There are many places where people are worried about erratic and destructive behavior by those inflamed with fear of global warming/climate change. In the past they have been known to vandalize pipelines delivering natural gas or oil critical for energy needs. These days climatists are more and more frantic, and for example, given to slashing tires on SUVs, thinking them to be “Axles of Evil.”
Fortunately, we have news from Paris that there may be a way for these fevered persons to vent their fears, thereby feeling better, and leaving the rest of us alone. I refer to the reported action by one of these poor souls attacking the image of Mona Lisa in the Louvre with a cream pie in order to save the planet from climate change. Of course the painting is behind bulletproof glass, so it was not damaged. But the release of passion was cathartic, followed by the climatist being taken away for admission to the Paris Home for the Bewildered.
The good news is that from now on there could be at local carnivals or at county fairs booths like those above where other such inflamed activists could act out their passion against images of Mona Lisa, and thus, perhaps regain reason and common sense. Let us all hope for the best for these tortured souls.
This post extracts from the above interview a clear conservative view of governing a contemporary nation, in particular Canada. The visionary is Pierre Poilievre ( pronounced pwa-lee-evre), who is not from Quebec as you might expect. Adopted son of Saskastchewan teachers, he grew up in Alberta, served since 2004 as a Member of Parliament from that province, and is contesting for leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada. Below is a transcript I produced from the captions in italics with my bolds.
Let’s look at Canada at this moment: What are our problems?
The the central underlying illness is a monstrous growth in the power and cost of the state
at the expense of the agency and freedom of the people.
That is the override and then there are specific examples of how that plays out. Take monetary policy. There’s no way Justin Trudeau could get away with spending all of the money he has in the last two years if he had to use real cash. Because people would never accept the many thousands of dollars of tax increases that it would require. So he has basically turned our central bank into an ATM machine for his spending. They’ve created 400 billion dollars of new money in two years which has given us a 30-year high in inflation and bumped up boosted real estate prices by 50 percent.
How does that compare to previous expenditures by governments? Well if you look at the balance sheet of the bank of Canada during the Harper era (PM 2006-2015), even during the great global recession there was a minor bump in the assets it held. That indicates how how much money it was injecting. Whereas right now that figure has shot off the charts.
The balance sheet of the central bank is up something like 350 percent and all that cash is particularly in ballooned asset prices. That’s the unspoken story.
Here everyone thinks about consumer inflation which is horrible enough. But then there’s asset price inflation and what that’s doing is creating an aristocratic economy where the bigger the asset value you had before the inflation, the richer you’ve become after it. It is almost like the housing is attached to a balloon and it’s being lifted higher and higher up. And anybody who’s not already in the house will never be able to grab it and get inside.
It is all the result of this massive expansion of the money supply. So we’re basically seeing a transfer of wealth from the the have-nots to the have-yachts, as I like to say. And it benefits those in the managerial class, the CEOs whose stocks have been artificially inflated. They’ve been able to give themselves share buybacks with exceptionally low interest rates. So they can borrow money and then buy back shares which increases share value and gives them a bonus. These are the folks who own mansions and live in neighborhoods that are protected by zoning laws against anyone else moving in. They have done exceptionally well over the last two years.
And yet the people who are doing the nation’s work are now having their salaries destroyed by inflation. And then at the local level you have municipalities bringing in our zoning laws that prevent new construction. So they’re making invisible gates, creating gated communities. But the gates are invisible because it’s government bureaucracy that prevents construction.
So we have fewer houses per capita than any country in the G7
even though we have the most land to build on
What I’m proposing is stop printing money and start building houses. I’m going to tell the big city mayors that if they don’t remove their bureaucratic zoning rules and let builders build, then I’m going to cut back on some of their infrastructure funds. Because I think it’s going to need something that drastic to get these gatekeepers out of the way and actually build houses so that our youth have a place to call home.
But you know it’s across the economy. Ironically all of these big government interventions seem to hurt the most disadvantaged. Our immigrants come here as doctors and engineers but they can’t work in those fields because of occupational licensing, more protectionism. Government is not enabling, they’re the gatekeepers. So I want to incentivize provinces to speed up recognition of foreign credentials so an immigrant doctor can actually work as a doctor.
And let’s remove the gatekeepers from our energy sector so we can build pipelines
and dig for resources and become energy self-sufficient.
And then remove the gatekeepers in speech. As you know the government is now pushing new censorship laws on the internet. I promise very clearly that I’m going to get rid of all of those laws and restore freedom of expression on the internet. There is a great need to remove the governmental gatekeepers to restore our freedom. Let people take back control of their lives
Now let’s delve into economic policy. The OECD recently predicted that Canada’s economy will be the worst performing advanced economy over 2020 to 2030. How lovely for us. So compared to many other countries that in some sense are peers, that’s a pretty damn gloomy forecast right because at that rate 40 years out we’re going to be the worst performing advanced economy in the world.
So what can we do differently and let’s focus on energy in particular because that’s a killer topic for everyone in the world at the moment
What did the conservatives do wrong, what has Canada done wrong what have the liberals done wrong apart from printing money like mad men and instituting these arbitrary rules?
Well I would respectfully disagree on the conservative economic track record. If you look at the 2008-09 financial crisis, we came through better than any of the other G7 countries, certainly way better than the Americans. We didn’t have a housing crash nor did we have a banking crisis. Not a single bank was bailed out and we had very modest inflation, which never cracked four percent, and was above three percent for only one or two quarters in the entire 10-year period.
When Harper was around, unemployment stayed relatively low and you could buy the average house. At the time Harper left office, in Canada average cost of a house was 434 thousand dollars. It’s almost unimaginable now.
But turning to energy, we need to repeal C69, the bill that makes it effectively impossible to build an energy project in Canada today. Because it introduced a whole series of sociological questions into the process that make no sense. You know Trudeau has said that energy projects cause gender imbalances. And therefore when someone applies to build one they have to write a sociological report on what the pipeline or the mine will do for gender relations.
In addition to being ridiculous pop culture sociology, it introduces massive uncertainty for investors. Because they don’t really know how and why a project will be approved or rejected. And they don’t have seven years to sit around, so they’ll take their money and invest it in other parts of the world. And that’s why the projects aren’t happening here.
We don’t mine lithium in Canada even though we have lots of lithium. In this electric car battery era, we’re importing lithium from China because they actually get projects built. However they burn coal to refine their lithium. So ironically we’re just inducing pollution in other countries when we buy electric cars that are made with lithium refined in that country. So if we could approve a lithium mine in Canada we could actually mine the stuff, refine it, manufacture it here.
We have the third biggest supply of oil on planet earth,
but we’re importing 130 000 barrels of overseas oil every day.
The solution is so obvious because right next door to the Saint John port where we bring in the oil, we have St John’s Newfoundland, capable of adding another 400 000 barrels of Canadian production. By just approving that production, we could ban foreign overseas oil from Canada all together. And that would mean the dollars wouldn’t be leaving our country for overseas dictatorships, but would be staying here paying Canadian wages instead.
On to natural gas. We have 1 300 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. And you know what you have to do to get natural gas onto a ship? You have to freeze it down to a liquid. So with our cold weather, it takes a hell of a lot less energy to liquefy natural gas here in Canada.
And we have another geographic advantage: The closest point in North America to Asia is from BC; The closest point in North America to Europe is Newfoundland. So we have a shorter shipping distance, less energy needed to liquefy gas, and yet we haven’t succeeded in building a single major liquefaction facility in Canada despite the fact that in 2015 there were 18 proposed projects. Approve those projects and we could be bringing hundreds of billions of dollars of opportunity to our people, and particularly our first nations people.
But it takes getting those regulatory gatekeepers out of the way to let it happen.
How do you take on the woke crowd who like to say: What about the planet? What about the climate crisis? If you turn back to fossil fuels you’re going to demolish the globe. In the next 30 years we should be moving towards net zero. You’re going to doom the poor to catastrophe while you’re pretending to elevate them economically. You’re going to be like cut into ribbons by that crowd, and so let’s talk about climate change and the Paris accords and all that. You we want to promote canadian energy, and you made a case for liquefication, so what should canada’s position regarding climate change?
The development of our energy infrastructure as well as our resources are not the problem, they’re the solution.
For example we export our natural gas we can displace foreign coal burning electricity. The energy hungry Asian markets are desperate for non-coal sources of electricity, but they need things like natural gas to replace coal.
As well as having that gas, we also have the biggest supply of civilian grade uranium in the world right in Saskatchewan. That could be used to export to regenerate emissions-free pollution-free nuclear energy. We have an over-abundance of hydroelectricity in Manitoba and Quebec that we could be exporting to the northern united states to displace their coal-fired electricity. We could be using small modular nuclear reactors to de-carbonize the electrical grid.
As for the oil sands, right here in Canada we have carbon capture and storage techniques in in our home province of Alberta that are second to none. For example White Cap Resources is a mid-sized company that says it’s actually a now a carbon negative company; in other words they bury more carbon in the ground than they put into the air.
So we have the technology and the resources to do it but right now what we’re doing is punishing our own resource sector to the advantage of heavily polluting foreign dictatorships with no environmental standards and who use the money to do great harm.
We would be better off to displace their energy with ours
and use that as a method of fighting for the environment
while enhancing the well-being of our working class at the same time.
Because we can make progress on the economic front and on the climate front at the same time. I would like to point out that America’s turn to natural gas has knocked their carbon dioxide output substantially down over the last 15 years, which is not a statistic you hear from the typical environmentalist types okay. If the world could turn to Canadian energy, as a consequence the net impact on the carbon economy would be positive.
If it means reduce reducing carbon carbon dioxide output and we could get wealthier in doing so, then why in the world aren’t the liberals already doing this?
It is hard to understand. I think it’s because their environmental policies seem mostly designed to give the state more control of the economy than they are designed to deliver an environmental outcome. By attacking the energy sector it gives them the ability to to create more of a command and control economy, which is what they believe in, and to redistribute wealth between industries and towards political friends in a very parasitical manner. You know we have a total nut as our environment minister right now. Steven Guilbeault is bonkers and he’s against nuclear power. It’s not just oil and gas, he would get rid of nuclear as well. So I don’t know what would be left. Maybe he thinks all you have to do to get electricity is put a plug in the wall.
The Trudeau policies are definitely designed to basically make the entire media apparatus dependent on the funding and the good will of the state. The government bureaucracy determines what is considered to be a qualified journalistic company. And they pick and choose based on their own political views who then qualifies and therefore gets the subsidy. This is intended to again create more dependency on the government and curry more favor with the state.
I haven’t made an announcement on exactly how I’m going to fix that problem yet but stay tuned. I want to de-politicize that and basically restore the freedom of the press in this country again by getting the state out of it.
What do you think of Mr. Trudeau?
So i think he’s an egomaniac and everything he does is comes back to his egomania, even his political ideology.. When you think about his his expansionist role of the state, it never comes back to serving an individual objective, only to make him more powerful or his legacy more grand.
Let me give you a few examples. So he slashed the amount you can put into a tax-free savings account but then he simultaneously increased the amount you were forced to pay into the state savings plan. He killed multiple pipelines then he invested state money in a pipeline. He attacked parents’ ability to take care of their own children by by removing tax fairness for families of the stay-home parent and then he brings in a government program to replace it.
In all cases what he does is take away the ability of business or individuals or families to do things for themselves and then require they do things through him and through the state.
His ideology is always about creating a pretext in order to justify the state garnering more control over every aspect of your life: how you raise your kids; how your business functions; what you see and say on the internet.
What actually happens in socialist models is that the rhetoric about economic equality never actually comes to pass. It was used as a tool to mobilize the masses, but ultimately the outcome was to concentrate power more in the hands of the political elite. Look government is really legalized force. So if you believe in big government, you believe in expanding force relationships always favoring the powerful. And so in reality those who have more political power then benefit from a bigger government. And those people are all rich and disproportionately powerful in the system.
So when this big beast called government gets bigger and more powerful, those who have the ability to steer that beast are the ones who are going to profit from it.
I think that we’re we’re divided right now in Canada because of a deliberate strategy of divide and conquer governments that want to enhance their control. They have to turn citizens against each other they have to make you afraid of your neighbor, your co-worker, your trucker, so that you’ll turn to the state for protection against your fellow citizens. That’s the oldest trick in the book: divide and conquer.
Control is by its nature divisive because it’s a zero-sum game. If one gets more control another must have less freedom. While the contrary is not the same. If your neighbor gets more freedom you don’t get less freedom. It’s likely you’ll have more as well
So if your friend has more freedom of speech, well you’ll have freedom of speech. If you are the immigrant who has the freedom to work as a doctor, then you’ll have the freedom to have a doctor. If the local small businessman has the freedom to function without red tape, then you’ll probably have the freedom to buy his products more affordably or your teenager might get a job. If a Muslim or Jewish person gets more religious freedom, then the Christian does as well.
That’s why freedom is a unifying principle: it brings people together because it allows each of them to be masters of their own destiny without taking anything from each other. We fight over control whereas we fight for freedom, that is the difference.
I believe we can bind up the nation’s wounds by reinstating the ancient freedoms that we inherited from our ancestors
And so I really see my role as quite an unimportant one: I’m here simply to restore what already belongs to Canadians by virtue of their 800-year inheritance of liberties going back to the Magna Carta. I’m just among the the common people who are custodians of that freedom while we’re alive. You know Edmund Burke said it’s a contract between the dead and the living and the yet to be born. We’re the living generation having the duty to pass on that inheritance. I want to re-kindle that inheritance and pass it on to my kids and so they can pass it on to their kids. I’ll pass on one day and fade away into the past, but hopefully we’ll have secured the freedom that we inherited for many more generations to come. That’s what I mean when I want to give people back control of their life in the present, and to extend it into the future.
There is a lot of mumbo jumbo psych talk circulating around the dead bodies in Uvalde, a town I knew pretty well because I consulted frequently with their hospital administrator.
I want to remind readers of the problem of personality disorders (PD) and distinguish PD from mental illness.
PD is pattern of anti-social or dysfunctional behavior that is not caused by mental illness but by bad manners and bad social adaptation. There are 3 groups of personality disorders. In the Emergency Medicine part of my life,
I taught residents that PDs are the weird, the wild, and the withdrawn.
The killers and criminals are usually in the wild group, who are the most anti-social and disruptive.
Characterized by suspiciousness and a deep mistrust of people, paranoid personalities often think of others as manipulative, cunning or dishonest. This kind of a person may appear guarded, secretive, and excessively critical. More..
· Schizoid personality disorder
People with schizoid personalities are emotionally distant and tend to prefer to be alone. They are generally immersed in their own thoughts and have little interest in bonding and intimacy with others. More..
· Schizotypal personality disorder
This disorder is characterized by odd and unusual “magical” beliefs. These individuals may have an eccentric way of behaving or dressing. They also tend to display outlandish beliefs such as believing that they can see the future or travel to other dimensions.
People with this condition often have difficulty connecting with others and establishing long term relationships. Overtime, they may develop a fear of social gatherings. More..
Class B (The Wild)
Dramatic, emotional or erratic disorders (wild)
· Antisocial/psychopath personality disorder
Individuals with this disorder are known to be manipulative, irresponsible, and have a history of legal difficulties. They show little respect for the rights of others and feel no remorse for their actions. They also leave a trail of unfulfilled promises and broken hearts.
Antisocial personalities are also at high risk for drug abuse (e.g., alcoholism; meth) since many are rush seekers. While they seldom suffer from depression or anxiety, they often use drugs to relieve boredom and irritability. More.. (Dunn note–this PD is male dominant)
· Borderline personality disorder
Borderline personalities are impulsive and have extreme views of people as either all good or bad.
These people are unstable in relationships and have a strong fear of abandonment. They may form an intense personal attachment with someone they barely know and end it without no apparent reason. They might also engage in a pull and push behavior that usually ends with their partner leaving permanently.
Self-mutilation, suicidal gestures or attention-seeking destructive behaviors are not uncommon. Borderline personalities are three times more likely to be female. More..
· Histrionic personality disorder
People with this condition engage in persistent attention-seeking behaviors that include innapropriate sexual behavior and exaggerated emotions. They can be oversensitive about themselves and constantly seek reasurrance or approval from others.
Excessive need to be the center of attention, low tolerance for frustration, blaming others for failures are also characteristics of the histrionic personality. More..
· Narcissistic personality disorder
Narcissistic personalities have a blown up perception of themselves and an excessive desire for attention and admiration. Individuals with this disorder have a false sense of entitlement and little respect for other people’s feelings. They are oversensitive to criticism and often blame others for their failures.
Prone to outbursts of anger and irritability, the narcissistic personality tends to be manipulative in interspersonal relationships. But deep beneath the surface lies a vulnerable self-esteem, susceptible to depression and feelings of inferiority. More..
Class C (The Withdrawn)
Anxious or fearful disorders
· Avoidant personality disorder
This disorder is described by chronic social withdrawal, feelings of inferiority, over-sensitivity and social withdrawal.
People with avoidant personality disorder are constantly fearful of rejection and ridicule. They form relationships only with people that they trust. The pain of rejection is so strong that these individuals prefer to isolate rather than risk disappointment.More..
· Dependent personality disorder
Individuals with this condition have an abnormal desire to be nurtured that leads to submissive and clinging behavior. Dependent personalities have difficulty making their own decisions and seek others to take over most important areas in their lives.
They will often go to great length to obtain nurturance from others, have separation anxiety when alone and desperately seek another partner when a close relationship ends.More..
Not to be confused with OCD. People with OCPD are perceived as strict and demanding by others. They have a persistent preoccupation with perfectionism, orderliness, and efficiency, at the expense of interpersonal relationships. They also show an excessive devotion to work, productivity and exhibit rigidness and stubbornness.
People with OCPD usually have a negative view of life and often become withdrawn and depressed.
I was a corrections physician for almost 30 years as a contribution to our hometown and local law enforcement/incarceration services. I know a little about criminals. Here are three essays, two short, one long, on the issue of criminality and mental disorders.
Consider my warning: PDs are not a mental illness, they are a culturally dysfunctional behavior problem. PD individuals are not psychotic or out of touch with reality — they just have a bad set of behavior and social controls. They got messed up on the way to adulthood and functional good behavior.
My Comment:
Dr. Dunn puts analytic rigor to confirm a suspicion many of us have, that these violent acts by individuals demonstrate the breakdown of socialization in our societies. Current political initiatives aim to denigrate and defund law enforcement, and to not prosecute criminal behavior. Educators are proudly replacing family values with ego-centric pleasure gratification. How can this be anything but a concerted effort to infect free societies with more and more mal-adjusted, disordered personalities? And social media adds fuel to the fire.
The wokeness destruction of our institutions must be reversed, and families must function to raise children to care about and respect others. Otherwise, when the social bonds are completely dissolved, the jack boots will come in.
Tuesday I was interviewed on the radio regarding my rebutting UN False Alarms. The image is a screen capture, and I didn’t know how to extract the audio file or embed the radio page. With some help from my grandson, you can hear my segment below (a few commercials included).
The interview is also on the station website linked below. My segment begins at 34:40 to the end
As we shall see, each of them, along with other WMO claims, depends on first buying the story of global warming/climate change, and then looking at the world in a myopic, lop-sided way to confirm an alarmist POV. Below are discussions of the main points from this latest attempt to monger fear in support of the IPCC agenda.
Sea Level Rise is Accelerating! Not.
WMO says:Global mean sea level reached a new record high in 2021, after increasing at an average 4.5 mm per year over the period 2013 -2021. This is more than double the rate of between 1993 and 2002 and is mainly due to the accelerated loss of ice mass from the ice sheets. This has major implications for hundreds of millions of coastal dwellers and increases vulnerability to tropical cyclones.
WMO Proof: Rational Response
Altimetry Estimates Are Unreliable
Tidal Gauges show slow, steady coastal rise
Land subsiding or rebounding Makes Local Differences
The claim of accelerating sea level rise depends on estimates from satellites regarding the entire ocean, such as this one:
There was an adjustment made to the dataset, and the “acceleration” comes by starting from the dip in 2013. Moreover, this is a highly processed reconstruction that is contradicted by tidal gauge measurements at the coastlines where people live and where the issue matters. For example, take New York City, where J. Hansen predicted flooding by 2009:
Already in 2021, observations have diverged greatly from the model-projected sea level rise, and there are many other examples confirming this. And do remember the longer range perspective on sea levels:
Earth’s Cryosphere is Melting! Not.
WMO Says: Cryosphere: Although the glaciological year 2020-2021 saw less melting than in recent years, there is a clear trend towards an acceleration of mass loss on multi-decadal timescales. On average, the world’s reference glaciers have thinned by 33.5 meters (ice-equivalent) since 1950, with 76% of this thinning since 1980. 2021 was a particularly punishing year for glaciers in Canada and the US Northwest with record ice mass loss as a result of heatwaves and fires in June and July. Greenland experienced an exceptional mid-August melt event and the first-ever recorded rainfall at Summit Station, the highest point on the ice sheet at an altitude of 3 216 m.
Rational Response
The warning about coastal flooding is based on fears that the sea will rise because frozen water will be added to the current ocean volume. A lot of reporting claims Arctic Sea Ice is retreating, not mentioning this is drift ice, floating on water, and thus not a threat to increase water volume. Even so, the quasi-60 year cycle of Arctic ice extents has been flat since it’s most recent bottom in 2007.
More pertinent is the concerns raised over land-based ice that does have the potential to add water to the ocean. For perspective, consider this:
To consider the impact of the above ice sheet melting, compare the thickness of the Laurentide ice sheet with some of our civilization’s landmarks (H/T RiC Communications):
With much ado about any retreat of land glaciers, no matter how small or short-lived, many people are unaware of the natural range of glacier fluctuations. For example, alpine glaciers:
Amid numerous periods of warming and cooling, hidden is the fact that Alpine glaciers were much smaller in the past, as evidenced by higher tree lines previous to the modern era.
The great majority of land ice is located firstly upon Antarctica, and secondly on Greenland. While there are fluctuations up and down, the trend is far from certain, and very small compared to the mass of these two ice sheets.
A recent study by Bamber et al. provides perspectives on the amplitude of ice sheet changes:
Here the realities are obvious 99% of the world land ice is on top of Antarctica (88%) and Greenland (11%). All the fuss in the media above concerns fluctuations in less than 1% of glacier mass. Secondly, the bottom line is should present melt rates continue ( a big if ) the world would lose 3% of land ice in 1000 years. Note also the wide range of estimates of the smallest category of glaciers, and also the uncertain reported volume change for East Antarctica. Note that the melt rates are for 2012 to 2016, leaving out lower previous rates and periods when ice mass gained.
Global Temperatures are Going Ever Higher! Not.
WMO says: The global annual mean temperature in 2021 was around 1.11 ±0.13 °C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average, less warm than some recent years owing to cooling La Niña conditions at the start and end of the year. The most recent seven years, 2015 to 2021, are the seven warmest years on record.
Rational Response:
Seen in the context of annual ranges of temperatures, a rise of 1 degree Celsius over 150 years would escape our notice were it not for alarmists constantly beating drums about it.
The geological and paleontological evidence overwhelmingly says that today’s average global temperature of about 15 degrees C and CO2 concentrations of 420 ppm are nothing to fret about. Even if they rise to about 17–18 degrees C and 500–600 ppm by the end of the century, it may well balance or improve the lot of mankind.
After all, bursts of civilization during the last 10,000 years uniformly occurred during the red portions of the graph below. The aforementioned river civilizations—the Minoan, the Greco-Roman era, the Medieval flowering, and the industrial and technological revolutions of the present era. At the same time, the several lapses into the dark ages happened when the climate turned colder (blue).
And that’s only logical. When it’s warmer and wetter, growing seasons are longer, and crop yields are better—regardless of the agricultural technology and practices of the moment. And it’s better for human and community health, too—most of the deadly plagues of history have occurred in colder climates, such as the Black Death of 1344–1350.
Greenhouse Gases Higher Than Ever! Not.
WMO says: Greenhouse gas concentrations reached a new global high in 2020, when the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) reached 413.2 parts per million (ppm) globally, or 149% of the pre-industrial level. Data from specific locations indicate that they continued to increase in 2021 and early 2022, with monthly average CO2 at Mona Loa in Hawaii reaching 416.45 ppm in April 2020, 419.05 ppm in April 2021, and 420.23 ppm in April 2022.
Rational Response:
The Radiative effect from increasing CO2 has been saturated, so that the next doubling from 400 to 800 ppm will barely affect temperatures. From William Happer presentation:
Schwarzschild was the theorist who first figured out how the real Earth, including the greenhouse gases in its atmosphere, radiates to space. That is described by the jagged black line. The important point here is the red line. This is what Earth would radiate to space if you were to double the CO2 concentration from today’s value. Right in the middle of these curves, you can see a gap in spectrum. The gap is caused by CO2 absorbing radiation that would otherwise cool the Earth. If you double the amount of CO2, you don’t double the size of that gap. You just go from the black curve to the red curve, and you can barely see the difference. The gap hardly changes.
Yet, the Climate Crisis Narrative employs two deceptive devices which are contradicted by earth’s climate history:
a. Planetary temperatures have been far higher than today, both long ago (over 600 million years) and recently (last 10,000 years) with no doomsday loop occurring.
b. It is claimed global warming is a one-way street from rising GHGs, when in fact higher CO2 concentrations are a consequence and by-product, not a driver and cause, of the current naturally rising temperatures.
The alleged harm from CO2 is from warming, and the warming observed is much, much less than predictions. In fact, warming as small as we are observing is almost certainly beneficial. It gives slightly longer growing seasons. You can ripen crops a little bit further north than you could before. So, there is completely good news in terms of the temperature directly. But there is even better news. By standards of geological history, plants have been living in a CO2 famine during our current geological period.
The Ocean Is Turning Acid! Not.
WMO says: Ocean acidification. The ocean absorbs around 23% of the annual emissions of anthropogenic CO2 to the atmosphere. This reacts with seawater and leads to ocean acidification, which threatens organisms and ecosystem services, and hence food security, tourism and coastal protection. As the pH of the ocean decreases, its capacity to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere also declines. The IPCC concluded that “there is very high confidence that open ocean surface pH is now the lowest it has been for at least 26,000 years and current rates of pH change are unprecedented since at least that time.”
Rational Response
Firstly ocean pH varies greatly on all time scales. From US Senate testimony:
“In the oceans, major climate warming and cooling and pH (ocean pH about 8.1) changes are a fact of life, whether it is over a few years as in an El Niño, over decades as in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation or the North Atlantic Oscillation, or over a few hours as a burst of upwelling (pH about 7.59-7.8) appears or a storm brings acidic rainwater (pH about 4-6) into an estuary.”
Secondly, sea life is adapted to changing pH, and some prefer more acidic levels. IPCC has ignored extensive research showing positive impacts on marine life from lower pH. These studies are catalogued at CO2 Science with this summary:
There are numerous observations of improvement in calcification of disparate marine life in realistic rates of PH change due to increased CO2.
“In the final graphical representations of the information contained in our Ocean Acidification Database, we have plotted the averages of all responses to seawater acidification (produced by additions of both HCl and CO2) for all five of the life characteristics of the various marine organisms that we have analyzed over the five pH reduction ranges that we discuss in our Description of the Ocean Acidification Database Tables, which pH ranges we illustrate in the figure below.”
“The most striking feature of Figure 11 is the great preponderance of data located in positive territory, which suggests that, on the whole, marine organisms likely will not be harmed to any significant degree by the expected decline in oceanic pH. If anything, in fact, the results suggest that the world’s marine life may actually slightly benefit from the pH decline.”
Finally, massive mineral deposits ensure our ocean will remain non-acidic in coming centuries. At Patrick Moore observed:
“It is a fact that people who have saltwater aquariums sometimes add CO2 to the water in order to increase coral growth and to increase plant growth. The truth is CO2 is the most important food for all life on Earth, including marine life. It is the main food for photosynthetic plankton (algae), which in turn is the food for the entire food chain in the sea.”
Summary:
The claim that the surface-water of the oceans has declined in pH from 8.2 to 8.1, since the industrial revolution, is based on sparse, contradictory evidence, at least some of which is problematic computer modeling. Some areas of the oceans, not subject to algal blooms or upwelling, may be experiencing slightly lower pH values than were common before the industrial revolution. However, forecasts for ‘average’ future pH values are likely exaggerated and of debatable consequences. The effects of alkaline buffering and stabilizing biological feedback loops seem to be underappreciated by those who carelessly throw around the inaccurate term “ocean acidification.”
Footnote on Climate Hype
Alarming claims are usually detected because they involve myopia, an error in perception, combined with lop-sided judgment weighing proportional significance of factors.
CO2 Alarm is Myopic: Claiming CO2 causes dangerous global warming is too simplistic. CO2 is but one factor among many other forces and processes interacting to make weather and climate.
Myopia is a failure of perception by focusing on one near thing to the exclusion of the other realities present, thus missing the big picture. For example: “Not seeing the forest for the trees.” AKA “tunnel vision.”
2. CO2 Alarm is Lopsided: CO2 forcing is too small to have the overblown effect claimed for it. Other factors are orders of magnitude larger than the potential of CO2 to influence the climate system.
Lop-sided refers to a failure in judging values, whereby someone lacking in sense of proportion, places great weight on a factor which actually has a minor influence compared to other forces. For example: “Making a mountain out of a mole hill.”
To avoid myopia, pay attention to the temporal and spatial contexts for effects discussed. To avoid lop-sided judgment, pay attention to the impact of factors proportional to the baseline inertia of climate system components.
James Kennedy explains the dangerous slide in his presentation Critical Materials The New Tool of Global Hegemony. Excerpts in italics with my bolds. H/T Mark Krebs
This presentation outlines the vast disconnect between green technology goals and the anticipated compounding economic consequences of finite resources. ♦ Begin by assessing resources and the challenges associated with the Administration’s limited goal of replacing the internal combustion engine. ♦ Expose who leads in resource production ♦ Reveal who leads in research, IP, control over finished materials and estimated
resource demand ♦ Consider the asymmetric geopolitical consequences ♦ Consider the consequences of compounding renewables (wind & solar), energy distribution and grid-storage demand on these limited resources.
To enlarge, open image in new tab.
♦ Most of the critical technology metals make up less than .003% of the earth’s crust. ♦ They tend to be present in measurements of parts per million. ♦ They tend to be tied up in much more complex mineralization’s. ♦ Extracting them requires mining and refining facilities that cost billions of dollars. ♦ The extraction process requires lots of energy and complex chemical processes. ♦ These processes pose environmental problems of their own.
As you can see from the red arrows, China controls most of these elements and critical materials at the point of refined materials, metals, alloys and magnets. Recent production from California’s Mt. Pass mine goes to China for refining and metal / magnet production.
China’s state sponsored subsidies and internal tax advantages make U.S. production of rare earth metals and magnets non-competitive. This is also true for refined cobalt and many other critical materials and components like anodes and cathodes for batteries.
China’s production capacity for these materials and components dwarfs the rest of the world – exceeding global demand in many cases.
Conclusion:
This rush to zero carbon is driven by short term private interests leveraging fears of global warming that conflate with larger ideological agendas.
Things will go wrong, there will be multiple train wrecks.
Potential Winners: China, natural gas producers, mining companies that supply China, flim-flam renewable / green tech / green energy project promoters, 1% or less of the U.S. & EU population.
Potential Losers: 99% of U.S. & EU population, legacy and residual manufacturing industries, the financial system and the U.S. dollar as its status as world reserve currency evaporates.
Potential Black Swan Outcomes Upside: Material Science Breakthroughs solve the problem Downside: Forfeiture of Western Economic Relevance
My Comment:
As posted previously, this drive to reduce carbon-based energy is absurd, costly and pointless.
Absurd, because there is no reliable data showing anything in our climate or weather outside historical ranges of variation.
Costly, because proposed remedies including “green energy” and electric vehicles serve only to make affordable reliable energy expensive and intermittent. In addition as demonstrated above, the tech depends on the rarest, most precious and environmentally damaging materials.
Pointless, because we do not control the weather anyway.
High time to unplug the EV illusion and back away from the social and economic cliff.
Jim Le Maistre has done the homework showing the futility of substituting electric cars for gas-powered vehicles. Entrepreneurs and the media have failed to inform us the EVs require almost 1/3 more energy per kilometer travelled than conventional cars. His document is Electric Cars Increase Energy Demand 31% over Gas Cars. Some of his exhibits are reproduced below to express the thrust of his analysis.
Yesterday I was interviewed on the radio regarding my rebutting UN False Alarms. The image is a screen capture, and I don’t know how to extract the audio file or embed the radio page. But you can listen to the interview by following the link below. My segment begins at 34:40 to the end (a few commercials included)
As we shall see, each of them, along with other WMO claims, depends on first buying the story of global warming/climate change, and then looking at the world in a myopic, lop-sided way to confirm an alarmist POV. Below are discussions of the main points from this latest attempt to monger fear in support of the IPCC agenda.
Sea Level Rise is Accelerating! Not.
WMO says:Global mean sea level reached a new record high in 2021, after increasing at an average 4.5 mm per year over the period 2013 -2021. This is more than double the rate of between 1993 and 2002 and is mainly due to the accelerated loss of ice mass from the ice sheets. This has major implications for hundreds of millions of coastal dwellers and increases vulnerability to tropical cyclones.
WMO Proof: Rational Response
Altimetry Estimates Are Unreliable
Tidal Gauges show slow, steady coastal rise
Land subsiding or rebounding Makes Local Differences
The claim of accelerating sea level rise depends on estimates from satellites regarding the entire ocean, such as this one:
There was an adjustment made to the dataset, and the “acceleration” comes by starting from the dip in 2013. Moreover, this is a highly processed reconstruction that is contradicted by tidal gauge measurements at the coastlines where people live and where the issue matters. For example, take New York City, where J. Hansen predicted flooding by 2009:
Already in 2021, observations have diverged greatly from the model-projected sea level rise, and there are many other examples confirming this. And do remember the longer range perspective on sea levels:
Earth’s Cryosphere is Melting! Not.
WMO Says: Cryosphere: Although the glaciological year 2020-2021 saw less melting than in recent years, there is a clear trend towards an acceleration of mass loss on multi-decadal timescales. On average, the world’s reference glaciers have thinned by 33.5 meters (ice-equivalent) since 1950, with 76% of this thinning since 1980. 2021 was a particularly punishing year for glaciers in Canada and the US Northwest with record ice mass loss as a result of heatwaves and fires in June and July. Greenland experienced an exceptional mid-August melt event and the first-ever recorded rainfall at Summit Station, the highest point on the ice sheet at an altitude of 3 216 m.
Rational Response
The warning about coastal flooding is based on fears that the sea will rise because frozen water will be added to the current ocean volume. A lot of reporting claims Arctic Sea Ice is retreating, not mentioning this is drift ice, floating on water, and thus not a threat to increase water volume. Even so, the quasi-60 year cycle of Arctic ice extents has been flat since it’s most recent bottom in 2007.
More pertinent is the concerns raised over land-based ice that does have the potential to add water to the ocean. For perspective, consider this:
To consider the impact of the above ice sheet melting, compare the thickness of the Laurentide ice sheet with some of our civilization’s landmarks (H/T RiC Communications):
With much ado about any retreat of land glaciers, no matter how small or short-lived, many people are unaware of the natural range of glacier fluctuations. For example, alpine glaciers:
Amid numerous periods of warming and cooling, hidden is the fact that Alpine glaciers were much smaller in the past, as evidenced by higher tree lines previous to the modern era.
The great majority of land ice is located firstly upon Antarctica, and secondly on Greenland. While there are fluctuations up and down, the trend is far from certain, and very small compared to the mass of these two ice sheets.
A recent study by Bamber et al. provides perspectives on the amplitude of ice sheet changes:
Here the realities are obvious 99% of the world land ice is on top of Antarctica (88%) and Greenland (11%). All the fuss in the media above concerns fluctuations in less than 1% of glacier mass. Secondly, the bottom line is should present melt rates continue ( a big if ) the world would lose 3% of land ice in 1000 years. Note also the wide range of estimates of the smallest category of glaciers, and also the uncertain reported volume change for East Antarctica. Note that the melt rates are for 2012 to 2016, leaving out lower previous rates and periods when ice mass gained.
Global Temperatures are Going Ever Higher! Not.
WMO says: The global annual mean temperature in 2021 was around 1.11 ±0.13 °C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average, less warm than some recent years owing to cooling La Niña conditions at the start and end of the year. The most recent seven years, 2015 to 2021, are the seven warmest years on record.
Rational Response:
Seen in the context of annual ranges of temperatures, a rise of 1 degree Celsius over 150 years would escape our notice were it not for alarmists constantly beating drums about it.
The geological and paleontological evidence overwhelmingly says that today’s average global temperature of about 15 degrees C and CO2 concentrations of 420 ppm are nothing to fret about. Even if they rise to about 17–18 degrees C and 500–600 ppm by the end of the century, it may well balance or improve the lot of mankind.
After all, bursts of civilization during the last 10,000 years uniformly occurred during the red portions of the graph below. The aforementioned river civilizations—the Minoan, the Greco-Roman era, the Medieval flowering, and the industrial and technological revolutions of the present era. At the same time, the several lapses into the dark ages happened when the climate turned colder (blue).
And that’s only logical. When it’s warmer and wetter, growing seasons are longer, and crop yields are better—regardless of the agricultural technology and practices of the moment. And it’s better for human and community health, too—most of the deadly plagues of history have occurred in colder climates, such as the Black Death of 1344–1350.
Greenhouse Gases Higher Than Ever! Not.
WMO says: Greenhouse gas concentrations reached a new global high in 2020, when the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) reached 413.2 parts per million (ppm) globally, or 149% of the pre-industrial level. Data from specific locations indicate that they continued to increase in 2021 and early 2022, with monthly average CO2 at Mona Loa in Hawaii reaching 416.45 ppm in April 2020, 419.05 ppm in April 2021, and 420.23 ppm in April 2022.
Rational Response:
The Radiative effect from increasing CO2 has been saturated, so that the next doubling from 400 to 800 ppm will barely affect temperatures. From William Happer presentation:
Schwarzschild was the theorist who first figured out how the real Earth, including the greenhouse gases in its atmosphere, radiates to space. That is described by the jagged black line. The important point here is the red line. This is what Earth would radiate to space if you were to double the CO2 concentration from today’s value. Right in the middle of these curves, you can see a gap in spectrum. The gap is caused by CO2 absorbing radiation that would otherwise cool the Earth. If you double the amount of CO2, you don’t double the size of that gap. You just go from the black curve to the red curve, and you can barely see the difference. The gap hardly changes.
Yet, the Climate Crisis Narrative employs two deceptive devices which are contradicted by earth’s climate history:
a. Planetary temperatures have been far higher than today, both long ago (over 600 million years) and recently (last 10,000 years) with no doomsday loop occurring.
b. It is claimed global warming is a one-way street from rising GHGs, when in fact higher CO2 concentrations are a consequence and by-product, not a driver and cause, of the current naturally rising temperatures.
The alleged harm from CO2 is from warming, and the warming observed is much, much less than predictions. In fact, warming as small as we are observing is almost certainly beneficial. It gives slightly longer growing seasons. You can ripen crops a little bit further north than you could before. So, there is completely good news in terms of the temperature directly. But there is even better news. By standards of geological history, plants have been living in a CO2 famine during our current geological period.
The Ocean Is Turning Acid! Not.
WMO says: Ocean acidification. The ocean absorbs around 23% of the annual emissions of anthropogenic CO2 to the atmosphere. This reacts with seawater and leads to ocean acidification, which threatens organisms and ecosystem services, and hence food security, tourism and coastal protection. As the pH of the ocean decreases, its capacity to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere also declines. The IPCC concluded that “there is very high confidence that open ocean surface pH is now the lowest it has been for at least 26,000 years and current rates of pH change are unprecedented since at least that time.”
Rational Response
Firstly ocean pH varies greatly on all time scales. From US Senate testimony:
“In the oceans, major climate warming and cooling and pH (ocean pH about 8.1) changes are a fact of life, whether it is over a few years as in an El Niño, over decades as in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation or the North Atlantic Oscillation, or over a few hours as a burst of upwelling (pH about 7.59-7.8) appears or a storm brings acidic rainwater (pH about 4-6) into an estuary.”
Secondly, sea life is adapted to changing pH, and some prefer more acidic levels. IPCC has ignored extensive research showing positive impacts on marine life from lower pH. These studies are catalogued at CO2 Science with this summary:
There are numerous observations of improvement in calcification of disparate marine life in realistic rates of PH change due to increased CO2.
“In the final graphical representations of the information contained in our Ocean Acidification Database, we have plotted the averages of all responses to seawater acidification (produced by additions of both HCl and CO2) for all five of the life characteristics of the various marine organisms that we have analyzed over the five pH reduction ranges that we discuss in our Description of the Ocean Acidification Database Tables, which pH ranges we illustrate in the figure below.”
“The most striking feature of Figure 11 is the great preponderance of data located in positive territory, which suggests that, on the whole, marine organisms likely will not be harmed to any significant degree by the expected decline in oceanic pH. If anything, in fact, the results suggest that the world’s marine life may actually slightly benefit from the pH decline.”
Finally, massive mineral deposits ensure our ocean will remain non-acidic in coming centuries. At Patrick Moore observed:
“It is a fact that people who have saltwater aquariums sometimes add CO2 to the water in order to increase coral growth and to increase plant growth. The truth is CO2 is the most important food for all life on Earth, including marine life. It is the main food for photosynthetic plankton (algae), which in turn is the food for the entire food chain in the sea.”
Summary:
The claim that the surface-water of the oceans has declined in pH from 8.2 to 8.1, since the industrial revolution, is based on sparse, contradictory evidence, at least some of which is problematic computer modeling. Some areas of the oceans, not subject to algal blooms or upwelling, may be experiencing slightly lower pH values than were common before the industrial revolution. However, forecasts for ‘average’ future pH values are likely exaggerated and of debatable consequences. The effects of alkaline buffering and stabilizing biological feedback loops seem to be underappreciated by those who carelessly throw around the inaccurate term “ocean acidification.”
Footnote on Climate Hype
Alarming claims are usually detected because they involve myopia, an error in perception, combined with lop-sided judgment weighing proportional significance of factors.
CO2 Alarm is Myopic: Claiming CO2 causes dangerous global warming is too simplistic. CO2 is but one factor among many other forces and processes interacting to make weather and climate.
Myopia is a failure of perception by focusing on one near thing to the exclusion of the other realities present, thus missing the big picture. For example: “Not seeing the forest for the trees.” AKA “tunnel vision.”
2. CO2 Alarm is Lopsided: CO2 forcing is too small to have the overblown effect claimed for it. Other factors are orders of magnitude larger than the potential of CO2 to influence the climate system.
Lop-sided refers to a failure in judging values, whereby someone lacking in sense of proportion, places great weight on a factor which actually has a minor influence compared to other forces. For example: “Making a mountain out of a mole hill.”
To avoid myopia, pay attention to the temporal and spatial contexts for effects discussed. To avoid lop-sided judgment, pay attention to the impact of factors proportional to the baseline inertia of climate system components.
As we shall see, each of them, along with other WMO claims, depends on first buying the story of global warming/climate change, and then looking at the world in a myopic, lop-sided way to confirm an alarmist POV. Below are discussions of the main points from this latest attempt to monger fear in support of the IPCC agenda.
Sea Level Rise is Accelerating! Not.
WMO says:Global mean sea level reached a new record high in 2021, after increasing at an average 4.5 mm per year over the period 2013 -2021. This is more than double the rate of between 1993 and 2002 and is mainly due to the accelerated loss of ice mass from the ice sheets. This has major implications for hundreds of millions of coastal dwellers and increases vulnerability to tropical cyclones.
WMO Proof: Rational Response
Altimetry Estimates Are Unreliable
Tidal Gauges show slow, steady coastal rise
Land subsiding or rebounding Makes Local Differences
The claim of accelerating sea level rise depends on estimates from satellites regarding the entire ocean, such as this one:
There was an adjustment made to the dataset, and the “acceleration” comes by starting from the dip in 2013. Moreover, this is a highly processed reconstruction that is contradicted by tidal gauge measurements at the coastlines where people live and where the issue matters. For example, take New York City, where J. Hansen predicted flooding by 2009:
Already in 2021, observations have diverged greatly from the model-projected sea level rise, and there are many other examples confirming this. And do remember the longer range perspective on sea levels:
Earth’s Cryosphere is Melting! Not.
WMO Says: Cryosphere: Although the glaciological year 2020-2021 saw less melting than in recent years, there is a clear trend towards an acceleration of mass loss on multi-decadal timescales. On average, the world’s reference glaciers have thinned by 33.5 meters (ice-equivalent) since 1950, with 76% of this thinning since 1980. 2021 was a particularly punishing year for glaciers in Canada and the US Northwest with record ice mass loss as a result of heatwaves and fires in June and July. Greenland experienced an exceptional mid-August melt event and the first-ever recorded rainfall at Summit Station, the highest point on the ice sheet at an altitude of 3 216 m.
Rational Response
The warning about coastal flooding is based on fears that the sea will rise because frozen water will be added to the current ocean volume. A lot of reporting claims Arctic Sea Ice is retreating, not mentioning this is drift ice, floating on water, and thus not a threat to increase water volume. Even so, the quasi-60 year cycle of Arctic ice extents has been flat since it’s most recent bottom in 2007.
More pertinent is the concerns raised over land-based ice that does have the potential to add water to the ocean. For perspective, consider this:
To consider the impact of the above ice sheet melting, compare the thickness of the Laurentide ice sheet with some of our civilization’s landmarks (H/T RiC Communications):
With much ado about any retreat of land glaciers, no matter how small or short-lived, many people are unaware of the natural range of glacier fluctuations. For example, alpine glaciers:
Amid numerous periods of warming and cooling, hidden is the fact that Alpine glaciers were much smaller in the past, as evidenced by higher tree lines previous to the modern era.
The great majority of land ice is located firstly upon Antarctica, and secondly on Greenland. While there are fluctuations up and down, the trend is far from certain, and very small compared to the mass of these two ice sheets.
A recent study by Bamber et al. provides perspectives on the amplitude of ice sheet changes:
Here the realities are obvious 99% of the world land ice is on top of Antarctica (88%) and Greenland (11%). All the fuss in the media above concerns fluctuations in less than 1% of glacier mass. Secondly, the bottom line is should present melt rates continue ( a big if ) the world would lose 3% of land ice in 1000 years. Note also the wide range of estimates of the smallest category of glaciers, and also the uncertain reported volume change for East Antarctica. Note that the melt rates are for 2012 to 2016, leaving out lower previous rates and periods when ice mass gained.
Global Temperatures are Going Ever Higher! Not.
WMO says: The global annual mean temperature in 2021 was around 1.11 ±0.13 °C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average, less warm than some recent years owing to cooling La Niña conditions at the start and end of the year. The most recent seven years, 2015 to 2021, are the seven warmest years on record.
Rational Response:
Seen in the context of annual ranges of temperatures, a rise of 1 degree Celsius over 150 years would escape our notice were it not for alarmists constantly beating drums about it.
The geological and paleontological evidence overwhelmingly says that today’s average global temperature of about 15 degrees C and CO2 concentrations of 420 ppm are nothing to fret about. Even if they rise to about 17–18 degrees C and 500–600 ppm by the end of the century, it may well balance or improve the lot of mankind.
After all, bursts of civilization during the last 10,000 years uniformly occurred during the red portions of the graph below. The aforementioned river civilizations—the Minoan, the Greco-Roman era, the Medieval flowering, and the industrial and technological revolutions of the present era. At the same time, the several lapses into the dark ages happened when the climate turned colder (blue).
And that’s only logical. When it’s warmer and wetter, growing seasons are longer, and crop yields are better—regardless of the agricultural technology and practices of the moment. And it’s better for human and community health, too—most of the deadly plagues of history have occurred in colder climates, such as the Black Death of 1344–1350.
Greenhouse Gases Higher Than Ever! Not.
WMO says: Greenhouse gas concentrations reached a new global high in 2020, when the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) reached 413.2 parts per million (ppm) globally, or 149% of the pre-industrial level. Data from specific locations indicate that they continued to increase in 2021 and early 2022, with monthly average CO2 at Mona Loa in Hawaii reaching 416.45 ppm in April 2020, 419.05 ppm in April 2021, and 420.23 ppm in April 2022.
Rational Response:
The Radiative effect from increasing CO2 has been saturated, so that the next doubling from 400 to 800 ppm will barely affect temperatures. From William Happer presentation:
Schwarzschild was the theorist who first figured out how the real Earth, including the greenhouse gases in its atmosphere, radiates to space. That is described by the jagged black line. The important point here is the red line. This is what Earth would radiate to space if you were to double the CO2 concentration from today’s value. Right in the middle of these curves, you can see a gap in spectrum. The gap is caused by CO2 absorbing radiation that would otherwise cool the Earth. If you double the amount of CO2, you don’t double the size of that gap. You just go from the black curve to the red curve, and you can barely see the difference. The gap hardly changes.
Yet, the Climate Crisis Narrative employs two deceptive devices which are contradicted by earth’s climate history:
a. Planetary temperatures have been far higher than today, both long ago (over 600 million years) and recently (last 10,000 years) with no doomsday loop occurring.
b. It is claimed global warming is a one-way street from rising GHGs, when in fact higher CO2 concentrations are a consequence and by-product, not a driver and cause, of the current naturally rising temperatures.
The alleged harm from CO2 is from warming, and the warming observed is much, much less than predictions. In fact, warming as small as we are observing is almost certainly beneficial. It gives slightly longer growing seasons. You can ripen crops a little bit further north than you could before. So, there is completely good news in terms of the temperature directly. But there is even better news. By standards of geological history, plants have been living in a CO2 famine during our current geological period.
The Ocean Is Turning Acid! Not.
WMO says: Ocean acidification. The ocean absorbs around 23% of the annual emissions of anthropogenic CO2 to the atmosphere. This reacts with seawater and leads to ocean acidification, which threatens organisms and ecosystem services, and hence food security, tourism and coastal protection. As the pH of the ocean decreases, its capacity to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere also declines. The IPCC concluded that “there is very high confidence that open ocean surface pH is now the lowest it has been for at least 26,000 years and current rates of pH change are unprecedented since at least that time.”
Rational Response
Firstly ocean pH varies greatly on all time scales. From US Senate testimony:
“In the oceans, major climate warming and cooling and pH (ocean pH about 8.1) changes are a fact of life, whether it is over a few years as in an El Niño, over decades as in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation or the North Atlantic Oscillation, or over a few hours as a burst of upwelling (pH about 7.59-7.8) appears or a storm brings acidic rainwater (pH about 4-6) into an estuary.”
Secondly, sea life is adapted to changing pH, and some prefer more acidic levels. IPCC has ignored extensive research showing positive impacts on marine life from lower pH. These studies are catalogued at CO2 Science with this summary:
There are numerous observations of improvement in calcification of disparate marine life in realistic rates of PH change due to increased CO2.
“In the final graphical representations of the information contained in our Ocean Acidification Database, we have plotted the averages of all responses to seawater acidification (produced by additions of both HCl and CO2) for all five of the life characteristics of the various marine organisms that we have analyzed over the five pH reduction ranges that we discuss in our Description of the Ocean Acidification Database Tables, which pH ranges we illustrate in the figure below.”
“The most striking feature of Figure 11 is the great preponderance of data located in positive territory, which suggests that, on the whole, marine organisms likely will not be harmed to any significant degree by the expected decline in oceanic pH. If anything, in fact, the results suggest that the world’s marine life may actually slightly benefit from the pH decline.”
Finally, massive mineral deposits ensure our ocean will remain non-acidic in coming centuries. At Patrick Moore observed:
“It is a fact that people who have saltwater aquariums sometimes add CO2 to the water in order to increase coral growth and to increase plant growth. The truth is CO2 is the most important food for all life on Earth, including marine life. It is the main food for photosynthetic plankton (algae), which in turn is the food for the entire food chain in the sea.”
Summary:
The claim that the surface-water of the oceans has declined in pH from 8.2 to 8.1, since the industrial revolution, is based on sparse, contradictory evidence, at least some of which is problematic computer modeling. Some areas of the oceans, not subject to algal blooms or upwelling, may be experiencing slightly lower pH values than were common before the industrial revolution. However, forecasts for ‘average’ future pH values are likely exaggerated and of debatable consequences. The effects of alkaline buffering and stabilizing biological feedback loops seem to be underappreciated by those who carelessly throw around the inaccurate term “ocean acidification.”
Footnote on Climate Hype
Alarming claims are usually detected because they involve myopia, an error in perception, combined with lop-sided judgment weighing proportional significance of factors.
CO2 Alarm is Myopic: Claiming CO2 causes dangerous global warming is too simplistic. CO2 is but one factor among many other forces and processes interacting to make weather and climate.
Myopia is a failure of perception by focusing on one near thing to the exclusion of the other realities present, thus missing the big picture. For example: “Not seeing the forest for the trees.” AKA “tunnel vision.”
2. CO2 Alarm is Lopsided: CO2 forcing is too small to have the overblown effect claimed for it. Other factors are orders of magnitude larger than the potential of CO2 to influence the climate system.
Lop-sided refers to a failure in judging values, whereby someone lacking in sense of proportion, places great weight on a factor which actually has a minor influence compared to other forces. For example: “Making a mountain out of a mole hill.”
To avoid myopia, pay attention to the temporal and spatial contexts for effects discussed. To avoid lop-sided judgment, pay attention to the impact of factors proportional to the baseline inertia of climate system components.
The best context for understanding decadal temperature changes comes from the world’s sea surface temperatures (SST), for several reasons:
The ocean covers 71% of the globe and drives average temperatures;
SSTs have a constant water content, (unlike air temperatures), so give a better reading of heat content variations;
A major El Nino was the dominant climate feature in recent years.
HadSST is generally regarded as the best of the global SST data sets, and so the temperature story here comes from that source. Previously I used HadSST3 for these reports, but Hadley Centre has made HadSST4 the priority, and v.3 will no longer be updated. HadSST4 is the same as v.3, except that the older data from ship water intake was re-estimated to be generally lower temperatures than shown in v.3. The effect is that v.4 has lower average anomalies for the baseline period 1961-1990, thereby showing higher current anomalies than v.3. This analysis concerns more recent time periods and depends on very similar differentials as those from v.3 despite higher absolute anomaly values in v.4. More on what distinguishes HadSST3 and 4 from other SST products at the end. The user guide for HadSST4 is here.
The Current Context
The 2021 year end report below showed rapid cooling in all regions. The anomalies then continued in 2022 to remain well below the mean since 2015. This Global Cooling was also evident in the UAH Land and Ocean air temperatures (Still No Global Warming, Milder March Land and Sea).
The chart below shows SST monthly anomalies as reported in HadSST4 starting in 2015 through March 2022. A global cooling pattern is seen clearly in the Tropics since its peak in 2016, joined by NH and SH cycling downward since 2016.
Note that higher temps in 2015 and 2016 were first of all due to a sharp rise in Tropical SST, beginning in March 2015, peaking in January 2016, and steadily declining back below its beginning level. Secondly, the Northern Hemisphere added three bumps on the shoulders of Tropical warming, with peaks in August of each year. A fourth NH bump was lower and peaked in September 2018. As noted above, a fifth peak in August 2019 and a sixth August 2020 exceeded the four previous upward bumps in NH.
After three straight Spring 2020 months of cooling led by the tropics and SH, NH spiked in the summer, along with smaller bumps elsewhere. Then temps everywhere dropped for six months, hitting bottom in February 2021. All regions were well below the Global Mean since 2015, matching the cold of 2018, and lower than January 2015. Then spring and summer 2021 brought more temperate waters and a July return to the mean anomaly since 2015. After an upward bump in August, the 2021 yearend Global temp anomaly dropped below the mean, driven by sharp declines in the Tropics and NH.
Now in 2022 all regions remain cool. In April 2022 NH warmed slightly, offset by cooling in SH and the Tropics, so the Global anomaly remained unchanged and lower than the mean for this period.
A longer view of SSTs
To enlarge image double-click or open in new tab.
The graph above is noisy, but the density is needed to see the seasonal patterns in the oceanic fluctuations. Previous posts focused on the rise and fall of the last El Nino starting in 2015. This post adds a longer view, encompassing the significant 1998 El Nino and since. The color schemes are retained for Global, Tropics, NH and SH anomalies. Despite the longer time frame, I have kept the monthly data (rather than yearly averages) because of interesting shifts between January and
July.1995 is a reasonable (ENSO neutral) starting point prior to the first El Nino. The sharp Tropical rise peaking in 1998 is dominant in the record, starting Jan. ’97 to pull up SSTs uniformly before returning to the same level Jan. ’99. For the next 2 years, the Tropics stayed down, and the world’s oceans held steady around 0.5C above 1961 to 1990 average.
Then comes a steady rise over two years to a lesser peak Jan. 2003, but again uniformly pulling all oceans up around 0.5C. Something changes at this point, with more hemispheric divergence than before. Over the 4 years until Jan 2007, the Tropics go through ups and downs, NH a series of ups and SH mostly downs. As a result the Global average fluctuates around that same 0.5C, which also turns out to be the average for the entire record since 1995.
2007 stands out with a sharp drop in temperatures so that Jan.08 matches the low in Jan. ’99, but starting from a lower high. The oceans all decline as well, until temps build peaking in 2010.
Now again a different pattern appears. The Tropics cool sharply to Jan 11, then rise steadily for 4 years to Jan 15, at which point the most recent major El Nino takes off. But this time in contrast to ’97-’99, the Northern Hemisphere produces peaks every summer pulling up the Global average. In fact, these NH peaks appear every July starting in 2003, growing stronger to produce 3 massive highs in 2014, 15 and 16. NH July 2017 was only slightly lower, and a fifth NH peak still lower in Sept. 2018.
The highest summer NH peaks came in 2019 and 2020, only this time the Tropics and SH are offsetting rather adding to the warming. (Note: these are high anomalies on top of the highest absolute temps in the NH.) Since 2014 SH has played a moderating role, offsetting the NH warming pulses. After September 2020 temps dropped off down until February 2021, then all regions rose to bring the global anomaly above the mean since 1995 June 2021 backed down before warming again slightly in July and August 2021, then cooling slightly in September. The present level compares with 2014.
What to make of all this? The patterns suggest that in addition to El Ninos in the Pacific driving the Tropic SSTs, something else is going on in the NH. The obvious culprit is the North Atlantic, since I have seen this sort of pulsing before. After reading some papers by David Dilley, I confirmed his observation of Atlantic pulses into the Arctic every 8 to 10 years.
But the peaks coming nearly every summer in HadSST require a different picture. Let’s look at August, the hottest month in the North Atlantic from the Kaplan dataset.
The AMO Index is from from Kaplan SST v2, the unaltered and not detrended dataset. By definition, the data are monthly average SSTs interpolated to a 5×5 grid over the North Atlantic basically 0 to 70N. The graph shows August warming began after 1992 up to 1998, with a series of matching years since, including 2020, dropping down in 2021. Because the N. Atlantic has partnered with the Pacific ENSO recently, let’s take a closer look at some AMO years in the last 2 decades.
This graph shows monthly AMO temps for some important years. The Peak years were 1998, 2010 and 2016, with the latter emphasized as the most recent. The other years show lesser warming, with 2007 emphasized as the coolest in the last 20 years. Note the red 2018 line is at the bottom of all these tracks. The heavy blue line shows that 2022 started warm, but in March went below all the tracks and in April remains near the bottom.
Summary
The oceans are driving the warming this century. SSTs took a step up with the 1998 El Nino and have stayed there with help from the North Atlantic, and more recently the Pacific northern “Blob.” The ocean surfaces are releasing a lot of energy, warming the air, but eventually will have a cooling effect. The decline after 1937 was rapid by comparison, so one wonders: How long can the oceans keep this up? If the pattern of recent years continues, NH SST anomalies may rise slightly in coming months, but once again, ENSO which has weakened will probably determine the outcome.
Footnote: Why Rely on HadSST4
HadSST is distinguished from other SST products because HadCRU (Hadley Climatic Research Unit) does not engage in SST interpolation, i.e. infilling estimated anomalies into grid cells lacking sufficient sampling in a given month. From reading the documentation and from queries to Met Office, this is their procedure.
HadSST4 imports data from gridcells containing ocean, excluding land cells. From past records, they have calculated daily and monthly average readings for each grid cell for the period 1961 to 1990. Those temperatures form the baseline from which anomalies are calculated.
In a given month, each gridcell with sufficient sampling is averaged for the month and then the baseline value for that cell and that month is subtracted, resulting in the monthly anomaly for that cell. All cells with monthly anomalies are averaged to produce global, hemispheric and tropical anomalies for the month, based on the cells in those locations. For example, Tropics averages include ocean grid cells lying between latitudes 20N and 20S.
Gridcells lacking sufficient sampling that month are left out of the averaging, and the uncertainty from such missing data is estimated. IMO that is more reasonable than inventing data to infill. And it seems that the Global Drifter Array displayed in the top image is providing more uniform coverage of the oceans than in the past.
USS Pearl Harbor deploys Global Drifter Buoys in Pacific Ocean
The fad of the moment is to claim that information detrimental to one’s point of view is either “Misinformation” or “Disinformation”, depending on whether you are also claiming the other person is lying in addition to being mistaken. That presupposes that you know what’s inside someone else’s head.
More importantly, many caught up in these insult exchanges are unable or unwilling to apply critical thinking to the subjects under discussion. A background essay below defines the concepts of Data, Facts, and Information to help with this deficit in current discourse. It is important to know firstly, how information depends facts and data, and secondly, that information is also based upon a value system, IOW a story about situational realities. In this sense, information is typically part of a story, and shares the values of people committed to that story. Many of the attacks regarding false information are really objections to an alternate story contrary to the attacker’s point of view.
Background from Previous Post Data, Facts and Information
In following many blogs related to climate science, it seems that confusion reigns regarding some fundamentals of scientific thought and practice. So this post attempts to clarify three important scientific concepts: Data, Facts, and Information.
Show Me the Data
Data pertains to observations of happenings in the world, independent of the observer. In a court of law, a witness on the stand gives his or her observations. For example, I heard person x say this, or I saw person y do that. This is evidence all right, but it is not data. And an artist or filmmaker can capture an event as evidence, but again it is not data in that format.
By definition, data is quantitative. And applying numbers to observations means using standard measurements so that these observations can be compared, contrasted, and replicated, as well as compiled with other similar observations. Each subject of study has one or more units of measurement pertinent to that inquiry. For example, observing a moving object requires distance and time, such as kilometers per minute, or rates of acceleration, such as meters per second per second, or m/s^2.
To summarize, data are a set of observations expressed in standard units of measurement.
What are the Facts
Taiichi Ohno was the central thinker behind the Toyota way of manufacturing. In his view facts are observed “in situ” by a knowledgeable and purposeful agent, an human expert. Facts are the result of direct observation of a process, product or part, including any measured data and the correct context for such data. Context means what relevant conditions, incidents, phenomena, and situations were occurring prior, during and after the data were collected.
In science a fact is a pattern detected in a data set. Thus, a fact is a finding, a meaning supported by data. And, importantly, a fact is particular to the place and time where the data was obtained. The pattern and meaning derives from interpreting the data (observations) in the specific place and time where the happenings occurred understanding the historical situation and context.
We hear a lot these days about fake news or facts in relation to political or cultural news. There, the spin and narratives overwhelm objective observations, and the report serves only to motivate audience acceptance or rejection of the subjects, the truth is irrelevant. Unfortunately, fact “checking” has morphed into substituting one spin for another.
In science, facts are supported by data, but each fact represents a pattern in the data seen in the context of a specific place and time. So, for example, it can be a fact that civilian deaths in Syria have increased by x% in the past year. Importantly, facts depend on persons with deep knowledge of the particular place and time.
To summarize, a scientific fact is a pattern in data in the context of a specific place and time.
The Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth
Information stands on facts, which themselves stand on data. Information consists of conclusions from weighing and judging the importance of various sets of facts regarding a situation. Based on the above, all the facts have a basis in data, but they are not equally significant. And the significance is relative to the concerns of the information analyst.
Information is not absolute, but serves to inform action. Facts are value-free, but information is not. Information draws on facts to form a conclusion as to the direction a situation is moving, out of a concern to intervene or not, according to the interests of the observers. In that sense, information is always actionable, or intends to be so.
As an example of this facet of information, consider media charges that someone is citing “alternate facts.” Now a fact is always true, meaning it is supported by data and corresponds to reality. Or it is not a fact, but a fiction not supported by data and in contradiction to reality.
In legal proceedings, frequently there are “alternate facts.” One party, say the prosecution, presents a set of facts comprising all the information supporting their explanation or theory of a criminal event. The defense presents an alternative explanation or theory of the event supported by other facts either ignored or discounted in the prosecution’s case. Such “alternate facts” are no less true, they simply form an alternate information convincing to those who place more weight on them.
A similar process goes on in scientific disputes where each side accuses the other of “cherry-picking” by referring only to those facts which support one theory. Honest science attempts to explain all relevant facts, and sometimes (e.g. Wave vs. Particle theories of light) holds competing theories in tension while a more comprehensive meta-theory can be formed and proved.
Information results from organizing data and facts into a perspective respecting the context of the facts and supporting humans’ need to anticipate the future. Forming theories of what to expect and how to respond or intervene is fundamental to human survival.
There are many places where people are worried about erratic and destructive behavior by those inflamed with fear of global warming/climate change. In the past they have been known to vandalize pipelines delivering natural gas or oil critical for energy needs. These days climatists are more and more frantic, and for example, given to slashing tires on SUVs, thinking them to be “Axles of Evil.”
Rational Response
Schwarzschild was the theorist who first figured out how the real Earth, including the greenhouse gases in its atmosphere, radiates to space. That is described by the jagged black line. The important point here is the red line. This is what Earth would radiate to space if you were to double the CO2 concentration from today’s value. Right in the middle of these curves, you can see a gap in spectrum. The gap is caused by CO2 absorbing radiation that would otherwise cool the Earth. If you double the amount of CO2, you don’t double the size of that gap. You just go from the black curve to the red curve, and you can barely see the difference. The gap hardly changes.
Science Matters 