I have started a new series ‘Towards a New Theory of Climate Change’ that I am thinking of renaming ‘The New Theory of Climate Resilience’.  The series is an excuse for interviewing clever scientists. Today’s guest is Prof Ivan Kennedy from Sydney University.

We have been chatting for about 10 years, but it’s Ivan’s most recent two papers, focused on seasonal changes in atmospheric concentrations of CO2 at Mauna Loa that most intrigue me, at this moment.   And there is a third about to come out, with me as a coauthor.

Ocean acidification is generally thought of as a drop in the pH of the ocean, and it is assumed to be caused by the increasing concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide that, in turn, is assumed to be caused by the combustion of oil, gas and coal.

But what if it was really the other way around?

What if changes in ocean pH are caused by natural cycles of ocean warming that cause an increase in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide. This is the hypothesis we will be discussing today.

There are already 150 attendees registered.  Thank you so much if you are already subscribed!

With my new Zoom subscription there are places for 500.

When: Feb 25, 2025 12:00 PM Brisbane.  Today!

Topic:  Oceans Breathe Out Carbon Dioxide. Part 2/Towards a New Theory of Climate Change

Register in advance for this webinar:

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_NfQkdaPZR46zfrKSxrKTBQ

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

I hope to see you online, and I hope I can get all the technology to work, including the AI.

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The photograph featured at the top is me in the water, at the Great Barrier Reef.  Topside with snorkel and cap.

From ClimateREALISM

By Linnea Lueken

A recent article posted by The Guardian discusses funding given to UK research groups in an effort to track potential “climate tipping points” so forecasts can be made to warn about upcoming catastrophes. The premise that we are approaching dangerous and unprecedented climate tipping points is unsupported by history or present data. The planet has been through periods of massive change many times in the past. There is no evidence that there is a magic temperature at which positive feedbacks will spiral out of control, and none of the myriad conditions some researchers have pointed to as dangerous indicate a threat of ”tipping” over some imagined edge.

The article, “Early warning system for climate tipping points given £81m kickstart,” describes funding given to 27 teams of researchers by the U.K.’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria). According to The Guardian, this is an “attempt to develop an early warning system for climate tipping points will combine fleets of drones, cosmic ray detection and the patterns of plankton blooms with artificial intelligence and the most detailed computer models to date.”

The goal is to detect signals “that forewarn of the greatest climate catastrophes the climate crisis could trigger,” describing these conditions as climate tipping points which “occur when global temperature is pushed beyond a threshold, leading to unstoppable changes in the climate system.”

The two main tipping points that the program will focus on are the alleged approaching collapse of both the Greenland ice sheet and critical ocean currents in the North Atlantic.

Trends on both of these supposed harbingers of climate change have been regularly misdescribed or exaggerated by the media in recent decades.

To begin with, the so-called climate threshold is an arbitrary value in the first place. The most common threshold value for global average temperature is 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures, but this is not a scientifically derived value, despite being cited frequently by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It was selected for political purposes by a political panel. Europe has long surpassed that value, with a temperature record going back to the 1700s showing warming of over 2.0°C since then, with no catastrophic results.

This being said, warming has occurred, and as a result of that of the Greenland ice sheet has experienced some melting, which should be expected as the planet transitions out of an ice age. Climate Realism has covered Greenland’s ice trends more than a dozen times, and the fact is that the ice mass loss is tiny compared to the full ice mass of Greenland, and what melts in the summer months refreezes over winter, amounting to a very low net ice loss over time. This is no sign or indication of a looming collapse, and neither physics nor research into ice dynamics indicate that there should be.

The collapse of the North Atlantic Ocean current is again another tipping point that is often hyped in the media while the full context is conveniently left out of the discussion. Indeed, researchers can’t even agree on what, if any, types of changes in the North Atlantic current are occurring. Some research suggests the current has slowed, other research that it has speeded up, and still other research suggests that there hasn’t been any significant change at all.

Last year around this same time, scientists and the media joined forces to warn readers that the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) was nearing collapse. This alarming warning was based on a computer model output that suggested the AMOC may collapse 1,758 years from now.

As meteorologist Anthony Watts points out in “No, CNN and Other Media Outlets, Climate Change Is Not Causing the Ocean Circulation to Collapse,” this type of slowdown of AMOC is not unprecedented, and in fact it resulted in better conditions for humanity:

The Younger Dryas Climate Event occurred about 12,900 to 11,700 years ago. Many of the climate changes related to that event were likely a response to increased freshwater discharge to the North Atlantic and the reduction in AMOC strength. That basically signaled the end of the most recent ice age, beginning the time when Earth became more habitable for humans, and sedentary agriculture began. Shortly after that, in geologic time the blinking of an eye, the first nascent, large-scale civilizations began developing.

The Earth’s multiple climate systems are complex and connected by many mechanisms which are only poorly understood. Proof of this fact is made quite clear by the contradictory studies that seem to whiplash between predicting a slowing or speeding up AMOC, depending on what data is used and what assumptions are built into the modelling.

The main theme for all of Earth’s history has been change, continuously. Some of those changes, like transitions into ice ages, are large scale and harmful to life. The modest warming of the past century-plus is not in that category. Sadly, it is pretty unlikely that funding for climate alarm studies will result in anything other than more alarmist projections spun out of flawed computer models. However, if we are very lucky, data collected over the next decades will help to assuage the fears of researchers and The Guardian’s reporters, as it becomes clearer that climate change poses no existential threat to life or human civilization.

..

By Jo Nova

The iconic 120 year old company shares fall as rumors of a takeover spread

BP has lost a quarter of its share price in the last two weeks. Company profits were just $9 billion last year compared to $14b a year ago and $28b in 2022. As The Telegraph reports, “BP’s shareholders had realised that the green spending they supported in 2020 had halved their dividends.” Shell, Chevron, and Exxon — they were all doing much better.

Twenty years ago BP called itself “Beyond Petroleum”. By 2020 the company was hellbent on getting there. Suicidally, the oil company pledged to reduce their own oil production by 40% by 2030, and promised to pivot into renewable power. BP set itself a target to increase renewables generation by a factor of twenty this decade.  The media gushed  —  “BP Shuns Fossil Fuels“, said Politico. BP supposedly shone a light on “stranded oil and gas”!

Thus and verily,  in mid 2020, BP management leapt headlong in the magical energy pit. They were sure that after the pandemic the world would ‘build back better’ with renewables “so their economies would be more resilient”... CEO Bernard Looney actually said that (probably while reading from the WEF handbook of “What to Wear for Billionaires”).

So BP flagged a write-down of $18 billion dollars in fossil fuel assets and talked of  “accelerating” it’s green investments. Then everything went wrong. Just after BP bet the house on renewables, the Ukraine war broke out and everyone needed oil and gas and no one needed another wind farm. There was a bonanza selling fossil fuels as prices lifted off (seen in the BP income in 2022) but suddenly no one could afford to buy real energy to make solar panels and turbines, and no one had much cash left to buy randomly-failing generators either. It’s been all downhill in renewables ever since.

The Telegraph has all the sordid details as British Petroleum fights for life.

The energy giant has vowed a ‘fundamental reset’ after its costly foray into net zero

Johnathon Leake and Ben Marlow, The Telegraph

Five years on from that speech in February 2020, the company is beleaguered by a ruthless activist investor, under pressure to boost its flatlining share price and considering a return to the oil and gas exploration that made it so successful to begin with.

The abrupt turn follows decades of crisis at one of Britain’s most venerable institutions. Today, its future is more uncertain than ever.

Five years on from that speech in February 2020, the company is beleaguered by a ruthless activist investor, under pressure to boost its flatlining share price and considering a return to the oil and gas exploration that made it so successful to begin with.

The abrupt turn follows decades of crisis at one of Britain’s most venerable institutions. Today, its future is more uncertain than ever.

To win round doubters, he is expected to announce a major break with the last five years – shifting away from net zero and back towards its oil and gas heritage.

Pushed by analysts, Auchincloss, Looney’s replacement, confirmed a halt to all investment in wind and solar. “We have completely decapitalised renewables,” he said.

We can blame management, who had been on the fruity green path since 1997, and screwed up majorly, but oddly, 88% of BP shareholders also voted in favor of cutting oil and growing renewables which doesn’t make much sense. Not unless the rank and file votes were unknowingly cast-by-proxy through their hedge funds and pension accounts.  Were 88% of British Petroleum investors really fooled into thinking oil was “bad” — or was BP quietly undermined by the big banker blob cartel who may have bossed all the pension funds into voting for Hari Kari?  Larry Fink, head of BlackRock, pumped up the whole renewables bubble in 2020, and the bankers were known to boss around whole countries with threats of high interest rates if they didn’t behave.

Hypothetically if the Big Bankers were heavily invested in renewable stocks (which they were), then during a bubble, it would work out well for them if one of the largest oil and gas companies performed a large public flip to renewables. And as a bonus, if BP shareholders were stiffed in the process, the wreckage of a great company could be picked up cheaply a few years later…

BP Truck Photo.

Photo of BP logo by Alf van Beem,

BP Pin photo: Museum Rotterdam