States with high COVID-19 total death rates are seeing few new cases, and vice-versa. Data here. It appears that herd immunity occurs at around 500 deaths per million. Same thing is true for countries. Countries above ~500 deaths per million … Continue reading →
via Real Climate Science
July 17, 2020 at 09:06AM
Why do the BBC need three environmental reporters, when all they do is cut and paste the latest alarmist study without actually doing any cross checking or ask awkward questions?
A record-breaking heatwave in Siberia would have been almost impossible without human-caused climate change, a study has found.
The Russian region’s temperatures were more than 5C above average between January and June of this year.
Temperatures exceeded 38C in the Russian town of Verkhoyansk on 20 June, the highest temperature ever recorded north of the Arctic circle.
The Arctic is believed to be warming twice as fast as the global average.
An international team of climate scientists, led by the UK Met Office, found the record average temperatures were likely to happen less than once every 80,000 years without human-induced climate change.
That makes such an event “almost impossible” had the world not been warmed by greenhouse gas emissions, they conclude in the study.
The scientists described the finding as “unequivocal evidence of the impact of climate change on the planet”.
It is, says co-author Prof Peter Stott of the Met Office, the strongest result of any attribution study to date.
Attribution studies attempt to work out the role that human-induced climate change plays in major weather events.
Climate scientists use computer simulations to compare the climate as it is today with the climate as it would have been without human influence to see how likely different weather events would have been.
As already pointed out, there was nothing remotely exceptional about the heatwave at Verhojansk last month, as temperatures were only half a degree higher than in 1988.
Now we have the full monthly data in, we can compare June temperatures at Verhojansk:
While last month was a degree or two higher than usual, we can see that it was actually hotter in 1912!
Meanwhile there seems to be little trend in overall summer temperatures, with the hottest summer on record way back in 1917:
If anything extreme was happening to the climate in Siberia, it would be immediately apparent in these graphs.
As is well accepted, the heatwave in Siberia last month was the result of loops in the jet stream, which brought hot air up from the south in conjunction with a large and fixed area of high pressure.. But there is nothing unusual about such a phenomenon.
HH Lamb found that not only did the same thing happen back in the 19thC, but that it was probably more common then:
HH Lamb: Climate, History and the Modern World- p 253
Lamb, Wahl and their contemporaries relied on meticulous analysis of actual data, rather than on the GIGO computer models used by Stott.
Strangely, while the BBC are quite happy to report Stott’s junk science, they omit to mention a study from the University of Exeter earlier this year. This conclusively found that the jet stream was not getting wavier.
The post Siberian Heatwaves Are Fairly Common: Hottest Summer On Record Was In 1917 appeared first on The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF).
via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
July 17, 2020 at 08:44AM
My column at WashingtonExaminer.com (Web | PDF).
Three major oil and gas pipelines have been scuttled or delayed this month. Is cancel culture coming for America’s newfound energy dominance?
Recently, Virginia and North Carolina utilities threw in the towel on the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which would have brought fracked natural gas from West Virginia to the two states for domestic use and export. Although the developers had won a 7-2 Supreme Court ruling in May, the mounting and seemingly never-ending legal and regulatory processes and costs, coupled with the prospect of an anti-fracking and anti-economic growth Biden administration, were just too discouraging.
On Monday, a U.S. district court in Washington ordered the Dakota Access Pipeline, running from North Dakota to Illinois, to halt operations pending a new environmental review. On the same day, the Supreme Court upheld the federal court’s stop-work order on the Keystone XL pipeline, which would bring oil sands from Canada to the Gulf Coast for refining.
All three pipelines have been vigorously opposed by radical environmental groups, often hiding behind Native American tribes. Despite years of detailed and thorough regulatory review by state and federal agencies, the greens and their tribal allies have always been able to find a court willing to frivolously rule that some essential “i” has not been dotted or some vital “t” has not been crossed.
It’s as though we don’t already have plenty of safe experience with pipelines. In fact, the United States has about 1.6 million miles of pipelines, including 500,000 miles that carry crude oil and large-volume natural gas. Pipelines work and are safe for the environment, especially with modern leak detection and repair technologies. Not to mention the fact that pipelines are obviously safer than transporting oil via less efficient and more expensive railroad tankers.
The saving grace is that there are railroads, other pipelines in operation, and approved expansions that will continue to transport oil and gas from wells in West Virginia and North Dakota and oil sand mines in Canada — for now, that is.
But storm clouds are on the horizon in the form of a Joe Biden administration. Although the Biden campaign is desperately trying to keep a lid on what its energy polices would be, the end of American energy dominance is what’s coming.
In May, a Democratic National Committee panel on climate and the environment, headed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, urged Biden to ban fracking — the key to our energy dominance. But as that position would be a sure loser, Democratic elders stepped in to squash any talk of a fracking ban.
More recently, the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force issued a corrective climate plan that omitted mention of a fracking ban or the Green New Deal. Although Ocasio-Cortez was on the task force, and despite her strong advocacy for banning fracking and for the Green New Deal, those views were totally silenced. But you can bet that they are still held by many Biden supporters, including Ocasio-Cortez, and they are what will be implemented if he’s the next president.
The Biden campaign recently announced yet another panel of climate advisors — one that includes Carol Browner, the former Clinton EPA chief and the Obama administration czar for the environment and energy. Browner was the mastermind behind obtaining the 2007 Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, which allowed EPA to regulate greenhouse gases despite lacking any sort of authorization by Congress. Browner also masterminded the Obama administration’s infamous war on coal, which destroyed 95% of the market value of the coal industry, killed 50,000 high-paying coal industry jobs, and sent many coal communities into desperate financial and social circumstances.
With the coal industry essentially finished off, it will now be fracking’s turn under a Biden administration.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton made the mistake of talking about putting coal miners out of work. That bit of honesty from Clinton clearly backfired in battleground states like Pennsylvania. The Biden campaign will not be making the same mistake.
To obtain power, the Biden campaign has sealed the loose lips of socialist radicals like Ocasio-Cortez. Browner, a former commissioner for Socialist International, is smart enough on her own to stay mum. She will just point to the long-term and seemingly benign goal of making the U.S. carbon-neutral by 2050.
If Biden wins in November, immediately following his inauguration in January, the Browner and Ocasio-Cortez agenda will emerge in open control of the Biden energy policies. U.S. energy dominance? Sorry: canceled.
Steve Milloy publishes JunkScience.com, served on the Trump EPA transition team and is the author of Scare Pollution: Why and How to Fix the EPA (2016, Bench Press).
via JunkScience.com
July 17, 2020 at 08:38AM
By Paul Homewood
Why do the BBC need three environmental reporters, when all they do is cut and paste the latest alarmist study without actually doing any cross checking or ask awkward questions?
A record-breaking heatwave in Siberia would have been almost impossible without human-caused climate change, a study has found.
The Russian region’s temperatures were more than 5C above average between January and June of this year.
Temperatures exceeded 38C in the Russian town of Verkhoyansk on 20 June, the highest temperature ever recorded north of the Arctic circle.
The Arctic is believed to be warming twice as fast as the global average.
An international team of climate scientists, led by the UK Met Office, found the record average temperatures were likely to happen less than once every 80,000 years without human-induced climate change.
That makes such an event "almost impossible" had the world not been warmed by greenhouse gas emissions, they conclude in the study.
The scientists described the finding as "unequivocal evidence of the impact of climate change on the planet".
It is, says co-author Prof Peter Stott of the Met Office, the strongest result of any attribution study to date.
Attribution studies attempt to work out the role that human-induced climate change plays in major weather events.
Climate scientists use computer simulations to compare the climate as it is today with the climate as it would have been without human influence to see how likely different weather events would have been.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-53415297
As already pointed out, there was nothing remotely exceptional about the heatwave at Verhojansk last month, as temperatures were only half a degree higher than in 1988.
Now we have the full monthly data in, we can compare June temperatures at Verhojansk:
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/tmp/gistemp/STATIONS/tmp_RSM00024266_15_0_1/station.txt
While last month was a degree or two higher than usual, we can see that it was actually hotter in 1912!
Meanwhile there seems to be little trend in overall summer temperatures, with the hottest summer on record way back in 1917:
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/tmp/gistemp/STATIONS/tmp_RSM00024266_15_0_1/station.txt
If anything extreme was happening to the climate in Siberia, it would be immediately apparent in these graphs.
As is well accepted, the heatwave in Siberia last month was the result of loops in the jet stream, which brought hot air up from the south in conjunction with a large and fixed area of high pressure.. But there is nothing unusual about such a phenomenon.
HH Lamb found that not only did the same thing happen back in the 19thC, but that it was probably more common then:
HH Lamb: Climate, History and the Modern World- p 253
Lamb, Wahl and their contemporaries relied on meticulous analysis of actual data, rather than on the GIGO computer models used by Stott.
Strangely, while the BBC are quite happy to report Stott’s junk science, they omit to mention a study from the University of Exeter earlier this year. This conclusively found that the jet stream was not getting wavier.
Indeed, they point out that it is this very waviness which leads to a warmer Arctic, by bringing mild air from the south. Something, I might add, that anyone with half a braincell might have suspected.
https://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/homepage/title_778916_en.html
In true BBC fashion, Rowlatt does not miss a chance to ramp up the alarmism, by suggesting that a warmer Arctic is making our weather worse.
The changing Arctic climate is of huge importance here in the UK.
Four of the six main systems that determine this country’s weather are driven by conditions in the Arctic, said Dr Katharine Hendry of Bristol University.
She was one of the lead authors on a paper published last month that suggested a series of extreme weather events could be linked to changes in the Arctic.
The so-called "Beast from the East", in the winter of 2018, is one.
It involved Arctic air blasting the country, driving temperatures below 0C for several days. Over half a metre of snow fell in some areas.
The Beast from the East was a direct result of a Sudden Stratospheric Warming event, a perfectly natural and common event. It had nothing to do with a “warming Arctic” at all.
Indeed, Hendry’s paper actually admits the theory is just speculation:
If HH Lamb was still around, he probably would have pointed out the inconvenient fact that bitterly cold winters used to be very common!
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
July 17, 2020 at 07:36AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 