Scientists Rebuke Claims Of Human

Control Over Glacier Mass Balance

“Natural climate variability still emerges as the key deciding element governing the Himalayan glacier mass balances.” – Shekhar et al., 2017

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Yet another new paper has challenged to IPCC-endorsed conclusion that the Himalayan glaciers are melting rapidly due to anthropogenic climate change, and that these glaciers will very likely “disappear” by 2035.

The claim that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 was included in the 4th IPCC report (2007) not for scientific reasons, but “to put political pressure on world leaders“.

However, a 2014 comprehensive analysis of over 2,000 glaciers in the region indicated that 88% of Himalayan glaciers are stable or advancing, with overall negligible change (0.2%) since 2000.

Prior to this apparent 21st century “pause” in Himalayan glacier melt, a substantial glacier retreat occurred between the 1970s and 1990s for the region.   There were also decadal-scale periods of severe glacier melt during the 1600s and 1700s (Little Ice Age), when atmospheric CO2 levels were significantly lower (~275 ppm) than they are now.  The amplitude of the glacier retreat during the 17th and 18th centuries sometimes even exceeded the melt rates achieved during the last few decades (Shekhar et al., 2017).

According to a new paper published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports entitled “Himalayan Glaciers Experienced Significant Mass Loss During Later Phases Of Little Ice Age“, the high/low temperatures and melt rates achieved during the Little Ice Age were determined by varying magnitudes of solar activity and El Niño episodes.   After the 1970s, Himalayan glacier melt and temperature changes were only “partly” influenced by human activity, but they were primarily driven by solar activity variations (the Modern Grand Maximum) and natural oceanic heat oscillations internal to the Earth’s climate system (El Niño Southern Oscillation [ENSO], North Atlantic Oscillation [NAO], and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation [AMO]).

The authors conclude that there is a “robust natural climatic control over the Himalayan glaciers“, even for recent decades.  This conclusion contradicts the IPCC’s contention that Himalayan glacier melt is controlled by human activity.

The Himalayan glaciers will not be “disappearing” by 2035.

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Shekhar et al., 2017

Half  Of The World’s Non-Polar Glaciers (Himalayas) Were Already Melting During 1600s, 1700s

[T]he Hindu Kush-Himalaya (HKH) harbors ~50% (by area) of all the glaciers outside of the polar regions. … Our research is the maiden attempt to reconstruct the longest regional scale glacier mass balance records for the Western Himalaya based on tree-ring sampling at an unprecedented scale. Another highlight of our study is that it presents valid evidence of the significant mass loss experienced by the Himalayan glaciers even during the LIA [1500-1850].

[W]e believe that the episodes of significantly negative mass balances … were the result of an enhanced El Niño affecting the ISM [Indian Summer Monsoon] and increasing the temperatures … [and] a more direct relationship between the high TSI and more negative mass balances during the LIA in the years with potentially weaker El Niño.

‘Extremely High’ TSI, El Niño Since 1970s Resulted In ‘Severe Glacial Mass Loss’

In the case of the Himalaya, the […] phase of rising regional temperatures, and the start of the strong solar cycles that in later years (since the 1970s), started showing substantial coupling with strong El Niño episodes.  [M]ass balance periodicities of 9–12 years during ~1970–1990 [are] a representation of the response to a few of the strongest consecutive solar cycles in past 400 years. In fact, we see that ~50% of the years since 1970 experienced an exceptionally high TSI of >1361 W m−2, ~40% of which also underwent warm phases of ENSO.

Although, the study acknowledges the contributions of anthropogenic drivers of climate change in the Himalayan region, it also highlights a strong effect from the increased yearly concurrence of extremely high TSI with El Niño in the past five decades, resulting in severe glacial mass loss.

Natural Variability, With TSI And ENSO, NAO, AMO As Drivers, Control Glacier Mass Balance

Although external anthropogenic forcing can partly control the glacial regime in the Himalaya, the natural climate variability still emerges as the key deciding element governing the Himalayan glacier mass balances. Similar to several other studies for the region, our study also identifies ENSO, NAO, and AMO as the primary drivers of the regional mass balance variability. The fact that the past few decades have experienced intensified episodes of NAO, closely correlating with rising temperature, also suggests a robust natural climatic control over the Himalayan glaciers.

 

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September 21, 2017 at 08:06AM

By Paul Homewood

 

Monbiot unloads on Merkel!

Which living person has done most to destroy the natural world and the future wellbeing of humanity? Donald Trump will soon be the correct answer, when the full force of his havoc has been felt. But for now I would place another name in the frame: Angela Merkel.

What? Have I lost my mind? Angela Merkel, the “climate chancellor”? The person who, as German environment minister, brokered the first UN climate agreement, through sheer force of will? The chancellor who persuaded the G7 leaders to promise to phase out fossil fuels by the end of this century? The architect of Germany’s Energiewende – its famous energy transition? Yes, the very same.

Unlike Trump, she has no malicious intent. She did not set out to destroy the agreements she helped to create. But the Earth’s systems do not respond to mission statements or speeches or targets. They respond to hard fact. What counts, and should be judged, as she seeks a fourth term as German chancellor in the elections on Sunday, is what is done, not what is said. On this metric, her performance has been a planetary disaster.

Merkel has a fatal weakness: a weakness for the lobbying power of German industry. Whenever a crucial issue needs to be resolved, she weighs her ethics against political advantage, and chooses the advantage. This, in large part, is why Europe now chokes in a fug of diesel fumes.

The EU decision to replace petrol engines with diesel, though driven by German car manufacturers, predates her premiership. It was a classic European fudge, a means of averting systemic change while creating an impression of action, based on the claim (which now turns out to be false) that diesel engines produce less carbon dioxide than petrol. But once she became chancellor, Merkel used every conceivable tactic, fair and foul, to preserve this deadly cop-out.

The worst instance was in 2013, when, after five years of negotiations, other European governments had finally agreed a new fuel economy standard for cars: they would produce an average of no more than 95g of CO2 per km by 2020. Merkel moved in to close the whole thing down.

She is alleged to have threatened the then president of the European council, Irish taoiseach Enda Kenny, with the cancellation of Ireland’s bailout funds. She told the Netherlands and Hungary the German car plants in their countries would be closed. She struck a filthy deal with David Cameron, offering to frustrate European banking regulations if he helped her to block the fuel regulations. Through these brutal strategies, she managed to derail the agreement. The €700,000 donation her party then received from the major shareholders in BMW does not suggest they were unhappy with what she had achieved.

In 2014, the European commission wrote to the German government, warning that the air pollution caused by diesel engines was far higher than its manufacturers were claiming. The government ignored the warning. Even now, two years after the dieselgate scandal broke, Merkel has continued to defend diesel engines, announcing that “we will use all our power to prevent” German cities from banning them, and stifling the transition to electric cars. The “mistake” made by the diesel manufacturers, she insists, “doesn’t give us the right to deprive the entire industry of its future”. Instead, her policy deprives thousands of people of their lives.

But this could be the least of the environmental disasters she has engineered. For this lethal concession to German car companies was predated by an even worse one, in 2007. In that case, her blunt refusal – supported by the usual diplomatic bullying – to accept proposed improvements in engine standards forced the European commission to find another means of reducing greenhouse gases. It chose, disastrously, to replace fossil fuel with biofuels, a switch Merkel has vociferously defended.

Merkel and the European commission ignored repeated warnings that the likely consequences would include malnutrition and massive environmental destruction, as land was converted from forests or food crops to fuel production. The European biofuel rule is now a major driver of one of the world’s greatest environmental disasters: the razing of the Indonesian rainforests and their replacement with oil palm.

While greenhouse gas emissions in other European nations have fallen sharply, in Germany they have plateaued

Not only has this wiped out vast and magnificent ecosystems, and the orangutans, tigers, rhinos, gibbons and thousands of other species they supported; but it has also, by burning trees and oxidising peat, caused emissions far higher than those produced by fossil fuels. What makes this history especially bitter is that the target she derailed in 2007 was the one that had first been proposed, in 1994, by a German environment minister called – let me think – ah yes, Angela Merkel.

Is this the worst? It is hard to rank such crimes against the biosphere, but perhaps the most embarrassing is Germany’s shocking failure, despite investing hundreds of billions of euros, to decarbonise its electricity system. While greenhouse gas emissions in other European nations have fallen sharply, in Germany they have plateaued.

The reason is, once more, Merkel’s surrender to industrial lobbyists. Her office has repeatedly blocked the environment ministry’s efforts to set a deadline for an end to coal power. Coal, especially lignite, which vies with Canadian tar sands for the title of the world’s dirtiest fuel, still supplies 40% of Germany’s electricity. Because Merkel refuses to restrict its use, the peculiar impact of Germany’s Energiewende programme has been to cut the price of electricity, stimulating a switch from natural gas to lignite, which is cheaper. (In Germany they call this the Energiewende paradox). But Merkel doesn’t seem to care. She has announced that “coal will remain a pillar of German energy supply for a prolonged time span”.

Shouldn’t the European emissions trading system have sorted this out, pricing coal power out of the market? Yes, it should. But it was sabotaged in 2006 by a German politician, who insisted that so many permits be issued to industry that the price fell through the floor. I think you can probably guess who.

All these are real impacts, while the paper agreements she helped to broker have foundered and dissipated as a result of special favours and dirty deals of the kind I have listed in this article. Yet still she attracts an aura of sanctity. This is quite an achievement, for the world’s leading environmental vandal.

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September 21, 2017 at 08:04AM

(and other nonsense from Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology, the University of Melbourne and The Conversation). Dr. Bill Johnston[1] Main points. Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology and climate scientists at the University of Melbourne should know that nowhere on planet-earth could rainfall be less than none! The Bureau’s latest Seasonal Summary (winter 2017) spuriously claims rainfall is…

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September 21, 2017 at 07:28AM

Having spent over a decade trying to get the idiots in academia to admit what was blindingly obvious to anyone who looked at the data: that they vastly overstated the science and were frankly deluded in their predictions, it has … Continue reading →

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September 21, 2017 at 07:24AM