Bureau Still Limiting Cooling to Minus 10 Degrees

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TWO weeks ago, in response to my queries the Australian Bureau of Meteorology acknowledged that it had put in place limits on the lowest temperature that an individual weather station could record.  So, when the automatic weather station which now operates in the town of Goulburn (not far from Canberra), recorded a measurement of minus […]

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July 18, 2017 at 05:01AM

Doomsday Activist Who Claimed Humans Will Be ‘Burned Alive’ By Climate Change Is Shot Down By Scientists

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
http://www.thegwpf.com

A controversial article appearing in the New York magazine has drawn criticism from the scientific community

Climate change is a huge threat facing mankind, but to what extend will it bring about the end of civilization?

One activist has drawn criticism from the scientific community by claiming it will render the planet uninhabitable and bring about “rolling death smogs” of pollution.

David Wallace-Wells wrote an article, titled The Uninhabitable Earth in New York magazine, and claimed the apocalypse could come about very quickly indeed.

“Climate-change skeptics point out that the planet has warmed and cooled many times before, but the climate window that has allowed for human life is very narrow, even by the standards of planetary history,” Wallace-Wells writes.

“At 11 or 12 degrees of warming, more than half the world’s population, as distributed today, would die of direct heat. Things almost certainly won’t get that hot this century, though models of unabated emissions do bring us that far eventually.”

He outlines common theories, such as the release of carbon trapped in ice, food shortages due to crop failure and the ever-increasing amount of harmful particles in the smog pollution that blankets cities.

But the article has been called “irresponsible” and “nonsense” by commentators taking to social media.

Full story

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) http://www.thegwpf.com

July 18, 2017 at 04:40AM

U.S. Has Produced More Oil Than Saudi Arabia For 4 Straight Years

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
http://www.thegwpf.com

Saudi Arabia has lagged the U.S. in oil production for the last four years, according to federal data compiled by University of Michigan economist Mark Perry.

Perry created a chart Saturday showing just how far behind Saudi oil production has trailed U.S. production. Rising U.S. production combined with OPEC policies drove crude oil prices down to new lows. Monday, a barrel of oil costs $46.26, while the same barrel would have sold for $109.04 in June 2014.

U.S. oil production, on the other hand, is increasing. The U.S. imported about 60 percent of its oil in 2007, but by 2014, the country only imported 27 percent of its oil — the lowest level since 1985. Rising oil production has reduced demand for Saudi oil abroad too, keeping prices low.

Saudi Arabia can likely handle cheap oil better than other Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) nations, but cheap oil is still devastating the country.

Saudi Arabia is currently expecting a budget deficit of $140 billion — roughly 20 percent of the country’s economy. When compared to its 2013 surplus of $48 billion, the fiscal outlook for the country looks dire. Saudi oil export revenues dropped 46 percent in just a year, and the country is selling bonds for the first time since 2007. The International Monetary Fund warned Saudi Arabia it could go through its fiscal reserves within five years.

Full post

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July 18, 2017 at 03:40AM

Western Hudson Bay polar bears reportedly still on ice as of 17 July 2017

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Today, polar bear biologist Andrew Derocher posted a progress report via twitter on the annual journey ashore of the Western Hudson Bay bears tagged by his University of Alberta research team that shows virtually all of the bears are still out on the sea ice.

After months of gloomy reports on the state of the Hudson Bay sea ice, it’s clear from the map Derocher posted (below) that only one bear out of 12 still transmitting has come ashore so far, although he comments that “some tags haven’t reported lately” (the purple icons are ear tags put on males &/or young bears while the blue icons are collars put on adult females):

Oddly, the same comment was made almost a month ago about these same bears and the suggestion was made that these animals “may be swimming to shore”:

Money quote: Today Derocher remarked that “bears may be shifting behaviour to stay out on less ice” to explain why the tagged bears have still not come ashore as he expects them to do.

Perhaps if he used a different ice chart, it might make more sense (see below). However, the same thing has been happening year after year: WHB polar bears stay on the ice much longer than Derocher predicts but he does not change his expectations or the type of ice chart he uses to track the bears.

As I’ve pointed out before (because this is what field researchers have stated), polar bears have a tough time catching seals after about mid-June or so but they may still prefer to be on the sea ice than on land, even if it’s low concentration ice.

The ice charts Derocher uses appears to show only ice that is more than 50% concentration. Compare the ice on his tweet from today (17 July) — which shows barely any ice at all and might be interpreted as showing polar bears in open water.

But the Canadian Ice Service chart for today shows much more ice:

Moreover, their “stage of development” charts for northern and southern HB show that virtually all of this ice is still classified as thick first year ice (> 1.2m thick):

The concentration is not uniform however, and as Derocher’s charts also show, there are only a few patches in the northern portion of the bay that are still 90-100% concentration but that clearly has not been driving his marked polar bears to shore in a hurry:

However, satellites have trouble recognizing some ice at this time of year because of melt water that forms on top of ice (which the satellite may interpret as open water), so there may actually be more ice than is shown even on the CIS charts.

The bears will come ashore eventually, of course — probably within the next week or so, depending on how the melt proceeds. Some are already ashore and others may stay out longer.

Keep in mind, however, that the latest research (Castro de la Guardia 2017 – see abstract below) shows that Western Hudson Bay polar bears in recent years (to 2015) spent only about 3 weeks longer onshore (i.e. 21 days) than they did in the 1980s. Bears left the ice about 2 weeks earlier and left shore about 1 week later — but this hasn’t changed since 2003 (Regehr et al. 2007).

Which means that there has been no change, on average, in the amount of time that most WHB polar bears spent on shore since 2003 and thus, the ice-free season in recent years has not been any worse for the bears than it was 14 years ago.

References

Castro de la Guardia, L., Myers, P.G., Derocher, A.E., Lunn, N.J., Terwisscha van Scheltinga, A.D. 2017. Sea ice cycle in western Hudson Bay, Canada, from a polar bear perspective. Marine Ecology Progress Series 564: 225–233. http://ift.tt/2lruEp5

Regehr, E.V., Lunn, N.J., Amstrup, S.C., and Stirling, I. 2007. Effects of earlier sea ice breakup on survival and population size of polar bears in Western Hudson Bay. Journal of Wildlife Management71: 2673-2683. http://ift.tt/1jhX8K0

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July 18, 2017 at 02:47AM