Open peer review: The truth about weather extremes: What the past tells us – The GWPF

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We are keen to receive review comments for our new report which is now available for open review here, says The Global Warming Policy Foundation.

Ralph Alexander: The truth about weather extremes. What the past tells us

This report refutes the popular but mistaken belief that today’s weather extremes are more common and more intense because of climate change, by examining the history of extreme weather events over the past century or so.

Drawing on newspaper archives, the report presents multiple examples of past extremes that matched or exceeded anything experienced in the present-day world.

Van Gogh Waves in the Magnetosphere

Van Gogh Waves in the Magnetosphere

‘A key finding of Kavosi’s paper is that the waves prefer equinoxes.’

Researchers forecast strong El Niño and ‘record-breaking’ global surface temperatures in 2023–2024

El Niño graphic [credit: NOAA]

Climate alarmists have been waiting nearly 8 years, since the last significant El Niño, for another chance to claim natural climate variation as an expression of their chosen non-natural theories. Tremble – or not – as the study authors predict ‘a cascade of climate crises’.
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A strong El Niño event is going to wreak havoc on global surface temperature and trigger several climate crises in 2023–2024, according to researchers from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. [Talkshop comment – the hype has already started].

The El Niño event, known for releasing massive heat into the atmosphere, is poised to change atmospheric circulation patterns, influence tropical-extratropical interactions, and impact subtropical jets, monsoons, and even polar vortices, and finally results in a rapid surge in Global Mean Surface Temperature (GMST), says Phys.org.

The study was published in The Innovation Geoscience on Sept. 15.

New study confirms Gulf Stream weakening, but cause unknown – or is it?

Gulf Stream map [image credit: RedAndr @ Wikipedia]

The lead and co-author have clearly different views on this:
Lead author: “While we can definitively say this weakening is happening, we are unable to say to what extent it is related to climate change or whether it is a natural variation.”
Co-author: “It saddens me to acknowledge, from our study and so many others, and from recent record-breaking headlines, that even the remotest parts of the ocean are now in the grip of our addiction to fossil fuels.”
What have headlines got to do with science research?
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The Gulf Stream transport of water through the Florida Strait has slowed by 4% over the past four decades, with a 99% certainty that this weakening is more than expected from random chance, according to a new study.

The Gulf Stream — which is a major ocean current off the U.S. East Coast and a part of the North Atlantic Ocean circulation — plays an important role in weather and climate, and a weakening could have significant implications, says Science Daily.

“We conclude with a high degree of confidence that Gulf Stream transport has indeed slowed by about 4% in the past 40 years, the first conclusive, unambiguous observational evidence that this ocean current has undergone significant change in the recent past,” states the journal article, “Robust weakening of the Gulf Stream during the past four decades observed in the Florida Straits,” published in Geophysical Research Letters.

Rosebank: Biggest untapped UK oil field approved by regulators – net-zero climate obsessives chew the wasp

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

Opponents don’t have much to say about where they think the essential oil and gas should come from, but churn out the usual dogmatic moans anyway. Even by 2050 under net-zero policies, large quantities of these products are still expected to be needed keep the country functioning. Renewables just don’t scale up enough to replace them.
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Summary (by BBC News).

— The UK’s largest untapped oil field has been approved by regulators

— It’s estimated that Rosebank, 80 miles west of Shetland, could produce 300 million barrels of oil [or more]

— The UK government welcomes the decision, saying it will raise billions of pounds and “make us more secure against tyrants like Putin”

— “As we make the transition to renewables, we will still need oil and gas – it makes sense to use our own,” says Rishi Sunak

— But Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf says he’s “disappointed”, while the Green Party calls the decision “morally obscene”

BBC Live Reporting here.
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Sky News reports:
The GMB Union agrees with the government’s approach to granting new oil and gas licences in the North Sea and similarly believes it will make the UK less reliant on imported gas.

Their general secretary, Gary Smith, even took a swipe at Labour’s stance, claiming: “We need a plan, not bans.”
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Supercomputer climate model absurdity: ‘extreme global warming could eventually wipe out humans’

The illogical conclusion of tail-wagging-dog climate theories fed into models based on them, with a side order of volcanoes. In any case a lot happened to Earth in the last 250 million years, including periods when CO2 was much higher than today – so whatever comes out of a supercomputer, natural evolution will continue.
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Extreme global warming will likely wipe all mammals – including humans – off the face of the Earth in 250 million years, according to a new scientific study. Sky News reporting.

Temperatures could spiral to 70C (158F) and transform the planet into a “hostile environment devoid of food and water”, the research warns.

The planet would heat up to such an extent that many mammals would be unable to survive – and the Earth’s continents would merge to form one hot, dry, uninhabitable supercontinent.

The apocalyptic projections are from the first-ever supercomputer climate models.

The world needs to cut ‘carbon intensity’ seven times faster to limit warming to 1.5°C – say net-zero obsessed analysts

CO2 is not pollution

It’s dangerous, *we must* do this that and the other, ambition, fight, requirements etc. When will the tedious climate ranting ever stop? Endless stats come and go, announcing the latest failures of policies supposedly intended to arrange global temperatures to some fraction of a degree. The more they complain, the faster total energy consumption rises, defeating all attempts at control by (as Bill Gates put it) ‘jerking around with renewables’.
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The world is falling dangerously short of the ambition that is needed to secure a safe future climate, according to new analysis by PwC, and as a result we need to fight to prevent every fraction of a degree of warming. [Talkshop comment – fight with what?]

PwC’s latest Net Zero Economy Index shows that a year-on-year decarbonisation rate of 17.2% (up from 15.2% last year) is now required to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels – seven times greater than what was achieved over the last year (2.5%) and 12 times faster than the global average (1.4%) over the past two decades.

To put this into perspective, since 2000, no G20 country has achieved a decarbonisation rate of more than 11% in a single year – the highest level was achieved by the UK in 2014 (-10.9%).

The Index provides a stark illustration of the growing divergence between the global ambition to tackle climate change and the reality of current progress.

Subsea cable failures could derail offshore wind ambitions – insurance costs ‘becoming prohibitive’

Image credit: nawindpower.com

Another blow for net-zero dogmatists. More evidence that cheap offshore wind power doesn’t exist and nobody can control its costs, or be sure of a good level of reliability.
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Global Underwater Hub (GUH) is leading the charge to tackle failures in underwater cables which could derail global offshore wind ambitions, says AGCC.

The trade body, which champions the UK’s £8billion underwater industry, says that reliability of subsea cables is “paramount” to the success of offshore wind and the energy transition.

But failure of these cables is all too common, to the point that the cost of insuring them is becoming prohibitive.

Long-lasting La Niña events more common over past century

Credit: concernusa.org

‘Global temperatures typically increase during an El Niño episode, and fall during La Niña’ – says BBC Science. This article also refers to ‘El Niño and La Niña, the warm and cool phases of a recurring climate pattern’. The featured research concludes that recent La Niñas are different, being more to do with warming, supported by ‘complex computer simulations’. The question is: does ‘the recent increase in multiyear La Niñas’ (per the study title) since 1998 suggest more cooling, or not? In the climate science world we read that ‘answers remain elusive’.
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Multiyear La Niña events have become more common over the last 100 years, according to a new study led by University of Hawai’i (UH) at Mānoa atmospheric scientist Bin Wang.

Five out of six La Niña events since 1998 have lasted more than one year, including an unprecedented triple-year event [Talkshop comment – no, occurred three times since 1950]. The study was published in Nature Climate Change.

“The clustering of multiyear La Niña events is phenomenal given that only ten such events have occurred since 1920,” said Wang, emeritus professor of atmospheric sciences in the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology.

El Niño and La Niña, the warm and cool phases of a recurring climate pattern across the tropical Pacific, affect weather and ocean conditions, which can, in turn, influence the marine environment and fishing industry in Hawai’i and throughout the Pacific Ocean.

Idea of green growth losing traction among climate policy researchers, survey of nearly 800 academics reveals

Prosperity via subsidies, making the energy that powers economies more scarce and/or more expensive, always sounded like a fantasy.
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When she took to the floor to give her State of the Union speech on 13 September, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen largely stood by the script, says Phys.org.

Describing her vision of an economically buoyant and sustainable Europe in the era of climate change, she called on the EU to accelerate the development of the clean-tech sector, “from wind to steel, from batteries to electric vehicles.”

“When it comes to the European Green Deal, we stick to our growth strategy,” von der Leyen said.

Her plans were hardly idiosyncratic.

Ben Pile: Rishi’s Net Zero delay has outed the Green Blob’s threadbare theory

Green blob [credit: storybird.com]

Rishi Sunak’s ‘watering down’ of certain Net Zero targets is the first time that the green policy agenda has had ANY scrutiny of any consequence, despite many failures, starting with the ruinously expensive Renewable Obligation, extending into the totally failed CfDs that allowed wind farm developers to lie to achieve planning consent over rival generators and technologies. Not one part of the green policy agenda has lived up to any promise to deliver good to the British public.

It was the mildest possible reversal. It is in fact an attempt to SAVE Net Zero, not roll it back. Complaints that it has left Britain without an ‘industrial policy’ or has left ‘investors’ without ‘confidence’ are for the birds. It has put the UK in the same policy position as the EU (more on which in a bit), and there is no evidence of green policies having delivered any significant industrial development to these shores. No green jobs. No green growth. No green industrial revolution. Not even a BritishVolt. It is a farce.

EU reaches deal banning ‘climate-neutral’ product claims

Game over by 2026?
[image credit: climateneutral.org]

The nonsense of climate greenwashing takes a hit, starting 2026.
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In the wake of longstanding complaints of greenwashing by consumer advocates, EU institutions finalised a new law on Tuesday (19 September) enacting a sweeping ban to combat the misleading of its citizens through erroneous claims of sustainability, reports Euractiv.

In March 2022, the European Commission proposed a law to empower consumers, which, following the conclusion of negotiations between EU countries and Parliament, will now ban companies from claiming that their products are climate-neutral.

“We have achieved an excellent deal for consumers,” said the S&D’s Biljana Borzan, a Croatian EU lawmaker who spearheaded the negotiations on behalf of Parliament.

The law, which still requires final approval by EU countries and the parliament’s plenary assembly – a formality – will be felt from 2026, as EU countries will be given two years’ time to adopt the changes.

Sunak considering weakening key net zero policies

Funny how unpopularity and an approaching election year can have an effect even on climate-obsessed politicians who love fantasising about ‘dealing with climate change’.
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Rishi Sunak is considering weakening some of the government’s key green commitments in a major policy shift, says BBC News.

It could include delaying a ban on the sales of new petrol and diesel cars and phasing out gas boilers, multiple sources have told the BBC.

The PM is preparing to set out the changes in a speech in the coming days.

“Mind-blowing” Claims of Record Low Antarctica Sea Ice on BBC Contradicted by Statements Made Seven Years Ago – The Daily Sceptic

Antarctica [credit: Wikipedia]

The BBC once again trying to pull the wool over the unsuspecting public’s eyes on climate? Surely not! Or…guilty as charged? With Arctic sea ice scare stories looking increasingly hollow, something along apparently similar lines at the other end of the globe proved irresistible.
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Antarctica sea ice is at a “mind-blowing” record low winter area of 17 million square kilometres, reports a three-person BBC “News Climate & Science and Data Journalism Team”, as lower levels than those recorded in the recent past provide the cue for yet more media climate hysteria, says The Daily Sceptic.

Of course, the BBC headline is clickbait nonsense, not least because it has been generally known in scientific circles that early NASA Nimbus satellites showed even lower winter levels around 15 million sq. kms in 1966.

But the BBC story does provide an excellent example of how science is twisted to fit the political narrative supporting the collectivist Net Zero agenda.

Study investigates primary drivers of observed warming: challenges of inadequate data

Urban heat island effect

The study, entitled The Detection and Attribution of Northern Hemisphere Land Surface Warming (1850–2018) in Terms of Human and Natural Factors: Challenges of Inadequate Data (August 2023), has 40 authors, some of whom are regular contributors to the ‘climate debate’ both in published papers and elsewhere. It takes a critical look at recent IPCC reports and summaries, especially the quality or otherwise of some of the data used to support its assertions. It suggests ways some of these issues could/should be addressed. Below is the abstract and the closing summary.
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Abstract
A statistical analysis was applied to Northern Hemisphere land surface temperatures (1850–2018) to try to identify the main drivers of the observed warming since the mid-19th century.

Two different temperature estimates were considered—a rural and urban blend (that matches almost exactly with most current estimates) and a rural-only estimate. The rural and urban blend indicates a long-term warming of 0.89 °C/century since 1850, while the rural-only indicates 0.55 °C/century.

This contradicts a common assumption that current thermometer-based global temperature indices are relatively unaffected by urban warming biases.

New Paper Reveals Classic Logical Fallacy In IPCC Report

The alarmist media bought it at the time, which may well have been the idea.
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A new paper from the Global Warming Policy Foundation reveals that the IPCC’s 2013 report contained a remarkable logical fallacy, says Climate Change Dispatch.

The author, Professor Norman Fenton, shows that the authors of the Summary for Policymakers claimed, with 95% certainty, that more than half of the warming observed since 1950 had been caused by man.

But as Professor Fenton explains, their logic in reaching this conclusion was fatally flawed.

UK wind power hype fails the reality test

‘Wind power triumphs: UK’s energy mix breezes past fossil fuels’ – trumpets Energy Live News. But turning to Gridwatch this morning, the current picture is totally different: wind minimal, gas nearly half of total electricity generation. As usual, reports misleadingly highlight wind *capacity*, which is merely the theoretical maximum output in ideal conditions. Of course in windier conditions the numbers can be a lot different, but the point is we’re not seeing anything like the runaway success being claimed by the wind lobby, and never will as the weather always decides how well or poorly it can perform. No amount of capacity changes that – unlike on-demand gas.
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Wind power has overtaken fossil fuels in installed capacity, says Energy Live News.

The analysis from Imperial College London, conducted for Drax Electric Insights, reveals that wind capacity reached 27.9GW in June, surpassing the 27.7GW installed capacity of gas generation.

This marks the first time in more than a century that the UK has more installed wind capacity than gas generation, according to experts.

Volkswagen cuts jobs as demand for EVs plunges

VW ID.3 [image credit: Alexander Migl @ Wikipedia]

Subsidies, wealthy buyers and niche markets only get EV makers so far, it seems. The old problems are still there – initial cost, range anxiety, slow charging, battery life etc. Moaning about humans supposedly having adverse effects on the weather turns out to be a weak selling point for the mass market.
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Volkswagen is cutting almost 300 roles at a factory in Germany as demand for electric cars dwindles, reports The Telegraph.

The redundancies are being carried out at the car giant’s plant in Zwickau, where a further 2,000 temporary workers are also at risk of losing their jobs.

Volkswagen’s Zwickau factory only produces electric vehicles, which have fallen in popularity due to high inflation and faltering government support. [Talkshop comment – is that crutch expected to go on forever?]

New research says orbital factors show why and when the Sahara Desert was green

Sahara desert from space [image credit: NASA]

No trace gases required to drive these climate processes. It was found that ‘the North African Humid Periods occurred every 21,000 years and were determined by changes in Earth’s orbital precession.’
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A pioneering study has shed new light on North African humid periods that have occurred over the past 800,000 years and explains why the Sahara Desert was periodically green, says Science Daily.

The research, published in Nature Communications, showed periodic wet phases in the Sahara were driven by changes in Earth’s orbit around the Sun and were suppressed during the ice ages.

For the first time, climate scientists simulated the historic intervals of ‘greening’ of the Sahara, offering evidence for how the timing and intensity of these humid events were also influenced remotely by the effects of large, distant, high-latitude ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere.

Government leadership needed to ‘support Net Zero lifestyle changes’, says UK review

Dalek from the BBC’s Dr. Who TV series

A lot of ‘requiring’ going on here. We read ‘researchers are calling for the urgent development of a UK public engagement strategy for Net Zero’ to flush out any troublemakers to get everyone ready to ‘shift behaviours’ in various specified ways. The attitude of climate obsessives handing out emissions reduction orders is spelt out in their reports.
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The pace and scale of behavior change required to meet the UK’s Net Zero targets will require the UK Government to do much more to support people to make greener choices, say the authors of a newly published review.

Environmental psychologists based at the Center for Climate Change & Social Transformations (CAST) at the University of Bath conducted a review for the Climate Change Committee (CCC)—the independent non-departmental body that advises the UK Government on adapting to and mitigating the effects of climate change, says Phys.org.

Across two reports, they highlight that to reach Net Zero by 2050, substantial emissions reductions will need to come from people making greener choices. The review focuses on eight key areas where behavior change is required. [Talkshop comment – *required*…you will obey!]