Footage from our recent London Climate Conference

Our recent conference held at Conway Hall in central London was a huge success, with over a hundred attendees being treated to two days of rapid-fire 20 minute presentations and discussion sessions. The footage has now been published online by Mark Windows, and are available for you to view at your leisure.

Another video Mark has produced, introduces the circumstances around the last-minute move from UCL to Conway hall,  and also presents interviews with many of the participants.

I had a short interview with Energy Live News

 

This conference was made possible by the tireless efforts of Nils-Axel Morner in the face of great difficulties, and huge credit is due to him for his determination and organisational ability.

They’re dragging out ocean acidification again

.
.
It’s getting tougher every year for ‘warmists’ to dream up climate scare stories that aren’t obviously just that.

American Elephants

James Delingpole, British writer, rants regularly at Breitbart about the utter goofiness of the world’s climate true believers.  He wrote today about a  climate “science” scam  that keeps on rearing its ugly head, in spite of being debunked thoroughly over and over.

Aside from the need to debunk once more, it’s a classic example of the workings of climate science. In this case, one of Delingpole’s articles was supposedly debunked in The Marine Biologist(the magazine of the marine biologist community). He wrote:

There was a time when I would have just ignored it: the guy who wrote it – one Phil Williamson – is the embodiment of Upton Sinclair’s dictum that “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Not only is Williamson based at the “University” of East Anglia – aka Climate Alarmism Central, heavily featured in the Climategate scandal…

View original post 292 more words

Caribbean Sea’s curious ‘whistle’ detected from space

Credit: deepseawaters.com

Scientists have detected a mysterious repeating Rossby wave signal in the Caribbean that has links to the Gulf Stream, reports Livescience.com.

The murmur of lapping ocean waves and the crash of breaking surf are familiar to any beachgoer. But scientists recently discovered a remarkable ocean sound unlike any other, produced by a unique combination of water movement and underwater geography in the Caribbean Sea.

Hemispheric Temperature Anomalies: 1851-1980

.
.
Are we anywhere close to really understanding the strength of natural climate variation and how it works?

We can easily overlook that most temperature measurements are taken on land, but over 70% of the Earth’s surface is deep water.

Frederick Colbourne investigates.

Geoscience - Environment

Climate Research Unit, University of East Anglia

The Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was established in the School of Environmental Sciences (ENV) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich in 1972.

The CRU has collected, collated and archived global climate data for over 40 years.

CRU temperature data

In 1987, the American Meteorological Society published a paper by Stanley Grotch of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, University of California, that assessed the robustness of the CRU dataset for land and other datasets.

Monthly Weather Review, Volume 115 No. 7, July 1987, ISSN: 0027-0644; eISSN: 1520-0493

Abstract

Three data bases of gridded surface temperature anomalies were used to assess the sensitivity of the average estimated Northern Hemisphere (NH) temperature anomaly to: 1) extreme gridpoint values and 2) zonal band contributions. Over the last 100 year, removal of either the top or bottom 10% of the gridpoint anomalies in any year changes…

View original post 601 more words

Ocean currents push phytoplankton around the globe faster than thought

The Great Ocean Conveyor Belt – blue = deep cold and saltier water current, red = shallower and warmer current
[credit: NWS / NOAA]

Evidence here from researchers of shorter oceanic cycles than expected. They say ‘The general message is that all parts of the ocean surface are connected on surprisingly short time scales’, which could be ‘just 10 years’.

North Atlantic played pivotal role in last great climate tipping point

Rinks Glacier, West Greenland
[image credit: NSIDC]

A new angle on glaciations perhaps, but HeritageDaily quotes one of the researchers: ‘The mechanism driving these expansions of southern sourced water into the deep Atlantic still needs working on.’

The North Atlantic Ocean played a key role in the last great tipping point in Earth’s climate system, pioneering new research has shown. An international research team has discovered ground-breaking new reasons why large continental ice-sheets first grew in North America and Scandinavia during the late Pliocene Epoch era, 2.7 millions of years ago.

Winds hide Atlantic variability from Europe’s winters

Out in the Atlantic Ocean [image credit: NASA]

Researchers claim to have ‘discovered a cycle of heating and cooling at the surface of the ocean’ in the North Atlantic which is modulated – so to speak – by winds, although they are also quick to make the obligatory nod in the direction of assumed future ‘global warming’.

Shifting winds may explain why long-term fluctuations in North Atlantic sea surface temperatures have no apparent influence on Europe’s wintertime temperatures.

Pumping meltwater back on Antarctica would need 850,000 wind turbines

Antarctica [credit: Wikipedia]

Indulging in climate fantasy can lead to some strange ideas, like this one. The idea of articles like this is presumably to infect the minds of the gullible with thoughts of impending crisis, where none should exist.

With sea levels rising and Antarctica’s temperatures well below freezing, some people [i.e. the authors?] have raised the question: What would happen if we took water out of the oceans and pumped it onto the icy continent to freeze?

A group of scientists put that question to the test in a new study that explores the physical possibility and economic feasibility of geoengineering climate solutions in the future.

Are wind turbines killing whales?

Struggling whale [image credit: BBC]

Between January 9 and February 4 this year, 29 sperm whales got stranded and died on English, German and Dutch beaches. Climate Change Dispatch investigates.

Environmentalists and the news media offered multiple explanations – except the most obvious and likely one: offshore wind farms. Indeed, that area has the world’s biggest concentration of offshore wind turbines, and there is ample evidence that their acoustic pollution can interfere with whale communication and navigation.

How Northern European waters soak up carbon dioxide

Carbon cycle [image credit: NASA Earth Observatory]

Somebody seems to have re-discovered the carbon cycle, and true to form the BBC is keen to spread the word by trying to relate it to buses and jumbo jets.

The seas around the UK and the rest of northern Europe take up a staggering 24 million tonnes of carbon each year. It is a mass equivalent to two million double-decker buses or 72,000 747 jets. The number was produced by scientists studying the movement of carbon dioxide into and out of the oceans.

Paul Vaughan: NOAA Corruption of SST records

NOAA’s vandalism of ERSSTv3b2 (good) to ERSSTv4 (corrupted) hinges on a single point.

Visual catalog of the beautiful natural patterns being systematically defaced:

— —

1. Secular

— —

Bill Illis: Formation of the AMOC not linked to Greenland meltwater

H/T to Paul Vaughan for pointing to a series of comments by Bill Illis on wuwt, which describe and differentiate between the under-ice salt induced sinking which forms Arctic deep water and the Greenland-melt surface waters which flow into the Gulf Stream. These were in response to an alarmist paper which claims that increased freshwater flux could weaken the AMOC and thus global circulation.

Bill Illis responds:

And the salinity in the ocean in the area in question has changed by exactly ZERO. The paper doesn’t address this issue one iota.

The AMOC starts under the sea ice throughout the entire Arctic Ocean basin. Somehow climate scientists have convinced themselves that the deep water formation of the AMOC is next to Greenland. There is no way to correct them because they don’t actually care what the facts are, just what gets them published in the climate theology field.

The sea surface temperatures in the Norwegian Sea range from +2.0C to +10.0C.

The Arctic Bottom Water is -0.5C to -1.0C and is 3000 metres deeper. it has nothing to do with the Nowegian Sea.

The Arctic Bottom Water overflows the canyons and chokepoints out of the Arctic Ocean basin, particularly the Fram Strait canyon, the Denmark Strait and the Greenland-Scotland Ridge.

Tony Thomas: The Fishy ‘Science’ of Ocean Acidification

My thanks to Tony Thomas for this entertaining piece, first published at Quadrant Online

How scary is “ocean acidification”?  Very  scary. The previously scary “global warming” stopped 19 years ago, but do stay scared because all that CO2 since 1997 has instead been “acidifying” the oceans. Please imagine baby oysters dissolving in the equivalent of battery acid, and hermit crabs raising a nervous feeler to discover that their protective shells have disappeared. Curse you, horrible human-caused CO2 emissions!

In one celebrated episode involving Climate Science™,  a lone oyster farmer in Maine put his oysters into  a bucket and then found that the bivalves at the bottom were crunched because their shells were weakened.[1] Can any reasonable person ask for better  scientific proof of ocean “acidification”?

Global cooling ahead: My prediction for 2016 and beyond

New Year is a traditional time for taking stock, getting rid of old stuff, and planning for the future. The climate advice from the talkshop is; Don’t sell your coat. As the current El Nino falters, we can expect cooler weather ahead for a couple of years from later in 2016.

Fig 1. Global temperature series from the two satellite datasets. The big El nino events in 1998 and 2010 were both followed by downturns. The 2015 El Nino will also be followed by a downturn in temperature.

Ian Wilson correctly forecasted the 2015 El Nino using his lunar technique and I also correctly forecasted it using my solar technique. Our observations of past events tell us is that  we are now likely to see a period of cooling, once the current El Nino dies down.

Per Strandberg: ENSO caused by tidal pulses during Perigee and by solar activity

My thanks to Per Strandberg for this update on his ENSO modelling effort. This is looking good, and is based on a neural network which uses lunar and solar data for its input.

There are two main drivers of ENSO. ENSO stands for El Niño Southern oscillation and is Earth’s most influential weather phenomena after seasonal changes. When ENSO changes it causes changes in currents and of temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean.

The most important ENSO driver is linked to variations in gravitational tidal forcing associated with Moon’s Perigee. Moon is in what is called Perigee, when the Moon is at it closest point during its elliptical orbit around Earth. This is also when the tidal force caused by the Moon is at its strongest.

The second most important forcing is linked to variation in solar activity.

Tom Wysmuller: No Link Between CO2 & Sea Level! NONE!!!

My thanks to Tom Wysmuller for sending me this pithy one pager that he’s asked to have handed out as a flyer in Paris.

No Link Between CO2 & Sea Level! NONE!!!
Tom Wysmuller© 5 Nov 2015 http://www.colderside.com

For the past 2,000 years, Sea Level rise was unchangingly linear, increasing between 1 & 1.5 mm/yr., and CO2 was stable and flat at 280 parts per million (ppm) for the same period. The great Ice Sheets from the last Ice Age had already melted.

Additional Sea Level change was slow, mostly due to thermal expansion of oceans and edge ice melt from Greenland and Antarctica. As Earth periodically warmed and cooled, remaining mountain glaciers either grew or added some melt water to the oceans.

In 1880, CO2 finally surges up, achieving a huge 38% increase during the past 135 years, likely due to industrial and agricultural development.

Most seacoasts either rise or fall, due to geological activity. Some do neither, and are “tectonically inert.” Actual Sea Levels, and any changes, are measured from them, such as Portland, Maine, USA, and Wismar, Germany, where Sea Level continues its methodical, steady, minimal, and linear rise. In the timeframe that CO2 massively increases, there is no sign whatsoever that Sea Level reacts likewise.

Harald Yndestad: The Lunar nodal cycle influence on the Barents Sea

I’m presenting the Doctoral thesis written by Harald Yndestad for his degree as Doctor of Philosophy at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. This work is highly relevant to our investigation of the effect of Lunar cycles on climatic variation.

The Lunar nodal cycle influence on the Barents Sea
Harald Yndestad
Submitted to Norwegian University of Science and Technology for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Department of Industrial Ecology and Technology Management
Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Preface

The research for this thesis began in 1996. The purpose was to confirm or reject the hypothesis that the life history of Northeast Arctic cod can be explained as a stationary cycle in a time series. I was rector at Aalesund University College from 1997 to 2000 and my research had to wait. In 2000 and 2001 I developed dynamic models for the most important species in the Barents Sea. The results supported the analysis from my first investigations. The next step was to look for the missing link between the 18.6-year lunar nodal cycle and the identified cycles in the Barents Sea. In 2001 I started to develop new methods to analyze climate indicators. The result was the Arctic Oscillation system theory. Wavelet analysis showed promising results and I started to analyze the biomass time series using the same analysis methods. This opened the possibility of a unified theory to explain the results from all time series.

Walter Starck: It’s the science, not the reef, that is being polluted

Posted Monday, 8 September 2014

In the fable about the boy who cried wolf the villagers quickly decided the boy was lying and ceased to respond to his alarms. It seems modern day journalists must be much more gullible than those ancient villagers. Every year for almost a half­century the news media have breathlessly reported alarmist claims of imminent threats to the existence of the Great Barrier Reef. Despite the fact that all have proved to be fictitious, trivial or short lived fluctuation of nature, the phony alarms never seem to lose credibility with news reporters or even provoke any investigation.

The latest such instance has involved uncritical propagation of alarmist claims regarding the threat from some additional dredging of an existing dredged shipping channel in connection with expansion of the coal loading terminal at Abbott Point in central Queensland. (See: BATTLE FOR THE REEF, reported by Marian Wilkinson and presented by Kerry O’Brien, broadcast on ABC 4 Corners Monday 18 August 2014) Only a modicum of investigation would reveal that all of the ports along the Queensland coast have been dredged and require periodic re­dredging to maintain their entrance channels. The GBR itself is many km offshore and no detriment to the reef attributable to coastal dredging has ever been documented. A scattering of low diversity inshore reefs does occur in the region but these are restricted to rocky outcrops where wave action prevents sediment build­up and these reefs are comprised of a limited range of silt tolerant coral species.

New insights into the dynamics of past climate change

Arctic ocean near Barrow, Alaska [image credit: Beth Ipsen/Associated Press]

A new study by the University of Cambridge ‘finds’ (their word) that changing climate in the polar regions can affect conditions in the rest of the world far quicker than previously thought. The full paper has paywalled access only, but by their own admission they say they are ‘only beginning to understand’ the processes they believe they have found.

A new study of the relationship between ocean currents and climate change has found that they are tightly linked, and that changes in the polar regions can affect the ocean and climate on the opposite side of the world within one to two hundred years, far quicker than previously thought.

Panama Canal ship size limit linked to El Niño

Sea surface height relative to normal ocean conditions on Dec. 1, 1997 [image credit: NASA/JPL]

This type of restriction was also imposed due to the ‘super El Niño’ of 1998, inviting comparisons with what’s happening to El Niño this season. No doubt various claims will be made about the causes. BBC News reports:

The Panama Canal Authority says it will temporarily cut the size of ships allowed through because of drought caused by El Niño. From 8 September, the maximum draft of ships will be cut to 39ft (11.89m), which may affect up to 20% of traffic. A similar restriction was imposed for the same reason in 1998.

The authorities say a further cut in the draft could be imposed on 16 September if the situation does not improve.The authority has taken the action because water levels in the Gatun and Alhajuela lakes has reduced as a result of the El Niño weather phenomenon. The current draft limit is 39.5ft, which will be cut to 39ft on 8 September and then potentially to 38.5ft on 16 September. Shipping companies had been warned the cuts could be coming.