Rocks beneath Antarctic Ice Sheet reveal ‘surprising past’- i.e. natural variation

Thwaites Glacier [image credit: NASA]

Why the surprise? Natural climate cycles are well documented in Earth’s history. Their ‘many glaciers’ turn out to mostly mean the area around Thwaites Glacier (aka the Doomsday Glacier), known to be affected by subglacial volcanoes and other geothermal “hotspots”, which obviously have nothing to do with the current obsession over atmospheric trace gases.
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The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is shrinking, with many glaciers across the region retreating and melting at an alarming rate, claims the British Antarctic Survey @ Phys.org.

However, this was not always the case according to new research published last month (April 28) in The Cryosphere. [Talkshop comment – self-evident].

A team of scientists from the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (ITGC), including two researchers from British Antarctic Survey (BAS), discovered that the ice sheet near Thwaites Glacier was thinner in the last few thousand years than it is today.

This unexpected find shows that glaciers in the region were able to regrow following earlier shrinkage.

Claim: Ozone treaty is delaying first ice-free Arctic summer

Sea ice optional? [image credit: BBC]

Why has it taken so long for greenhouse gas obsessives to come up with this, using ‘new climate model simulations’? The Arctic summer sea ice was supposed to be on its last legs at least fifteen years ago. Of course natural variation is ignored or discounted, as usual.
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A 1987 global deal to protect the ozone layer is delaying the first ice-free Arctic summer by up to 15 years, new research shows.

The Montreal Protocol – the first treaty to be ratified by every United Nations country – regulates nearly 100 man-made chemicals called ozone-depleting substances (ODSs), says EurekAlert.

While the main aim was to preserve the ozone layer, ODSs are also potent greenhouse gases, so the deal has slowed global warming.

The new study shows the effects of this include delaying the first ice-free Arctic summer (currently projected to happen the middle of this century) by up to 15 years, depending on future emissions.

BBC kicks off 2023 alarm season: Global warming set to break key 1.5C limit for first time

Credit: nationalreview.com

The 1.5C relates back to sometime in the 19th century, when global temperature data was minimal compared to today, one exception being the Central England data which shows nothing dramatic. After three years of La Niña, climate alarmists are relishing the prospect of an El Niño to revive their sagging crisis narrative a bit.
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Our overheating world [Talkshop comment – BBC climate hype] is likely to break a key temperature limit for the first time over the next few years, scientists predict.

Researchers say there’s now a 66% chance we will pass the 1.5C global warming threshold between now and 2027.

The chances are rising due to emissions from human activities and a change in weather patterns expected this summer, says BBC News.

If the world passes the limit, scientists stress the breach, while worrying, will likely be temporary.

El Niño on the way?

The SIS Group surveys the recently active commentary/prediction scene, finishing with climate alarm central aka the UN. Elsewhere, NOAA’s ENSO blog explains Why making El Niño forecasts in the spring is especially anxiety-inducing. Warmists are willing one to get going soon.
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The story begins at https://www.netzerowatch.com/rapid-ocean-temperature-rise-puzzles-scientists/  … rapid ocean temperature changes are on the way as the planet moves from a persistant La Niña position into El Niño conditions.

This will please the alarmists as global ocean temperatures appear to be a forewarning of El Niño – the only few times in the last 25 years that there has been an upward spike in global temperatures.

Mostly, it has flatlined.

Continued here.

1875 was coldest in 10,000 years, Warming A Good Thing

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‘We made ourselves an extremely poor experiment when we started to observe meteorology at the coldest time in the last ten thousand years.’ – Indeed.

Science Matters

Jørgen Peder Steffensen, of Denmark’s Niels Bohr Institute, is one of the most experienced experts in ice core analysis, in both Greenland and Antarctica. In this video he explains a coincidence that has misled those alarmed about the warming recovery since the Little Ice Age.  And if you skip to 2:25, you will see the huge error we have made and the assumptions and extrapolations based on that error.  Transcript below is from closed captions with my bolds and added images. H/T Raymond

What do ice cores tell us about the history of climate change and the present trend? 

This ice is from the Viking age around the year one thousand, also called the medieval warm period. We believe that in Greenland the Medieval Warm Period was about one and a half degrees warmer on average than today

NorthGRIP the Greenland ice core project is being reopened to drill…

View original post 610 more words

West Antarctic Ice Sheet retreated far inland, re-advanced since last Ice Age

Antarctica

This research suggests natural climate variation in Antarctica has a much wider range than expected.
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The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is melting rapidly, claims EurekAlert, raising concerns it could cross a tipping point of irreversible retreat in the next few decades if global temperatures rise 1.5 to 2.0 degrees Celsius (2.7 to 3.8 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.

New research finds that 6,000 years ago, the grounded edge of the ice sheet may have been as far as 250 kilometers (160 miles) inland from its current location, suggesting the ice retreated deep into the continent after the end of the last ice age and re-advanced before modern retreat began.

“In the last few thousand years before we started watching, ice in some parts of Antarctica retreated and re-advanced over a much larger area than we previously appreciated,” said Ryan Venturelli, a paleoglaciologist at Colorado School of Mines and lead author of the new study. “The ongoing retreat of Thwaites Glacier is much faster than we’ve ever seen before, but in the geologic record, we see the ice can recover.”

US ski season extended as record snowpack dents Western drought

Image credit: activenorcal.com]

‘Record snowpack’, ‘staggering snowfall’ – dismal climate doomsters take note.
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Record snowfall across much of the western United States has not only helped to alleviate drought—it has also brought a massive boon for the region’s ski resorts, with many hoping to keep their lifts running deep into summer, says Phys.org.

Sitting more than 10,500 feet (3,200 meters) above sea level, Colorado’s Arapahoe Basin has long been famous for its long seasons. The resort’s frozen pistes were the state’s first to open last fall, and typically don’t close until June.

“I bet you, here, we might make it into July. I hope so,” said local ski enthusiast Ian Burkle, 52.

Researchers investigate the “Warm Arctic-Cold Continent” (WACC) climate theory

Their analysis relates to 1979-2018 only. Media talk of ‘stranded’ polar bears, not mentioned in the study, ignores the fact that they are talented swimmers. The unresolved issue of the wavier jet stream is noted in the study, but that’s all. They admit prediction of where it’s all going is difficult.
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Pictures of melting glaciers and stranded [?] polar bears on shrinking sea ice in the Arctic are perhaps the most striking images that have been used to highlights the effects of global warming, says Phys.org.

However, they do not convey the full extent of the consequences of warmer Arctic. In recent years, there has been growing recognition of the Arctic’s role in driving extreme weather events in other parts of the world. [Talkshop comment – dubious assertions]

While the Arctic has been warming at a rate twice as fast as the global average, winters in the midlatitude regions have experienced colder and more severe weather events.

What the science says (or doesn’t?) about California’s record–setting snow

Credit: NOAA

Expecting to find ‘the science’ (who owns it?) explaining why a warming climate is able to produce near-record snow, we wade in – but the sub-heading is a let-down: ‘A relentless series of ‘rivers in the sky’ is creating extreme conditions across the state, but a role for climate change is unclear’. Then we read: ‘As the atmosphere warms, atmospheric rivers are likely to become more frequent and hold more moisture, and that will result in heavy downpours of rain and snow.’ The obvious clash of warmth and snow in the same sentence is left for the reader to ponder. They end up saying in effect that the weather is getting more weathery. A self-proclaimed ‘NEWS EXPLAINER’ that can’t explain much, it seems.
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Not again! Earlier this week, California was battered by heavy rain, strong winds and thick snow — the latest in a seemingly unending procession of strong storms, says Nature.

Wild weather has afflicted the previously drought-stricken state for three months, resulting in devastating floods, paralysing blizzards and dozens of deaths.

Data released Thursday show that the snowpack is the biggest on record.

Nature spoke to atmospheric and climate scientists about what’s driving the surge in wet weather and what the state could look like in a warmer future.

Surprise effect: Methane cools even as it heats, say researchers

Credit: airbus.com

If the headline seems puzzling, try the article that follows it. We’re taken back to the imaginary world of atmospheric ‘blankets’, forgetting to mention that the methane content of our air is less than 2000 parts per *billion* (= 2 per million).
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Most climate models do not yet account for a new UC Riverside discovery: methane traps a great deal of heat in Earth’s atmosphere, but also creates cooling clouds that offset 30% of the heat, says Phys.org.

Greenhouse gases like methane create a kind of blanket in the atmosphere, trapping heat from Earth’s surface, called longwave energy, and preventing it from radiating out into space. This makes the planet hotter. [Talkshop comment – according to what empirical evidence?]

“A blanket doesn’t create heat, unless it’s electric. You feel warm because the blanket inhibits your body’s ability to send its heat into the air. This is the same concept,” explained Robert Allen, UCR assistant professor of Earth sciences.

In addition to absorbing longwave energy, it turns out methane also absorbs incoming energy from the sun, known as shortwave energy. “This should warm the planet,” said Allen, who led the research project. “But counterintuitively, the shortwave absorption encourages changes in clouds that have a slight cooling effect.”

Summer sea ice disappearance from the Arctic has happened before, say researchers

They studied molecules from certain algae that are only produced when there is sea ice. Natural climate variation alone was all it took to reach the required temperature level.
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The “Last Ice Area” north of Greenland and Canada is the last sanctuary of all-year sea ice in this time of rising temperatures caused by climate change.

A new study now suggests that this may soon be over, says Phys.org.

Researchers from Aarhus University, in collaboration with Stockholm University and the United States Geological Survey, analyzed samples from the previously inaccessible region north of Greenland.

The sediment samples were collected from the seabed in the Lincoln Sea, part of the “Last Ice Area”. They showed that the sea ice in this region melted away during summer months around 10,000 years ago.

The research team concluded that summer sea ice melted at a time when temperatures were at a level that we are rapidly approaching again today.

Catastrophism update: UN to deliver diagnosis, prescription for its ‘climate crisis’

The world only has one temperature, which must somehow be restrained by human efforts — and lots of money. Or so the endless IPCC reports would have us believe. Keep paying up so the self-styled weather controllers can ‘save the planet’.
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The United Nations was poised to release a capstone report Monday distilling nearly a decade of published science on the impacts and trajectory of global warming, and the tools available to prevent climate catastrophe, says Phys.org.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 30-odd page “summary for policymakers”—compressing 10,500 pages authored by more than 1,000 scientists—is as dense as a black hole and will deliver a stark warning.

“We are nearing a point of no return,” UN chief Antonio Guterres said last week as diplomats from 195 nations gathered in Interlaken, Switzerland, to hammer out the final wording, finalized on Sunday night by exhausted and sleep-deprived delegates two days behind schedule.

“For decades, the IPCC has put forward evidence on how people and planet are being rocked by climate destruction.”

Switching to hydrogen fuel could prolong ‘the methane problem’, say researchers

The imagined methane problem derived from the ‘greenhouse’ obsession, that is. Hydrogen already has a nitrogen problem, according to IPCC climate theories at least. Now it seems there’s a leaky infrastructure issue.
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Hydrogen is often heralded as the clean fuel of the future, but new research suggests that leaky hydrogen infrastructure could end up increasing atmospheric methane levels, which would cause decades-long climate consequences, says Science Daily.

Hydrogen’s potential as a clean fuel could be limited by a chemical reaction in the lower atmosphere, according to research from Princeton University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association.

This is because hydrogen gas easily reacts in the atmosphere with the same molecule primarily responsible for breaking down methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

Catastrophism update: Governments to vet ‘crucial’ UN climate science report

The ‘Pakistan one third underwater’ lie gets yet another airing here, while Arctic summer sea ice keeps confounding the doomsters. Pretending to know the future of global climate via modelling has only led to the failure of numerous over-the-top predictions so far.
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Diplomats from nearly 200 nations and top climate scientists begin a week-long huddle in Switzerland Monday to distill nearly a decade of published science into a 20-odd-page warning about the existential danger of global warming, and what to do about it, says Phys.org.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s synthesis report—to be released on March 20—will detail observed and projected changes in Earth’s climate system; past and future impacts such as devastating heatwaves, flooding and rising seas; and ways to halt the carbon pollution [sic] pushing Earth toward an unlivable state. [Talkshop comment – unverified claim].

“It’s a massive moment, seven years since the Paris Agreement and nine years since the last IPCC assessment report,” Greenpeace Nordic senior policy advisor Kaisa Kosonen, an official observer at IPCC meetings, told AFP.

Concern grows over rich nations controlling sunlight

[image credit: latinoamericarenovable.com]

Say hello to an umbrella term for outlandish climate intervention schemes, or maybe scams: SRM (solar radiation management).
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Radical climate interventions — like blocking the sun’s rays — could alter the world’s weather patterns, potentially benefiting some regions of the world and harming others, says E&E News.

That possibility, climate scientists say, means any research on such methods must consider those risks and involve the countries that already bear the greatest impacts from a warming planet.

“If you’re actually talking about actively deploying technologies to alter the climate, then you need to engage all of us in the discussion,” said Andrea Hinwood, chief scientist at the United Nations Environment Programme in Nairobi, Kenya. “And that means those who are the most vulnerable to these effects need to be able to have a say.”

Claim: Global food system emissions imperil Paris climate goals

Meat under attack [image credit: farminguk.com]

Phys.org pounces on another supposed climate alarm. Once again magical powers are assigned to trace gases with no evidence offered.
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The global food system’s greenhouse gas emissions will add nearly one degree Celsius to Earth’s surface temperatures by 2100 on current trends, obliterating Paris Agreement climate goals, scientists warned Monday.

A major overhaul of the sector—from production to distribution to consumption—could reduce those emissions by more than half even as global population increases, they reported in Nature Climate Change.

Earth’s surface has warmed 1.2 C since the late 1800s, leaving only a narrow margin for staying under the 2015 treaty’s core goal of capping warming at “well under” 2 C.

Battle simmers in Illinois over plans to pipe in and store millions of tons of carbon dioxide

This article (extracts below) is littered with climate propaganda and evidence-free claims about weather and warming. But then a Stanford University professor is quoted saying carbon capture is “not going to help the climate”. The story of the Satartia CO2 pipeline rupture is disturbing.
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The opportunity to compete for billions of dollars in federal funding is on the line as Illinois considers the future of carbon capture, according to the Prairie Research Institute report, as well as the chance to create jobs and boost local economies, says Phys.org.

And at a time when the state and federal government and nations worldwide are trying to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and stave off the worst effects of global warming—including catastrophic floods and droughts—carbon capture also holds out the promise of making the job easier.

Carbon capture and storage “could play an important role in achieving the state’s decarbonization goals,” according to the report, which was commissioned by the state legislature.

According to Navigator CO2, the Heartland Greenway pipeline would have the ability to reduce annual carbon dioxide emissions by 15 million metric tons, the equivalent of taking 3.2 million cars off the road.

But as the fight over Navigator CO2’s pipeline illustrates, battle lines are being drawn, with opponents questioning carbon capture’s very reason for being—its real-world effectiveness in reducing greenhouse gases.

There are also safety concerns. Landowners fear a pipeline could rupture, releasing a potentially suffocating gas not far from bedroom windows.

“Right now, to move forward with a carbon dioxide pipeline is unconscionable,” said Pam Richart, lead organizer of the Coalition to Stop CO2 Pipelines, which includes citizens and environmental groups. “It just brings too much risk.”
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‘A boondoggle’

Carbon dioxide, which traps heat close to the earth, plays a vital role in maintaining the planet’s temperature [Talkshop comment – a mere assertion].

But now, scientists say, we have too much of a good thing. Due largely to carbon emissions [Talkshop comment – another assertion] from fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal, global temperatures have risen in the last century.

As a result, there’s been an increase in extreme weather events [Talkshop comment – another one] such as droughts, heat waves and floods; trees and corals have died off in large numbers; and millions of people have been exposed to acute food and water insecurity, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Scientists say urgent action is needed and effective solutions are available, including replacing fossil fuels with wind and solar energy, switching homes and businesses from gas to electricity, and turning to electric cars.

Carbon capture is more controversial, especially when it comes to keeping coal or gas-burning power plants open for business.

Among the critics is climate scientist Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University.

“If you don’t care about climate or air pollution or energy security, go for it,” he said when asked whether Illinois should pursue leadership in carbon capture. “You can pump a lot of money into carbon capture and create some jobs, but it’s not going to help the climate.”

Jacobson, author of a 2019 study in the journal Energy & Environmental Science that raised doubts about the real-world effectiveness of carbon capture, said that the widely quoted figure that the technology can capture 90% of carbon dioxide emissions is actually an assumption based on idealized measurements.

When Jacobson looked at the real-world performance of the $1 billion Petra Nova project in Texas, at the time the biggest coal-plant carbon capture project in the United States, only about 55% of carbon dioxide emissions were being captured.

And that figure didn’t take into account emissions from the natural gas turbine that had to be built to power carbon capture. Also excluded: emissions from mining and processing the coal and natural gas used at the Petra Nova.

When those factors were taken into account, Jacobson found that carbon capture only reduced average annual emissions by 11% to 20%.

“There’s just no evidence this stuff is useful,” Jacobson said of carbon capture. “And all the evidence suggests it’s just a boondoggle and we could have spent all that money on actual emissions reduction.”

Asked for studies that show carbon capture’s effectiveness in reducing emissions, the authors of the Prairie Research Institute study responded via a spokesperson, who offered a written list of studies, none of which appeared to look at real-world emissions before and after carbon capture.
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Unanswered questions

Among the questions that Illinois still hasn’t answered clearly: Who will bear the long-term responsibility for underground carbon storage sites? Who owns the potentially valuable underground space where carbon dioxide can be stored?

And what will happen if some landowners want to offer up their property for carbon dioxide storage, and other, adjacent, owners do not?

The Prairie Research Institute report includes a range of recommendations addressing such issues, including that the state should create legal and regulatory frameworks for the long-term stewardship and oversight of carbon dioxide storage sites.

The report also recommends the establishment of an interagency planning and oversight committee to consider carbon capture and storage activities in Illinois.

Carbon capture, utilization and storage “should be both enabled and appropriately regulated to ensure long-term storage of CO2 in full consultation with impacted communities,” the report says.

In the wake of a 2020 carbon dioxide pipeline rupture near Satartia, Mississippi, the federal government is also considering more regulation.

At the Satartia pipeline rupture, which followed heavy rains and a landslide, the escaping carbon dioxide roared like a jet engine and carved a crater an estimated 40 feet deep in the ground. A potentially suffocating green fog rose from the pipeline and started moving downhill toward Satartia, according to rescue workers who testified before the Illinois Commerce Commission.

Gas-powered vehicles stalled out on the road due to lack of oxygen, according to testimony. People passed out. In one car, rescue workers found three people unconscious, two with froth coming out of their mouths.

“It looked like the Zombie apocalypse,” testified Yazoo County Emergency Management Agency Director Jack Willingham, who arrived in Satartia about five hours after the rupture. “It was hazy. … There were abandoned vehicles everywhere, many with doors ajar, many with their windows smashed from the rescue efforts.”

No deaths were reported, but 45 people sought medical attention at local hospitals, according to a government report, and federal regulators took notice.

In May, the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration announced that it would start a new rule-making process to update standards for carbon dioxide pipelines, including new requirements related to emergency preparedness and response.

Meanwhile, some counties in Illinois have taken matters into their own hands, declaring moratoriums on permits for pipeline construction.

Full article here.
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Huffpost: The Gassing Of Satartia (2021)

A CO2 pipeline in Mississippi ruptured last year, sickening dozens of people. What does it forecast for the massive proposed buildout of pipelines across the U.S.?
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This story is the result of a 19-month HuffPost/Climate Investigations Center investigation into the Satartia pipeline rupture, and the safety of CO2 pipelines.

Antarctic Sea Ice: ‘The beginning of the end!’ – again – Net Zero Watch

Is it game over for the climate yet? Media over-excitement takes off again.
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The great sleeping giant that is Antarctica that — apart from the Antarctic Peninsula — refuses to respond to global warming may just have begun to stir, and the implications are, well, apocalyptic, jokes Dr David Whitehouse @ Net Zero Watch.

According to CNN “Antarctic sea ice hits record lows again. Scientists wonder if it’s “the beginning of the end.” CNN also reports that, “90% of ice around Antarctica has disappeared in less than a decade.”

CNN are not the only media outlets to report on this years’ record low sea ice around Antarctica in apocalyptic terms, other media extremists are available.

For Sky News it’s the accelerating melt of polar regions. For the BBC “There is now less sea-ice surrounding the Antarctic continent than at any time since we began using satellites to measure it in the late 1970s.” All this is technically true, but misleading. When it’s put into context one sees a different picture.

So let’s have a look at the actual satellite data of Antarctic sea ice collected monthly since 1979. The NSIDC gives two data sets for what it calls i) sea ice extent, and ii) sea ice area. So let’s examine both of them.

The first graph is sea ice area, the second sea ice extent [see here].

From the empirical data it is evident that there is hardly any change of sea ice over the 44-year time span. Since 2016 there is a dip with possibly more variability (of which more later), and the lowest month (February) does show a record low, but by hardly anything (and also look at the data for 1992).

Does this actual data look like the beginning of the end to you? Where is CNN’s 90% loss or Sky News acceleration?

Antarctic sea ice evolution has no significant trends along the whole period, but a volume drop is observed since 2016.

Full article here.

Climate signals from ancient ice and wood

Hunger stone at Decin on the River Elbe, with dates back to 1616 or earlier [image credit: Norbert Kaiser @ Wikipedia]

We looked at some of this recently, here and here. Of course the problem nowadays is that weather news is liable to be subjected to the melodrama treatment by climate obsessives. Re. the European droughts, there’s also the evidence of the ‘hunger stones’, for example.
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The Holocene – the time since the end of the last glaciation – which has witnessed all of humanity’s recorded history and the rise and fall of civilisations – began only 11,700 years ago, says Dr David Whitehouse @ Net Zero Watch.

It is a relatively warm period, but how warm was it at its warmest?

What happened in the past informs current climate models placing the current global warming into perspective.

Study finds sinking tundra surface unlikely to trigger runaway permafrost thaw

Alaskan permafrost: [image credit: insideclimatenews.org]

Nature has its own adaptations. Eventually the process, should it occur, becomes self-limiting.
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Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists set out to address one of the biggest uncertainties about how carbon-rich permafrost will respond to gradual sinking of the land surface as temperatures rise.

Using a high-performance computer simulation, the research team found that soil subsidence is unlikely to cause rampant thawing in the future, says EurekAlert.

The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has identified the possibility of soil subsidence leading to a feedback loop that could trigger a rapid thaw as a major concern in the decades ahead.

Accelerated thawing caused by uneven land subsidence has been observed on smaller scales over shorter time frames, but the IPCC’s assessments were uncertain as to what may happen over the long term.