Child blood lead levels actually slightly declined from harmless to even less harmless during the crisis. This study has been out for two weeks. No media outlet has reported it. It was much more fun and profitable for the #FakeNews media to report the scare as below. The study abstract is below.
via JunkScience.com
March 26, 2019 at 02:52PM
By Paul Homewood
Many blamed climate change for last summer’s tragic fires in Greece.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-44932366
For instance, the Guardian reported:
Areas around Athens were like a tinderbox, emergency workers said, after a dry winter and a summer heatwave in which temperatures have risen above 40C.
Whilst the above BBC report did not specifically mention a connection, there were various links on the page to “global heatwaves” and “heat records”.
Now that the data is in for last year, we can actually check what did happen.
First, rainfall:
Annual rainfall last year was pretty normal, and there is no evidence of long term trends.
From January to June, just before the fires started, we find that rainfall in Athens was above average.
Clearly then, lack of rainfall was not a factor.
As for temperatures, it was not unusually hot in either June or July. Neither have summer temperatures been high by historical standards in recent years:
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/tmp/gistemp/STATIONS/tmp_618167140000_5_0_1/station.txt
In fact, a few days after the tragedy, the BBC published a much more objective analysis, written by two experts. It made several relevant observations:
At least 80 people have been killed in wildfires in Greece, with blazes also reported as far apart as the US, Sweden, Canada and the UK. It’s a summer that has seen an unusually high number of fires in some countries.
Worldwide, an area equivalent to about 20 times the size of Great Britain is burnt by wildfires in a typical year.
Most are in remote areas such as the savannah grasslands of Africa and South America, or the boreal forests which stretch from western Alaska to eastern Siberia.
But we rarely hear about wildfires in such isolated places. It tends to be those which threaten lives, infrastructure, or natural resources that hit the headlines.
Indeed, in Europe, the number of fires so far this year is well above average – but not in the countries which are usually worst affected.
There were 427 blazes between 1 January and 24 July, compared with an average of 298 for the same period in the past decade.
But, very importantly, the area they burned is only about half what is usually seen – 55,700 hectares, compared with 112,000 hectares.
In the US, the number of fires this year is slightly below average. However, there has been a small increase in the area burned, from just over 1.4m hectares to almost 1.6m hectares.
The most important change is not how many fires there have been, but where they are burning. The north-west of Europe is experiencing a rare heatwave.
This has brought unusually dry conditions which have allowed large fires in regions which usually see very few.
In the UK the area burned so far – 13,888 hectares – is more than four times the average of the past decade. The fires have included an area of peatland near Manchester and grassland in London.
In Sweden, the figure, 18,500 hectares, is an astounding 41 times the 10-year average. Dozens of fires have burned from the Arctic Circle down to the Baltic Sea.
Other northern European countries including Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany and Latvia have seen between 20 and 200 times the normal area burned.
In contrast, Mediterranean Europe – which usually sees a large number of fires – has had a relatively cool and wet spring and early summer.
In Italy and Croatia the area burned is well below average.
Spain and Portugal, which normally have fire damage over a greater area than any other European countries, have suffered relatively few fires – with only 12% and 5% of the average area burned, respectively.
The following points are worth noting:
1) Many fires start in the boreal forests which stretch from western Alaska to eastern Siberia..
It is often claimed that fires in these are unusual, and must be due to Arctic warming. Clearly that is a lie.
2) There were 427 blazes between 1 January and 24 July, compared with an average of 298 for the same period in the past decade in Europe
But, very importantly, the area they burned is only about half what is usually seen – 55,700 hectares, compared with 112,000 hectares.
In other words, last year was not unusual in the least.
3) In the US, the number of fires this year is slightly below average. However, there has been a small increase in the area burned, from just over 1.4m hectares to almost 1.6m hectares
Similarly in the US, where fire activity was around normal at that stage of the year.
4) Because of the hot, dry weather across N Europe, wildfires were much worse than a typical year. However, across the Med, the opposite was the case, with much reduced burn.
The article finishes:
Natural ignition by lightning is common in some regions, such as the North America boreal forest, but in Europe the vast majority of fires are human-caused.
The deadly fires in Greece are a prime example of weather being only one important factor.
Until a few days ago, Greece had experienced fewer fires than is typical.
But, in a densely-populated region near Athens, the presence of villages and towns amid highly-flammable pine forests and shrubland has had tragic consequences.
In recent decades, there has been an increase of "megafires".
These are too big and fierce to be stopped, irrespective of the efforts and resources thrown at them. While climate change may have made more fuel available for such fires, human behaviour has also played a role.
In many rural areas of Europe land has been abandoned – leading to the growth of more vegetation close to and among homes. People often enjoy living or holidaying in forest areas, which also increases the risk of being directly affected by fire.
Fortunately, it is possible to reduce the risks this poses – by clearing "fuel" close to buildings and building fire shelters in areas where the population might need them.
Educating people about the risks and having evacuation plans in place can also reduce the threat to human lives and the economy.
We need to adapt and learn how to coexist with fire.
Fire has been transforming the Earth’s landscapes and vegetation for millions of years.
It is not going to go away.
As they say, human ignition is by far the main cause of wildfire. The BBC mentioned at the time:
Officials quoted by AFP news agency have suggested the current blazes may have been started by arsonists looking to loot abandoned homes.
"Fifteen fires had started simultaneously on three different fronts in Athens," said government spokesman Dimitris Tzanakopoulos
And in a report a couple of weeks ago, the BBC noted that a 65-year-old man suspected of having started the wildfires after he burned wood in his garden is also facing charges.
I wonder whether David Attenborough will offering any of these truths in his propaganda stunt, or if he will stick to the “blame it on global warming” lie?
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
March 26, 2019 at 02:42PM
Jakobshavn Glacier, Greenland Image: NASA
The Jakobshavn is the glacier that dumps more ice in the ocean than any other in the Northern Hemisphere. It made the iceberg that “sank the titanic”. It has been receding for years, and the losses were accelerating, but then it astonished the scientists.
”At first we didn’t believe it,” said glaciologist Ala Khazendar of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “We had pretty much assumed that Jakobshavn would just keep going on as it had over the last 20 years.”
–ScienceAlert
“That was kind of a surprise. We kind of got used to a runaway system,” said Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland ice and climate scientist Jason Box. “The good news is that it’s a reminder that it’s not necessarily going that fast. But it is going.”
Box, who wasn’t part of the study, said Jakobshavn is “arguably the most important Greenland glacier because it discharges the most ice in the northern hemisphere. For all of Greenland, it is king.”
– Associated Press
But it’s OK, seriously, we’re all still going to bake in climate hell because all the models that […]
via JoNova
March 26, 2019 at 02:06PM
By Kirye
and Pierre Gosselin
In December 2000, environment correspondent Paul Brown wrote here at The Guardian that global warming threatened “to create a dust belt around the globe” and that the Sahara had “crossed the Mediterranean” and forced “thousands to migrate as a lethal combination of soil degradation and climate change” turned “parts of southern Europe into desert.”
He added: “A fifth of Spanish land is so degraded […] and in Italy tracts of land in the south are now abandoned and technically desert. Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece are the four EU countries already so badly affected that they have joined the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD) which is meeting in Bonn this week.”
Failed predictions
Brown also wrote that the spreading desertification was not confined to the EU, but that also Bulgaria, Hungary, Moldova, Romania and Russia have all reported signs of desertification and that it was spreading beyond the Black Sea and stretching as far as Mongolia. China!
Just the opposite is occurring
So since this 2000 claim made in The Guardian and the many other alarmist desertification claims coming due to climate change, we ask whether or not things have gotten worse since like they were supposed to. A brief look at precipitation data across southern Europe shows us that the opposite is more the case.
Precipitation has increased, and not decreased, and so greening is favored more than before.
What follows are the precipitation charts for some southern European countries, which are located north of Africa’s massive Sahara Desert. First we begin with Spain:
Data source: Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA)
Examined are two stations in Spain with sufficiently available precipitation data. Both La Coruna and Valladolid stations show more precipitation since 1983, thus contradicting predictions of less. But the trend has not impressed the alarmists at The Guardian, who in 2016 wrote:
Southern Spain will be reduced to desert by the end of the century if the current rate of greenhouse gas emissions continue unchecked, researchers have warned.”
Next we look at France. Using data available from 13 stations across France from the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), here as well we find no downward trend that would aid increased desertification:
Data source: Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA)
France also has five stations that go back further, i.e. to 1983:
Data source: Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA)
Here as well we see a rising precipitation trend, and not one that suggests precipitation is falling and so things are going to get drier.
Now we move to the southern European country of Italy, where the data from 7 stations are examined:
Modestly rising trend in Italy. Data source: Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA)
Finally we look at the best datasets from Greece, where 6 stations are plotted:
Data source: Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA)
As is the case in the other southern European countries, Greece has not seen a downward trend in precipitation, rather the trend has increased noticeably.
Of course there are other factors that effect desertification, such as agriculture. However, the rainfall data over the current century shows that precipitation is rising and hampering the expansion of deserts into Europe. Contrast that to what the Guardian claimed in 2016:
Temperatures would rise nearly 5C globally under the worst case scenario by 2100, causing deserts to expand northwards across southern Spain and Sicily, and Mediterranean vegetation to replace deciduous forests.”
Clearly this is fake science that ranks on the scale of the Russia collusion hoax.
via NoTricksZone
March 26, 2019 at 01:03PM
Iowa Climate Science Education 