Month: December 2023

Fear Not for Arctic Ice New Year 2024

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Impressive Arctic ice recovery continued in December as seen in the animation below:

The month of December 2023 shows Hudson Bay (lower right) starting with some western shore ice and ending 92% ice covered, adding in that basin ~800k km2. Just above Hudson, you can see the Gulf of St. Lawrence icing over, and Baffin Bay adding ice as well, now up to 50% of its annual maximum.

At the extreme and lower left, Okhotsk and Bering Seas also start with little shore ice. Okhotsk grew ice extent from 57k km2 up to 530k, 62% of its max last March.  Bering grew from 48k up to 478k km2, 56% of its max.  At the top Kara freezes over and Barents and Greenland Seas add ice to their margins. The graph below shows the December ice recovery. (Day 365 coming, and may be delayed by holiday.)

Note the average year adds 2M km2 while 2023 added ~2.5M, now 361k km2 above average. SII started 200k km2 lower than MASIE and ended up with the same deficit. Note that the other years are not far from the 17-year average at year end.

The table below shows year-end ice extents in the various Arctic basins compared to the 17-year averages and some recent years.

Region 2023364 Day 364 2023-Ave. 2007364 2023-2007
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere 13335688 12974817  360871  13049737 285951 
 (1) Beaufort_Sea 1070966 1070352  614  1069711 1255 
 (2) Chukchi_Sea 966006 963344  2662  965971 35 
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea 1087137 1087133  4  1087120 17 
 (4) Laptev_Sea 897845 897841  4  897845 0 
 (5) Kara_Sea 923106 880831  42275  871851 51255 
 (6) Barents_Sea 423772 415592  8179  334577 89194 
 (7) Greenland_Sea 739662 579776  159886  666135 73528 
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence 911691 965051  -53360  1074827 -163136 
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago 854860 853421  1439  852556 2304 
 (10) Hudson_Bay 1165656 1234412  -68757  1260856 -95201 
 (11) Central_Arctic 3218074 3205662  12412  3199726 18348 
 (12) Bering_Sea 472476 391321  81155  373942 98534 
 (13) Baltic_Sea 44969 27442  17527  9972 34997 
 (14) Sea_of_Okhotsk 530117 377911  152206  371241 158876 

This year’s ice extent is 361k km2 or 2.8% above average.  Only Baffin Bay and Hudson have deficits to average, more than offset by surpluses elsewhere, espcially Greenland, Bering and Okhotsk seas. Many of the others are already maxed out.

Comparing Arctic Ice at End of Years

At  the bottom is a discussion of statistics on year-end Arctic Sea Ice extents.  The values are averages of the last five days of each year.  End of December is a neutral point in the melting-freezing cycle, midway between September minimum and March maximum extents.

Background from Previous Post Updated to Year-End 2023

Some years ago reading a thread on global warming at WUWT, I was struck by one person’s comment: “I’m an actuary with limited knowledge of climate metrics, but it seems to me if you want to understand temperature changes, you should analyze the changes, not the temperatures.” That rang bells for me, and I applied that insight in a series of Temperature Trend Analysis studies of surface station temperature records. Those posts are available under this heading. Climate Compilation Part I Temperatures

This post seeks to understand Arctic Sea Ice fluctuations using a similar approach: Focusing on the rates of extent changes rather than the usual study of the ice extents themselves. Fortunately, Sea Ice Index (SII) from NOAA provides a suitable dataset for this project. As many know, SII relies on satellite passive microwave sensors to produce charts of Arctic Ice extents going back to 1979.  The current Version 3 has become more closely aligned with MASIE, the modern form of Naval ice charting in support of Arctic navigation. The SII User Guide is here.

There are statistical analyses available, and the one of interest (table below) is called Sea Ice Index Rates of Change (here). As indicated by the title, this spreadsheet consists not of monthly extents, but changes of extents from the previous month. Specifically, a monthly value is calculated by subtracting the average of the last five days of the previous month from this month’s average of final five days. So the value presents the amount of ice gained or lost during the present month.

These monthly rates of change have been compiled into a baseline for the period 1980 to 2010, which shows the fluctuations of Arctic ice extents over the course of a calendar year. Below is a graph of those averages of monthly changes up to and including this year. Those familiar with Arctic Ice studies will not be surprised at the sine wave form. December end is a relatively neutral point in the cycle, midway between the September Minimum and March Maximum.

The graph makes evident the six spring/summer months of melting and the six autumn/winter months of freezing.  Note that June-August produce the bulk of losses, while October-December show the bulk of gains. Also the peak and valley months of March and September show very little change in extent from beginning to end.

The table of monthly data reveals the variability of ice extents over the last 4 decades.

The values in January show changes from the end of the previous December, and by summing twelve consecutive months we can calculate an annual rate of change for the years 1979 to 2023.

As many know, there has been a decline of Arctic ice extent over these 40 years, averaging 70k km2 per year. But year over year, the changes shift constantly between gains and losses, ranging up to +/- 500k km2.  Since 1989 the average yearend gain/loss is nearly zero, -0.033k km2 to be exact.

Moreover, it seems random as to which months are determinative for a given year. For example, much ado was printed about 2023 losing more ice than usual June through September. But then the final 3 months of 2023 more than made up for those summer losses, resulting in a sizeable gain for the year.

As it happens in this dataset, October has the highest rate of adding ice. The table below shows the variety of monthly rates in the record as anomalies from the 1980-2010 baseline. In this exhibit a red cell is a negative anomaly (less than baseline for that month) and blue is positive (higher than baseline).

Note that the  +/ –  rate anomalies are distributed all across the grid, sequences of different months in different years, with gains and losses offsetting one another.  As noted earlier,  in 2023 the outlier negative months were June through September where unusual amounts of ice were lost.  Then unusally strong gains in October and December resulted in a large annual gain, compared to the baseline. The bottom line presents the average anomalies for each month over the period 1979-2021.  Note the rates of gains and losses mostly offset, and the average of all months in the bottom right cell is virtually zero.

A final observation: The graph below shows the Yearend Arctic Ice Extents for the last 34 years.

Year-end Arctic ice extents (last 5 days of December) show three distinct regimes: 1988-1998, 1998-2010, 2010-2022. The average year-end extent 1989-2010 is 13.4M km2. In the last decade, 2011 was 13.0M km2, and six years later, 2017 was 12.3M km2. 2021 rose back to 13.06  2022 slipped back to 12.6M, and 2023 is back up to 13.0M. So for all the the fluctuations, the net is zero, or a gain of half a Wadham (0.5M) from 2010. Talk of an Arctic ice death spiral is fanciful.

These data show a noisy, highly variable natural phenomenon. Clearly, unpredictable factors are in play, principally water structure and circulation, atmospheric circulation regimes, and also incursions and storms. And in the longer view, today’s extents are not unusual.

 

 

Illustration by Eleanor Lutz shows Earth’s seasonal climate changes. If played in full screen, the four corners present views from top, bottom and sides. It is a visual representation of scientific datasets measuring Arctic ice extents.

 

No, NATO Chief, Climates Don’t Start Wars, People do

Posted on by Ron Clutz

In his American Thinker article Chris J. Krisinger reports on another distortion proclaimed at COP28  World Leaders’ Terror of Climate Change.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

[During his Air Force career, Colonel Krisinger served as military advisor to the assistant secretary of state for European affairs at the Department of State while working from the NATO Policy Office.  He is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and the Naval War College and was also a National Defense Fellow at Harvard University. ]

Playing to what amounted to a friendly home crowd at the Dubai U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP28), NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg went there to deliver a message touting a relationship between global security and climate change, while emphasizing the necessity of shifting military resources to combat global warming.

In his speech, set against a backdrop of the Ukraine war, he was adamant about the influence of climate change on international security with conflict actually undermining “our capability to combat climate change because resources that we should have used to combat climate change are spent on our protecting our security with our military forces.”  He would even become apologetic about the Alliance’s reliance on fossil fuel–intensive military machinery, telling the audience, “If you look at big battle tanks and the big battleships and fighter jets, they are very advanced and great in many ways, but they’re not very environmentally friendly.  They pollute a lot, so we need to get down the emissions.”

Stoltenberg’s address at COP28 comes not long after President Biden’s September declaration in Vietnam that “the only existential threat humanity faces even more frightening than a nuclear war is global warming.”  Then, just two days after the October 7 attack on Israel, instead of talking about hostages and the U.S. response, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby went in front of TV cameras defending that statement: “the president believes wholeheartedly that climate change is an existential threat to all of human life on the planet.”

But do world events — present or past — justify such inordinate interest by political leaders in climate change shaping the global security environment who go so far as to deem it an “existential threat to humankind”?  Does the still uncertain and arguable science of climate change cross a threshold to influence, even justify, Alliance or national decision-making to link defense and security policy, actions, and investments?  World events reminds us it does not.

The current century’s major conflicts — Iraq, Afghanistan, Assad’s Syria, Ethiopia’s Tigray war, Yemen’s and South Sudan’s civil wars, and more recently Ukraine and Israel’s war against Hamas — have no compelling environmental or climatological links, just as all other international conflicts in the post-WWII era did not.  ISIL, which once controlled large swaths of some of the planet’s most inhospitable desert areas in Syria and Iraq, professed no regard for “climate change” in its worldview, nor has Hamas or Hezbollah today, both of which also inhabit arid, hot desert lands.

Arguably, no conflict in human history, modern or otherwise, has a causal
(or effectual) relationship with climate change, despite the planet
undergoing periods of both warming and cooling.

Today’s foremost security threats — e.g., great power competition, cyber-attacks, piracy, weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, financial crises, dictatorships, nationalism, drug-trafficking, insurgencies, revolutions, Iran, North Korea, etc. — all continue to fester.  None can be persuasively linked to climate change, even as a worsening effect.  Further, climate change does not appear to drive the agendas or motives of global antagonists like Putin, Xi, Al-Shabaab, the Taliban, Kim, Khomeini, Assad, al-Qaeda, cartels, Hezb’allah, Hamas, the Houthis, Boko Haram, or others.

Instead, consider that environmental factors rarely incite
conflict within or between nations.  

In fact, the opposite — international cooperation — is the more likely outcome in concert with the human race’s innate ability to adapt to its environment.  The climate-security link Stoltenberg wants us to accept can be greatly overstated and instead aimed to serve political agendas and economics more than addressing real security threats.  What climate advocates further ignore or overlook is the slow, gradual process over years, decades, even centuries by which environmental phenomena occur, while ignoring empirical evidence of the pace, causes, and drivers of current events.  Climate change is not the catalyst determining whether conflict occurs or its severity.

Of more practical importance is that, should a military response be required,
military forces must be prepared to operate and prevail in
whatever weather extremes are encountered at that moment.  

Their equipment and resources must best perform their military function, regardless of environmental sensibilities.  In one telling example, if U.S. or NATO forces had been required to operate in Russia in 2012 along similar routes as the Wehrmacht in 1941 and Napoleon in 1812, they would have encountered worse cold and weather than in either of those campaigns, so infamously ravaged by winter.

In fact, Russia endured its harshest winter in over 70 years and had not experienced such a long cold spell since 1938, with temperatures 10–15 degrees below seasonal norms nationwide.  Like Russia, China’s 2012 winter temperatures were the lowest in almost three decades, cold enough to freeze coastal waters and trap hundreds of ships in ice.  Even today, had the COP28 conference been held at a European location, Stoltenberg may have become snowbound while traveling, with more of the continent under snow cover in December’s first week than in any year for more than a decade.

A Lufthansa aircraft at the snow-covered Munich airport on Saturday, Dec. 2, 2023. Photograph: Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/AP

A NATO alliance currently facing epic regional challenges cannot lose focus on core security and defense priorities or its profound grasp of the true origins, causes, and motives for human conflict.  Both military and political leaders cannot be distracted from true security threats — i.e., antagonists and competitors willfully and purposefully directing adversarial, often military, actions against a member nation with malicious intent — or not be prepared to operate and prevail in whatever weather or climatic conditions are encountered at that time.

With such clarity — absent the narrative, politics, uncertainty, and rhetoric of climate change — NATO, its member nations, and their leaders can then best direct its substantial enterprise towards those more numerous, serious, and pressing security threats facing the Alliance.

Background Food, Conflict and Climate

From data versus models department, a recent study contradicts claims linking human conflict to climate change by means of food shortages. From Dartmouth College March 1, 2018 comes Food Abundance and Violent Conflict in Africa.  by Ore Koren.  American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2018; Synopsis is from Science Daily (here) with my bolds.

Food abundance driving conflict in Africa, not food scarcity

The study refutes the notion that climate change will increase the frequency of civil war in Africa as a result of food scarcity triggered by rising temperatures and drought. Most troops in Africa are unable to sustain themselves due to limited access to logistics and state support, and must live off locally sourced food. The findings reveal that the actors are often drawn to areas with abundant food resources, whereby, they aim to exert control over such resources.

To examine how the availability of food may have affected armed conflict in Africa, the study relies on PRIO-Grid data from over 10,600 grid cells in Africa from 1998 to 2008, new agricultural yields data from EarthStat and Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset, which documents incidents of political violence, including those with and without casualties. The data was used to estimate how annual local wheat and maize yields (two staple crops) at a local village/town level may have affected the frequency of conflict. To capture only the effects of agricultural productivity on conflict rather than the opposite, the analysis incorporates the role of droughts using the Standardized Precipitation Index, which aggregates monthly precipitation by cell year.

The study identifies four categories in which conflicts may arise over food resources in Africa, which reflect the interests and motivations of the respective group:

  1. State and military forces that do not receive regular support from the state are likely to gravitate towards areas, where food resources are abundant in order to feed themselves.
  2. Rebel groups and non-state actors opposing the government may be drawn to food rich areas, where they can exploit the resources for profit.
  3. Self-defense militias and civil defense forces representing agricultural communities in rural regions, may protect their communities against raiders and expand their control into other areas with arable land and food resources.
  4. Militias representing pastoralists communities live in mainly arid regions and are highly mobile, following their cattle or other livestock, rather than relying on crops. To replenish herds or obtain food crops, they may raid other agriculturalist communities.

These actors may resort to violence to seek access to food, as the communities that they represent may not have enough food resources or the economic means to purchase livestock or drought-resistant seeds. Although droughts can lead to violence, such as in urban areas; this was found not to be the case for rural areas, where the majority of armed conflicts occurred where food crops were abundant.

Food scarcity can actually have a pacifying effect.“Examining food availability and the competition over such resources, especially where food is abundant, is essential to understanding the frequency of civil war in Africa,” says Ore Koren, a U.S. foreign policy and international security fellow at Dartmouth College and Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of Minnesota. “Understanding how climate change will affect food productivity and access is vital; yet, predictions of how drought may affect conflict may be overstated in Africa and do not get to the root of the problem. Instead, we should focus on reducing inequality and improving local infrastructure, alongside traditional conflict resolution and peace building initiatives,” explains Koren.

Summary:

In Africa, food abundance may be driving violent conflict rather than food scarcity, according to a new study. The study refutes the notion that climate change will increase the frequency of civil war in Africa as a result of food scarcity triggered by rising temperatures and drought.

Reading the study itself shows considerable rigor in sorting out dependent and independent variables.  It is certain that armed conflicts destroy food resources, while it is claimed that food shortages from climate events like drought cause the conflicts in the first place.  From Koren:

Moreover, in addition to illustrating the validity of this mechanism by the process of elimination—that is, by empirically accounting for a variety of alternative mechanisms— figure 2 further highlights the interactions between economic inequality, food resources, and conflict. Here, nonparametric regression plots—which do not enforce a modeling structure on the data and hence provide a more flexible method of visualizing relationships between different factors—show the correlations of local yields and conflict with respect to economic development as approximated using nighttime light levels. As shown, conflict occurs more frequently in cells with more crop productivity, but relatively low levels of economic development, where—based on anecdotal evidence at least—limitations on food access are more likely (Roncoli, Ingram, and Kirshen 2001).

In Addition

https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2017/07/14/updated-climates-dont-start-wars-people-do/

 

 

McKitrick: COP28 Worse Threat Than You Think

Posted on by Ron Clutz

A demonstration against fossil fuels at the COP28 United Nations climate summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. PHOTO BY PETER DEJONG/AP

Ross McKitrick writes at Financial Post: The only thing wrong with the globalist climate agenda — the people won’t have it  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Phasing out fossil fuels is going to cost way more than ordinary people
will accept.  Delegates to COP28 clearly didn’t understand that

It’s tempting to dismiss the outcome of COP28, the recent United Nations climate change conference in the United Arab Emirates, as mere verbiage, especially the “historic” UAE Consensus about transitioning away from fossil fuels. After all, this is the 28th such conference and the previous ones all pretty much came to nothing. On a chart showing the steady rise in global CO2 emissions since 1950 you cannot spot when the 1997 Kyoto Protocol entered into force (2002), with its supposedly historic language binding developed countries to cap their CO2 emissions at five per cent below 1990 levels by 2012, which they didn’t do. The 2015 Paris Agreement also contained “historic” language that bound countries to further deep emission reductions. Yet the COP28 declaration begins with an admission that the parties are not on track for compliance.

Still, we should not overlook the real meaning of the UAE Consensus.

COP agreements used to focus on one thing: targets for reducing greenhouse gases. The UAE Consensus is very different. Across its 196 paragraphs and 10 supplementary declarations it’s a manifesto for global central planning. In their own words, some 90,000 government functionaries aspire to oversee and micromanage agriculture, finance, energy, manufacturing, gender relations, health care, air conditioning, building design and countless other economic and social decisions. It’s all supposedly in the name of fighting climate change, but that’s just the pretext. Take climate away and they’d likely appeal to something else.

Climate change doesn’t necessitate such plans.

Economists have been studying climate change for many decades and have never considered it grounds to phase out fossil fuels, micromanage society, manage gender relations and so on. Mainstream scientific findings, coupled with mainstream economic analysis, prescribe moderate emission-pricing policies that rely much more on adaptation than mitigation.

The fact that the UAE Consensus is currently non-binding is beside the point. What matters is what the COP28 delegates have said they want to achieve. Two facts stand out: the consensus document announced plans that would cause enormous economic harm if implemented, and it was approved unanimously — yes, by everyone in the room.

The first point is best illustrated by the language around eliminating fossil fuels. Climate policy is supposed to be about optimally reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. As technology gradually allows emissions to be de-coupled from fuel use, there may eventually be no need to cut back on fuels. But activist delegates insisted on abolitionist language anyway, making elimination of fossil fuels an end in itself. Such fuels are of course essential for our economic standard of living, and 30 years of economic analysis has consistently shown that, even taking account of emissions, phasing out fuels would do humanity far more harm than good. The Consensus statement ignores this, even while claiming to be guided by “the science.”

The second point refers to the fact that all representatives of all governments worldwide endorsed policies that will, if implemented, do extraordinary harm to their own people. Where governments have made even small attempts to take these radical steps, the public has rebelled. This calls into question whom the COP28 delegates actually “represent.” A few elected officials did attend, but no one voted for the great majority of attendees. And have no doubt: even if some heads of state, whether courageous or foolhardy, did go to COP intent on opposing the overall agenda, they would almost certainly be browbeaten into signing the final package.

The UAE Consensus is the latest indication that the real fault line in contemporary society is not right versus left, it’s the people versus (for lack of a better word) the globalists. A decade ago this term was only heard on the conspiracy fringe. It has since migrated to the mainstream as the most apt descriptor of a permanent transnational bureaucracy that aspires to run everything, even to the public’s detriment, while insulating themselves from democratic limits.

A hallmark of globalists is their credo of “rules for thee but not for me.” Thousands of delegates fly to Davos or to the year’s COP, many on private jets, to be wined and dined as they advise the rest of us to learn to do without.

Two sides of the same coin.

On both COVID-19 and climate change, the same elite has invoked “the science,” not in support of good decision-making, but as a talisman to justify everything they do, including censoring public debate. Complex and uncertain matters are reduced to dogmatic slogans by technocrats who force-feed political leaders a one-sided information stream. Experts outside the process are accorded standing based solely on their obeisance to the preferred narrative, not their knowledge or qualifications. Critics are attacked as purveyors of “misinformation” and “disinformation.” Any opposition to government plans therefore proves the need to suppress free speech.

Eventually, however, the people get the last word. And despite nonstop fear-mongering about an alleged climate crisis, the people tolerate climate policy only insofar as it costs almost nothing.

The climate movement may think that by embedding itself in the globalist elite it can accelerate policy adoption without needing to win elections. In fact, the opposite is happening. Globalists have co-opted the climate issue to try to sell a grotesque central planning agenda that the public has repeatedly rejected. If the UAE Consensus is the future of climate policy, climate policy’s failure is guaranteed.

Looking Into the Middle East Abyss

Posted on by Ron Clutz

With the chaos erupting in violent conflict in Gaza, and strong reactions around the world, this opinion from three years ago seems prescient.  Bret Stephens wrote at New York Times January 2020  Every time Palestinians say ‘no,’ they lose.  Text in italics with my bolds.

Regarding President Donald Trump’s peace plan for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the instant conventional wisdom is that it’s a geopolitical nonstarter, a gift to Benjamin Netanyahu and an electoral ploy by the president to win Jewish votes in Florida rather than Palestinian hearts in Ramallah.

It may be all of those things. But nobody will benefit less from a curt dismissal of the plan than the Palestinians themselves, whose leaders are again letting history pass them by.  The record of Arab-Israeli peace efforts can be summed up succinctly: Nearly every time the Arab side said no, it wound up with less.

That was true after it rejected the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan, which would have created a Palestinian state on a much larger footprint than the one that was left after Israel’s war of independence. It was true in 1967, after Jordan refused Israel’s entreaties not to attack, which resulted in the end of Jordanian rule in the West Bank.

It was true in 2000, when Syria rejected an Israeli offer to return the Golan Heights, which ultimately led to U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty of that territory. It was true later the same year, after Yasser Arafat refused Israel’s offer of a Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem, which led to two decades of terrorism, Palestinian civil war, the collapse of the Israeli peace camp and the situation we have now.

It’s in that pattern that the blunt rejection by Palestinian leaders of the Trump plan — the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, denounced it as a “conspiracy deal” — should be seen. Refusal today will almost inevitably lead to getting less tomorrow.

That isn’t to say that the plan, as it now stands, can come as anything but a disappointment to most Palestinians. It allows Israel to annex its West Bank settlements and the long Jordan Valley. It concedes full Israeli sovereignty over an undivided Jerusalem. It conditions eventual Palestinian statehood on full demilitarization of a Palestinian state and the disarming of Hamas. It compensates Palestinians for lost territories in the West Bank with remote territories near the Egyptian border. The map of a future Palestine looks less like an ordinary state than it does the MRI of a lung or kidney.

Then again, much of what the plan gives to Israel, Israel already has and will never relinquish — which explains why the plan was hailed not only by Netanyahu but also by his centrist rival Benny Gantz. Critics of Israeli policy often insist that a Palestinian state is necessary to preserve Israel as a Jewish democracy. True enough. But in that case, those critics should respect the painful conclusions Israelis have drawn about just what kind of Palestinian state they can safely accept.

More important, however, is what the plan offers ordinary Palestinians — and what it demands of their leaders. What it offers is a sovereign state, mostly contiguous territory, the return of prisoners, a link to connect Gaza and the West Bank, and $50 billion in economic assistance. What it demands is an end to anti-Jewish bigotry in school curricula, the restoration of legitimate political authority in Gaza and the dismantling of terrorist militias.

Taken together, this would be a historic achievement, not the “scam” that liberal critics of the deal claim. The purpose of a Palestinian state ought to be to deliver dramatically better prospects for the Palestinian people, not tokens of self-importance for their kleptocratic and repressive leaders.

That begins with improving the quality of Palestinian governance,
first of all by replacing leaders whose principal interests
lie in perpetuating their misrule.

If Abbas — now in the 16th year of his elected four-year term of office — really had Palestinian interests at heart, he would step down. So would Hamas’ cruel and cynical leaders in Gaza. That the peace plan insists on the latter isn’t an obstacle to Palestinian statehood. It’s a prerequisite for it.

At the same time, it’s also essential to temper Palestinian expectations. The Jewish state has thrived in part because it has always been prepared to make do with less. The Palestinian tragedy has been the direct result of taking the opposite approach: of insisting on the maximum rather than working toward the plausible. History rarely goes well for those who try to live it backward.

For all the talk about Trump’s plan being dead on arrival, it says something that it has been met with an open mind by some Arab states, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. They know only too well that the Arab world has more important challenges to deal with than Palestinian statehood. They know, too, that decades of relentless hostility toward the Jewish state have been a stupendous mistake. The best thing the Arab world could do for itself is learn from Israel, not demonize it.

That ought to go for the Palestinians as well. The old cliché about Palestinians never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity has, sadly, more than a bit of truth in it. Nobody ought to condemn them to make the same mistake again.

Bret Stephens is a regular columnist for The New York Times.

EV Push Imploding

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Levi Russell writes at Heartland The Rush to Force Everyone into Electric Vehicles is Imploding. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

A recently published article in the peer-reviewed academic journal Transportation Research tells us that cars, even the supposedly anointed battery electric variety, are far too convenient and that the state must be empowered to “restrict car use.” The authors tell us that converting car lanes to bus lanes have reduced car use in Oslo. No surprise there. The fact that academia is floating this sort of policy should concern anyone who has any inkling of mistrust of the federal government.

Truly our freedom of movement is in peril.

Electric vehicles are not nearly as popular as their advocates would have had us believe, as sales are now slumping in the face of rising interest rates and a lack of so-called fast chargers. As we begin to bump up against mined mineral constraints and international relations complications, there’s no doubt the cost of making these glorified toys will continue to rise. A recent Consumer Reports publication shows that, over the last 3 model years, electric vehicles are less reliable than normal gasoline and diesel vehicles. So, several states want to ban the sale of reliable, inexpensive gas and diesel cars and force us to buy less reliable electric cars. Note well that the superior reliability of hybrids is likely down to the fact that car makers who are better known for their reliability make more hybrids. There’s nothing inherent to a hybrid that would make it more reliable than a gasoline engine vehicle.

[And in addition: No one wants to buy used EVs and they’re piling up in weed-infested graveyards Fortune magazine. No One Wants Used EVs, Making New Ones a Tougher Sell Too Bloomberg ]

Even our ability to travel using air travel is under the gun. A CNN op-ed recently floated the idea of limiting air travel through the use of carbon (read: sin) passports. We will be limited to traveling based on the amount of carbon dioxide emitted during the flight. The author wants this applied to cruise ships as well. It’s not hard to see this applied to your car as well.

Of course, such rules will not apply to the super-wealthy climate grifters.
They’ll be jetting all over the globe for their very important climate conferences.

And it’s not just transportation. In September, Reuters “fact checked” a claim that US cities had agreed to limit meat consumption, finding the claim false. And yet, we are told on a nearly daily basis that eliminating beef consumption is necessary to save the planet. The sin of using coal (but not apparently to create steel) has become the sin of eating a steak. What’s next? Rice? Pork?

Beginning in 2024, the German government will empower local electricity providers to limit the flow of electricity to heat pumps and electric cars. Such limits were the stuff of alleged conspiracy theories mere months ago. Now they’re a reality. Germany’s suicidal attempt to power their grid with nothing but wind and solar, killing off their own nuclear power generation over the last 20 years, has led to energy rationing. It’s not as if this is unpredictable. The unreliability of so-called renewables is common knowledge among energy experts.

It’s sensible for those who are concerned about their ability to choose where and when they travel, what they eat, and when they turn on their heaters and air conditioners to be skeptical of every single attempt to accrue more power by state and federal governments. That skepticism should turn into activism against these power grabs. Anyone who tells you these power grabs aren’t coming is telling you not to believe your own eyes.

Postscript Absurdum

Canada poised to pass rules that all new vehicles must be zero-emissions by 2035 Source Financial Post

The act to be announced in coming days aims
to phase out the sale of new combustion vehicles

The new rules will require zero-emissions vehicles — which include battery electric, hydrogen and plug-in electric vehicles — to make up 20 per cent of all new car sales in 2026, 60 per cent in 2030 and 100 per cent in 2035, the reports said.

 

Milei Liberating Argentina

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The graph shows the rapid deterioration of Argentines’ wellbeing in the last decade, and why they turned to Milei for a new path.  Only Venezuela’s hard left socialist regime was more destructive than the Peronists governing Argentina.  Many doubted that Milei would follow through on his promises, no different than other politicians.  Boy are they mistaken, and also scared that libertarian economics will takeover elsewhere and dismantle governmental bureaucracies.  The latest report is from Monica Showalter at American Thinker Argentina’s Milei proves to be the world’s strangest ‘dictator,’ handing out freedom all over the place.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

According to Breitbart News:

Argentine President Javier Milei announced during a national broadcast on Wednesday night the signing of a Necessity and Urgency Decree (DNU), a form of executive order, that would modify or overturn an estimated 350 federal economic policies.

Milei’s executive order targeted nearly every aspect of the Argentine economy – including imports, price controls, health care, sports federations, landlord and tenant policies, and the yerba mate industry – in what he described as an attempt to impose a “shock stabilization plan” to prevent a financial catastrophe. Argentina is facing the worst economic crisis of its history as a result of decades of socialist policies, lavish government spending, and corruption, fueling skyrocketing rates of poverty, joblessness, and inflation. The nation’s inflation rate reached 160 percent in the days after Milei’s December 10 inauguration.

And yeah, it’s a lot of stuff:

Milei eliminated multiple laws that allow the state to control the prices of various goods and services. The “Rental Law,” which greatly limited what kind of lease contracts landlords and tenants can sign, no longer exists. The Argentine outlet Infobae noted that rents in Argentina increased by 300 percent year-on-year in 2023 under the Rental Law, despite socialist lawmakers insisting it would keep rents low.

The executive order also eliminated price control laws for artisanal products, regulations governing the purchasing of rural land, and the federal government’s Price Observatory, “to avoid the persecution of companies.” Customs regulations controlling imports and exports were also severely reduced and a national registry of importers and exporters will cease to exist, as the DNU noted Argentina was one of the few countries in the world to have such a registry. Milei’s executive order addressed Internet access, as well, greatly deregulating telecommunications.

The regulations targeted some of Argentina’s largest industries, including winemaking – freed from a restrictive state regulation system – and the cultivation of yerba mate, a plant used to make a hot herbal drink popular in Argentina. The order called for the modernization of the National Institute of Yerba Mate to limit the use of quality control regulations to suppress the industry. It made similar revisions to policies for mining, the airline industry, and sugar. On the subject of health care, the executive order dramatically deregulates the drug industry, allowing Argentines greater access to generic drugs and expanding the use of electronic prescriptions “to achieve greater agility in the industry and minimize costs.”

Food prices have reportedly dropped 15% overnight.

And what does the left call him after doling out all this freedom, freedom, freedom?

They have a mighty funny understanding of what a dictator is. Apparently if you free your country and deregulate everything that made it a living hell, you are a dictator to the left. The real dictators, of course, like Fidel Castro or whoever the heck has succeeded him, always get pilgrimages, always get passes.

But Milei slashes regulation to allow the private sector to finally breathe and blossom, well, he’s the dictator.

Obviously, the left has a thing against freedom. The more it’s handed out, the more upset it gets.  Sound like anyone north of Argentina that you might have heard of?  We learn a lot about the left here in the states just by watching how they react in Argentina.

And we can only conclude that if this is a dictator, let’s have more of them.

Postscript

The precipitous drop in living standards and the monster rise in poverty tells us the story of what socialism does and why Argentinians elected wildly radical libertarian Milei.

And if we look to the United States, the story is comparable and in some ways even more alarming: Under Joe Biden’s socialism, U.S. poverty has risen 5 percentage points from 7.4% to 12.4% over a mere one year’s time, not ten years, according to a report in Time magazine.

The U.S. poverty rate saw its largest one-year increase in history. 12.4% of Americans now live in poverty according to new 2022 data from the U.S. census, an increase from 7.4% in 2021. Child poverty also more than doubled last year to 12.4% from 5.2% the year before.

The U.S. poverty level is now $13,590 for individuals and $23,030 for a family of three. The new data shows that 37.9 million people lived in poverty in 2022.

That story is the same everywhere on what socialism does and why people take chances on change. The correlation is so close it needs to become better known: Vote for a socialist, find poverty as a result. Happens every time. (Source: Chart shows why Argentinians voted for Milei.)

Background Post: 

Why Milei is Argentina’s Last, Best Hope

 

Heroic Doctors Still Fighting Covid Tyranny

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Larry Kaifesh explains in his American Thinker article One Doctor’s Fight for Covid Justice.  Excerpts it italics with my bolds and added images.

Background

A physician with more than 25 years of experience, Dr. Mary Talley Bowden is board-certified in otolaryngology and sleep medicine.  In 2019, she founded BreatheMD in Houston.  Educated at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University, and the University of Texas Medical Branch, Dr. Bowden completed her residency at Stanford University.  She is one of the few direct care specialists in the U.S. who does not contract with any health insurance companies and strives to offer affordable care with clear pricing.

Dr. Bowden was targeted after speaking out against prescribed protocols for treating COVID-19 and the experimental COVID vaccine.  She has been a target of the Texas Medical Board, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and Houston Methodist Hospital for her early treatment of over 6,000 patients with COVID-19, despite her record including no deaths.

Public Health Descent into Covid Madness

In the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Bowden started using monoclonal antibodies to treat her patients and had great success.  She explained that whenever she needed more, she could order them, and they would be delivered the next day.  However, the government took over the distribution of the monoclonal antibodies.  When this happened, it became harder and harder for her to get them until the government just stopped shipping them.  Dr. Bowden says this was in order to push the COVID-19 vaccine.

The monoclonal antibodies were effective, and she said patients would turn the corner the next day if they were treated early.  She emphasized that early treatments lead to better outcomes.

When she could not get any more monoclonal antibodies delivered by the government, she worried there would not be anything else as effective.  However, she discovered that ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine worked just as well.

Her results highlight the effectiveness of her protocol in direct contrast to the protocols hospitals were using.  The hospital protocols are using are connected with countless deaths, hospitalizations, and adverse effects, according to the government data found on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

From early on in the pandemic, Dr. Bowden, and other doctors, were using ivermectin, the Nobel Prize–winning medication, in their extremely effective treatment protocols.  In response, the FDA initiated an aggressive campaign against using ivermectin in treating COVID-19.  The FDA used the famous “horse” message stating, “Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19,” emphasizing that it is a horse dewormer and should not be used on people.  This message can still be found on the FDA website.

In 2021, the attacks on ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine increased exponentially.  Dr. Bowden and others believe that the more ivermectin, a generic prescription drug, threatened the lucrative pharmaceutical industry, the more enemies it accumulated.

At present, there are more than 17,000 physicians who support
early treatment and the protocol Dr. Bowden uses.

Covid Tyrants Continue to Oppress Doctors and Patients

Dr. Bowden and two other doctors sued the FDA for overstepping their authority and making suggestions for patient treatments.  Judge Don Willett agreed, declaring in his ruling that the “FDA is not a physician.  It has authority to inform, announce, and apprise — but not to endorse, denounce, or advise.”  Currently, this case is going back to the U.S. District Court in Galveston for further debate.

Dr. Bowden has also sued Houston Methodist for defamation.  Although her case was dismissed, she appealed, and the judge reviewed the case on Dec. 12, 2023.  She does not expect to hear anything back on this case for over a year.

Following Dr. Bowden’s success with her protocols, the Texas Medical Board filed a formal complaint against her for violations of the Texas Medical Practice Act.  Now, after a couple of appeals, her next hearing is scheduled to take place April 29, 2024.

Additionally, Dr. Bowden explained that there is now overwhelming data
showing that the spike proteins in the COVID-19 vaccines are causing
four major domains of disease:
cardiovascular, neurological, blood clots, and immunological abnormalities.

Because of this, her priority is to do everything she can to get the COVID-19 vaccine off the market.  She is working with elected officials and political candidates to pull these dangerous vaccines.  She said she is happy to report that every day, more and more are joining the initiative.

Dr. Bowden is also concerned about and focused on the pediatric vaccine schedule, which currently includes the COVID-19 vaccine.  This is scary, she explained, because most parents trust the government and do what they are told.  However, she is hopeful that more parents will wake up to the dangers of the COVID-19 vaccine.  In Dr. Bowden’s opinion, “there is no reason for children to get these shots. … We have no long-term safety data.”

‘Cures’ Worse than the Disease

Dr. Bowden went on to say when she looked at her new patient appointments, over seven percent are for ongoing chronic debilitating health issues that developed following individuals taking the vaccine.  She went on to say it is very hard to diagnose myocarditis in a nonverbal child.  How can a child communicate that he has chest pain, the primary symptom of myocarditis?  Dr. Bowden fears that these babies will get myocarditis — permanent scarring of the heart — and then one day they will collapse on the soccer field.  This is what we are looking at, she emphasized.

Any other vaccine with this record would have been pulled off
the market a long time ago, according to Dr. Bowden.  

She explained that in the 1976 swine flu outbreak, they stopped giving the vaccine after 25 deaths.  Currently on VAERS, there are more than 36,000 deaths reported, which is believed to be only one percent of the real number due to underreporting.  Yet they are still advertising this vaccine.

There is also significant concern with the protocol the hospitals are using to treat COVID-19 patients.  The CARES Act provides incentives for hospitals to use treatments directed solely by the federal government with the backing of the National Institute of Health.  These incentives are financial and provide payments to the hospitals for the following: a diagnosis of COVID, admission to the hospital, use of Remdesivir (a drug shown to cause kidney failure in 25 percent of the people who take it), a patient being put on a ventilator, and if the patient dies and the cause of death is listed as COVID-19.

These incentives were not designed to treat patients and facilitate their health,
but to aid in their demise, warned Dr. Bowden.

Last week, the FDA warned of a catastrophic drop in life expectancy, and in just the last nine months of this year, more than 158,000 more Americans died unexpectedly than in all of 2019, before the COVID-19 vaccine was introduced.  To put that number in context, that is more casualties than in all wars since Vietnam, combined.

Medical Profession Betrayed by Overlords

Dr. Bowden expressed deep concern about what is happening to the medical industry.  Doctors have lost their autonomy and are now employees taking orders from the government and administrators on how to treat their patients, she explained.  Many are sheep, she said, who sit quietly and do what they are told, rather than what is right by the medical doctrine “first do no harm.”  She sympathized that they have families and mortgages but said they cannot allow themselves to be controlled by nefarious forces.

Footnote: Xmas 2020: Twelve Forgotten Principles of Public Health

Dr. Martin Kulldorff, PhD, is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. His research centers on developing new epidemiological and statistical methods for the early detection and monitoring of infectious disease outbreaks and for post-market drug and vaccine safety surveillance. This holiday gift remembrance is collected from Dr. Kulldorff’s twitter thread courtesy of AIER, which also includes links to articles adding depth to the 12 points. Tweets in italics with my bolds.

  1. Public health is about all health outcomes, not just a single disease like Covid-19. It is important to also consider harms from public health measures. More. 
  2. Public health is about the long term rather than the short term. Spring Covid lockdowns simply delayed and postponed the pandemic to the fall. More. 
  3. Public health is about everyone. It should not be used to shift the burden of disease from the affluent to the less affluent, as the lockdowns have done. More. 
  4. Public health is global. Public health scientists need to consider the global impact of their recommendations. More. 
  5. Risks and harms cannot be completely eliminated, but they can be reduced. Elimination and zero-Covid strategies backfire, making things worse. More. 
  6. Public health should focus on high-risk populations. For Covid-19, many standard public health measures were never used to protect high-risk older people, leading to unnecessary deaths. More. 
  7. While contact tracing and isolation are critically important for some infectious diseases, it is futile and counterproductive for common infections such as influenza and Covid-19. More. 
  8. A case is only a case if a person is sick. Mass testing asymptomatic individuals is harmful to public health. More. 
  9. Public health is about trust. To gain the trust of the public, public health officials and the media must be honest and trust the public. Shaming and fear should never be used in a pandemic. More. 
  10. Public health scientists and officials must be honest with what is not known. For example, epidemic models should be run with the whole range of plausible input parameters. More. 
  11. In public health, open civilized debate is profoundly critical. Censoring, silencing and smearing leads to fear of speaking, herd thinking and distrust. More. 
  12. It is important for public health scientists and officials to listen to the public, who are living the public health consequences. This pandemic has proved that many non-epidemiologists understand public health better than some epidemiologists. More.

Dr. Martin Kulldorff

 

After COP28: What Transition From Hydrocarbons?

Posted on by Ron Clutz

How Do You Want Your Energy ‘Transition’?

Mario Loyola wrote at The Wall Street Journal The Impossible Energy ‘Transition’.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

After two weeks of negotiation, the United Nations climate conference in Dubai agreed last week to “transition away” from fossil fuels. Left unanswered is whether governments are supposed to do that by reducing supply, reducing demand or both. A lot rides on the answer, but neither would affect the climate much.

In the demand-side scenario, technology saves the day with cost-competitive renewables. This is the vision of the International Energy Agency, according to which the more rapid the transition from fossil fuels, the more precipitous the decline in fossil-fuel prices. In its “Net Zero Emissions” scenario, oil demand drops faster than supply this decade, pushing oil prices below $30 a barrel soon after 2030, which corresponds to $1-a-gallon gasoline.

Yet even with fossil-fuel prices near historic highs, effective renewable substitutes are nowhere near cost-competitive. They’d have to get cheaper still to compete with $30-a-barrel oil. And in developed countries, especially the U.S., it’s impossible to get permits quickly enough for the staggering amount of renewable capacity that would be needed.

In the supply-side approach, governments would slash oil production or impose rationing, hoping to make fossil fuels so expensive that renewables are the only option. This is the dark vision of “Stop Oil” and Greta Thunberg. But as long as renewable substitutes aren’t immediately available and oil and gas remain necessary, a small reduction in supply causes prices to soar. That means windfall profits for energy companies, scarcity for everyone else, and electoral danger for the governments responsible. Ms. Thunberg claims that climate change is a “death sentence” for the poor, but the poor are far more vulnerable to disruptions in energy supply. In the 1970s, an oil boycott aimed at the U.S. caused famines in Africa.

Putting into context the desire to stop consumption of fossil fuels. The graph shows that global Primary Energy (PE) consumption from all sources has grown continuously over nearly 6 decades. Since 1965 oil, gas and coal (FF, sometimes termed “Thermal”) averaged 88% of PE consumed, ranging from 93% in 1965 to 82% in 2022. Note that in 2020, PE dropped 21 EJ (4%) below 2019 consumption, then increased 31 EJ in 2021. WFFC for 2020 dropped 24 EJ (5%), then in 2021 gained back 26 EJ to slightly exceed 2019 WFFC consumption. (Source: Energy Institute)

While the stop-oil view was popular at Dubai, there were enough adults in the room to keep the conference from committing to it. “There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phaseout of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5 C” (the Paris Agreement’s proposed limit on 21st-century temperature increases), said conference president Ahmed al Jaber, “unless you want to take the world back into caves.” Saudi Energy Minister Abdulaziz bin Salman dared countries to try to choke off the oil supply: “Let them do that themselves. And we will see how much they can deliver.”

Poor countries are clear-eyed about the danger of energy poverty. “We are not going to compromise with the availability of power for growth,” said India’s minister for power, R.K. Singh. China has more coal plants under construction than are in operation in the U.S. Few rich countries have announced plans to stop drilling for oil or gas, and none of those are major producers. Even President Biden ran away from increasing the gasoline tax as soon as prices went above $3 a gallon in the summer of 2021.

The administration’s answer to this conundrum is to defer political consequences via the regulatory state. The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed to require that all coal and natural-gas plants shut down or adopt unproven zero-carbon technologies by 2038. Another EPA proposal would require 62% of all cars sold in America to be fully electric by 2032.

Assuming they survive court challenges and future administrations, they would impose soaring prices and reduced mobility on Americans. They would have almost no impact on global temperatures unless other countries, including China and India, also commit to energy poverty. The question is how much damage these policies will do before they’re abandoned.

Mr. Loyola teaches environmental law at Florida International University and is a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

Foornote:  Advice from Berkeley Earth

Winter Solstice Teaches Us About Climate Change

Posted on by Ron Clutz

With Winter Solstice due this week (December 21) the shortest NH day of the year demonstrates the sun’s role in seasonal climate change.  I am reposting an analysis looking into global warming in relation to our empirical knowledge of solar orbital patterns.

From Previous Post When Is It Warming?

On June 21, 2015 E.M. Smith made an intriguing comment on the occasion of Summer Solstice (NH) and Winter Solstice (SH):

“This is the time when the sun stops the apparent drift in the sky toward one pole, reverses, and heads toward the other. For about 2 more months, temperatures lag this change of trend. That is the total heat storage capacity of the planet. Heat is not stored beyond that point and there can not be any persistent warming as long as winter brings a return to cold.

I’d actually assert that there are only two measurements needed to show the existence or absence of global warming. Highs in the hottest month must get hotter and lows in the coldest month must get warmer. BOTH must happen, and no other months matter as they are just transitional.

I’m also pretty sure that the comparison of dates of peaks between locations could also be interesting. If one hemisphere is having a drift to, say, longer springs while the other is having longer falls, that’s more orbital mechanics than CO2 driven and ought to be reflected in different temperature trends / rates of drift.” Source: Summer Solstice is here at chiefio

Monthly Temps NH and SH

Notice that the global temperature tracks with the seasons of the NH. The reason for this is simple. The NH has twice as much land as the Southern Hemisphere (SH). Oceans have greater heat capacity and thus do not change temperatures as much as land does. So every year when there is almost a 4 °C swing in the temperature of the Earth, it follows the seasons of the NH. This is especially interesting because the Earth gets the most energy from the sun in January presently. That is because of the orbit of the Earth. The perihelion is when the Earth is closest to the sun and that currently takes place in January.

sun-distances

Observations and Analysis:

At the time my curiosity was piqued by Chiefio’s comment, so I went looking for data to analyze to test his proposition. As it happens, Berkeley Earth provides data tables for monthly Tmax and Tmin by hemisphere (NH and SH), from land station records. Setting aside any concerns about adjustments or infilling I did the analysis taking the BEST data tables at face value. Since land surface temperatures are more variable than sea surface temps, it seems like a reasonable dataset to analyze for the mentioned patterns. In the analysis below, all years refers to data for the years 1877 through 2013.

Tmax Records

NH and SH long-term trends are the same 0.07C/decade, and in both there was cooling before 1979 and above average warming since. However, since 1950 NH warmed more strongly, and mostly prior to 1998, while SH has warmed strongly since 1998. (Trends below are in C/yr.)

 Tmax Trends NH Tmax SH Tmax
All years 0.007 0.007
1998-2013 0.018 0.030
1979-1998 0.029 0.017
1950-1979 -0.003 -0.003
1950-2013 0.020 0.014

Summer Comparisons:

NH summer months are June, July, August, (6-8) and SH summer is December, January, February (12-2). The trends for each of those months were computed and the annual trends subtracted to show if summer months were warming more than the rest of the year (Trends below are in C/yr.).

Month less Annual NH
Tmax		 NH Tmax NH Tmax SH Tmax SH Tmax SH Tmax
Summer Trends

6

 7 8 12 1

2
All years -0.002 -0.004 -0.004 0.000 0.003 0.002
1998-2013 0.026 0.002 0.006 0.022 0.004 -0.029
1979-1998 0.003 -0.004 -0.003 -0.014 -0.029 0.001
1950-1979 -0.002 -0.002 -0.005 0.004 0.005 -0.005
1950-2013 -0.002 -0.003 -0.002 -0.002 -0.002 -0.002

NH summer months are cooler than average overall and since 1950. Warming does appear since 1998 with a large anomaly in June and also warming in August.  SH shows no strong pattern of Tmax warming in summer months. A hot December trend since 1998 is offset by a cold February. Overall SH summers are just above average, and since 1950 have been slightly cooler.

Tmin Records

Both NH and SH show Tmin rising 0.12C/decade, much more strongly warming than Tmax. SH shows average warming persisting throughout the record, slightly higher prior to 1979. NH Tmin is more variable, showing a large jump 1979-1998, a rate of 0.25 C/decade (Trends below are in C/yr.).

 Trends NH Tmin SH Tmin
All years 0.012 0.012
1998-2013 0.010 0.010
1979-1998 0.025 0.011
1950-1979 0.006 0.014
1950-2013 0.022 0.014

Winter Comparisons:

SH winter months are June, July, August, (6-8) and NH winter is December, January, February (12-2). The trends for each of those months were computed and the annual trends subtracted to show if winter months were warming more than the rest of the year (Trends below are in C/yr.).

Month less Annual NH Tmin NH Tmin NH Tmin SH Tmin SH Tmin SH Tmin
Winter Trends

12

 1 2 6 7

8
All years 0.007 0.008 0.007 0.005 0.003 0.004
1998-2013 -0.045 -0.035 -0.076 -0.043 -0.024 -0.019
1979-1998 -0.018 -0.005 0.024 0.034 0.008 -0.008
1950-1979 0.008 0.005 0.007 0.008 0.012 0.013
1950-2013 0.001 0.007 0.008 -0.001 -0.002 0.002

NH winter Tmin warming is stronger than SH Tmin trends, but shows quite strong cooling since 1998. An anomalously warm February is the exception in the period 1979-1998.  Both NH and SH show higher Tmin warming in winter months, with some irregularities. Most of the SH Tmin warming was before 1979, with strong cooling since 1998. June was anomalously warming in the period 1979 to 1998.

Summary

Tmin did trend higher in winter months but not consistently. Mostly winter Tmin warmed 1950 to 1979, and was much cooler than other months since 1998.

Tmax has not warmed in summer more than in other months, with the exception of two anomalous months since 1998: NH June and SH December.

Conclusion:

I find no convincing pattern of summer Tmax warming carrying over into winter Tmin warming. In other words, summers are not adding warming more than other seasons. There is no support for concerns over summer heat waves increasing as a pattern.

It is interesting to note that the plateau in temperatures since the 1998 El Nino is matched by winter months cooler than average during that period, leading to my discovering the real reason for lack of warming recently.

The Real Reason for the Pause in Global Warming?

These data suggest warming trends are coming from less cold overnight temperatures as measured at land weather stations. Since stations exposed to urban heat sources typically show higher minimums overnight and in winter months, this pattern is likely an artifact of human settlement activity rather than CO2 from fossil fuels.

uhi_profile-rev-big

Thus the Pause (more correctly the Plateau) in global warming is caused by end of the century completion of urbanization around most surface stations. With no additional warming from additional urban heat sources, temperatures have remained flat for more than 15 years.

Note on Data:

I thought about updating this analysis, but discovered that the BEST tables have not been updated since 2018.  The sources have also moved, now located here:

https://berkeleyearth.org/temperature-region/southern-hemisphere

https://berkeleyearth.org/temperature-region/northern-hemisphere

Happy Winter Solstice

Winter Solstice farolito labyrinth in Santa Fe

COP28 Stabilizes Mid-Dec. Arctic Ice

Posted on by Ron Clutz

 

As COP28 began, Arctic ice extrent grew rapidly and by its end the Arctic was completely normal. On lower left, Chukchi sea filled in and below Bering sea started serious freezing. Lower right Hudson Bay more than doubled up to 800k km2, 2/3 of its maximum extent.  Center right Baffin Bay grew to 45% of max.

A Lufthansa aircraft at the snow-covered Munich airport on Saturday. Photograph: Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/AP

Coincidently, COP28 also triggered heavy snow bringing chaos to southern Germany causing Munich to suspend flights to anywhere, including Dubai.

The graph below shows the gains in ice extent mid-November to Mid December for 2023, the 17 year average and some other recent years, as well as SII (Sea Ice Index)

MASIE showed 2023 and 2022 tracking the 17 year average and ending very close together.  2007 fluctuated a lot, well below average in December before rising at the end.  SII tracked ~400k km2 lower most of this period, before rising to match MASIE in the last few days.

 

The table below shows the distribution of ice in the Arctic Ocean basins.

Region 2023349 Day 349 2023-Ave. 2007349 2023-2007
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere 12104311 12162108  -57797  12000124 104187 
 (1) Beaufort_Sea 1070966 1070103  863  1069711 1255 
 (2) Chukchi_Sea 948805 934827  13978  796459 152347 
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea 1087137 1086539  598  1077192 9945 
 (4) Laptev_Sea 897845 897835  9  897845 0 
 (5) Kara_Sea 826874 847433  -20559  842174 -15300 
 (6) Barents_Sea 370088 335870  34218  285179 84909 
 (7) Greenland_Sea 688238 546548  141690  571916 116322 
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence 819365 824803  -5438  852443 -33079 
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago 854860 853420  1440  852556 2304 
 (10) Hudson_Bay 800760 1101080  -300320  1248305 -447546 
 (11) Central_Arctic 3212059 3204043  8016  3192331 19728 
 (12) Bering_Sea 226652 236725  -10073  93340 133312 
 (13) Baltic_Sea 55323 11920  43403  10353 44970 
 (14) Sea_of_Okhotsk 231640 200090  31550  206342 25297 

Note that Arctic ice now exceeds 12M km2, or 80% of last March maximum.  As shown in the table above, the main deficit to average is in Hudson Bay, likely to be overcome with the current rapid growth. Offsetting are surpluses elsewhere, mostly in Greenland sea, along with Barents and Baltic seas.