Month: March 2019

Landscape of Climate Ideologies

Posted on by Ron Clutz

This post summarizes a useful set of categories for positions on global warming/climate change that are advocated in the public square. H/T Richard Drake for pointing me to an extensive and illuminating discussion by Edward Ring at American Greatness The Politics, Science, and Politicized Science of Climate Change. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Climate alarm shouldn’t be a hard sell, and it isn’t. The horror inspired by natural conflagrations taps into primal, instinctual fears; when vividly imagining terrifying acts of nature, even the most hardened skeptic might have a moment of pause.

And every time there’s a hurricane, or a flood, or a wildfire, we’re reminded again by the consensus establishment; we caused this. We are to blame. And nothing, absolutely nothing, is too high a price to pay to stop it.

But rarely explored, and difficult to find, is data on how much it costs to adapt to climate change versus how much it would cost to stop climate change. Equally hard to find is information about the extent to which climate change might actually benefit humanity.

Political Categorizing of Today’s Eco Intellectuals

In 2014, Matthew Nisbet, a professor of communications at Northeastern University, in a paper titled “Disruptive ideas: public intellectuals and their arguments for action on climate change” made an interesting attempt to classify influential activists and experts on climate change into three categories: Ecological Activists, Smart Growth Reformers, and Ecomodernists. The focus of Nisbet’s analysis was how these public intellectuals “establish their authority, spread their ideas, and shape public discourse.”

While retaining Nisbet’s framework, it is useful to speculate as to how each of the mass political ideologies and major political movements in 2019 America would align with each of Nisbet’s three categories. After all, how “climate action” is implemented, now and in the future, arguably is the most significant variable determining how Americans and everyone else in the world will cope with challenges relating to energy development, economic growth, technology deployment, individual freedom, property rights, national sovereignty, international cooperation, and, of course, environmental protection.

Click on image to enlarge.

Making this leap, a plausible match for each of Nisbet’s categories would be as follows: The “Ecological Activists” are mostly socialists, the “Smart Growth Reformers” are mostly liberals, and the “Ecomodernists” are mostly libertarians. It is important to reiterate that this only roughly overlaps with the influencers Nisbet has characterized in his three groups. Moreover, there is a fourth important category that Nisbet ignored (or dismissed), which might be defined as practical skeptics. More on that later. Here is Nisbet’s chart depicting his three categories of environmental influencers:

Socialist Environmentalists

The first of Nisbet’s three categories are the Ecological Activists. Based on Nisbet’s description, their political ideology is most likely socialist. This group has the most negative perspective on climate change, seeing it as a consequence of capitalism run amok. They argue that the carrying capacity of planet earth has reached its limit and that only by radically transforming society can the planet and humanity avoid catastrophe.

This group is Malthusian in outlook, and the solutions they advocate—returning to small scale, decentralized infrastructure, “smaller scale, locally owned solar, wind and geothermal energy technologies, and organic farming”—are not practical or even internally consistent for several reasons.

“Ecological Activists argue on behalf of a fundamental reconsideration of our worldviews, aspirations, and life goals, a new consciousness spread through grassroots organizing and social protest that would dramatically re‐organize society, decentralize our politics, reverse globalization, and end our addiction to economic growth,” Nisbet writes. It must be a very selective subset of globalization the Ecological Activists wish to reverse, however, because this most radical of Nisbet’s cohorts tend to be the same people who favor open borders and the erasure of national governments. Can they truly believe small communities will constitute what remains of governance when nation-states and multinational corporations wither away?

But in their commitment to achieving 100 percent decentralized, renewable energy, the Ecological Activists make their greatest departure from reality.

Not mentioned in Nisbet’s paper, but easily fitting into the Ecological Activists category, are the “deep greens,” a group typified by the “Deep Green Resistance.” They reject “green technology and renewable energy,” both in terms of its ability to meet the total energy requirements of modern civilization, and in terms of how “green” it actually is. Their solution is to “create a life-centered resistance movement that will dismantle industrial civilization by any means necessary.”

Most Ecological Activists believe in phasing out the use of fossil fuel in a manner they perceive to be as benign as possible. But to achieve this, and unlike the Smart Growth Reformers, the Ecological Activists do not believe in market-based solutions. They support carbon rationing and carbon taxes as the means both to curtail the use of fossil fuel and to fund development and deployment of renewable energy solutions.

In Congress today, the Ecological Activists would be most represented by the Democratic Socialists, led by their media-anointed leader, Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-N.Y.). The policies promoted by Ocasio-Cortez and her allies in the “Green New Deal,” in its undiluted form, read like a socialist manifesto.

It is impossible to catalog the profusion of activist groups and activist websites now promoting the Green New Deal. There are too many. But almost invariably they perceive “social justice,” socialist economics, environmentalism, and abolition of fossil fuels as interlinked goals sharing common values. One of the explicitly political online promoters of a congressional Green New Deal is the Sunrise Movement. The group claims already to have secured the endorsements of 45 members of Congress, along with hundreds of environmentalist organizations.

But how can Americans possibly expect to replace conventional energy with more expensive renewable energy, at the same time as they pay additional trillions to secure the “economic rights” for everyone living in the United States? The very idea is so preposterous it is difficult to take the socialist environmentalist movement seriously. That would be a mistake.

Liberal Environmentalists

If the Ecological Activists tend to lean socialist, the second of Nisbet’s groups, the Smart Growth Reformers, appear to be conventional liberals. They are more business-friendly, and while they agree that a climate catastrophe is inevitable without dramatic changes in policy, they believe “market forces” can be harnessed to change the energy economy of the world. Where the Ecological Activists support carbon taxes and carbon rationing, the Smart Growth Reformers support carbon trading.

The best known of the so-called Smart Growth Reformers is former Vice President Al Gore, who has enjoyed a career since 2000 that, if anything, eclipses his accomplishments as a politician. In addition to producing Oscar-winning documentaries on climate change, writing bestsellers on the topic, and receiving a Nobel Prize for his proselytizing on the issue, he has become fabulously wealthy. As a co-founder of Generation Investment Management, with over $18 billion in assets under management, and as a senior partner at the elite venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, Gore falls firmly into the pro-business political camp, along with plenty of other liberal democrats. A likely Gore ally among the Smart Growth Reformers would be U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), whose net worth is estimated at $29 million.

It isn’t hard to see why emissions trading would appeal to pro-business liberals, although embracing this terminology requires a very specific sort of definition for the phrase “pro-business.” Why enact a carbon tax, where only the government gets to be the middleman, when with emissions trading, you can engage the global financial community, and create completely new categories of economics, as armies of accountants, economists, environmental scientists, and myriad additional, highly-credentialed ancillary experts engage in cradle to cradle assessments of carbon molecules?

Emissions-trading schemes pose all kinds of problems. Think of the subjectivity inherent in measuring significant variables, the stupefying complexity, the huge, nonproductive overhead, consisting of a veritable army of bureaucrats, consultants, experts, and, of course, financial middlemen. Or consider the vast potential for corruption, or just multiplying schemes that turn out to do more harm than good, saturate the prospect of emissions trading from end to end.

A recent ignoble example would be how carbon emissions trading in the European Union funded palm oil plantations. To purchase the right to emit more CO2 than their allotment, European companies bought “carbon credits,” investing in “carbon neutral” biofuel plantations in Indonesia, Malaysia, and elsewhere in the tropics. Thousands of square miles of tropical rainforest, valuable wildlife habitat, were incinerated to accommodate the new market for biodiesel made from palm oil. By the time the Europeans realized what they were doing, it was too late. Just ask the orangutans of Borneo, if there are any left.

The “smart growth reformers” advocate more than just carbon trading, but it is difficult to overstate its centrality to their much broader agenda. And it’s important to emphasize that the scope of its implementation will go far beyond regulating energy. Because there is a “carbon footprint” to virtually every development—all housing, all infrastructure, all transportation; not just power plants, but bridges, dams, water and wastewater treatment plants, solid waste management, the energy grid, inland waterways, levees, ports, public parks, roads, rail, transit, schools, every durable good, every gadget, everything.

In the hands of a creative carbon accountant, there isn’t any human activity that might not have earnings potential, taxation potential, or become a target for regulation. Government agencies view this as a gold mine. Code enforcement departments and planning commissions will become profit centers—so long as people are forced by law and ordinance to use less and consume less. And to enable, monitor, and enforce the great ratcheting down: the internet of things.

Libertarian Environmentalists

It may not be entirely accurate to claim that most Ecomodernists are libertarians. While libertarians appear to overlap more with the Ecomodernists than with Smart Growth Reformers or Ecological Activists, there are plenty of libertarians who have been seduced by the “market-based” solutions of emissions trading. Moreover, according to Nisbet’s paradigm, Ecomodernists “argue for ‘clumsy’ policy approaches across levels of society, government investment in energy technologies and resilience strategies,” hardly something you would expect from a Libertarian. Nonetheless, many self-proclaimed Ecomodernists identify as libertarians. One of the public intellectuals who is cited by Nisbet as an Ecomodernist is Michael Shellenberger. An apt choice, as Shellenberger co-authored “An Ecomodernist Manifesto” along with 17 other notables.

The Seven Key Sections of the Ecomodernist Manifesto

(1) Humanity has flourished over the past two centuries.

(2) Even as human environmental impacts continue to grow in the aggregate, a range of long-term trends is today driving significant decoupling of human well-being from environmental impacts.

(3) The processes of decoupling described above challenge the idea that early human societies lived more lightly on the land than do modern societies.

(4) Plentiful access to modern energy is an essential prerequisite for human development and for decoupling development from nature.

(5) We write this document out of deep love and emotional connection to the natural world.

(6) We affirm the need and human capacity for accelerated, active, and conscious decoupling. Technological progress is not inevitable. Decoupling environmental impacts from economic outputs is not simply a function of market-driven innovation and efficient response to scarcity.

(7)We offer this statement in the belief that both human prosperity and an ecologically vibrant planet are not only possible but also inseparable.

Ecomodernists may not all embrace the libertarian desire to let the unfettered free market solve every challenge facing humanity (note point No. 6), but perhaps in a more important sense they are very libertarian, in their commitment to encouraging a free market of ideas.

All in all, the Ecomodernist category is an intriguing way of gathering together an eclectic group of thinkers. Also included on Nisbet’s list of Ecomodernists is Roger Pielke Jr., a political science professor at the University of Colorado and another co-author of the “Ecomodernist Manifesto.” Pielke’s situation is one that many Ecomodernists (and Practical Skeptics) face, he is condemned by the “consensus” community merely because he is occasionally willing to criticize their work.

Where Pielke is attacked for exposing politically motivated hyperbole that violates the integrity of the scientists that produce it or condone it, Danish economist Bjorn Lomborg (who is not on Nisbet’s list of Ecomodernists but perhaps should be) is attacked for exposing the deeply flawed economic logic underlying many of the most urgently promoted policies designed to mitigate climate change.

What Pielke, Lomborg, and many others have in common is their overt, unequivocal agreement with the fundamental premise—Earth is warming, and anthropogenic CO2 is the cause. And yet they are at times marginalized because they question certain critical assumptions or conclusions relating to that premise. As these two examples show, the twin hearts of the climate change movement—the science and the economics—have hardened against the voices of contrarians. Along with being eclectic, contrarian might be another widely shared quality of the Ecomodernists.

The Ecomodernist, or, if you will, the Libertarian Environmentalist, as a category, is elusive and heterogeneous. These qualities make its output less predictable, its potential greater. It is best defined simply as not belonging to the two preceding categories, nor willing to cross the red line into overtly questioning the theory of anthropogenic global warming. It has much to offer.

Practical Skeptics

The failure of Nisbet to include climate skeptics as a fourth category may be a forgivable oversight on his part, because climate skeptics almost have been erased from public dialogue. As a result, it makes sense that Nisbet would not consider the members of this group to qualify as influential public intellectuals.

Another reason Nisbet may not have included climate skeptics would be because he was analyzing differing approaches by “public intellectuals arguing for action on climate change.” It’s certainly debatable, but understandable to assert that climate skeptics are arguing for no action on climate change. Equally likely, of course, was that Nisbet chose to avoid the opprobrium he would invite if he legitimized climate skeptics by including them in his analysis.

Climate skeptics have been demonized and ostracized by the socialist and liberal environmentalists. The Ecomodernists, for the most part, scrupulously avoid allowing their laudable contrarianism to overflow into questioning the theory of anthropogenic global warming.

Practical Skeptics have a range of positions that earn them the “denier” label, and everything that comes with that: suppression of their work, savaging of their reputations, and banishment from the public square. Some of them, such as “Climate Etc.” host Judith Curry, former professor and chairwoman of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, maintain that while anthropogenic CO2 is contributing to global warming, the likely amount of warming is far less than what alarmingly is being projected. Curry has also criticized the growing calls by congressional Democrats to criminalize the free speech of skeptic scientists, by attempting to expose their links, if any, to fossil fuel corporations.

One of the most distinguished, and most demonized, of living climate skeptics is Richard Lindzen, an American atmospheric physicist who is a senior fellow with the Cato Institute. Until his retirement in 2013, Lindzen was the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lindzen was one of the early participants in the early IPCC reports on climate change, but became disillusioned because he perceived the organization had become politicized.

Lindzen’s specific criticisms of conventional climate change theories are many: He acknowledges there are moderate warming trends, but that it is merely our emergence from the “little ice age” of the 19th century. He claims that if the earth were warming significantly, extreme weather would diminish, not increase. He questions the assumptions built into the computer programs that model global climate and produce predictions. He believes predicted warming is overstated. He states that the natural feedback mechanisms governing the global climate have offsetting impacts, and that if they did not, the earth would have experienced catastrophic warming eons ago.

There are dozens of credible climate skeptics, credible enough, that is, to deserve a place on panels at climate conferences or congressional testimony, editorial pages, scientific journals, and press coverage, on what are arguably the most consequential policy decisions of modern times. Along with Curry and Lindzen, other skeptical scientists include Roy Spencer, Fred Singer, and Anastasios Tsonis along with many others who are keeping their heads down.

Lindzen has said that many climate scientists will criticize alarmist pronouncements in whatever may be their specific area of expertise. A glaciologist will challenge a press release predicting an ice-free Himalayan mountain range by 2035. A meteorologist will challenge a press release asserting an increase in extreme weather. But none of them will take the further step of criticizing the overall “consensus.”

There remains a handful of organizations that will provide equal time, or even promote, climate skeptics. They include Cato, AEI, The Heartland Institute, and the Heritage Foundation. But these scientists, these online reporters, and these nonprofit organizations are vastly outgunned by most of the political establishment (with the major exception of the Trump administration), the media and entertainment communities, prestigious scientific journals, the K-12 public education system, higher education, local, state, federal, and international government bureaucracies, virtually every major corporate or financial player, and spectacularly wealthy nonprofit educational foundations including powerful environmental pressure groups.

But scientific “consensus” does not constitute scientific truth. Just ask Galileo. And the overwhelming institutional consensus on a course of action, even if there is such a thing, does not mean that course of action is the optimal course of action.

Solutions Require Renewed Debate

Even if anthropogenic CO2 emissions are driving the planet headlong into an apocalyptic nightmare, climate skeptics should be heard. Because as it is the scope of acceptable debate is relentlessly narrowing. Should Bjorn Lomborg’s valuable economic analysis be ignored, simply because he’s willing to point out the absurdity of spending trillions for the remote possibility of slowing warming by a half-degree? Should Roger Pielke, Jr. be silenced, when the data he presents suggests extreme weather may not be the primary type of havoc for which we need to prepare?

The Heartland Institute Sent 300,000 Teachers Books and DVDs Presenting Evidence Contradicting Alarming Man-Made Climate Change

A healthy policy synthesis would be to promote and invest in projects and technologies that make sense no matter what climate outcome is destined to befall the planet. But the chances of getting that right are improved if skeptics are allowed to rejoin the conversation.

The notion that skeptics are the beneficiaries of vast sums of dark money is by now ludicrous. Every major corporation, certainly including the oil companies, has worked out their lucrative pathway into a profitable “carbon-free” future. But which set of public intellectuals, along with their powerful institutional allies and grassroots constituents, will prevail?

Will it be the Socialist Environmentalists, who are funded by a European-style leftist oligarchy, backed up by populist agitators, with growing support from the electorate? And if so, will any of the stupendous sums of new tax revenues they collect actually make it onto the ground in the form of renewable energy, and if so, will it do any good? Or will climate change just be the Trojan Horse of socialism that finally made it through the gates?

What about the Liberal Environmentalists, the “Smart Growth Reformers”? Will they win? And if so, do we want to live in their hyper-regulated world, where the “free market” survives in the form of cronyism, and every aspect of our lives is monitored in order to ensure we each maintain our “carbon neutrality”? And will that do any good? And when the predicted climate disasters don’t happen, will any of them admit those disasters weren’t going to happen anyway, or will they claim the green police state they built saved the world?

The Ecomodernists, we hope, will excuse being associated in any context with the Practical Skeptics, but here goes: in terms of divergent, undogmatic thinking, and general optimism regarding the ultimate fate of humanity, these two groups have much in common. It used to be accepted that the person holding the sign on the street corner, proclaiming the imminent doom of mankind was the crazy one, and the person suggesting that actually, mankind is probably not doomed, was the sane one. But in the crazy world of climate alarmism, those roles have been inverted.

Shock. Despair. Change everything, overnight, or else. We’ve got five years. When it comes to climate change, that is the prevailing message, and deviation from that message invites demonization, banishment, erasure.

In a recent and very typical development, the BBC, in response to pressure from activists, announced in September 2018 they would no longer cover the arguments of climate skeptics. This is a natural progression that began in 2007 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled—in an ominous endorsement of politicized science and a staggering violation of common sense—that CO2, part of our atmospheric blanket against the cold cosmic emptiness, the food of all plant life, whose rise perhaps delays the past-due next ice age, is a pollutant. Nisbet’s omission of climate skeptics from his panoply of public intellectuals driving the climate debate is just another part of this sad, possibly misanthropic, potentially tragic course.

It is unclear who is right, nor whether reason will prevail. But it would be far better if every voice was heard.

Summary

What a strange twist. Marx gave us the notion of ideology, which he understood to be the system of beliefs and values that the ruling class used to control the working class and ensure continued power and privileges. Today’s Marxist wannabes who are mostly in the entitled class are employing the ideology of environmentalism to mount an anti-capitalist crusade under the banner of Climate Change, advocating policies which will further the misery of the downtrodden.

See Also: Warmists and Rococo Marxists.

Swirling Socialist Socialites

Posted on by Ron Clutz

 

Some reflections in this article give context to displays of social craziness around us. Abe Greenwald writes at the Commentary Our Socialist Socialites Aren’t they cute. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

If there’s confusion about what socialism means in today’s America it should be cleared up by Simon van Zuylen-Wood’s recent article on the hip socialists of New York City. Socialism is mostly a scene—a loosely organized assemblage of youngish people who are connected by a shared aesthetic. That’s pretty much it.

There were once beatniks, rockers, and punks, and now there are socialists. They speak about the same things, drink beer at the same bars, and celebrate one another for belonging to the same group. Yes, they talk about corporate greed, and they back socialist candidates. But they also do things like start a socialist dating app (called Red Yenta) and launch a glossy magazine (named “Lux,” after Rosa Luxemburg). Many of them, in fact, seem to have sexy media jobs. And judging from the pictures in the article, they look a lot like fashion models. They’re wealthy, whiny, and mostly white. In the U.S., socialism is for the privileged.

If all this sounds like a strange manifestation of socialism, keep in mind that socialism in America is bound to be bizarre (and silly) because we have none of the supposed preconditions necessary for a people’s revolution. No brutal class distinctions, no tyrannical government, no grossly exploited workers.

But we do have socialist university professors—plenty of them. So these kids get indoctrinated by radicals in college and are then turned loose in a placid world requiring no radical solutions. There’s no draft and no institutional discrimination, and there’s little unemployment. Yet they’re stuck with their socialist training, so they…throw Communist-themed parties with DJs. Here’s what things are like at one socialist bash in Brooklyn:

An hour into the party, Isser and Brostoff stage a version of The Dating Game—one bachelorette, four suitors—to promote Red Yenta. Friend-of-the-app Natasha Lennard, a columnist at the Intercept, yells for quiet. “There is a service—a communal service—that is better than a Tinder, or the last hurrahs of an OKCupid,” she announces. Who wants to slog through a few bad dates only “to find out that someone is a liberal?” Brostoff takes the mic. Pins and posters are available for purchase, she says, and donations are of course welcome. “That’s how we became capitalists,” she jokes. “And that’s what you call irony. Or dialectics.”

That’s actually what you call the triumph of the free market. Capitalism effortlessly commodifies its enemies and turns them into brands. It’s part of why these glitzy Marxists don’t stand a chance in America. But it’s not entirely clear what they think about capitalism altogether. At another socialist party, we meet a “23-year-old self-proclaimed venture capitalist named Michael.” He doesn’t reveal his last name because “his parents fled the Soviet Union and hate socialism.” Here’s how Michael, son of Soviet refugees, explains his move toward socialism: “I went from a neoliberal Hillary Clinton fan to, like, questioning everything I believed….That was my shit, dude. I was so pragmatist. I was all about it. And then I was like, This makes no sense.” The ellipsis above omits none of Michael’s words. That was his whole explanation.

The only people in the world who would dream of taking these socialist socialites seriously are in the Democratic Party. Older Democratic politicians come to their bar hangs, try to learn the kids’ language, and take it back to the world of actual politics, fueling the left’s Iran-Iraq War between socialism and identitarianism. It’s one of several ways in which the Democrats are becoming a truly eccentric political party. They’re shaping their politics to reflect the whims of a few young scenesters. A recent NBC and Wall Street Journal poll revealed that 72 percent of Americans do not want a socialist candidate for president. Socialism is fine as a theme for loft parties. For political parties, not so much.

 

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February Land and Sea Mixed Cooling

Posted on by Ron Clutz

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With apologies to Paul Revere, this post is on the lookout for cooler weather with an eye on both the Land and the Sea.  UAH has updated their tlt (temperatures in lower troposphere) dataset for January.   Previously I have done posts on their reading of ocean air temps as a prelude to updated records from HADSST3. This month I will add a separate graph of land air temps because the comparisons and contrasts are interesting as we contemplate possible cooling in coming months and years.

Presently sea surface temperatures (SST) are the best available indicator of heat content gained or lost from earth’s climate system.  Enthalpy is the thermodynamic term for total heat content in a system, and humidity differences in air parcels affect enthalpy.  Measuring water temperature directly avoids distorted impressions from air measurements.  In addition, ocean covers 71% of the planet surface and thus dominates surface temperature estimates.  Eventually we will likely have reliable means of recording water temperatures at depth.

Recently, Dr. Ole Humlum reported from his research that air temperatures lag 2-3 months behind changes in SST.  He also observed that changes in CO2 atmospheric concentrations lag behind SST by 11-12 months.  This latter point is addressed in a previous post Who to Blame for Rising CO2?

The February update to HadSST3 will appear later this month, but in the meantime we can look at lower troposphere temperatures (TLT) from UAHv6 which are already posted for February. The temperature record is derived from microwave sounding units (MSU) on board satellites like the one pictured above.

The UAH dataset includes temperature results for air above the oceans, and thus should be most comparable to the SSTs. There is the additional feature that ocean air temps avoid Urban Heat Islands (UHI).  The graph below shows monthly anomalies for ocean temps since January 2015.

The anomalies over the entire ocean dropped to the same value, 0.12C  in August (Tropics were 0.13C).  Warming in previous months was erased, and September added very little warming back. In October and November NH and the Tropics rose, joined by SH.  In December 2018 all regions cooled resulting in a global drop of nearly 0.1C. The upward bump in January in SH was reversed in February.  Despite some warming in both NH and the Tropics, the Global anomaly cooled. The trajectory is not yet set, but soon we will see if the long-expected El Nino appears in NH and Tropics SSTs.

Land Air Temperatures Tracking Downward in Seesaw Pattern

We sometimes overlook that in climate temperature records, while the oceans are measured directly with SSTs, land temps are measured only indirectly.  The land temperature records at surface stations record air temps at 2 meters above ground.  UAH gives tlt anomalies for air over land separately from ocean air temps.  The graph updated for February is below.

The greater volatility of the Land temperatures was evident earlier, but has calmed down recently. Also the  NH dominates, having twice as much land area as SH.  Note how global peaks mirror NH peaks.  In December air over Tropics fell sharply, SH slightly, while the NH land surfaces rose, pulling up the Global anomaly for the month.  In January  both NH and SH cooled slightly, pulling the Global anomaly down despite some Tropical warming. Then in February, air temps over both NH and SH land rose, pulling the Global anomaly slightly upward to match 12/2018.

TLTs include mixing above the oceans and probably some influence from nearby more volatile land temps.  Clearly NH and Global land temps have been dropping in a seesaw pattern, now more than 1C lower than the peak in 2016.  TLT measures started the recent cooling later than SSTs from HadSST3, but are now showing the same pattern.  It seems obvious that despite the three El Ninos, their warming has not persisted, and without them it would probably have cooled since 1995.  Of course, the future has not yet been written.

 

What Warming 1978 to 1997?

Posted on by Ron Clutz

 

Flawed thermometers can lead to false results.

Those public opinion surveys on global warming/climate change often ask if you believe the world has gotten warmer in the last century. Most all of us answer “Yes,” because that is the data we have been shown by the record keepers.  Fred Singer, a distinguished climate scientist, asks a disturbing question: “What if trends in surface average temperatures (SAT) were produced by biases of the instruments themselves, rather than being a natural fact?.  He makes his case in an article at The Independent The 1978-1997 Warming Trend Is an Artifact of Instrumentation  Excerpts below in italics with my bolds.(H/T John Ray)

Now we tackle, using newly available data, what may have caused the fictitious temperature trend in the latter decades of the 20th century.

We first look at ocean data. There was a great shift, after 1980, in the way Sea Surface Temperatures (SSTs) were measured (see Goretzki and Kennedy et al. JGR 2011, Fig. 1), “Sources of SST data.” Note the drastic changes between 1980 and 2000 as global floating drifter buoys and geographic changes increasingly replaced opportunities for sampling SST with buckets.

Data taken from floating drifter buoys increased from zero to 60% between 1980 and 2000. But such buoys are heated directly by the sun, with the unheated engine inlet water in lower ocean layers. This combination leads to a spurious rise in SST when the data are mixed together.

The estimated biases for the global and hemispheric average SSTs are shown in Figure 3 (orange areas). They increase from between 0.0 and −0.2°C in the 1850s to between −0.1 and −0.6°C in 1935 as the proportion of both canvas buckets and fast ships increases. From 1935 to 1942, the proportion of ERI  (Engine Room Inlet) measurements increases (see also Figure 2) and the bias approaches zero. Between 1941 and 1945, the biases are between 0.05 and 0.2°C. The positive bias is a result of the large numbers of U.K. Navy and U.S. ERI measurements in the ICOADS database during the Second World War. In late 1945, the bias drops sharply and becomes negative again, reflecting an influx of data gathered by U.K. ships using canvas buckets. The bias then increases from 1946 to the early 1980s, becoming predominantly positive after 1975, as insulated buckets were introduced and ERI measurements become more common. After 1980, the slow decrease in the bias is caused by the increase in the number of buoy observations.

In merging them, we must note that buoy data are global, while bucket and inlet temperatures are (perforce) confined to (mostly commercial) shipping routes. Nor do we know the ocean depths that buckets sample; inlet depths depend on ship type and degree of loading.

Disentangling this mess requires data details that are not available. About all we might demonstrate is the possibility of a distinct diurnal variation in the buoy temperatures.

The land data have problems of their own. During these same decades, quite independently, by coincidence, there was a severe reduction in “superfluous” (mostly) rural stations—unless they were located at airports. As seen from Fig. 2, the number of stations decreased drastically in the 1990s, but the fraction of airport stations increased sharply…

Figure 2: Weather stations at (potential) airports. Source: NOAA.

…from ~35% to ~80%, in the fraction of “airport” weather stations, producing a spurious temperature increase from all the construction of runways and buildings. These are hard to calculate in detail. About all we can claim is a general increase in air traffic, about 5% per year worldwide (Fig. 19, “HTCS-1”).

We have, however, MSU data for the lower atmosphere over both ocean and land; they show little difference, so we can assume that both land data and ocean data contribute about equally to the fictitious surface trend reported for 1978 to 1997. The BEST (Berkeley Earth System Temperatures) data confirm our supposition.

The absence of a warming trend removes all of the IPCC’s evidence for AGW (anthropogenic global warming). Both IPCC-AR4 (2007) and IPCC-AR5 (2013), and perhaps also AR-6, rely on the spurious 1978–1997 warming trend to demonstrate AGW (see chapters on “Attribution” in their respective final reports).

Obviously, if there is no warming trend, these demonstrations fail—and so do all their proofs for AGW.

S. FRED SINGER is a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia.

 

Bering Ice Lost and Found

Posted on by Ron Clutz

2019/03/06 GCOM-W/AMSR2 [Okhotsk] Sea Ice Concentration Source: JAXA. Note Hokkaido Island, Japan, under the white triangle tip.

This week has news reports frightened about the early melting of ice in Bering Sea.  This post is to reassure everyone that the lost ice has been found, most of it just next door in Okhotsk sea.

The Pacific basins of Bering and Okhotsk display opposing ice patterns this year.

The last two weeks saw open water growing on the right in Bering Sea, now down to 140k km2, one-fourth of its maximum extent.  Meanwhile, Okhotsk on the left grew steadily, now pressing down on Hokkaido Island, producing the southernmost Arctic Ice to be found. The graph below shows how 2019 compares to the 12 year average, after taking the Bering anomaly out of the picture.

The chart runs from mid-February to mid-March, showing how 2019 NH ice extent peaked above average on day 54, declined for a week, then rose again recently.  The effect of Bering ice loss appears in the gaps between NH extents with and without Bering ice.  Note that the black and green lines show Bering has contributed about 700k km2 to the overall total, and that increases to 800k km2 by day 76.

2019 NH included about 500k km2 from Bering on day 32, but the Bering extent has steadily decreased, now only 140k km2.  Thus 2019 w/o Bering is 270k km2 greater than NH average w/o Bering at this time, with another 10 days or so for additional ice to form.

The table below shows ice extents in the various basins on day 64.

Region 2019064 Day 064 
Average		 2019-Ave. 2018064 2019-2018
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere 14706623 15022070 -315447 14461393 245231
 (1) Beaufort_Sea 1070498 1070200 297 1070445 53
 (2) Chukchi_Sea 943452 965931 -22479 965161 -21709
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea 1087137 1087133 4 1087120 18
 (4) Laptev_Sea 897845 897842 3 897845 0
 (5) Kara_Sea 934558 927864 6694 934055 503
 (6) Barents_Sea 781551 642119 139431 598121 183430
 (7) Greenland_Sea 553335 639443 -86108 548263 5072
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence 1575867 1538064 37803 1610374 -34507
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago 853337 853037 300 853109 229
 (10) Hudson_Bay 1260903 1259978 925 1260838 66
 (11) Central_Arctic 3246782 3218361 28421 3150790 95993
 (12) Bering_Sea 140439 716013 -575574 286010 -145571
 (13) Baltic_Sea 64749 106825 -42077 166155 -101407
 (14) Sea_of_Okhotsk 1285797 1063174 222622 1008051 277746

The Bering deficit is 575k km2 or just 20% of the 12 year average.  Surpluses in Okhotsk, Baffin, Central Arctic and Barents do not completely offset, so the NH total is 315k km2 or 2% below average.

Taking a boat trip from Hokkaido Island to see Okhotsk drift ice is a big tourist attraction, as seen in the short video below.  Al Gore had them worried back then, but not now.

Drift ice in Okhotsk Sea at sunrise.

Weather is Not Climate (again): Marine Heat Waves

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Currently, the fashion is to prove global warming/climate change by pointing to “extreme” weather events. This week we have a new candidate for alarms: Marine Heat Waves. For example:

Suffering in the heat—the rise in marine heatwaves is harming ocean species Phys.org08:40

Marine heat waves threaten fish, corals SBS00:28

Ocean heat waves remake Pacific and Caribbean habitats Ars Technica06:56

Study: More Marine Heat Waves Threaten Fish, Corals Voice of America20:55 Mon, 04 Mar

More marine heatwaves threaten fish and corals — study Gulf Times16:55 Mon, 04 Mar

Ocean Heat Waves Are Threatening Marine Life The New York Times13:55 Mon, 04 Mar

Background

Variation in sea surface temperatures is not new. Cliff Mass of U. Washington, Seattle, educated us some years ago regarding a persistent patch of N. Pacific warm water he named: “The BLOB.” A series of posts at his blog covered this event starting in Autumn 2013, waxing and waning until finally disappearing in 2018. Most informative is The Blob Strengthens Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The original BLOB, named by Washington State Climatologist Nick Bond, formed the previous winter (2013-2014). The BLOB was defined as a persistent region of anomalously warm water in the northeast Pacific. With the air reaching the Northwest generally passing over the BLOB, the result was warmer than normal temperatures.

And by the first week of this month, the BLOB seems to have returned, and with it, its evil twin, El Nino, indicated by the warm waters in the eastern tropical Pacific. Now we have a problem. Note that the temperatures in the BLOB are 2-3 C (roughly 4-5F) above normal.

The effects of the BLOB have become more than a little evident to everyone living in our region. Temperatures are way above normal because of the warming effects of the ocean…it is hard for our minimum temperatures to fall much below the ocean temperatures this time of the year. Want to see evidence of this? Here are the surface air temperatures at Seattle Tacoma Airport for the last 4 weeks, with the average highs and lows shown. We have been warmer than normal, with minimum temperatures consistently 3-4F above normal.

The BLOB itself is not an independent player. It has been forced by an anomalous atmospheric circulation, including anomalous high pressure (ridging) centered north of our region (see map showing the height (pressure) anomalies (difference from normal) at 500 hPa (about 18,000ft) for the last 30 days. Yellow indicates higher heights than normal.

An article from that time (2016) at Climate Central took mainly the alarmist view, but also quoted a reasonable statement from Cliff Mass. California Drought, Marine Heat More Likely With Warming

“The atmospheric variability that forced the warm blob is the same that forced the drought,” said Emanuele Di Lorenzo, an ocean and climate dynamics professor at Georgia Tech who coauthored the analysis, published in Nature Climate Change. “This atmospheric variability is increasing under greenhouse gases.”

The new findings could help scientists predict when similar marine heatwaves and droughts will strike in the future. They also suggest such heatwaves will become more common and intense, which could mean greater drought risks in the West. (By increasing evaporation and reducing snowfall, warmer temperatures are already making Western droughts worse.)

“This could potentially provide predictability,” said Cliff Mass, a University of Washington atmospheric sciences professor who wasn’t involved with the research. “This is natural variability that we’re dealing with.”

What Are “Marine Heat Waves?” (From Marine Heat Waves.org)

We use a recently developed definition of marine heatwaves (Hobday et al. 2016). A marine heatwave is defined a when seawater temperatures exceed a seasonally-varying threshold (usually the 90th percentile) for at least 5 consecutive days. Successive heatwaves with gaps of 2 days or less are considered part of the same event.

Marine heatwaves can be caused by a whole range of factors, and not all factors are important for each event. The most common drivers of marine heatwaves include ocean currents which can build up areas of warm water and air-sea heat flux, or warming through the ocean surface from the atmosphere. Winds can enhance or suppress the warming in a marine heatwave, and climate modes like El Niño can change the likelihood of events occurring in certain regions.

[Note: the phrase about the atmosphere warming the ocean is misleading. The ocean has 1000 times the heat capacity of the air, and the heat transfer is upward. From Columbia U. on the Ocean/Atmosphere Heat Flux:

Solar heating of the ocean on a global average is 168 watts per square meter

Net infrared radiation cools the ocean, on a global average by 66 watts per square meter.

On global average the oceanic heat loss by conduction is only 24 watts per square meter. (If the ocean were colder than the atmosphere (which of course happens) the air in contact with the ocean cools, becoming denser and hence more stable, more stratified. As such the conduction process does a poor job of carrying the atmosphere heat into the cool ocean.)

On global average the heat loss by evaporation is 78 watts per square meter. (The largest heat loss for the ocean is due to evaporation, which links heat exchange with hydrological cycle.) ]

The trigger for the current concern is Marine heatwaves threaten global biodiversity and the provision of ecosystem services published March 4, 2019 at Nature Climate Change. Dan A. Smale is lead author with 17 co-authors. The media were quick to misinterpret the study and claim a link to burning of fossil fuels.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Abstract: The global ocean has warmed substantially over the past century, with far-reaching implications for marine ecosystems. Concurrent with long-term persistent warming, discrete periods of extreme regional ocean warming (marine heatwaves, MHWs) have increased in frequency. Here we quantify trends and attributes of MHWs across all ocean basins and examine their biological impacts from species to ecosystems. Multiple regions in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans are particularly vulnerable to MHW intensification, due to the co-existence of high levels of biodiversity, a prevalence of species found at their warm range edges or concurrent non-climatic human impacts. The physical attributes of prominent MHWs varied considerably, but all had deleterious impacts across a range of biological processes and taxa, including critical foundation species (corals, seagrasses and kelps). MHWs, which will probably intensify with anthropogenic climate change, are rapidly emerging as forceful agents of disturbance with the capacity to restructure entire ecosystems and disrupt the provision of ecological goods and services in coming decades.

My Comments

The authors managed to produce an hockey stick graph by means of attaching an high-resolution instrumental record to low-resolution proxy estimates of the past. The method is described in the paper:

Global time series and regional trends in total MHW days were derived using a combination of satellite-based, remotely sensed SSTs and in situ-based seawater temperatures. First, total MHW days were calculated globally over 1982–2015 at 1/4° resolution from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Optimum Interpolation SST V2 high-resolution data. Then, proxies for total MHW days globally over 1900–2016 were developed on the basis of five monthly gridded SST datasets (HadISST v.1.1, ERSST v.5, COBE 2, CERA-20C and SODA si.3). A final proxy time series was calculated by averaging across the five datasets. The five monthly datasets were used since no global daily SST observations are available before 1982.

The three peaks in the modern record are clearly the result of the major El Ninos 1997, 2009 and 2015. And it is likely that mining the daily satellite records since 1982 identified marine heat waves that would not show up in the proxy monthly datasets.

Conclusion

This is another example of a natural process that threatens our livelihoods but which we struggle to predict and to adapt. As with other short-term weather events, humankind has a great stake in better understanding in order to forecast, prepare and manage adapations as required. There have always been major variations in warming and cooling sea surface temperatures. And yet the Global average anomalies vary by a few tenths of a degree celsius, with significant difference in the two hemispheres. This implies both that marine heat waves are offset by cold waves elsewhere, and that the well-mixed CO2 molecules are not to blame.

See Also: On Climate “Signal” and Weather “Noise”

Empirical Evidence: Oceans Make Climate

Trump So far: A Balanced Reflection

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The Trump presidency has this train wreck quality by which observers are obsessed with the unfolding drama, a presidency so unconventional and so volatile that both detractors and amused supporters do not know what is coming next.  It is easily the most captivating and entertaining US Presidency Evehhh!

Just now we have the best and most balanced reflection so far upon this amazing experience writen by the insightful Victor Hanson in the Spectator Donald Trump the paradox: Trump’s election caused a self-created contradiction  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

John Ford’s most moving scene in his best film, The Searchers, is the unloved Ethan Edwards’s final exit from a house of shadows, swinging open the door and walking alone into sunlit oblivion, the community he has saved symbolically closing the door on him.

If he is lucky, President Trump may well experience the same self-inflicted fate. By his very excesses, Trump has already lost in conventional terms of being admired or considered presidential, but in his losing he might alone be able to end some things that long ago should have been ended.

No one can still quite calibrate whether Trump’s combativeness and take-no-prisoners management style always hurts him as president, or is a necessary continuum of his persona that ensured his unlikely election and early political effectiveness as president. And no one quite knows either whether Trump’s inexplicable outbursts are sometimes planned by design to unnerve his critics and the media, or are instead spontaneous expressions of indiscipline and crudity. Conventional wisdom squares these circles by concluding that Trump’s ferocity shores up his base, but his base is not large enough to give him a reliable 51 percent popularity rating among voters. Most also have concluded that Trump’s unorthodox style, speech, and comportment likewise are designed to advance his agendas, but are usually overtaken by his fury. But how often the last three years has conventional wisdom been right?

When Trump entered office, he was immediately faced with a self-created contradiction. He had won the key midwestern and purple swing states on promises of ‘draining the swamp.’ That refrain was taken by his base to mean both dismantling the permanent deep state and staffing his administration with unorthodox appointments that would lessen the opportunities for corruption.

Yet Trump needed some tried old hands who knew the deep state and yet were not part of it. But how many such loyal fellow iconoclasts were there?

Added to Trump’s conundrum were two other challenges. One was certainly political. Trump’s agendas that had won him the presidency were deeply antithetical to those of most of the bipartisan Washington hierarchy. In terms of economic policy, Trumpism, at least in theory, did not appeal to many Republicans with prior government service, blue-chip academic billets, and directorships of major companies and corporations. The usual Republicans eager for high office were precisely those most likely to oppose Trump’s promises to leave Afghanistan, avoid most overseas interventions, level tariffs, or build a border wall.

Trump also forged a management style foreign from almost all prior presidents, born from Manhattan real estate brokerage, reality television, and entrepreneurial salesmanship. Drama, even chaos, was considered ‘energy,’ even creativity. Loyalty and compatibility above all were prized, even over competence. Looks and fashion mattered, on the principle that both drove up ratings. How something was said and who said it were as important as what was said.

Hiring and firing for Trump were also organic processes. Trump consulted outsiders in the private sector almost as frequently as he did his own team. Turnover was a necessary means of finding those with ‘talent’ whose personalities jived with Trump’s own mercurial moods.

In prior administrations, ‘stability’ and ‘continuity’ were more prized. Difficult or even unimpressive figures who should have been promptly fired often were not, on the principle that their abrupt departures might signal poor presidential judgment or incur crises of confidence at the center of the global order, or, more mundanely, earn a spate of incriminating, get-even, tell-all memoirs.

Did the apparent bedlam bother Trump? Hardly.

Amid the disruptions, lost was the fact that in terms of process, Trump met the press frequently. He was far more candid and accessible than had been Barack Obama. His inner team was as diverse in terms of race, sex, class, and prior political leanings as most prior administrations. His tweets held back nothing. And yet that accessibility and informality were mostly lost on the press. Or such familiarity with Trump only bred more media contempt.

As far as the nation’s soul was concerned, America’s elites — academic, journalistic, and political — were ironically revealing to the American people the sort of crude put-downs, stereotyping, and biases about Trump supporters that questioned the value of their cultural advantages, higher education, and privilege, given that they had proved so unsteady, profane, and unhinged since the appearance of Trump in 2015. No establishmentarian quite figured out that any success that Trump enjoyed was often seen as a de facto negative referendum on the past performance of the status quo—and by extension themselves.

It was hard to see how US relations with key allies or deterrent stances against enemies were not improved since the years of the Obama administration, at least in the sense that there was no more naïve Russian reset. China was on notice that its trade cheating was no longer tolerable. The asymmetrical Iran deal was over. And the United States was slowly squeezing with sanctions a nuclear North Korea. Was chaos or predictability the more dangerous message in dealing with thuggish regimes?

Yet an ‘adults in the room’ anti-Trump narrative was hyped through deliberate media massaging and disloyal leaking. ‘Anonymous’ senior officials winked and nodded on ‘background’ to reporters that, if had it not been for their own sober stewardship, the entire Trump administration would have imploded. . .

Still, the real moral question is not whether the gunslinger Trump could or should become civilized (again defined in our context as becoming normalized as ‘presidential’). Rather, the key is whether he could be of service at the opportune time and right place for his country, occasionally crude as he is said to be.

After all, despite their decency, in extremis did the frontier farmers have an orthodox solution without Shane? The town elders of Hadleyville in High Noon had no viable plan without Marshal Will Kane in the streets. Even Agamemnon’s ego did not convince him that he would ever have had any chance of killing ‘man-slaughtering Hector’ without use of a petulant and dangerous Achilles.

Trump’s dilemma was always that at some likely point his successes on the economy and in foreign policy might create a sense of calm prosperity — and thereby, in counterintuitive fashion, allow voters the luxury of reexamining the messenger more so than the message. In other words, if crudity got results, then the results might appear no longer to hinge on further crudity. Every tragic hero realizes that he can be driven out of town, not just after the original threat is ended, but the moment it first appears that soon the danger will be neutralized. For civilized society, the perceived coarseness of the tragic hero always remains nearly as repugnant as the threat that brought in its deliverer in the first place.

In sum, the nation may believe that it could not withstand the fire and smoke of a series of Trump-like presidencies. But given the direction of the country over the last 16 years, half the country, the proverbial townspeople of the classic Western, wanted some outsider, even with a dubious past, to ride in and do things that most normal politicians not only would not, but could not do — before exiting stage left or riding wounded off into the sunset, to the relief of most and the regret of a few.

 

On Climate “Signal” and Weather “Noise”

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Discussions and arguments concerning global warming/climate change often get into the issue of discerning the longer term signal within the shorter term noisy temperature records. The effort to separate natural and human forcings of estimated Global Mean Temperatures reminds of the medieval quest for the Holy Grail. Skeptics of CO2 obsession have also addressed this. For example the graph above from Dr. Syun Akasofu shows a quasi-60 year oscillation on top of a steady rise since the end of the Little Ice Age (LIA). Various other studies have produced similar graphs with the main distinction being alarmists/activists attributing the linear rise to increasing atmospheric CO2 rather than to natural causes (e.g. ocean warming causing the rising CO2).

This post features a comment by rappolini from a thread at Climate Etc. and Is worth careful reading. The occasion was Ross McKitrick’s critique of Santer et al. (2019) that claimed 5-sigma certainty proof of human caused global warming. Excerpts from rappolini in italics with my bolds

Ben Santer was searching for a human footprint back in 2011. Apparently, he is still searching.

Most recent global climate models are consistent in depicting a tropical lower troposphere that warms at a rate much faster than that of the surface. Thus, the models would predict that the trend for warming of the troposphere temperature (TT) would be at a higher rate than the surface.

Douglass and Christy (2009) presented the latest tropospheric temperature measurements (at that time) that did not show this warming. (Since then, this continued lack of warming has continued for another ten years without much change, but that is getting ahead of ourselves).

Hence, in keeping with recent practice over the past few years in which alarmistsj promptly publish rebuttals to any papers that slip through their control of which manuscripts get accepted by climate journals, it was necessary for the alarmists to publish such a rebuttal.

Ben Santer took on this responsibility and the result was Santer et al. (2011). It is interesting, perhaps, that Santer included 16 co-authors in addition to himself; yet the nature of the work is such that it is difficult to imagine how 16 individuals could each contribute significant portions to the work. In other words, many names were added to give the paper political endorsement? In fact, when I redid all their work, it took me about one day!

 

Santer et al. (2011) were concerned with a very basic problem in climatology: how to distinguish between long-term climate change and short-term variable weather in regard to TT measurements? They treated the problem in terms of signal and noise: the signal is assumed to be a long-term linear trend of rising temperatures due increasing greenhouse gas concentrations, that is obfuscated by short-term noise. However, the climate-weather problem is innately different from a classical signal/noise problem such as a radio signal affected by atmospheric activity. In that case, if the radio signal has a sufficiently narrow frequency band, and the noise has a wider frequency spectrum, the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) can be improved with a narrow-band receiver tuned to the frequency of the radio signal. The radio signal and the noise are separate and distinct. By contrast, in the climate-weather problem, the instantaneous weather is the noise, and the signal is the long-term trend of the noise. The noise and signal are coupled in a unique way. Furthermore, there is no evidence that it is even meaningful to talk about a “trend” since there is no evidence that the variation of TT with time is linear.

Santer et al. (2011) were primarily concerned with estimating how many years of data are necessary to provide a good estimate of the putative underlying linear trend. They were also intent on showing that short periods with no apparent trend do not violate the possibility that over a longer term, the trend is always there. They derived signal-to-noise (S/N) ratios for both the temperature data and the model average by means that are not exactly clear to this writer.

As Santer et al. (2011) showed, one can pick any starting date and any duration length and fit a straight line to that portion of the curve of TT vs. time. They did this for various 10-year and 20-year durations. In each case, depending on the start date, they derived a best straight-line fit to the TT data for that time period. They found that the range of trends for 10-year periods was greater (-0.05 to +0.44°C/decade) than the range for 20-year periods (+0.15 to +0.25°C/decade).

The trend line was steepest for a start date around 1988 (ending in the giant El Niño year of 1998). Prior to 1988 and after 1998, the trends were minimal.

Santer et al. described use of longer durations as “noise reduction”, which it is, provided that one assumes the overall signal is linear in time. It still was problematic that the trend was nil after 1998 that they rationalized by saying:

“The relatively small values of overlapping 10-year TT trends during the period 1998 to 2010 are partly due to the fact that this period is bracketed (by chance) by a large El Niño (warm) event in 1997/98, and by several smaller La Niña (cool) events at the end of the … record”.

However, as Pielke pointed out, the period after 1998 was 13 years, not 10, and furthermore, the period after 1998 had roughly equal periods of El Niño and La Niña and was not dominated by La Niñas as Santer et al. claimed. What Santer et al. (2011) implied was that an unusual conflux of a large El Niño early on and multiple La Niñas later on caused the trend to minimize for that unique period as a statistical quirk. However, that is like a baseball pitcher saying that if the opponents hadn’t hit that home run, he would have won the game.

In simplistic terms, the signal-to-noise ratio can be estimated as follows. For either 10-year or 20-year durations, the signal was the mean trend derived by a straight-line fit to the TT data over that duration. The noise was the range of trends for different starting dates. For ten-year durations, the trend was 0.19 ± 0.25°C/decade. For twenty-year durations, the trend was 0.20 ± 0.05°C/decade. The signal in each case is taken as the mean trend. The distribution of trends within these ranges was similar to a normal distribution. Thus, we can roughly estimate the noise as ~ 0.7 times the full width of the range. Hence, the S/N ratio for ten-year durations can be crudely estimated to be S/N ~ 0.19/(0.7  0.5) = 0.5 and for twenty-year durations is S/N ~ 0.2/(0.7  0.1) = 2.9. Santer et al. obtained S/N = 1 for ten-year durations and S/N = 2.9 for twenty-year durations. If it can be assumed that the signal varies linearly with time, one can then estimate what level of precision for the estimated trend can be obtained for any chosen duration. Santer et al. obviously believe that the signal is linear with time for all time. By some logic that escapes me, Santer et al. concluded that

“Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on global-mean tropospheric temperature”.

This conclusion seems to be grossly exaggerated. A more proper statement might be as follows:

Assuming that the variability of TT is characterized by a long-term upward linear trend caused by human impact on the climate, and that variability about this trend is due to yearly variability of weather, El Niños and La Niñas, and other climatological fluctuations, the recent data suggest that the trend can be estimated for any 17-year period with a S/N ratio of roughly 2.5.

Finally, we get to the nub of the paper by Santer et al. that asserted:

“Claims that minimal warming over a single decade undermine findings of a slowly-evolving externally-forced warming signal are simply incorrect”.

Here is where Santer et al. attempted to dispel the notion that minimal warming for a period contradicts the belief that underneath it all, the long-term signal continues to rise at a constant rate. Pielke Sr. argued that this was an overstatement and he concluded:

“If one accepts this statement by Santer et al. as correct, then what should have been written is that the observed lack of warming over a 10-year time period is still too short to definitely conclude that the models are failing to skillfully predict this aspect of the climate system”

However, I would go further than Pielke Sr. First of all, the period of minimal temperature rise was longer than 10 years. Second, there is no cliff at 17 years whereby trends derived from shorter periods are statistically invalid and trends derived from longer periods are valid. According to Santer et al. a trend derived from a 13-year period is associated with a S/N ~ 1.5 which though not ideal, is good enough to cast some doubt on the validity of models.

The continued almost religious belief by alarmists that the temperature always rises linearly and continuously is evidently refuted. If the alarmists would only reduce their hyperbole and argue that rising greenhouse gas concentrations produce a warming force that is one of several factors controlling the Earth’s climate, and there are periods during which the other factors overwhelm the greenhouse forces, perhaps we would have a rational description. Instead, the alarmists continue to find linear trends over various time periods, in some cases when they are not there.

Santer, B. D., C. Mears, C. Doutriaux, P. Caldwell, P. J. Gleckler, T. M. L. Wigley, S. Solomon, N. P. Gillett, D. Ivanova, T. R. Karl, J. R. Lanzante, G. A. Meehl, P. A. Stott, K. E. Taylor, P. W. Thorne, M. F. Wehner, and F. J. Wentz (2011) “Separating Signal and Noise in Atmospheric Temperature Changes: The Importance of Timescale” Journal of Geophysical Research (Atmospheres) 116, D22105.

PS.
There may not be human fingerprint on tropospheric temperatures since 1978, but there very certainly is an El Nino fingerprint. Occurrence of El Ninos dominated over La Ninas from 1978 to 1998, a period when there was more global warming than any other period in the past 150 years. After the great El Nino of 1997-8, global temperatures have meandered in consonance with the Nino 3.4 Index, rising to a new height in the great El Nino of 2015-6, only to fall back after that to about the “pause”.

 

Kangaroo Klimate Kourt Ruling

Posted on by Ron Clutz

A kangaroo court is a court that ignores recognized standards of law or justice, and often carries little or no official standing in the territory within which it resides. The term may also apply to a court held by a legitimate judicial authority who intentionally disregards the court’s legal or ethical obligations. (Wikipedia)

The latest example is provided last month by Chief Justice Preston of the New South Wales Land and Environment Court  dismissing on appeal the proposal to construct a new open-cut coal mine in the state’s Hunter Valley.  His ruling rested on dubious suppositions.

The Chief Justice found that “all anthropogenic GHG emissions contribute to climate change”.

The Chief Judge invented a “wrong time test”. To pass that test, a fossil fuel proponent must now establish why their project should be allowed to proceed at this time in history, when it is clearly recognized that there is an urgent need for rapid and deep decreases in greenhouse gas emissions. To achieve this, most fossil fuel reserves need to remain in the ground unburned.  The test asserts that a practical consequence of reaching the emission reductions required by the Paris Accord to achieve the 1.5 to 2°C goal is that coal production needs to reduce rather than expand.

So we have come to this.  A sitting judge declares a prevalent social opinion regarding the future is the law of the land.  A legal business venture is blocked on ideological grounds, because some believe now is the “wrong time” in history for such an undertaking.  Kangaroos are hopping around like crazy.

It is fortunate indeed that this judge is not hearing the Juliana vs. US case.  But then that is actually a legal proceeding where kangaroos or unicorns do not have standing.  The precedents and body of law stacked against these climate cases is summarized in the most recent brief by the appellants (US Govt.) arguing against the claims of activists/alarmists (plaintiffs).

APPELLANTS’ OPPOSITION TO MOTION FOR PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION PENDING APPEAL  February 19,2019 Some points of climate caselaw excerpted in italics.

“the unprecedented nature of this ambitious attempt to throttle important government functions superintending broad swaths of the national economy”

“The injuries identified by Plaintiffs arise from a diffuse, global phenomenon that affects every other person in their communities, in the United States, and throughout the world.”

“Plaintiffs “simply ignore that Defendant agencies and officers do not produce greenhouse gases, but act to regulate those third parties that do: innumerable businesses and private industries.”

“Plaintiffs have not even begun to articulate a remedy within a federal court’s authority to award that could meaningfully address global climate change as the claimed cause of their injuries.”

“Plaintiffs ask the district court to review and assess the entirety of the representative branches’ decisions relating to climate change and then to pass on the comprehensive constitutionality of those policies, programs, and inaction in the aggregate and then enter and enforce a sweeping decree against the government writ large.”

“Thus, the Due Process Clause imposes no duty on the government to protect persons from harm inflicted by third parties that would violate due process if inflicted by the government.”

“Every instance” in which this Court has “permitted a state-created danger theory to proceed has involved an act by a government official that created an obvious, immediate, and particularized danger to a specific person known to that official.”

“Plaintiffs seek to remedy carbon emissions, myopically attributing them to the U.S. government and ignoring that the global mix of carbon levels is (even on their own theory) predominantly the product of the actions of foreign actors the world over.”

“All of Plaintiffs’ claimed harms result from what they allege is the government’s general failure to protect the environment. Yet Plaintiffs have no constitutional right to particular climate conditions, and they may not resort to the state-created danger exception to circumvent that limitation.”

“This allegation of slowly-recognized, long-incubating, and generalized harm by itself distinguishes their claim from all other state-created danger cases on which they and the district court relied.”

“First, there is no fundamental right to a “climate system capable of sustaining human life.”

“The Supreme Court definitively rejected an attempt to use the federal common law of nuisance to centralize the management of carbon dioxide emissions in a single district court, operating outside the purview of the comprehensive Clean Air Act.”

“It is not clear how much of this sea level rise can be avoided by slowing down climate warming or even cooling the planet again.”

“Plaintiffs’ reliance on their self-described “deep anger, frustration, depression, and feeling of betrayal,” Motion 23-25, is likewise insufficient to establish irreparable harm. First, if this Court were to recognize feelings as irreparable injury, then every plaintiff who passionately disagrees with government action — i.e., most if not all plaintiffs — would satisfy the injury requirement.”

“Because Plaintiffs cannot demonstrate that their requested relief pending appeal would concretely impact climate change, the balance of equities tips heavily in favor of denying Plaintiffs’ motion.”

 

 

The Heavy Hand vs. The Hidden Hand

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Context: Living Under the Heavy Hand

We have discussed before how the administrative state has grown like topsy under so-called progressive politicians.

The Obama administration issued a record number of new regulations on its way out the door in 2016, leaving an administrative state that saps the economy of nearly $2 trillion a year, according to a report being released in May 2017. 3,853 federal rules that were finalized in 2016 — the most for any year since 2005.

The government itself spent $63 billion in 2016 to administer and enforce all of its own regulations, the Competitive Enterprise Institute said.

Since President Obama assumed office in 2009, the EPA alone published over 3,900 rules, averaging almost 500 annually, and amounting to over 33,000 new pages in the Federal Register. The compliance costs associated with EPA regulations under Obama number in the hundreds of billions and have grown by more than $50 billion in annual costs since Obama took office.

Under climate crusading Governor Inslee of Washington State, in just 60 days last year, 300 bills were passed regulating everything from school breakfasts to workplace sexual misconduct and teenage voting rights.

California out did them by passing 1000 bills by the end of Jerry Brown’s 16th and last year as Governor. Laws included requiring 100% renewable energy by 2045, bans on sugary drinks on school menus and offering plastic straws in restaurants.

California governor-elect Gavin Newsom promised that he, after his inauguration on January 7, 2019 and with the huge Democrat majorities elected in both houses of the state Legislature, will pass a much broader social justice agenda. Newsom’s top agenda goals include “Guaranteed Health Care for All,” an affordable housing “Marshall Plan,” a “Master Plan for Aging with Dignity,” free college tuition, ending child poverty, and middle-class workforce strategy.

Methane Shows the Market’s Hidden Hand Works, Government’s Heavy Hand Fails

Present Trump made it a priority to cut deeply into the red tape, and claims his administration has killed 22 regulations for every new one approved. The recent action to rescind the EPA methane rule illustrates why this is the better approach. Paul Gessing writes at RealClearEnergy ‘Green Activists’ Opposing Trump’s Methane Rollback Are Full of It Excerpts in italics with my bolds

The Trump administration recently rolled back an Obama-era environmental rule that restricted oil and natural gas drilling. Almost immediately, the Environmental Defense Fund, California, and New Mexico sued to block the move. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra warned the administration’s rollback “risks the air our children breathe.”

Children can breathe easy — and so can adults, for that matter. The old “Waste Prevention Rule” governing methane emissions was counterproductive. Forcing energy firms to comply with its onerous red tape would have harmed workers and discouraged natural gas production, which benefits the environment.

Energy companies often capture methane, the main component in natural gas, when they’re drilling for crude oil. This methane byproduct is valuable, so companies try to sell it whenever possible.

But sometimes, safety concerns or a lack of available pipeline capacity compels firms to burn the gas instead. This practice, known as “flaring,” prevents dangerous gas buildups in wells. Similarly, firms sometimes have to release the gas, a practice known as “venting.”

The Waste Prevention Rule, which was finalized by the Bureau of Land Management in 2016 but delayed by the Trump administration, aimed to discourage venting and flaring. It forced energy companies on public and Indian lands to upgrade their equipment and pay royalties on any flared or vented gas.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the technology and infrastructure upgrades required by the old rule would have been prohibitively expensive for many producers. This is especially true of those operating so-called “marginal” wells — which produce no more than 90,000 cubic feet of gas per day, and thus aren’t as profitable.

More than 70 percent of oil and gas wells on federal land are classed as “marginal.” If the rule had forced these wells to close, America’s natural gas production would fall and unemployment would rise. If all marginal wells were shut down, over 240,000 Americans could have lost their jobs.

Ironically, the environment would suffer from such shutdowns. Thanks to new technologies such as fracking and horizontal drilling, America’s natural gas production has soared in the past decade. We’re now the world’s largest producer of the fuel.

This surge in natural gas supplies has caused prices to plummet. As a result, many utility companies have transitioned from using dirty, more expensive coal to cheaper, cleaner-burning natural gas to generate electricity. Thanks to this shift, domestic carbon dioxide emissions recently hit their lowest levels in 25 years.

In other words, by limiting natural gas production, the Waste Production Rule would have incentivized utilities to continue relying on dirty coal, thereby harming the environment.

The rule was also unnecessary. Controlling methane emissions is already a priority for oil and gas companies — and has been for years. Methane emissions have dropped 16 percent over the past quarter-century even as natural gas production has increased 50 percent.

In 2017, The Environmental Partnership, composed of nearly 30 domestic oil and gas companies, launched a comprehensive methane reduction program based on EPA guidelines. Similarly, the international Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, which includes BP, Shell, and Saudi Aramco, recently committed to reducing methane emissions in line with the Paris Agreement.

In short, the Trump administration is rolling back a rule that threatened our economy and our environment without delivering any significant benefits to the planet. The green activists fighting this much-needed reform need to calm down and take some deep breaths. And they needn’t worry — the air will be just as clean as before.

Paul Gessing is president of the Rio Grande Foundation, an independent, nonpartisan, tax-exempt research and educational organization dedicated to promoting liberty, opportunity and prosperity for New Mexico.

Summary: Progressive politics long ago ceased being liberal, i.e. concerned about individual freedom of choice and speech.  Progressives are increasingly a coalition of drama queens, know-it-alls, and control freaks.

See also:  MORE CALIFORNIA CRAZY LAWS

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