ABC News says there has been an increase in heart disease, and it is caused by global warming. “Dr. Martha Gulati will never forget the first time she saw a young, healthy athlete die of heat stroke. It was 1995 … Continue reading →
via Real Climate Science
January 11, 2023 at 12:26PM
Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
As the result of an untimely rush of blood to my head, I posted the first comment on an article at PhysOrg entitled “On this flooded island of homeless people, climate change has never been more real“. Pulling out all the stops to tug at our heartstrings, the article talks about some homeless folks in Sacramento, California who apparently believed the recent drought would last forever. The story was also picked up by the LA Times and other papers. Of course, the LA Times can’t call them “homeless”, that’s not politically correct these days. The term currently used by noble virtue signalers is “unhoused” …
[Lest you think I am without compassion for the homeless, please read my posts “Fixing The Brakes“, “Fixing The EGR“, and “Wandering In Wonderland“. But I digress …]
In any case, here’s the backstory. As a result of thinking the river would never rise again, or perhaps not considering the river at all, a number of the “unhoused” took up residence on a spit of land jutting into the Sacramento river called “Bannon Island”. And of course, 100% predictably, after the last several years of little rain the recent strong rains slowly transformed the spit. First, it turned back into an island, then into a partially-flooded marsh. As the photo above shows, now these unhoused people have to travel to/from their unhouses by raft. Shocking, I know, and obviously a clear sign of “climate change” to the climate ignorati.
My comment was:
When California was dry over the last few years, that drought was blamed on “climate change”, and the people on Bannon Island were high and dry. Mostly high.
Now that we have rainfall again, Bannon Island is partially submerged, and the people on Bannon Island are wet, but likely still high … and that is also blamed on “climate change” …
You guys are a joke. If both wet and dry can be blamed on climate change, then EVERYTHING is the result of climate change. And that’s just nonsensical.
Get a grip. California has had both floods and droughts for untold millennia. And if you live on a low-lying spit of land in a riverbed, you can’t be surprised if the rain may flood your home.
Duh.
w.
Likely somewhat harsh in retrospect, but I don’t care for folks who turn human foolishness and lack of foresight into some kind of bogus climate morality tale.
Amid the usual mud-throwing personal attacks on me that are the typical response of people who have no scientific ammunition, someone said:
It is pretty clear even to high school students: more energy in a system with high contrasts and processes of mixture leads to increased extremes, on either side. You don’t even need earth science for this, of which much can influence the outcome, exacerbate or dampen events.
To which I replied:
While this may be true in theory, recently in fact there has been LESS annual variation in rainfall in Sacramento. Variations in the 1800’s were larger than today. See here for the actual data. (Note there is missing data for a few of the recent years.)
Unfortunately, the PhysOrg website doesn’t allow images in comments. If they had, I’d have posted up this graphic.
Figure 1. Monthly rainfall, Sacramento, CA. Source: KNMI
Of course, this was not convincing to the gentleman, who once again resorted to a personal attack, saying “It is true in practice and you are not a climate scientist.” I had to laugh at that, given that my work has been cited by the IPCC as well as in a Congressional submission to the EPA, and Google Scholar lists ~ 200 citations to my various scientific articles.
However, it did give me an idea about how I could measure “climate extremes”. I decided to take a look at a trailing standard deviation of the Sacramento rainfall data. “Standard deviation” is a measure of the spread of the data. If we’re currently getting more extremes, meaning more wet years and also more dry years, then the standard deviation of the recent data should be greater than that of the earlier years.
A “trailing standard deviation” measures the standard deviation of some number of years previous to a given year. I used a 30-year trailing standard deviation in the graphic below, meaning that each data point in time represents the standard deviation of the 30-year period prior to that time. Why 30 years? Well, calculations over that length of time are generally said to represent the climate rather than the weather. Here’s the result.
Figure 2. 30-year trailing standard deviation of the monthly rainfall in Sacramento, California. Photo shows one of the unhoused inhabitants of Bannon Island considering the vagaries and peccadilloes of the weather.
“Great,” sez I, “done deal!” … however, as has happened more than once, during the night I woke up and thought “Hang on, I left something out!” Grrr … what I’d left out is the fact that as the average rainfall decreases, as has happened in Sacramento, we’d expect the standard deviation to decrease as well. So Figure 1 was not showing what I wanted to investigate.
Of course, that kept me tossing and turning the rest of the night, until I got up early and redid my calculations by expressing them as the 30-year trailing standard deviation divided by the 30-year trailing mean (average) of the values. This removes the effects of the change in the mean over time. Here’s that result.
Figure 3. 30-year trailing standard deviation of the monthly rainfall divided by the 30-year trailing mean (average) of the monthly rainfall, Sacramento, California.
So that was encouraging. The shape of the curve changed, but the conclusion of decreasing extremes was unchanged.
Upon seeing that I had another thought, viz, “Well, maybe I’m missing short-term increases in extremes that are masked by looking at a 30-year time span”. So instead, I looked at 6-year trailing standard deviations divided by 6-year trailing means as shown below.
Figure 4. 6-year trailing standard deviation of the monthly rainfall divided by the 6-year trailing mean of the monthly rainfall, Sacramento, California.
Clearly, despite generally rising temperatures and “more energy in the system”, the variations in rainfall in Sacramento have been getting less extreme, not more extreme … go figure.
At some future date I might take a look at some other datasets … any suggestions regarding what data might be revealing gladly accepted, but no guarantees. Ars longa, vita brevis …
California rain is important to me because I live in a redwood forest about six miles inland from the Pacific Ocean, an hour and a half north of San Francisco … and the rain continues to fall. Supposed to rain every day for the next ten days, looks like a real frog-strangler. No complaints from me, though, it fills the water table so our water well will produce in the upcoming summer.
My best to all, wet or dry, housed or un,
w.
As Is My Custom: I ask that when you comment, you quote the exact words you are discussing. This lets everyone know exactly who and what you are discussing, and it avoids many of the misunderstandings that plague the Web.
via Watts Up With That?
January 11, 2023 at 12:03PM
Guest “Lions and Tigers and Bears!” by David Middleton
Study: Two-thirds of glaciers on track to disappear by 2100
By SETH BORENSTEIN
January 5, 2023The world’s glaciers are shrinking and disappearing faster than scientists thought, with two-thirds of them projected to melt out of existence by the end of the century at current climate change trends, according to a new study.
[…]
The study in Thursday’s journal Science examined all of the globe’s 215,000 land-based glaciers — not counting those on ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica — in a more comprehensive way than past studies. Scientists then used computer simulations to calculate, using different levels of warming, how many glaciers would disappear, how many trillions of tons of ice would melt, and how much it would contribute to sea level rise.
[…]
Yes… I know… I should have stopped reading after “Seth Borenstein”… That said, I took the time to dig up the “new study” (Rounce et al., 2023) and found that the paper wasn’t awful… However…
And it appears to be more advocacy than science. The paper is linked to this “perspective” article:
Acting now will reduce glacier loss
Many of the world’s glaciers will disappear, but quick action will make a differenceAbstract
As global mean temperature rises in pace with increasing greenhouse gas emissions, the future of the world’s glaciers looks bleak. Rates of glacier mass loss have increased over the past two decades (1), a trend that will continue even if emissions are capped (2–4). Despite their small size relative to the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, these dwindling ice stores are important. They currently contribute as much to sea level as the ice sheets (3), their disappearance means water insecurity for millions, and their retreat increases glacier hazard frequency, such as glacier outburst floods and landslides (2). Although most countries have agreed to pursue temperature limits within 1.5°C above preindustrial levels (5), these targets are unmet (6). On page 78 of this issue, Rounce et al. (7) present a model of the fate of all 215,547 glaciers under different climate scenarios. Their findings emphasize the need to act now to prevent substantial glacier loss.
If I was cynical, I would say that Rounce et al was written for the sole purpose of science-ing up another pathetic plea to ban the use of fossil fuels.
According to the study, the world currently has 215,547 alpine/valley glaciers. While I seriously doubt that detailed mass balance studies have been carried out on all 215,547, the number sounds reasonable. The 2/3’s of glaciers (144,416 or ~44% of total ice mass) hypothetically destined to vanish will do so under the nearly physically impossible RCP8.5 scenario. Even if we undiscovered fire tomorrow (RCP2.6), half of the glaciers (107,774) would still be toast by the turn of the century. Returning to the Stone Age in order to save 36,443 smallish glaciers doesn’t sound like a good deal to me… But I make my living finding oil and gas… And I’m a geologist… So, I’m doubly biased. Be that as it may… Scale and context seem to be missing from the assertion that “two-thirds of glaciers on track to disappear by 2100.” Even if they “disappear,” will this be significant relative to what glaciers were already doing in the Quaternary Period?
The subject paper forecasts what might happen to glaciers over the period from 2015 to 2100. Presumably, every thing that has happened or will happen to all things climate since 1950 were or will be due to fossil fuel consumption and the resultant emissions of so-called greenhouse gases. While the evidence of an anthropogenic climate change fingerprint since 1950 is equivocal, at best, predictions about the distant future are about as useful as mammary glands on a bull. When I make a prediction at work, it’s generally tested by drilling a well within a year or two of the prediction. If I make a prediction about the results of a well, that won’t reach the objective until 2100, I won’t be around to see if my prediction was at least in the ballpark.
However, we can provide some scale and context to the glacier issue by looking at what they were doing before the alleged anthropogenic fingerprint allegedly emerged from the climatic noise level.
Most of the remainder of this post was sourced from WUWT posts I previously authored.
The cool thing about “new” CAGW studies, is that they’ve usually already been debunked on WUWT. What does it mean to “debunk” something?
debunk
to show that something is less important, less good, or less true than it has been made to appear
Debunking doesn’t require that something be demonstrated to be false. It only requires demonstrating that it is less, usually far less, important (or significant) than asserted.
Glacier mass balance is a way to measure changes in the cryosphere. A glacier with a negative mass balance is losing more ice than it gains annually. A glacier with a positive mas balance is gaining more ice than it loses annually.
Total global glacier mass balance has been negative since the end of Neoglaciation in the mid-1800’s. When glaciers and ice sheets have negative mass balances, some of the meltwater eventually finds its way to the ocean and sea level rises. Over most of the past 150 years, more glaciers have been retreating (negative mass balance) than advancing (positive mass balance).
Another way to measure glacial advance and retreat is by changes in glacier length. Oerlemans’ 2005 climate reconstruction was derived from changes in global stacked glacier length. The following graph overlays atmospheric CO2 and northern hemisphere temperatures on Oerlemans’ stacked glacier length plot. The glacial length is relative to 1950.
In the extremely unlikely event that the climate models are right, 90% of the ice loss occurred before an anthropogenic fingerprint could be discerned.
Could it possibly be true that most the the magnificent glaciers, about which Seth Borenstein waxed so eloquently, had already largely disappeared before the word “climatologist” had even been coined?
Glaciers are always advancing or retreating… The may move at a glacial pace, but they do move. People living in a world with advancing glaciers are not likely to thrive as well as they would in a world of retreating glaciers.
I wonder if Mr. Borenstein is aware of the fact that the “temperature rise since pre-industrial times” began at a time when Earth was colder and more ice-covered than at any point since the end of the Pleistocene Epoch.
Little Ice Age
JUNE 5, 2015 / K. JAN OOSTHOEK[…]
During the height of the Little Ice Age , it was in general about one degree Celsius colder than at present. The Baltic Sea froze over, as did most of the rivers in Europe. Winters were bitterly cold and prolonged, reducing the growing season by several weeks. These conditions led to widespread crop failure, famine, and in some regions population decline.
The prices of grain increased and wine became difficult to produce in many areas and commercial vineyards vanished in England. Fishing in northern Europe was also badly affected as cod migrated south to find warmer water. Storminess and flooding increased and in mountainous regions the treeline and snowline dropped. In addition glaciers advanced in the Alps and Northern Europe, overrunning towns and farms in the process.
Iceland was one of the hardest hit areas. Sea ice, which today is far to the north, came down around Iceland. In some years, it was difficult to bring a ship ashore anywhere along the coast. Grain became impossible to grow and even hay crops failed. Volcanic eruptions made life even harder. Iceland lost half of its population during the Little Ice Age.
Tax records in Scandinavia show many farms were destroyed by advancing ice of glaciers and by melt water streams. Travellers in Scotland reported permanent snow cover over the Cairngorm Mountains in Scotland at an altitude of about 1200 metres. In the Alps, the glaciers advanced and threatened to bulldozed towns. Ice-dammed lakes burst periodically, destroying hundreds of buildings and killing many people. As late as 1930 the French Government commissioned a report to investigate the threat of the glaciers. They could not have foreseen that human induced global warming was to deal more effective with this problem than any committee ever could.
“Many farms were destroyed by advancing ice of glaciers and by melt water streams”… “Ice-dammed lakes burst periodically, destroying hundreds of buildings and killing many people”… Sounds like an actual climate crisis to me.
History of Glaciers in Glacier National Park
The history of glaciation within current Glacier National Park boundaries spans centuries of glacial growth and recession, carving the features we see today. Glaciers were present within current Glacier National Park boundaries as early as 7,000 years ago but may have survived an early Holocene warm period (Carrara, 1989), making them much older. These modest glaciers varied in size, tracking climatic changes, but did not grow to their Holocene maximum size until the end of the Little Ice Age (LIA) around A.D. 1850. While they may not have formed in their entirety during the LIA, their maximum perimeters can be documented through mapping of lateral and terminal moraines. (Key, 2002) The extent and mass of these glaciers, as well as glaciers around the globe, has clearly decreased during the 20th century in response to warmer temperatures.Climate reconstructions representative of the Glacier National Park region extend back multiple centuries and show numerous long-duration drought and wet periods that influenced the mass balance of glaciers (Pederson et al. 2004). Of particular note was an 80-year period (~1770-1840) of cool, wet summers and above-average winter snowfall that led to a rapid growth of glaciers just prior to the end of the LIA. Thus, in the context of the entire Holocene, the size of glaciers at the end of the LIA was an anomaly of sorts. In fact, the large extent of ice coverage removed most of the evidence of earlier glacier positions by overriding terminal and lateral moraines.
Tree-ring based climate records and historic photographs indicate the initiation of frontal recession and ice mass thinning between A.D. 1860 and 1880. The alignment of decadal-scale climate anomalies over the early 20th century produced a period of glacial recession somewhat analogous to conditions experienced over the past few decades. The coupling of hot, dry summers with substantial decreases in winter snowpack (~30% of normal) produced dramatic recession rates as high as 100 m/yr from A.D. 1917-1941 (Pederson et al. 2004). These multidecadal episodes have substantially impacted the mass balance of glaciers since A.D. 1900.
The glaciers of Glacier National Park reached their maximum Holocene extent about 150 years ago and may not have existed at all prior to 7,000 years ago.
Most alpine and valley glaciers formed after the Holocene Climatic Optimum and generally advanced until the early to mid 1800’s. This period is known as Neoglaciation. Since the end of Neoglaciation most alpine and valley glaciers have been retreating. Neoglaciation ended long-before CO2 levels had risen much above 280 ppm.
While vanishing glaciers sound awful, advancing glaciers are a lot worse.
Bohleber, P., Schwikowski, M., Stocker-Waldhuber, M. et al. New glacier evidence for ice-free summits during the life of the Tyrolean Iceman. Sci Rep 10, 20513 (2020). https://ift.tt/DSLMoaf
Dyke, A.S., Moore, A. and L. Robertson. [computer file]. Deglaciation of North America. Geological Survey of Canada Open File 1547. Ottawa: Natural Resources Canada, 2003.
Grosjean, Martin, Suter, Peter, Trachsel, Mathias & Wanner, Heinz. (2007). “Ice‐borne prehistoric finds in the Swiss Alps reflect Holocene glacier fluctuations”. Journal of Quaternary Science. 22. 203 – 207. 10.1002/jqs.1111.
Kaufman, D., McKay, N., Routson, C. et al. Holocene global mean surface temperature, a multi-method reconstruction approach. Sci Data 7, 201 (2020). https://ift.tt/1CW38NA
MacFarling-Meure, C., D. Etheridge, C. Trudinger, P. Steele, R. Langenfelds, T. van Ommen, A. Smith, and J. Elkins (2006). “Law Dome CO2, CH4 and N2O ice core records extended to 2000 years BP“. Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L14810, doi:10.1029/2006GL026152.
Moberg, A., D.M. Sonechkin, K. Holmgren, N.M. Datsenko and W. Karlén. 2005. “Highly variable Northern Hemisphere temperatures reconstructed from low- and high-resolution proxy data”. Nature, Vol. 433, No. 7026, pp. 613-617, 10 February 2005.
Oerlemans, J. “Extracting a climate signal from 169 glacier records”. Science (80-. ). 2005, 308, 675–677, doi:10.1126/science.1107046.
Rounce, David R., Regine Hock, Fabien Maussion, Romain Hugonnet, William Kochtitzky, Matthias Huss, Etienne Berthier et al. “Global glacier change in the 21st century: Every increase in temperature matters.” Science 379, no. 6627 (2023): 78-83.
via Watts Up With That?
January 11, 2023 at 08:14AM
This case is due to take place on March 15th with far reaching results for all of us. Below is the background to it:
In The Netherlands there have now been two prominent climate cases. In 2015 Dutch NGO Urgenda won its case against the Dutch state, demanding more ambitious reduction of greenhouse gases. Now Friends of the Earth (FoE) has prevailed against a private company in a climate case. Shell was ordered to adopt corporate policies to reduce the CO2 emissions from the group’s activities by net 45% by the end of 2030 compared to 2019. This reduction obligation applies to the Shell Group’s entire global energy portfolio. Shell must not only reduce its own emissions but also ensure that the emissions of its suppliers and customers (Scope 3 emissions) fall drastically.
Sweetheart
The verdict and court documents, reveal that this is some sort of ‘sweetheart’ case in which the parties agreed on the facts. Shell could hardly defend itself against the alarmist statements put forward by FoE because the company had previously made similar statements. Nowadays, a large, publicly traded company cannot publicly deny the “climate crisis.” If a company were to do so, it would have the media, activists, and a large number of politicians all condemning it. No public company can afford such reputational damage. Climate activists exploit the inability of corporations to defend themselves.
FoE in power
With the big win against Shell in its pocket FoE has demanded ambitious ‘climate plans’ from 30 major Dutch companies, including food companies and even banks and insurance companies. These climate plans have been verified by the “New Climate Institute,” a consultancy known for the “Climate Action Tracker” that has turned climate into a huge revenue model. The result was a red “climate crisis index” rating for the vast majority.
These companies face the same dilemma as Shell. If they fight back they will likely suffer huge reputational damage. Shell moved its headquarter from The Hague to London last year, and will receive huge subsidies for CCS-projects (Carbon Capture and Storage) and green hydrogen. Ultimately, the bill for all these ‘climate plans’ will have to be paid by citizens and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). Small companies are already suffering due to high energy prices, which are only partly related to the war in Ukraine and for the rest the result of environmental and climate policies.
Intervention by Clintel
Clintel says enough is enough. In October Clintel sent a request to the court of appeal to join the case as a third independent party. Clintel’s aim is to make clear that the judge based its verdict on a distorted picture of climate science, the role of the IPCC and the state of the climate. It will also defend the rights of citizens and democracy.
Not surprisingly, but disappointing nonetheless, both Shell and FoE oppose Clintel‘s proposed intervention. The court ordered a hearing on March 15th 2023 in which Clintel can plead its case.
We launched our own special website for this court case: climatecaseofthecentury.org.
Everyone in the world can (free of charge) join our case (as a citizen/lawyer or as a scientist) by filling in a form on the website. The more people participate, the better for making your voices heard. You can also help us by sending this newsletter to other people that might want to join our case.
Of course, we also need a lot of financial support for this big court case. All the details about how you can contribute are available on climatecaseofthecentury.org.
We are truly living in extraordinary times. As has been said, above, all this is going to drive up prices which we will all be paying. It will also lead to shortages, as some businesses will go broke. I hope that many of these businesses will help to fund the Clintel legal team, as it is ultimately for their benefit, just as it will be for us. I suspect that there will be huge and complex arguments about what counts as a "carbon emission" and who is responsible for what. All this will lead to long and expensive court cases. It is utter madness brought upon us by foolish governments and courts. It will probably be looked at in future centuries in much the same way as we now see the Spanish inquisition and the Salem witch trials.
via climate science
January 11, 2023 at 07:42AM
