Month: September 2023

Culture War Facturing Canada (Updated)

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Update Below Adds Context from Angus Reid and Links to Series of Reports, Some Upcoming

Bruce Pardy writes at National Post Woke wolves dominate the culture war ecosystem — for now.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Canada is unravelling. Culture wars are making the country stupid, poor and fractured — and according to Angus Reid, these fractures have produced five distinct groups.

Last week, the Angus Reid Institute released a study on the bubbling, sometimes boiling, political conflicts in Canada. The study characterized five culture war factions that comprise the country: the “zealous activists,” the “quiet accommodators,” the “conflicted middle,” the “frustrated skeptics” and the “defiant objectors.” They make up the political ecosystem, which is why they are perhaps best recast as members of the animal kingdom.

Zealous Activists Behave as Wolves

“Zealous activists,” according to the Angus Reid study, make up 17 per cent of the population. They are ardent social progressives who believe that cancel culture is about “accountability.” I think of them as wolves. They travel in packs. These are woke mobs pushing the social justice revolution. They hunger to rip to shreds the reputation of anyone who defies progressive agendas.

Although they sometimes attack big targets, wolves prefer to hunt the vulnerable. They dress in sheep’s clothing, pretending to protect the weak and the downtrodden. But when the weak or downtrodden step out of line, wolves turn on them without a moment’s hesitation. Wolves appear to be more numerous than they really are, perhaps because they howl incessantly. They are proud virtue-signallers. Some truly believe in the cause, but activism is also a means to professional and social standing: they compete with one another for status within the pack.

Quiet Accommodators Resemble Sheep

Just over one quarter of Canadians are “quiet accommodators.” Like wolves, they are progressives, tending to agree with safe spaces and trigger warnings — but they lack the intensity of a predator. Let’s call them sheep. They are the foot soldiers of the culture wars; they believe in social justice dogma because that is what they have been fed. They crave approval and belonging.

Some sheep don’t understand social justice ideology beyond catchphrases and knee-jerk reactions, but they know those very well. Sheep can be found in positions of authority, where they enthusiastically enforce woke policies. They can be primary school principals, CEOs and even premiers. They seek to preserve their status by supporting the “correct” attitudes; in doing so, they willingly follow wolves, failing to understand that wolves are their greatest threat.

Conflicted Middle Act Like Ostriches

Ostriches don’t actually put their heads in the sand. They mostly lay their heads in the grass, preoccupied with staying well fed.

The “conflicted middle” makes up 18 per cent of the population. They are ostriches who keep their heads close to the ground, divided on culture wars and politics. Ostriches are ambivalent about social justice agendas and cultural revolutions; they comply to avoid any unwanted attention. Like sheep, ostriches seek to preserve their professional or social status. Unlike sheep, who want to belong, ostriches obey to avoid trouble. They tend to abhor politics and prefer not to think about ideology, even when ideology won’t leave them alone. Ostriches just wish the whole thing would go away.

Can you spot the leopard hidden in the grass?

Frustrated Skeptics Lurk Like Leopards

Nineteen per cent of Canadians are “frustrated skeptics.” They view culture wars as tiring and unproductive. Imagine them as leopards, aware and poised, but camouflaged against the scrubby savannah. Leopards object to woke agendas but keep their opinions to themselves. Some feel vulnerable in their jobs or social relationships. Others hide their opposition strategically, believing they can resist more effectively from the inside. Like ostriches, leopards are careful not to provide wolves with a reason to attack. Unlike ostriches, leopards are not ambivalent, but are waiting for the right moment to pounce.

Defiant Objectors Roar Like Lions

A fifth of Canadians are “defiant objectors.” They oppose cancel culture, safe spaces and censorship. These are the lions, who openly roar in disapproval at the progressive transformation of their society. Lions are the only animals in the kingdom who say “hell no” out loud. Some have prominent public profiles, but most lions are simply fearless ordinary people. They sometimes gather in prides, like the truckers and their supporters, but they are naturally inclined to be independent. When lions roar, wolves howl that they are bigots, populists, or members of a fringe minority with unacceptable views.

Missteps are dangerous in a culture war. The pack will devour those who commit wrongthink. The most susceptible are sheep and ostriches, who, despite submitting to the regime, are apt to utter inconvenient truths. Social justice ideology is tricky. It contains incoherent positions, changes the meanings of words and constantly moves the target. “My body, my choice” is a rallying cry when it relates to abortion, but racist and misogynist when it applies to vaccine mandates. Sheep and ostriches must navigate an ever-shifting landscape of rules and political correctness.

Leopards can misstep and blow their cover, but sometimes that works out for the best. Once revealed, they may find that they were meant to be lions after all. Lions can’t misstep, at least in the sense of accidentally outing themselves. Out is where they mean to be.

An activist minority is setting the agenda in Canada, but only
for as long as Canadians allow it. Be a lion.

Footnote:  A Pride of Lions Roaring in the Streets of Ottawa

Exclusive footage from LifeSiteNews in Ottawa shows thousands of pro-family Canadians formed near Parliament Hill, rivaled by an estimated 350 counter-protesters.

Pro-family Canadians flood Ottawa, other cities for Million Person March against LGBT indoctrination

According to LifeSite’s John-Henry Westen, who was on the ground at the Ottawa march, there was a noticeable number of children present on the pro-family side of the protest, with very few if any children present on the pro-LGBT side. Westen also estimates that the pro-family side outnumbered the pro-LGBT side by roughly ten to one.

Video footage from Toronto and Calgary posted to social media by True North shows thousands of pro-family citizens gathered in protest against LGBT indoctrination in both cities.

Counter-protesters were expected at the events after leaked video footage of a Zoom call appeared online last week showing unions leaders encouraging their members to oppose the pro-family efforts.

Update: Detailed Findings from Angus Reid

The website for this project is Canada and the Culture Wars: In the first of a multi-part series, Canadians weigh in on the nation’s divided discourse

Part One: Defining Canadians’ cultural mindsets

 

Topical Reports

Canadians say we’re changing how we talk to each other,
split over whether it’s a good or bad thing

The first release focused on Canadians views of the culture wars, how we talk to each other, as well as conflict mitigation, censorship, and “cancel culture”. Depending on where they sit on the spectrum of cultural mindsets, Canadians can view these issues as important, informative, exhausting or even unnecessary.

Example:

Gender Identity:  More than half say male or female;
one-third say that’s too limiting, others unsure

The second release covered  Gender Identity – including topics such as gender fluidity and gender neutral language.  Also Transgender Issues – how do Canadians say they would react if their child showed an affinity for a gender other than the one they were assigned at birth?

Example:

These forthcoming studies will put a spotlight on:

Climate and the Economy – how should Canada move forward in energy development? Do Canadians support or oppose a wealth tax?

Colonialism and Indigenous Issues – addressing topics such as the legacy of Canada’s colonial history and residential schools

Race and Ethnicity – including topics such as privilege, cultural appropriation, equity, discrimination and racism

Canada’s Animal Farm Culture War Factions

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Bruce Pardy writes at National Post Woke wolves dominate the culture war ecosystem — for now.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Canada is unravelling. Culture wars are making the country stupid, poor and fractured — and according to Angus Reid, these fractures have produced five distinct groups.

Last week, the Angus Reid Institute released a study on the bubbling, sometimes boiling, political conflicts in Canada. The study characterized five culture war factions that comprise the country: the “zealous activists,” the “quiet accommodators,” the “conflicted middle,” the “frustrated skeptics” and the “defiant objectors.” They make up the political ecosystem, which is why they are perhaps best recast as members of the animal kingdom.

Zealous Activists Behave as Wolves

“Zealous activists,” according to the Angus Reid study, make up 17 per cent of the population. They are ardent social progressives who believe that cancel culture is about “accountability.” I think of them as wolves. They travel in packs. These are woke mobs pushing the social justice revolution. They hunger to rip to shreds the reputation of anyone who defies progressive agendas.

Although they sometimes attack big targets, wolves prefer to hunt the vulnerable. They dress in sheep’s clothing, pretending to protect the weak and the downtrodden. But when the weak or downtrodden step out of line, wolves turn on them without a moment’s hesitation. Wolves appear to be more numerous than they really are, perhaps because they howl incessantly. They are proud virtue-signallers. Some truly believe in the cause, but activism is also a means to professional and social standing: they compete with one another for status within the pack.

Quiet Accommodators Resemble Sheep

Just over one quarter of Canadians are “quiet accommodators.” Like wolves, they are progressives, tending to agree with safe spaces and trigger warnings — but they lack the intensity of a predator. Let’s call them sheep. They are the foot soldiers of the culture wars; they believe in social justice dogma because that is what they have been fed. They crave approval and belonging.

Some sheep don’t understand social justice ideology beyond catchphrases and knee-jerk reactions, but they know those very well. Sheep can be found in positions of authority, where they enthusiastically enforce woke policies. They can be primary school principals, CEOs and even premiers. They seek to preserve their status by supporting the “correct” attitudes; in doing so, they willingly follow wolves, failing to understand that wolves are their greatest threat.

Conflicted Middle Act Like Ostriches

Ostriches don’t actually put their heads in the sand. They mostly lay their heads in the grass, preoccupied with staying well fed.

The “conflicted middle” makes up 18 per cent of the population. They are ostriches who keep their heads close to the ground, divided on culture wars and politics. Ostriches are ambivalent about social justice agendas and cultural revolutions; they comply to avoid any unwanted attention. Like sheep, ostriches seek to preserve their professional or social status. Unlike sheep, who want to belong, ostriches obey to avoid trouble. They tend to abhor politics and prefer not to think about ideology, even when ideology won’t leave them alone. Ostriches just wish the whole thing would go away.

Can you spot the leopard hidden in the grass?

Frustrated Skeptics Lurk Like Leopards

Nineteen per cent of Canadians are “frustrated skeptics.” They view culture wars as tiring and unproductive. Imagine them as leopards, aware and poised, but camouflaged against the scrubby savannah. Leopards object to woke agendas but keep their opinions to themselves. Some feel vulnerable in their jobs or social relationships. Others hide their opposition strategically, believing they can resist more effectively from the inside. Like ostriches, leopards are careful not to provide wolves with a reason to attack. Unlike ostriches, leopards are not ambivalent, but are waiting for the right moment to pounce.

Defiant Objectors Roar Like Lions

A fifth of Canadians are “defiant objectors.” They oppose cancel culture, safe spaces and censorship. These are the lions, who openly roar in disapproval at the progressive transformation of their society. Lions are the only animals in the kingdom who say “hell no” out loud. Some have prominent public profiles, but most lions are simply fearless ordinary people. They sometimes gather in prides, like the truckers and their supporters, but they are naturally inclined to be independent. When lions roar, wolves howl that they are bigots, populists, or members of a fringe minority with unacceptable views.

Missteps are dangerous in a culture war. The pack will devour those who commit wrongthink. The most susceptible are sheep and ostriches, who, despite submitting to the regime, are apt to utter inconvenient truths. Social justice ideology is tricky. It contains incoherent positions, changes the meanings of words and constantly moves the target. “My body, my choice” is a rallying cry when it relates to abortion, but racist and misogynist when it applies to vaccine mandates. Sheep and ostriches must navigate an ever-shifting landscape of rules and political correctness.

Leopards can misstep and blow their cover, but sometimes that works out for the best. Once revealed, they may find that they were meant to be lions after all. Lions can’t misstep, at least in the sense of accidentally outing themselves. Out is where they mean to be.

An activist minority is setting the agenda in Canada, but only
for as long as Canadians allow it. Be a lion.

Biden Nanny State Coming At You

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Mark Krebs exposes federal shenanigans in their war on home appliances in his Master Resource article Update: DOE Appliance Minimum Efficiency Standards.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

“It started with gas cooking.  It will end with getting gas out of homes and business entirely, If they can. Basically, what we’re witnessing is the energy equivalent of ethnic cleansing. I’ve been saying this for years but now it should be obvious.”

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under the Biden Administration has significantly accelerated the pace of minimum appliance efficiency rulemaking. With this acceleration, there has been a marked decrease in DOE’s analytical quality and transparency. The purpose of this update is to summarize:

  1.  Energy Conservation Standards for Consumer Conventional Cooking Products

2.  Energy Conservation Standards for Consumer Products; Boilers

3.  Energy Conservation Standards for Consumer Water Heaters

Note: In DOE-speak, the term ‘consumer’ means non commercial/industrial, or just residential.

Part 1: Consumer Cooking Products

On April 27, 2023, MasterResource published DOE vs. Gas Cooking: A Review of Critical Comments. On August 2, 2023, DOE reopened the docket with a “Notification of data availability and request for comment (NODA) with comments due September 1. More than 100 comments were filed.

Some commenters viewed the NODA and relatively short (30-day) comment period as a violation to the Administrative Procedures Act codified by 5 U.S.C. § 551(5)–(7) and the DOE’s “process rule” codified by 10 CFR 430 Appendix A to Subpart C. One such commenter making this case was the Institute for Energy Research (IER).

Other comments privided detailed content in opposition of DOE’s proposal for consumer cooking products.  My comments addressed what has changed since DOE determined (in 2019) that additional efficiency mandates for gas cooking appliances is not justified. In short, Biden happened. With that change, DOE resorted to a longstanding bias that any amount of net positive cash flow (greater than zero) on average was sufficient economic justification. I cited AHAM’s press release “Gas Cooking Appliances Remain at Risk Despite New DOE Data” for this NODA that succinctly justified what that amount now is:

“The revised data reduces consumer savings to just 9 cents per month.”

I contend no one would freely elect to invest in anything with that kind of return-on-investment (ROI). Additionally, 9 cents per month is far less than the uncertainty range within DOE’s economic calculations.  Besides, DOE’s economic calculations typically low-ball increased maintenance costs and over-inflate fuel costs (among many other biased input assumptions).

What else has changed is that DOE cost-effectiveness now includes highly controversial benefits from reduced climate change allowed by grossly inflated social cost of carbon (SCC) avoidance and health benefits from improved indoor air quality (IAQ).

Part 2: Consumer Boilers

On September 12, 2023, DOE held a public webinar to go over its proposal for increased minimum efficiencies for residential boilers. A 59-page slide deck for that meeting is here. (If you have never read one of these slide decks, I urge you to do so. It’s a relatively painless way of getting familiar with the ‘administrative state’ going about its business of picking winners and losers.)

There were many participants representing manufacturing interests that would be adversely impacted by DOE’s proposal, and they were quite vocal about it (in a professional way of course).  But why would manufacturers want to litigate? DOE would put some of them out of business. 

Part 3: Consumer Water Heaters

On September 13, 2023, DOE held a public webinar to go over its proposal for increased minimum efficiencies for residential water heaters that lasted 3 hours. A 74-page slide deck for that meeting is here. There were nearly twice as many participants on line compared to the number of webinar participants the day before for consumer boilers; and many of the participants represented water heater manufacturers, some of which would be devastated if DOE’s proposed mandates were finalized.

One manufacturer that stood out in this regard was Rinnai America. Rinnai is the sole manufacturer of non-condensing tankless water heaters in the U.S. Rinnai’s President stated, as I recall, that DOE’s proposed ban of non-condensing water heaters would shut down Rinnai’s new factory that cost $70 million. That, of course, would devastate the many involved.

Conclusions

DOE has been (ostensibly) ‘improving’ appliance efficiency for nearly a half-century. The low hanging fruit is long gone. In many cases, DOE is doing more harm than good and using unfair tactics to maintain control and reward its minions. What we have now is relentless self-serving “mission creep” of the administrative state and its “useful idiots” that forces consumers to fund the erosion of viable energy alternatives. The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act is greatly aiding and abetting this forced transformation away from free market forces.

DOE doesn’t care what it costs to litigate. After all, DOE has the backing of the Department of Justice for such matters. In my opinion, DOE has strayed too far from any redeeming virtue that may have originally existed from the 1975 passage of EPCA. It’s past time for Congress clean up the mess it created by enacting EPCA and the numerous ambiguous loopholes that gives undeserved deference to the administrative state to interpret. A valid question is whether EPCA (and DOE for that matter) should be salvaged or scrapped.

Biden’s DOE wants to eliminate alternatives to electricity. 

This fixation became apparent to all with their planned elimination of gas cooking and ran head-on with consumers that hold gas cooking near-and-dear. Consumer preferences for gas cooking was and is a major obstacle to control via societal electrification overall. As this article hopefully conveys, it started with gas cooking. It will end with getting gas out of homes and business entirely, If they can.

Postscript:

The Department of Energy (DOE) quietly promoted a top adviser to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm to a senior role overseeing home appliance regulations after he failed to clear Senate confirmation.

The DOE announced last week that Jeff Marootian was appointed to be the principal deputy assistant secretary of the agency’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). The appointment came days after the White House withdrew his name from consideration to lead EERE as the office’s assistant secretary.

While Marootian’s nomination failed after Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., opposed him over the Biden administration’s crackdown on natural gas-powered stovetops, his appointment last week makes him the effective chief of the DOE’s EERE office.

More complete discussion on appliance war at Fox: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/experts-warn-biden-admins-water-heater-crackdown-hike-prices-reduce-consumer-choice

 

Confirmed: Temperature Drives CO2, not the Reverse

Posted on by Ron Clutz

From notrickszone New Study: The Rising-CO2-Causes-Warming Perception Not Supported By Real-World Observation.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

One of the most basic concepts in physics is that causes precede effects and effects follow causes. Determining the directionality sequence is thus essential in any causality analysis.

The assumed CO₂→T causality direction cannot be scientifically supported

The assumption in climate models is that CO₂ causes changes in temperature, or T. More specifically, it is assumed modern global warming has been caused by increases in anthropogenic CO₂ emissions.

However, scientists (Koutsoyiannis et al., 2023) have now expanded upon last year’s 2-part study on stochastics-formulated causality published in The Royal Society (Koutsoyiannis et al., 2022 (1) and Koutsoyiannis et al., 2022 (2)) where they notably contend:

“Clearly the results […] suggest a (mono-directional) potentially causal system with T as the cause and [CO₂] as the effect. Hence the common perception that increasing [CO₂] causes increased T can be excluded as it violates the necessary condition for this causality direction.”

The analysis is in complete agreement with several posts here, especially:

Temps Cause CO2 Changes, Not the Reverse. 2023 Update

The paper is On Hens, Eggs, Temperatures and CO2: Causal Links in Earth’s Atmosphere by Demetris Koutsoyiannis et al.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Abstract

The scientific and wider interest in the relationship between atmospheric temperature (T) and concentration of carbon dioxide ([CO2]) has been enormous. According to the commonly assumed causality link, increased [CO2] causes a rise in T. However, recent developments cast doubts on this assumption by showing that this relationship is of the hen-or-egg type, or even unidirectional but opposite in direction to the commonly assumed one. These developments include an advanced theoretical framework for testing causality based on the stochastic evaluation of a potentially causal link between two processes via the notion of the impulse response function. Using, on the one hand, this framework and further expanding it and, on the other hand, the longest available modern time series of globally averaged T and [CO2], we shed light on the potential causality between these two processes.

All evidence resulting from the analyses suggests a unidirectional,
potentially causal link with T as the cause and [CO2] as the effect.

That link is not represented in climate models, whose outputs are also examined using the same framework, resulting in a link opposite the one found when the real measurements are used.

Discussion and Further Results

The mainstream assumption of the causality direction [CO2] → T makes a compelling narrative, as everything is blamed on a single cause, the human CO2 emissions. Indeed, this has been the popular narrative for decades. However, popularity does not necessarily mean correctness, and here we have provided strong arguments against this assumption.

Since we have identified atmospheric temperature as the cause and atmospheric CO2 concentration as the effect, one may be tempted to ask the question: What is the cause of the modern increase in temperature? Apparently, this question is much more difficult to reply to, as we can no longer attribute everything to any single agent.

We do not claim to have the answer to this question, whose study is far beyond the article’s scope. Neither do we believe that mainstream climatic theory, which is focused upon human CO2 emissions as the main cause and regards everything else as feedback of the single main cause, can explain what happened on Earth for 4.5 billion years of changing climate.

The examined processes in the Appendices are internal to the climatic system. Other processes affecting T, not examined here, could also be external (e.g., solar and astronomical [43,44] and geological [45,46,47,48,49]). Generally, in complex systems, an identified causal link, even though it gives some explanation of a phenomenon, raises additional questions, e.g., what caused the change in the identified cause, etc. In turn, causal links in complex systems may form endless sequences.

For this reason, it is naïve to expect complete answers to problems related to complex systems or to assume that a complex system is in permanent equilibrium and that an external agent is needed to “kick” it out of the equilibrium and produce change. Yet the investigation of a single causal link between two processes, as is the focus of this paper, provides useful information, with possible significant scientific, technical, practical, epistemological and philosophical implications. These are not covered in this paper. 

As already clarified, the scope of our work is not to provide detailed modeling of the processes studied but to check causality conditions. We highlight the fact that the relationship we established explains only about 1/3 of the actual variance of Δln[CO2]. This is not negligible for investigating causality, but also leaves a margin for many other climatic factors to act.

Conclusions

With reference to points 1–7 of the Introduction setting the paper’s scope, the results of our analyses can be summarized as follows.

  1. All evidence resulting from the analyses of the longest available modern time series of atmospheric concentration of [CO2] at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, along with that of globally averaged T, suggests a unidirectional, potentially causal link with T as the cause and [CO2] as the effect. This direction of causality holds for the entire period covered by the observations (more than 60 years).
  2. Seasonality, as reflected in different phases of [CO2] time series at different latitudes, does not play any role in potential causality, as confirmed by replacing the Mauna Loa [CO2] time series with that in South Pole.
  3. The unidirectional 𝑇→ln[CO2] potential causal link applies to all timescales resolved by the available data, from monthly to about two decades.
  4. The proposed methodology is simple, flexible and effective in disambiguating cases where the type of causality, HOE or unidirectional, is not quite clear.
  5. Furthermore, the methodology defines a type of data analysis that, regardless of the detection of causality per se, assesses modeling performance by comparing observational data with model results. In particular, the analysis of climate model outputs reveals a misrepresentation of the causal link by these models, which suggest a causality direction opposite to the one found when the real measurements are used.
  6. Extensions of the scope of the methodology, i.e., from detecting possible causality to building a more detailed model of stochastic type, are possible, as illustrated by a toy model for the T-[CO2] system, with explained variance of [CO2] reaching an impressive 99.9%.
  7. While some of the findings of this study seem counterintuitive or contrary to mainstream opinions, they are logically and computationally supported by arguments and calculations given in the Appendices.

 

 

Zharkova on Solar Forcing and Global Cooling

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The Grand Solar Minimum is Coming.

Interview of Prof. V. Zharkova  by Franco Battaglia  for the Italian newspaper La Verita Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The following interview will show – if there were still the need to show it – that the climate system is quite far to be well understood, thereby it is quite far from the truth any claim according to which on the matter “science is settled”, as Al Gore and the IPCC have been claiming for 20 years. Valentina Zharkova is an outstanding Ukrainian scientist: she graduated from the University of Kiev in Applied mathematics, first, and then completed her PhD studies in Astrophysics from the Main Astronomical Observatory in Kiev. For the past 30 years she worked in the UK Universities of Glasgow, Bradford and Northumbria, since 2005 as a Professor of Applied Mathematics. At the present she is Professor Emeritus at Northumbria University (Newcastle, UK) and Director of ZVS Research Enterprise Ltd. (London UK).

Q. Prof. Zharkova, people say that the Earth is warming since the beginning of the Industrial revolution and that this is due to human activities. Do you have any comment on that?

A. Actually the Earth is warming since 1690, the minimum of the Little Ice Age. In 1976, Prof. John Eddy established that the terrestrial temperature follows solar radiation deposition during solar activity cycles, increasing during the solar cycle maxima and decreasing during solar minima. Then, in 1995, prof. Judith Lean and collaborators discovered and later in 2016 Prof. Don Easterbrook confirmed that the input of solar radiation to Earth was decreased during the Maunder minimum in 1645-1710 by about 3 W/m2 leading to a decrease of terrestrial temperature during what is now called the Little Ice Age. Since 1700 and the recovery of the Maunder minimum the solar radiation deposition to Earth restored to previous level and terrestrial temperature followed solar activity cycles.

Q. Has then the solar activity been increasing during the last few decades?

A. No. Actually the solar activity has been decreasing since the 80’s of the last century.

Q. This is why IPCC has concluded that the present warming is due to humans?

A. Exactly, the warming is present but it is not due to humans. They make a mistake: they assume that solar radiation is essentially constant, thereby attributing the warming to CO2’s enhanced concentration in the terrestrial atmosphere.

Q. Could you clarify?

A. Within solar activity there are two important cycles: one – the small solar cycle – with a 11-year period and the other – the grand solar cycle – with a 350-year period. The grand solar cycles are separated by grand solar minima (GSMs), the most recent of them occurred during Maunder minimum (1645-1710). The GSM acts on the terrestrial environment via the cold air jets coming from Arctic and Antarctica because of the reduction of solar UV radiation and ozone abundances in the terrestrial atmosphere.  Now there is a current solar cycle (cycle number 25) is showing to have the largest numbers of spotless days than any other cycles of the last 280 years of observations. During the modern GSM, similar to Maunder minimum, the solar radiation is expected to decrease by about 3 W/m2. The terrestrial temperature is then expected to decrease in the next three decades by about 1C. This was recorded during the Maunder Minimum and the same is expected in the modern GSM (2020-2050).

But the further change of solar irradiance deposited to the Earth can be caused by other effects.

Q. Namely?

 

A. By orbital effects. There are well known Milankovitch cycles caused by various variation of the earth orbit eccentricity, inclination of its axis to the ecliptics, aberrations. These periods vary from 15K to 100K years and well protocolled in the terrestrial biomass. There is a shorter period of solar radiation changes with a period of about two millennia: Hallstatt’s cycle. It reflects medium-scale variations of the solar radiation level whose origin comes not from the dynamo activity inside the Sun but from the Sun’s position with respect to the orbit focus, or barycentre, where it supposed to reside according to Kepler motion, or so called, solar inertial motion (SIM). This means that the Sun is shifted, or wobbling from its focus/barycentre position on two millennial scale, so that Sun-Earth distance has to change on the two millennial period.

Basically, this happens because of the gravitation from Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus, the Sun does not sit in the focus of the ellipse of the Earth orbit, but performs the motion called SIM (wobbling on smaller orbits) about this focus. This principle of wobbling stars is used to search for exoplanets because wobbling star proves that it has a planetary system attached. In fact, the official ephemeris of the Sun-Earth distance taken from Paris-Meudon observatory and NASA JPL sites show that in the millennium 1600-2600 the Sun in February-June of every year is closer to the Earth orbit when the Sun is closer to the point of the spring equinox of the Northern hemisphere, leaving the Earth to be further from the Sun in August-December than in the usual elliptical orbit when the Sun is in its focus.

This SIM leads to an increase of the solar radiation deposited to the Earth every year during the first half of a year and, thus, to the increase of the terrestrial temperature in March-July of every year by approximately 10-12 W/m2 for each hemisphere. With the exchange of solar heating via the ocean the terrestrial atmosphere is heated to higher temperatures owing this SIM, and this extra heating occurs since the Maunder Minimum to last until 2600. The SIM provides the extra-solar heating of terrestrial atmosphere, which is not considered in the IPCC models.

Hence, the solar irradiance is not a constant, but changes on a scale
of 11 and 350 years, as induced by the solar dynamo action,
and on a two-millennial scale as induced by the solar inertial motion.

Q. In other words, you are saying that IPCC found in the CO2 the wrong source of increasing terrestrial temperature?

A. Yes. In fact the increase of CO2 abundances is a consequence of the temperature increase but not its reason as Patrick Moore of Canada has shown in his book. The main part of solar radiation energy is stored in the Ultraviolet (UV) region, much less in the visible spectrum and even less in the infra-red spectrum where molecules of CO2 emit. CO2 molecules only re-scatter the UV solar emission in much weaker infrared part of solar spectrum. CO2 does not have the emission energy to heat anything because its radiation is the in low energy infra-red range! The abundances of CO2 molecules increases every year, this is correct, but because the Sun deposits more radiation to Earth and other planets owing to SIM.

The IPCC models calculate the emission from the layer containing increased number of CO2 molecules by simply adding all the emission by each extra CO2 molecules appeared in the past 200 years. This is not correct! Because the emission from a thick layer of CO2 is locked inside this layer by radiative transfer effects, so that the emission emitted outside this layer has a saturation effect independent on the abundance of CO2 inside the layer!

Instead, I have shown that owing to SIM, the increase of solar radiation in this millennium will be about about 10-12 W/m2 per hemisphere and per year, until around 2600.  This means that the temperature increase will continue by further 2.5-3.0C until 2600 independently of any actions on the Earth and other planets. If this extra-solar heating is included then the whole temperature increase since Maunder Minimum is provided by the solar radiation because of SIM as it should because it is the only heating we have in the solar system.

In conclusion, the real reason of the current heating of terrestrial atmosphere since
the Maunder minimum is this extra-solar heating caused by the orbital motion of the Sun.
And currently the Sun is already visibly closer to the Earth (and other planet orbits)
during the springs and summers.

Q. Is there a way to test your theory?

A. Sure, it is. In the next 30 years it will be shown what is heating the Earth atmosphere: the Sun or human activity. Currently, the Sun is approaching the grand solar minimum (GSM) predicted by us in 2015, when the Sun itself is going into hibernation as all the observations of sunspots show, producing less and less active regions, flares, sunspots and coronal mass ejections. This should cause a steaming decrease of the terrestrial temperature by up to 1C in cycle 26 (2031-2042). This decrease should happen in spite the Sun already closer to Earth and increased by 2020 its temperature by 1.2C since the Maunder minimum.

If AGW were in action, then we would not observe any decrease
of the terrestrial temperature, only its increase.

However, this year and a few previous years show clearly that the Earth is on the course to a decrease of terrestrial temperature. We will see the terrestrial temperature to decrease and rather dramatically decrease in the next decade or two because of the reduced activity, or GSM, of the Sun.

Q. I imagine that the whole issue, including your finding, is still quite controversial. Would you then agree that it is safe to say that the matter is quite far from being settled?

A. Definitely!

Well, in the medieval age the settled model of the solar system was Ptolemy’s model where the Sun and planets revolve about the Earth. They invented two circles for each planet to explain their strange jumps on the sky. The church considered the science settled then.

So settled that when Copernicus proposed in 1532 the heliocentric system, where the Sun is the main central star and all planets revolve about it, they considered it as heresy. We know what happened to Giordano Bruno and led to Galileo to deny Copernicus model to survive.

Until nearly a century later, in 1610-1620 Kepler formulated three laws of the planets revolving about the central star. But only in 1665 or 1666 Isaak Newton discovered the gravity, which was only roughly (via central star-planets) included into Kepler’s laws.

And only in 1965 Jose calculated the gravity effects not only of the central star on its planets but also of the planets on the central star, thus discovering the star’s motion, naming it SIM.

Maybe it is the time to progress correctly with the orbital effects
of solar and planetary motion!

 

Social Justice Sendup

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Long before BLM flash mobs, calls to “Defund the Police” and ultra-liberal prosecutors blind to BIPOC misdemeanors or even felonies, Bluesman R.L. Burnside dropped his song “Nothin’ Man,” a satirical sendup of the sappy social justice mindset. (Closed captions are an option.)

R. L. Burnside (1926-2005) Blues Hall of Fame

Ironically, Burnside Street is a major thoroughfare of Portland, Oregon, one of the cities most damaged by social justice politicians. East Burnside Street and 122nd Avenue is the most dangerous spot of the most dangerous neighborhood when it comes to shootings. (2023)

Don’t Buy “Planetary Boundaries” Hype

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Latest diagram from Stockholm Resilience Centre

The usual suspects are beating on their “planetary boundaries” drum to scare up submission to Zero Carbon restrictions.  Remember these are the same climate justice warriors pushing the notion of a new geological era named “Anthropocene”.  For example, cue the following:

Six of nine planetary boundaries now exceeded–Phys.org

Humans Have Crossed 6 of 9 ‘Planetary Boundaries’–Scientific American

Earth is now outside most of the “planetary boundaries” under which human civilization emerged–TechSpot

Six out of 9 planetary boundaries breached, Earth increasingly becoming uninhabitable for humans–MSN.com

Humanity deep in the danger zone of planetary boundaries: study–YAHOO!News

Etc., Etc. Etc.

Background

In 2009, a group of 29 scholars published an article in Nature, advancing an approach to define a “safe operating space for humanity” (1). The group argued that we can identify a set of nine “planetary boundaries” that humanity must not cross at the cost of its own peril. Since this 2009 publication, the concept of planetary boundaries has been highly influential in generating academic debate and in shaping research projects and policy recommendations worldwide. At the same time, the concept has come under heavy scrutiny as well, and many critics have taken the floor contesting the broader framework as well as its implementation and interpretation. Partially because of this critique, the original proposition of nine planetary boundaries has undergone various reformulations and updates by their proponents and an emerging network of scholars specializing in planetary boundary research.

The original 2009 paper in Nature suggested nine boundary conditions in the earth system that could, if crossed, result in a major disruption in (parts of) the system and a transition to a different state, which is likely to be hostile to human prosperity. The proposed planetary boundaries included:

♦  climate change,
♦  biodiversity loss,
♦  the nitrogen cycle,
♦  the phosphorus cycle,
♦  stratospheric ozone depletion,
♦  ocean acidification,
♦  global freshwater use,
♦  land use change,
♦  atmospheric aerosol loading, and
♦  chemical pollution.

For each of these planetary boundaries, one or more control variables were identified (e.g., atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration), which in turn were assigned with numerical boundary values at a “safe” distance from dangerous levels, or where applicable, “tipping points” in earth system processes (1).

Eventually, the framework should allow for quantification of threshold parameters, as a guide also for political responses. For some planetary boundaries, the group in 2009 suggested that the current state of knowledge was too uncertain to allow for quantification. Yet, for other earth system processes, the group felt confident enough to suggest a specific boundary value. In this endeavor, they erred on the side of caution and a strict interpretation of the precautionary principle: Where they saw remaining uncertainties, the group suggested the lower values for the boundary that they identified.

They concluded that three planetary boundaries had been crossed already.

On climate change, for instance, the boundary value proposed was 350 ppm, which had been passed long ago in the second half of the twentieth century. Regarding biodiversity, the current extinction rate is more than 100 extinct species per million species per year, whereas the suggested boundary was 10 extinctions. As for the nitrogen cycle, humans remove today approximately 121 million tons of nitrogen per year from the atmosphere, whereas a safe rate would be a maximum of 35 million tons. In these three areas, therefore, this analysis suggested that humankind had pushed the earth system past planetary boundaries and possibly dangerous levels, into a new—and unknown—world.  Source: The Boundaries of the Planetary Boundary Framework: A Critical Appraisal of Approaches to Define a “Safe Operating Space” for Humanity.  Annual Review of Environment and Resources October 2020

We don’t know how long we can keep transgressing these key boundaries before combined pressures lead to irreversible change and harm.–Johan Rockström, co-author and Centre researcher

Critics of the Planetary Boundaries Framework

Leaving aside those who want the boundaries to be tighter and harder than presented, let’s hear from critics challenging the whole enterprise. Shortly after the invention of “planetary boundaries,” Breakthrough Institute published a thorough critique of the notion and the framework.  Planetary Boundaries: A Review of the Evidence.  Linus Blomqvist (2012)

The planetary boundaries hypothesis – embraced by United Nations bodies and leading nongovernmental organizations like Oxfam and WWF – has serious scientific flaws and is a misleading guide to global environmental management, according to a new report by the Breakthrough Institute. The hypothesis, which will be debated this month at the UN Earth Summit in Brazil, posits that there are nine global biophysical limits to human development. But after an extensive literature review and informal peer review by leading experts, the Breakthrough Institute has found the concept of “planetary boundaries” to be a poor basis for policy and for understanding local and global environmental challenges.

KEY FINDINGS

♦   Six of the “planetary boundaries” — land-use change, biodiversity loss, nitrogen levels, freshwater use, aerosol loading, and chemical pollution — do not have planetary biophysical boundaries in themselves.

♦   Aside from their impacts on the global climate, these non-threshold “boundaries” operate on local and regional, not global, levels.

♦   There is little evidence to support the claim that transgressing any of the six non-threshold boundaries would have a net negative effect on human material welfare.  The full report is linked below:

A new report from the Breakthrough Institute highlights scientific flaws
of the “planetary boundaries” hypothesis

Planetary Boundaries as Power Grab–Giving Political Decisions a Scientific Sheen–Roger Pielke Jr. (2013)

When the cover of the Economist famously announced ‘Welcome to the anthropocene’ a couple of years ago, was it welcoming us to a new geological epoch, or a dangerous new world of undisputed scientific authority and anti-democratic politics?

The basis for the power grab by the experts – really old wine in new bottles – is the fashionable idea of “planetary boundaries“ which holds that there are hard and fast ecological limits within which human activity must be constrained. The concept is much contested scientifically — such as in this excellent review by my colleagues at The Breakthrough Institute.

A real-world example of the implications of the planetary boundaries political philosophy is vividly seen through the issue of global energy access. Future global development, at least in the short term, necessarily will involve trade offs between expanded use of carbon-emitting fossil fuels and the expansion of energy access to the world’s poorest. The planetary boundaries advocates, consist with their hierarchical values framework, call for “universal clean energy” and recommend development targets focused not on measuring expanded energy access, but rather carbon dioxide emissions (here in PDF).

In other words, expanded energy access to the world’s poorest is deemed acceptable
only if it first satisfies the demands of planetary boundaries – in other words,
the political demands of the scientists couched in the inviolable authority of science.

An major recent critique was: Planetary Boundaries for Biodiversity:  Implausible Science, Pernicious Policies  by Montoya, Donohue and Pimm. Trends in Ecology and Evolution (2018)

The notion of a ‘safe operating space for biodiversity’ is vague and encourages harmful policies. Attempts to fix it strip it of all meaningful content. Ecology is rapidly gaining insights into the connections between biodiversity and ecosystem stability. We have no option but to understand ecological complexity and act accordingly.

How best should environmental science articulate its concerns, set research agendas, and advise policies?One solution embraces the notion of planetary boundaries [1] arguing that global environmental processes very generally have ‘tipping points’. These are catastrophes involving thresholds beyond which there will be rapid transitions to new states that are very much less favorable to human existence than current states. The associated notion is that humanity’s ‘business as usual’ can only continue so long as it remains within some ‘safe operating space’.

We show that notions of planetary boundaries add no insight into our understanding
of the threats to biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, have no evidence to support them,
are too vague for use by those who manage biodiversity, and promote pernicious policies.

Fatally, the boundaries framework lacks clear definitions, or it has too many conflicting definitions, does not specify units, and fails to define terms operationally, thus prohibiting application by those who set policy or manage natural resources. Moreover, recent reviews indicate that tipping points occur only rarely in
natural systems [6], while policies related to boundaries are unlikely to be evidence based. A need for operational definitions to aid managers is self-evident [7].

At the heart of the problem are terms such as ‘planetary boundaries’, but also ‘sustainability’, ‘health’, ‘harmony’, and others, that are emotionally appealing but rarely, if ever, defined. They all speak to the urgent need to understand how human impacts change ecosystems, when at best we aspire to protect only
half of it. We must set policies and establish management for the vast tracts of land and sea that we do not protect. Fatally, those who do so often use language that does not borrow from the existing knowledge about ecosystem processes, nor readily translates its aspirations to those who study them [7].

See Also:

Planetary Boundaries as Millenarian Prophesies  Malthusian Echoes

The identification of the planetary boundaries is dependent on the normative assumptions made, for example, concerning the value of biodiversity and the desirability of the Holocene. Rather than non-negotiables, humanity faces a system of trade-offs – not only economic, but moral and aesthetic as well. Deciding how to balance these trade-offs is a matter of political contestation (Blomqvist et al, 2012:37). What counts as “unacceptable environmental change” is not a matter of scientific fact, but involves judgments concerning the value of the things to be affected by the potential changes. The framing of planetary boundaries as being scientifically derived non-negotiable limits, obscures the inherent normativity of deciding how to react to environmental change. Presenting human values as facts of nature is an effective political strategy to shut down debate.

Beyond Planetary Boundaries by Michael Shellenberger, Ted Nordhaus, and Linus Blomqvist (2012)

There are useful implications for environmental change science that can be drawn from where planetary boundaries went wrong. First, any pragmatic framework on environmental change must look at benefits and costs. Some of the hypothesis’s authors have said that their motivation was to provide a useful framework for helping global leaders manage environmental change. We applaud and support this motivation. But for any environmental change framework to be useful, it must seek to understand not only the costs of change but also its benefits.

One of the implications of this is that simply measuring variance from Holocene baselines is a highly misleading metric of human sustainability. Since so much variance from the Holocene has been good for humans, future environmental change cannot be assumed, as planetary boundaries does, to be negative for our welfare.

 

IPCC Guilty of “Prosecutor’s Fallacy”

Posted on by Ron Clutz

IPCC made an illogical argument in a previous report as explained in a new GWPF paper The Prosecutor’s Fallacy and the IPCC Report.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

London, 13 September – A new paper from the Global Warming Policy Foundation reveals that the IPCC’s 2013 report contained a remarkable logical fallacy.

The author, Professor Norman Fenton, shows that the authors of the Summary for Policymakers claimed, with 95% certainty, that more than half of the warming observed since 1950 had been caused by man. But as Professor Fenton explains, their logic in reaching this conclusion was fatally flawed.

“Given the observed temperature increase, and the output from their computer simulations of the climate system, the IPCC rejected the idea that less than half the warming was man-made. They said there was less than a 5% chance that this was true.”

“But they then turned this around and concluded that there was a 95% chance
that more than half of observed warming was man-made.”

This is an example of what is known as the Prosecutor’s Fallacy, in which the probability of a hypothesis given certain evidence, is mistakenly taken to be the same as the probability of the evidence given the hypothesis.

As Professor Fenton explains

“If an animal is a cat, there is a very high probability that it has four legs.
However, if an animal has four legs, we cannot conclude that it is a cat.
It’s a classic error, and is precisely what the IPCC has done.”

Professor Fenton’s paper is entitled The Prosecutor’s Fallacy and the IPCC Report.

What the number does and does not mean

Recall that the particular ‘climate change number’ that I was asked to explain was the number 95: specifically, relating to the assertion made in the IPCC 2013 Report of ‘at least 95% degree of certainty that more than half the recent warming is man-made’.  The ‘recent warming’ related to the period 1950–2010. So, the assertion is about the probability of humans causing most of this warming.

Before explaining the problem with this assertion, we need to make clear that (although superficially similar) it is very different to another more widely known assertion (still promoted by NASA) that ‘97% of climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming and climate change’. That assertion was simply based on a flawed survey of authors of published papers and has been thoroughly debunked.

The 95% degree of certainty is a more serious claim.
But the  case made for it in the IPCC report is also flawed.

[Commment: In the short video above, Norman Fenton explains the fallacy IPCC committed.  Synopsis of example.  A man dies is a very rowdy gathering of young men.  A size 13 footprint is found on the body.  Fred is picked up by the police.  He admits to being there but not to killing anyone, despite wearing size 13 shoes.  Since statistics show that only 1% of young men have size 13 feet, the prosecutor claims a 99% chance Fred is guilty.  The crowd was reported to be on the order of 1000, so  there were likely 10 others with size 13 shoes.  So in fact there is only a 10% chance Fred is guilty.]

The flaw in the IPCC summary report

It turns out that the assertion that ‘at least 95% degree of certainty that more than half the recent warming is man-made’ is  based on the same fallacy. In my article about the programme, I highlighted this concern as follows:

The real probabilistic meaning of the 95% figure. In fact it comes from a classical hypothesis test in which observed data is used to test the credibility of the ‘null hypothesis’. The null hypothesis is the ‘opposite’ statement to the one believed to be true, i.e. ‘Less than half the warming in the last 60 years is man-made’. If, as in this case, there is only a 5% probability of observing the data if the null hypothesis is true, the statisticians equate this figure (called a p-value) to a 95% confidence that we can reject the null hypothesis.

But the probability here is a statement about the data given the hypothesis. It is not generally the same as the probability of the hypothesis given the data (in fact equating the two is often referred to as the ‘prosecutors fallacy’, since it is an error often made by lawyers when interpreting statistical evidence).

IPCC defined ‘extremely likely’ as at least 95% probability.  The basis for the claim is found in Chapter 10 of the detailed Technical Summary, which describes various climate change simulation models, which reject the null hypothesis (that more than half the warming was not man-made) at the 5% significance level. Specifically, in the simulation models, if you assumed that there was little man-made impact, then there was less than 5% chance of observing the warming that has been measured. In other words, the models do not support the null hypothesis of little man-made climate change. The problem is that, even if the models were accurate (and it is unlikely that they are) we cannot conclude that there is at least a 95% chance that more than half the warming was man-made, because doing so is the fallacy of the transposed conditional.

The illusion of confidence in the coin example comes from ignoring (the ‘prior probability’) of how rare the double-headed coins are. Similarly, in the case of climate change there is no allowance made for the prior probability of man-made climate change, i.e. how likely it is that humans rather than other factors such as solar activity cause most of the warming. After all, previous periods of warming certainly could not have been caused by increased greenhouse gases from humans, so it seems reasonable to assume – before we have considered any of the evidence – that the probability humans caused most of the recent increase in temperature to be very low. 

Only the assumptions of the simulation models are allowed,
and other explanations are absent.

In both of these circumstances, classical statistics can then be used to deceive you into presenting an illusion of confidence when it is not justified.

See Also 

Beliefs and Uncertainty: A Bayesian Primer

 

You pick one unopened door. Monty opens one other door. Do you stay with your choice or switch?

Monty Hall Problem Simulator

 

Ocean Warming Crest August 2023, Solar Coincidence?

Posted on by Ron Clutz

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;
  • Major El Ninos have been 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 chart below shows SST monthly anomalies as reported in HadSST4 starting in 2015 through August 2023.  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 in 2015-2016 the Tropics and SH peaked in between two summer NH spikes.  That pattern repeated in 2019-2020 with a lesser Tropics peak and SH bump, but with higher NH spikes. By end of 2020, cooler SSTs in all regions took the Global anomaly well below the mean for this period.  In 2021 the summer NH summer spike was joined by warming in the Tropics but offset by a drop in SH SSTs, which raised the Global anomaly slightly over the mean.

Then in 2022, another strong NH summer spike peaked in August, but this time both the Tropic and SH were countervailing, resulting in only slight Global warming, later receding to the mean.   Oct./Nov. temps dropped  in NH and the Tropics took the Global anomaly below the average for this period. After an uptick in December, temps in January 2023 dropped everywhere, strongest in NH, with the Global anomaly further below the mean since 2015.

Now comes El Nino as shown by the upward spike in the Tropics since January, the anomaly nearly tripling from 0.38C to 1.06C.  Now in August 2023, all regions rose, especially NH up from 0.70C to now 1.37C, pulling up the global anomaly to a new high for this period. 

Comment:

The climatists have seized on this unusual warming as proof of their Zero Carbon agenda, without addressing how impossible it would be for CO2 warming the air to raise ocean temperatures.  It is the ocean that warms the air, not the other way around.  Recently Steven Koonin had this to say about the phonomenon confirmed in the graph above:

El Nino is a phenomenon in the climate system that happens once every four or five years.  Heat builds up in the equatorial Pacific to the west of Indonesia and so on.  Then when enough of it builds up it surges across the Pacific and changes the currents and the winds.  As it surges toward South America it was discovered and named in the 19th century  It is well understood at this point that the phenomenon has nothing to do with CO2.

Now people talk about changes in that phenomena as a result of CO2 but it’s there in the climate system already and when it happens it influences weather all over the world.   We feel it when it gets rainier in Southern California for example.  So for the last 3 years we have been in the opposite of an El Nino, a La Nina, part of the reason people think the West Coast has been in drought.

It has now shifted in the last months to an El Nino condition that warms the globe and is thought to contribute to this Spike we have seen. But there are other contributions as well.  One of the most surprising ones is that back in January of 2022 an enormous underwater volcano went off in Tonga and it put up a lot of water vapor into the upper atmosphere. It increased the upper atmosphere of water vapor by about 10 percent, and that’s a warming effect, and it may be that is contributing to why the spike is so high.

A longer view of SSTs

Open image in new tab to enlarge.

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. There were strong cool periods before and after the 1998 El Nino event. Then SSTs in all regions returned to the mean in 2001-2. 

SSTS fluctuate around the mean until 2007, when another, smaller ENSO event occurs. There is cooling 2007-8,  a lower peak warming in 2009-10, following by cooling in 2011-12.  Again SSTs are average 2013-14.

Now a different pattern appears.  The Tropics cooled 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 were 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.  In 2021-22 there were again summer NH spikes, but in 2022 moderated first by cooling Tropics and SH SSTs, then in October to January 2023 by deeper cooling in NH and Tropics.  

Now in 2023 the Tropics flipped from below to well above average, while NH has produced a summer peak with August higher than any previous year. In fact, the summer warming peaks in NH have occurred in August or September, so this number is likely the crest.

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.

Contemporary AMO Observations

Through January 2023 I depended on the Kaplan AMO Index (not smoothed, not detrended) for N. Atlantic observations. But it is no longer being updated, and NOAA says they don’t know its future.  So I find that ERSSTv5 AMO dataset has data through August.  It differs from Kaplan, which reported average absolute temps measured in N. Atlantic.  “ERSST5 AMO  follows Trenberth and Shea (2006) proposal to use the NA region EQ-60°N, 0°-80°W and subtract the global rise of SST 60°S-60°N to obtain a measure of the internal variability, arguing that the effect of external forcing on the North Atlantic should be similar to the effect on the other oceans.”  So the values represent sst anomaly differences between the N. Atlantic and the Global ocean.

The chart above confirms what Kaplan also showed.  As August is the hottest month for the N. Atlantic, its varibility, high and low, drives the annual results for this basin.  Note also the peaks in 2010, lows after 2014, and a rise in 2021. Now in 2023 the peak is nearly 1.4C.  An annual chart below is informative:

Note the difference between blue/green years, beige/brown, and purple/red years.  2010, 2021, 2022 all peaked strongly in August or September.  1998 and 2007 were mildly warm.  2016 and 2018 were matching or cooler than the global average.  2023 started out slightly warm, then in May and June spiked to match 2010. Now there are highs in August and the peak in July.

The pattern suggests the ocean may be demonstrating a stairstep pattern like that we have also seen in HadCRUT4. 

The purple line is the average anomaly 1980-1996 inclusive, value 0.18.  The orange line the average 1980-202306, value 0.38, also for the period 1997-2012. The red line is 2013-202306, value 0.64. As noted above, these rising stages are driven by the combined warming in the Tropics and NH, including both Pacific and Atlantic basins.

Curiosity:  Solar Coincidence?

The news about our current solar cycle 25 is that the solar activity is hitting peak numbers now and higher  than expected 1-2 years in the future.  As livescience put it:  Solar maximum could hit us harder and sooner than we thought. How dangerous will the sun’s chaotic peak be?  Some charts from spaceweatherlive look familar to these sea surface temperature charts.

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? And is the sun adding forcing to this process?

Space weather impacts the ionosphere in this animation. Credits: NASA/GSFC/CIL/Krystofer Kim

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

USS Pearl Harbor deploys Global Drifter Buoys in Pacific Ocean

 

 

More Proof CO2 Global Warming is Bogus

Posted on by Ron Clutz

More Proof That CO2 Climate “Control Knob” Is Bogus from C3 Headlines

Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) published their August 2023 global lower troposphere (LT) dataset, and it validates that global temperatures have increased over recent months. However, the world remains in a very slight cooling trend since the start of 2015—over 8.5 years.

By combining the RSS data with NOAA’s CO2 data, it’s possible to calculate whether the past three years of rising atmospheric CO2 are causing LT temperatures to increase.

As this chart confirms, the monthly moving three-year CO2 increases
have zero correlation (R2 = 0.00007) with monthly temperatures.

It also affirms that the widely claimed “control knob” is nothing more than political science fiction.

Additional global and regional temp charts.

Notes: Excel used for all calculations and plotting.