What uncertainties remain in climate science?

How long is a piece of string? The waffle about ‘climate deniers’ and ‘reputable scientists’ is a waste of time. There will always be known unknowns and unknown unknowns – that’s science.
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[Last paragraph of the article only]
The uncertainties in climate science that remain are not a justification for not acting to slow climate change, because uncertainty can work both ways: Climate change could prove to be less severe than current projections, but it could also be much worse, says State of the Planet @ Phys.org.

Full article here.
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Talkshop comments:
— ‘Climate change could prove to be less severe’ – or not related to human activity, or not severe at all
— ‘Could also be much worse’ – ‘could’ be this or that, i.e. they can only speculate about the future, but nevertheless demand ‘action’ now

Greenhouse gas concentrations further increased in 2022, finds analysis of global satellite data

What was the point of all those UN climate conferences again?
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Preliminary analyses of global satellite data by environmental researchers at the University of Bremen show that atmospheric concentrations of the two important greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) continued to rise sharply in 2022, reports Phys.org.

The increase in both gases is similar to that of previous years. However, the increase in methane does not reach the record levels of 2020 and 2021.

The Institute of Environmental Physics (IUP) at the University of Bremen is a world-leading institute in the field of evaluation and interpretation of global satellite measurements of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) and other atmospheric trace gases that are of great importance for climate and air quality.

The institute leads the GHG-CCI greenhouse gas project of the European Space Agency’s Climate Change Initiative (ESA) and provides related data to the European Copernicus Climate Change Service C3S and the Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service CAMS.

What Climate Crisis? A Primer On Earth’s Turbulent Climatic Past

Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica

Blinkered climate obsessives, from protesters to governments, need to wise up about their pet topic. Professor Ian Plimer offers some assistance to trace gas worriers.
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For more than 80 percent of the time, Earth has been a warm wet greenhouse planet with no ice, says Ian Plimer at Spectator AU (via Climate Change Dispatch.

We live in unusual times when ice occurs on continents. This did not happen overnight.

The great southern continent, Gondwanaland, formed about 550 million years ago. It occupied 20 percent of the area of our planet and included Antarctica, South America, Australia, South Africa, and the Indian subcontinent.

Gondwanaland was covered by ice when it drifted across the South Pole 360-255 million years ago. Evidence for this ice age is in the black coal districts of Australia, South Africa, and India.

Net zero mania on show in review of UK government plans

Apart from making everything much more expensive and further jeopardising the stability of the electricity grid, what possible benefits arise from this? Misplaced ‘carbon’ obsession already has a lot to answer for.
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The Government has been urged to go “further and faster” on cutting carbon emissions with the publication of a review of the UK’s net zero plans, says Yahoo News.

The review, carried out by Tory MP Chris Skidmore and published on Friday, described net zero as “the economic opportunity of the 21st century” and said the UK was “well placed” to take advantage of the opportunities presented by decarbonisation.

But it also warned that the UK would have to move “quickly” and “decisively”, and opportunities were already being missed thanks to a lack of skills and “inconsistent policy commitment”.

UAE puts oil company boss in charge of Cop28 climate talks

Abu Dhabi National Oil Company or ADNOC is the state-owned oil company of the United Arab Emirates

Sounds like a sensible chap, on energy matters, but some ‘campaigners’ are already frothing. Pointing out that oil and gas demand is continuing to rise isn’t a crime, it’s just reality.
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The United Arab Emirates (UAE) government has appointed Sultan Al-Jaber to be the president of the Cop28 climate talks in November, reports Climate Home News.

Al Jaber heads the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), the twelfth largest oil company in the world, and the emirates’ much smaller renewable energy firm Masdar.

He has been a key figure in national climate and energy policy for over a decade. While Al Jaber has promoted renewable energy, in November 2021 he called for increased global investment in oil and gas.

“The oil and gas industry will have to invest over $600bn every year until 2030 just to keep up with the expected demand,” he told an Abu Dhabi oil conference.

Antarctic icebergs still exist today where 1700-era sailors spotted and tracked them

Antarctic sea ice [image credit: BBC]

Probably not the result that was expected from this study. Captain Cook’s descriptions of iceberg sightings still seem valid. Is saying ‘large icebergs…are not as sensitive to climate change’ enough to avoid raising questions about modern global warming theories?
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A new study comparing observations of large Antarctic icebergs from the 1700s with modern satellite datasets shows the massive icebergs are found in the same areas where they were pinpointed three centuries ago, reports Phys.org.

The study shows that despite their rudimentary tools, the old explorers truly knew their craft, and it confirms that the icebergs have behaved consistently for more than 300 years.

Using primarily the journal records of Captain James Cook’s 1772–1775 Antarctic circumnavigation on the HMS Resolution (where he noted the positions of hundreds of icebergs), a trio of researchers from Brigham Young University, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Washington’s School of Oceanography made comparisons with the two largest modern datasets available today: the BYU/National Ice Center and Alfred Wegener Institute datasets.

They found that Cook’s description of the iceberg plume east of Antarctica’s Amery Ice Shelf, along with iceberg distributions in the Weddell, Ross and Amundsen Seas, agree with modern data.

Fed chief Powell: Central banks must not lead fight on climate change

Sounds like the old armed forces ‘mission creep’. In any case puny humans won’t get far with ‘fighting climate change’ instead of adapting where necessary, however much money they try to throw around. Stick to the day job!
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Central banks risk undermining independence by wading into social issues and seeking to tackle climate change, the head of the US Federal Reserve has warned.

Jerome Powell said it was essential that institutions “resist the temptation” to wade into “social issues” that go beyond their remit, reports The Telegraph.

His comments are likely to be seen as a rebuke to the Bank of England, which has been criticised by politicians for its approach to climate change.

Sea level is stable around the world

No acceleration in the historical trend. No correlation with CO2 increase. End of story.
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We have been studying climate change and potentially associated sea level changes resulting from melting ice and warming oceans for a half century, says CFACT.

In the 1970s our primary concern was global cooling and an advancing new ice age.

Many believe that increasing quantities of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere could result in rising levels of the sea in general. The record does not show this to be true.

The Silly Giant Scale Of U.S. Offshore Wind Development

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If the North Atlantic Right Whale is a right-thinking whale, it will leave that area and not come back.

PA Pundits International

By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~

The world’s biggest offshore wind array is Hornsea 2, which is 1,386 MW with a turbine size of 8.4 MW. Operational in 2022 it is the state of the OSW art. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offshore_wind_farms

But Virginia’s phase 1 array is a whopping 2,600 MW, with huge 15 MW turbines. Clearly it is a giant, far bigger than anything that has ever been built. The cost is estimated as $10 billion to build.

Moreover there are a dozen or more comparable giant arrays proposed to be built at the same time, lining the Atlantic coast. Last I heard the combined proposals topped a gigantic 40,000 MW.

From an engineering point of view this is nuts. No one has ever done anything like this so let’s do a hundred billion dollars worth and see how it goes, right? Work up to it? Start small then scale up, learning…

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California’s Newsom blames climate change as more storms line up to batter state

“Hot’s getting a lot hotter,” Newsom said. “Dry’s getting a lot dryer. But the wet’s getting a lot wetter, as well.” — The weather’s getting more weathery? It’s as if the wonder gas carbon dioxide can do anything, even at a tiny atmospheric concentration of 0.04%. Of course severe weather is a serious matter for those concerned, but the amazing power of CO2 is beyond belief /sarc!
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Newsom said climate change is to blame for the increase in the number of atmospheric rivers and intensity, reports Fox News.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced during a press conference on Sunday that he is requesting a state of emergency from the White House as another round of storms targets the Golden State this week.

Severe storms in California knocked out power to over 560,000 homes on Sunday.

UAE plans to have it both ways as Cop28 climate summit host

Work this one out. Hydrocarbon production is booming in the UAE, due to high demand. Its Dubai International Airport is the world’s busiest by passenger numbers. Next year it will host a conference that in theory at least wants to knock all that on the head, because… climate etc. At COP27 it fielded dozens of oil and gas lobbyists.
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If there was a sign the United Arab Emirates is taking its role as host of the next UN climate talks seriously, the 1,073 delegates it registered to attend the Cop27 summit in Egypt would be it, says Climate Home News.

The Persian Gulf petrostate came out in force in Sharm el-Sheikh with the second largest delegation in the history of climate summits, including 70 oil and gas lobbyists – a flavour of what is to come.

The UAE takes on the UN climate talks presidency from the Egyptians at the end of November next year, when it hosts Cop28 on the site of the Dubai Expo.

Expert discusses La Niña and El Niño cycles effects on Australia

The last El Niño was 6-7 years ago, but elapsed time can’t on its own be a guarantee of one this year. Neutral ENSO conditions are another option. As usual an assertion about warming from greenhouse gases is thrown in, with no evidence to back it up.
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Climate models indicate La Niña is on the way out, with El Niño conditions expected later this year, claims Phys.org.

CSIRO Climate Scientist Dr. Wenju Cai explains what this means for Australia’s weather and how changing conditions will affect the country.

Is La Niña really on the way out? What do the climate models tell us?

We are in the mature season of the current three-consecutive La Niña years. During the three years, heat has been stored in the equatorial Pacific Ocean.

Temps Cause CO2 Changes, Not the Reverse. 2023 Update

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Not forgetting that CO2 is only a minor trace gas, at ~0.04% of the atmosphere.

Science Matters

This post is about proving that CO2 changes in response to temperature changes, not the other way around, as is often claimed.  In order to do  that we need two datasets: one for measurements of changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations over time and one for estimates of Global Mean Temperature changes over time.

Climate science is unsettling because past data are not fixed, but change later on.  I ran into this previously and now again in 2021 and 2022 when I set out to update an analysis done in 2014 by Jeremy Shiers (discussed in a previous post reprinted at the end).  Jeremy provided a spreadsheet in his essay Murray Salby Showed CO2 Follows Temperature Now You Can Too posted in January 2014. I downloaded his spreadsheet intending to bring the analysis up to the present to see if the results hold up.  The two sources of data were:

Temperature…

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Climate hysteria: Scottish Greens prefer imports to new Rosebank oil field?

North Sea oil platform [image credit: matchtech.com]

Worldwide oil consumption is close to 100 million barrels per day, and rising (apart from a small Covid-related slowdown). Rosebank is the proverbial drop in the ocean, and would reduce the need for imported oil. Demand has to be met from somewhere for the modern world to function, and Russian supply is off the menu.
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H/T saighdear
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Plans to create an oil field more than twice the size of the controversial Cambo development risk “wrecking” Scotland’s climate and setting net-zero targets back.

Rosebank, located north-west of Shetland, could produce over 70,000 barrels of oil every day at its peak under proposals brought before Westminster by Norwegian state-controlled company Equinor, says STV News.

However The Scottish Greens have branded the blueprints “a climate disaster” and urged the UK government to turn the bid down.

’60 Minutes’ Makes Fake News About Humans Ruining Earth

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Attention seeker predicts doom, media laps it up. Nothing new there.

PA Pundits International

By Tim Graham ~

Chalk this up as 60 Minutes hosting the worst peddler of false knowledge since Dan Rather left the set.

CBS kicked off 2023 by touting “mass extinction” blather by Paul Ehrlich, the guy who’s been peddling radical and misanthropic eco-garbage since his book The Population Bomb in 1968.

That screed began: “The battle to feed all humanity is over. In the 1970’s the world will undergo famines–hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”

This may qualify as the drop-dead dumbest announcement of the Sixties and should have disqualified him from the status of Expert by the end of the 1970s. But the left-wing media never tire of him. They can’t get enough of this ecological self-loathing. The human race is always a pestilence on the planet.

Pelley led off the show with Ehrlich…

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Study: How Planetary And Solar Oscillations Affect Earth’s Temperature Cycles

Earth and climate – an ongoing controversy

Introducing the term: Astronomical Harmonic Resonances (AHR). To see the figures cited below, go to the original article (here). A familiar topic to long-time Talkshop visitors, e.g. here.
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The mechanism and even the existence of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) have remained under debate among climate researchers, and the same applies to general temperature oscillations of a 60- to 90-year period, writes Antero Oilia, Ph.D. @ Climate Change Dispatch.

The recently published study of Ollila and Timonen has found that these oscillations are real and they are related to 60- and 88-year periodicities originating from the planetary and solar activity oscillations.

These oscillations can be observed in the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), the Pacific Multidecadal Oscillation (PMO), and actually in the global surface temperature (GST). The similarities between the GST, AMO, PMO, and AHR (Astronomical Harmonic Resonances) are obvious in Fig. 1.

The oscillations are not limited only to temperatures.

Sunspot Counts Hit a 7-Year High

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What happens next?

Spaceweather.com

Jan. 2, 2022: December was a busy month on the sun. How busy? Senol Sanli of Bursa, Turkey, answered the question by stacking 26 days of sun photos (Dec. 2nd – 27th) from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory:

“There were more than 24 sunspot groups, some of them quite large, congested in two bands on opposite sides of the sun’s equator,” says Sanli.

The congestion of dark cores catapulted the monthly sunspot number to its highest value in 7 years:

This plot from NOAA shows the ascending progression of Solar Cycle 25. It has outperformed the official forecast for 35 months in a row. If the trend continues, Solar Maximum will either happen sooner or be stronger than originally expected–possibly both. Stay tuned for lots more sunspots.

This story was brought to you by Spaceweather.com

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Benny Peiser‘s big warning to Americans: Avoid Europe’s green energy disaster

Climate obsession at government level comes at a high economic price to its citizens. ‘Saving the planet’ is mythology, not science.
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From The Heritage Foundation, Washington DC (via Climate Depot)…

Benny Peiser: “I remember giving evidence to a Senate hearing here some years back, and I was saying: ‘Look, as long as these [climate] policies are unilateral, as long as you do this on your own, this is not going to address your main concern, which is CO2 emissions, because the rest of the world will not follow.’

And the rest of the world will definitely not follow Europe’s green experiment which is going so badly. No one wants to do what the Europeans are doing, because they can see the damage we are doing to ourselves.

Unless — and this is the whole point — unless you can come up with an energy policy that is attractive to other countries, in particular to poorer countries, they will not follow your lead.

Full transcript here.

Extinction Rebellion ‘to temporarily shift away from public disruption’

Oxford Circus climate demo [image credit: London Evening Standard]

In this case at least, crime doesn’t pay. The look-at-us climate botherers have had enough of arrests and bad publicity, for now.
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Sky News:
The climate activists are aiming to attract more people to their cause through a less confrontational approach, admitting “very little has changed”.
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Enough said.

Nuclear plants face shutdown over tax on windfalls

Heysham power station [image credit: Belfast Telegraph]

The UK government is running short of electricity supply options due to net zero policies based on climate obsessions, as well as years of reluctance to believe that renewable energy is, and will always be, too erratic and unreliable. A power supply crunch is looming.
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The Telegraph reports:
Two nuclear power stations crucial to keeping Britain’s lights on risk being closed next year as a result of Jeremy Hunt’s windfall tax, their French owner warns today.

EDF, which operates all five of the country’s serving nuclear plants, said the Chancellor’s raid on power producers will make it harder to keep the ageing Heysham 1 and Hartlepool stations open as long as hoped.

It would mean the sites close in March 2024, potentially removing the “cushion” of spare capacity used by the National Grid to avoid blackouts and reducing nuclear power generation in Britain to its lowest level since the 1960s.