California Auto Emissions Showdown

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March 25, 2017 at 08:08AM

We really don′t know clouds at all 

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Despite confessing to being ‘baffled by clouds’, climate science and its media followers are still prone to assertions like ‘as the world warms’ – as though it’s bound to do so indefinitely.

Though we see them every day, clouds remain such a mystery to scientists that they are inhibiting climate change predictions. But a new atlas could be a game changer, thinks DW.COM.

Nothing beats a lazy afternoon sitting on the grass and watching the clouds roll by. These white fluffy friends can feel like a constant and comforting presence in life. And since the dawn of air travel, as folk singer Joni Mitchell once sang, we’ve looked at clouds from both sides now.

But as Mitchell cautioned, somewhow we still don’t know clouds at all. Her words were true in 1969, and they are still true today.

Clouds might seem a familiar part of our lives. In fact, they are one of the least-understood aspects of our environment. And that’s causing a huge headache for researchers trying to predict how the world will be affected by climate change.

Despite the critical role they play in the planet’s water cycle and heating patterns, scientists are often still baffled by how and why clouds behave the way they do. This uncertainty is the main reason climate research remains an imperfect science. Researchers just can’t say for sure how clouds are going to react to a warming environment, and that means they can’t make exact predictions about how the world will be affected by climate change.

A cloudy day
But scientists now have a new tool to unravel these mysteries. Tomorrow (23 March), the World Meteorological Organization will unveil a new, long-awaited digitized International Cloud Atlas – a modern update to an atlas started nearly 150 years ago.

“The last update was roughly 40 years ago,” WMO scientific officer Isabelle Ruedi told DW. “At that time there was no internet, no digital cameras, nothing like that. It means that nowadays the old atlas is not so accessible to people. We decided to update it to take into account the best knowledge we have of clouds.”

The new atlas is being unveiled on World Meteorological Day, which this year is being dedicated to the theme of clouds. WMO secretary-general Petteri Taalas says it offers a new chance for meteorologists and scientists to get to grips with these mysterious celestial beings – which remain both known and unknown at the same time.

“Throughout the centuries, few natural phenomena have inspired as much scientific thought and artistic reflection as clouds,” he says. “If we want to forecast weather we have to understand clouds. If we want to model the climate system we have to understand clouds. And if we want to predict the availability of water resources, we have to understand clouds.”

This new version of the atlas brings together for the first time a wealth of data, including high-tech, surface-based, space observations and remote sensing. It follows a consultation period in which photographs and other forms of evidence were gathered from all across the world.

Central to climate
So why are clouds so important to our weather patterns? Most importantly, they move water from one place to another. Clouds soak up water from lakes and dump it on dry land. When their patterns go awry, it results in droughts and floods.

Clouds also modulate heat in the atmosphere, cooling the earth by shielding it from the sun. So we know clouds are important to the weather we experience. What we don’t know is how their behavior will change as the Earth’s atmosphere gets warmer.

Sandrine Bony, author of a 2012 white paper on climate science by the World Climate Research Program, notes that the mysteries of clouds have remained frustratingly difficult to solve. “Uncertainty in estimates of the magnitude of the climate sensitivity has hardly changed in 30 years,” she explains. “Although models are getting better, some biases in modelled large-scale circulations have persisted across many cycles of model development.”

Researchers hope to use the new data contained in the atlas to focus on four initiatives aimed at doubling the knowledge of how clouds behave within the next five to 10 years.

First, they will design new tests to measure why there have been so many differences between prediction models for cloud behavior so far. They will then use this research to reduce model errors and make more reliable projections. Thirdly, they will work to better understand the connection between clouds and the convective processes that cause water to evaporate.

Work will also focus on the changing patterns of clouds already taking place due to a warming environment.

Continued here.

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March 25, 2017 at 07:45AM

EU countries used €600 million climate loophole worth extra “114 million cars”

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Taxing a basic molecule of life on Earth was never going to be easy.

Leaked paper exposes EU abuse of climate loophole

EXCLUSIVE/ European Union countries exploited loopholes in United Nations forestry rules to pocket carbon credits worth €600 million and the equivalent of global-warming emissions from 114 million cars.

That’s slightly more cars than exist in Germany, France and Italy combined.

You will not believe, governments overstated their logging targets then claimed credits for the forests they didn’t cut down, and the EU paid them for it.

Just saving the world, one lie at a time.

The document said that leaving the loophole open risked 133 million tonnes of unearned carbon credits falling into governments hands.

133 million tonnes is worth €665 million at today’s carbon price and is equivalent to 127 million cars on the road.

It’s a market based on intentions instead of a product. What could possibly go wrong?

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March 25, 2017 at 05:42AM

The futility of “Earth Hour” @earthhour

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The winner for Earth Hour every year since 2003  – North Korea. Odds favor them to be the winner again this year.

“Earth Hour” starts tonight. Yawn.

Every year at Christmas, many newspapers reprint “Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus“, this excellent essay by Ross McKittrick should be repeated on every blog on every observance of Earth Hour. Copy, paste, and share it widely. Better yet, turn on all your lights to celebrate, as Ross says below.

The whole mentality around Earth Hour demonizes electricity. I cannot do that, instead I celebrate it and all that it has provided for humanity. – Ross McKitrick

Earth Hour: A Dissent

by Ross McKitrick

Ross McKitrick, Professor of Economics, University of Guelph, Canada. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Image via Wikipedia

In 2009 I was asked by a journalist for my thoughts on the importance of Earth Hour.

Here is my response.

I abhor Earth Hour. Abundant, cheap electricity has been the greatest source of human liberation in the 20th century. Every material social advance in the 20th century depended on the proliferation of inexpensive and reliable electricity.

Giving women the freedom to work outside the home depended on the availability of electrical appliances that free up time from domestic chores. Getting children out of menial labour and into schools depended on the same thing, as well as the ability to provide safe indoor lighting for reading.

 

Development and provision of modern health care without electricity is absolutely impossible. The expansion of our food supply, and the promotion of hygiene and nutrition, depended on being able to irrigate fields, cook and refrigerate foods, and have a steady indoor supply of hot water.

Many of the world’s poor suffer brutal environmental conditions in their own homes because of the necessity of cooking over indoor fires that burn twigs and dung. This causes local deforestation and the proliferation of smoke- and parasite-related lung diseases.

Anyone who wants to see local conditions improve in the third world should realize the importance of access to cheap electricity from fossil-fuel based power generating stations. After all, that’s how the west developed.

The whole mentality around Earth Hour demonizes electricity. I cannot do that, instead I celebrate it and all that it has provided for humanity.

Earth Hour celebrates ignorance, poverty and backwardness. By repudiating the greatest engine of liberation it becomes an hour devoted to anti-humanism. It encourages the sanctimonious gesture of turning off trivial appliances for a trivial amount of time, in deference to some ill-defined abstraction called “the Earth,” all the while hypocritically retaining the real benefits of continuous, reliable electricity.

People who see virtue in doing without electricity should shut off their fridge, stove, microwave, computer, water heater, lights, TV and all other appliances for a month, not an hour. And pop down to the cardiac unit at the hospital and shut the power off there too.

I don’t want to go back to nature. Travel to a zone hit by earthquakes, floods and hurricanes to see what it’s like to go back to nature. For humans, living in “nature” meant a short life span marked by violence, disease and ignorance. People who work for the end of poverty and relief from disease are fighting against nature. I hope they leave their lights on.

Here in Ontario, through the use of pollution control technology and advanced engineering, our air quality has dramatically improved since the 1960s, despite the expansion of industry and the power supply.

If, after all this, we are going to take the view that the remaining air emissions outweigh all the benefits of electricity, and that we ought to be shamed into sitting in darkness for an hour, like naughty children who have been caught doing something bad, then we are setting up unspoiled nature as an absolute, transcendent ideal that obliterates all other ethical and humane obligations.

No thanks.

I like visiting nature but I don’t want to live there, and I refuse to accept the idea that civilization with all its tradeoffs is something to be ashamed of.

Ross McKitrick
Professor of Economics
University of Guelph

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Just add to the inanity of the stunt by WWF, note the header from their website this year:

Apparently, you should turn off your lights, but encourage computer use by putting the picture above on your Facebook page…sorta cancels out, doesn’t i?

The real reason behind WWF’s “Earth Hour”? Cold. Hard. Cash. Note the big red donate button to extract funds from the easily duped.

 

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March 25, 2017 at 04:50AM