Author: Ron Clutz

Ice Alive: Uncovering the secrets of Earth’s Ice

Posted on by Ron Clutz

You have to respect glaciologists whose curiosity takes them to the most extreme places, in this case the Arctic.  Joseph Cook received the Rolex award for Science in Extremis and he provides at his blog a wonderful 20 minute video explaining his work.  From Ice Alive: Uncovering the secrets of Earth’s Ice by Joseph Cook and Chris Hadfield.  Excerpts from below in italics.

In collaboration with Rolex Awards for Enterprise, Proudfoot Media and I have produced a documentary film explaining the latest research into the surprising hidden biology shaping Earth’s ice. The story is told by young UK Arctic scientists with contributions from guests including astronaut Chris Hadfield and biologist Jim Al-Khalili. We went to great lengths to make this a visually striking film that we hope is a pleasure to watch and communicates the otherwordly beauty and incredible complexity of the Arctic glacial landscape. We aim to educate, entertain and inspire others into exploring and protecting this most sensitive part of our planet in their own ways.

We think the film is equally suited to the general public as school and university students, and we are delighted to make this a free-to-all teaching resource. Please watch, share and use!

Albedo is the survival probability of a photon entering a medium. Light incident upon a material partly reflects from the upper surface, the remainder enters the medium and can scatter anywhere there is a change in the refractive index (e.g. a boundary between air and ice, or ice and water, etc). Where there are opportunities for scattering, light bounces around in the medium, sometimes preferentially in a certain direction depending upon the optical properties of the medium (ice is forward-scattering) but always changing direction to some extent each time it scatters, until it is either absorbed or it escapes back out of the medium travelling in a skywards direction.

The albedo of the material is the likelihood that the down-welling light entering the medium exits again later as up-welling light. The more strongly absorbing the material, the more likely the light is to be absorbed before exiting. Ice is very weakly absorbing in blue wavelengths (~400 nm), becoming generally more strongly absorbing at longer wavelengths into the near infra-red (hence ice often appearing blue). Solar energy is mostly concentrated within the wavelength range 300 – 5000 nm and the term albedo concerns the survival probability of all photons with wavelengths within this range either at a particular wavelength (spectral albedo) or integrated over the entire solar spectrum (broadband albedo).

For a single material, its absorbing and scattering efficiencies are described using the scattering and absorption coefficients. The ratio of these two coefficients is known as the single scattering albedo (SSA), which is a crucial term for radiative transfer. A higher SSA is associated with a greater likelihood of a particle scattering a photon rather than absorbing it. a particle with SSA = 1 is non-absorbing.

Algal cells are strongly absorbing and their effect on snow and ice albedo is to increase the likelihood of a photon being absorbed rather than scattered back out of the medium. For this reason, the better term to use would be bio-co-albedo, where co-albedo describes the fraction of incident energy absorbed by the particles (i.e. 1-SSA).

Albedo is a primary driver of snow melt. For clean snow and snow with black carbon, radiative transfer models to an excellent job of simulating albedo, yet there remain aspects of snow albedo that are poorly understood. In particular current models do not take into account algal cells that grow and dramatically discolour ice in some places (except our 1-D BioSNICAR model) and few take into account changes in albedo over space and time.

This led me to wonder about using cellular automata as a mechanism for distributing albedo modelling using radiative transfer over three spatial dimensions and time, and also enabling a degree of stochasticity to be introduced to the modelling (which is certainly present in natural systems).

As an Arctic scientist I am privileged to be able to explore the coldest parts of our planet, making observations and measurements and helping others to understand how these areas function by writing papers and giving talks, lectures and writing for magazines and newspapers. But to truly understand an environment, we must also explore the intangible and immeasurable. To communicate it to diverse audiences, we must use not only facts and observations, but aesthetics and emotion. The piece above is a bridge connecting music and science – an effort to understand and communicate the hidden beauty, complexity and sensitivity of the Greenland Ice Sheet through sound. I hope that projects like this will bring new audiences to Arctic science, using music, art and aesthetics to pique their curiosity.

Footnote:

The video mentions algae as a positive feedback:  more warming>more algae>less albedo>more warming.  However, there are also negative feedbacks operating in summertime.  More warming>more open water>more evaporation>more clouds>less sunshine on the surface.  Also, more evaporation>more snowfall>whiter surface>higher albedo>less solar absorption.

More on sea ice dynamics: Climate on Ice: Ocean-Ice Dynamics

 

G7 Hypocrisy

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Diplomacy has become the art of talking as though something is agreed and will happen, when in fact nothing has changed and nothing different will ensue. Trump did indeed blow up the G7 meeting because he insists on facing the facts of trade imbalances and the emptiness of virtue signaling. By not making the gesture of signing some insipid joint communique, he exposed the whole charade.

Liz Peek at the Hill explains in article Hypocritical France and Germany scold Trump; how dare they  Excerpts below in italics with my bolds

Emmanuel Macron is having a “crise de colere;” that’s French for hissy fit.

In the run-up to the Group of Seven (G-7) meeting, the French president joined with Germany’s Angela Merkel in warning that he would refuse to sign a joint statement from the G-7 unless the U.S. demonstrates a willingness to shift its position on the Iran nuclear agreement, the Paris Agreement and on tariffs. The nerve!

Let’s start with tariffs. As Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has written, the EU is quick to criticize the United States for not pursuing free trade, but at the same time, they charge higher tariffs than the U.S. in 17 of 22 major consumer goods categories.

On dairy products, fruits and vegetables, cereals, sugar, fish, chemicals, electrical machinery and many other goods, the EU charges import fees far above those levied by the U.S. What is the rationale for that imbalance? There is none. Europe is simply protecting its interests.

On autos, the EU imposes a 10-percent fee on imports from the U.S. while we reciprocate with a 2.5-percent charge. Again, why the difference? Why shouldn’t we help out our car manufacturers and workers just as the French and Germans help theirs?

It isn’t as though the U.S. has a built-in advantage. As Ross wrote, “Today Europe exports 1.14 million automobiles to the U.S., nearly four times as many as the U.S. exports to Europe.”

And, of course, the EU doesn’t rely on tariffs alone to jack up their trade surplus with the U.S. They also give their exporters enormous help with financing and impose other kinds of barriers to American goods, like obscure health standards and regulations.

In short, over the years they have tilted the playing field in their favor, and we have let them get away with it. Today, their protectionist measures help earn them a roughly $150 billion annual trade surplus; there is no plausible excuse for that.

As for the Iran deal, France and Germany are incensed that a seriously flawed agreement will be abandoned. They do not care, apparently, that Tehran’s mullahs have not lived up to the spirit of the deal, instead spending the billions received as part of the pact to foment unrest across the region.

Their pique is not because they believe that in return for being freed from sanctions, Tehran was about to emerge as a reliable actor for peace in the Middle East. No, they are miffed that their scramble to do business with Iran will have to wait.

Given the EU’s sluggish growth track, brought on in large part by dysfunctional work rules and regulations of the sort that President Trump has worked to eliminate in the U.S., they are desperate for access to new markets.

Even as President Trump ditched the Iran deal and threatened to re-impose sanctions, EU officials encouraged companies to power forward with commercial ties, so greedy are they for growth.

Already, however, many firms have decided the risk of running afoul of U.S. prohibitions is simply too great and have started to leave the country.

French company Total, the only major oil firm to re-engage in Iran, signed a $5 billion, 20-year agreement last year to develop a large natural gas field. It has announced it is withdrawing from the deal.

The Danish shipping company Moller-Maersk announced it would cease shipping Iranian oil; the company’s CEO said in a statement that its business with the U.S. was more important than operating in Iran. Peugeot and Siemens, similarly, have announced they would withdraw from Iran.

Germany and France are unhappy, too, about President Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris treaty. But their outrage is undeserved. In 2017, the U.S. reported the largest year-to-year drop in carbon emissions of any advanced economy, according to a report from the International Energy Agency.

In the same year, the EU saw emissions rise 1.5 percent. Greenhouse gases also rose in Asia. In fact, the only country making progress toward emissions reductions at this time is the U.S. So, bemoaning the decision by President Trump to withdraw from the cherished Paris Agreement would appear to be little more than diplomatic theater.

While berating the U.S., the French allowed their own carbon dioxide emissions to rise 3.6 percent over their targeted level last year. France has decided to mothball its clean nuclear power industry, which of course makes any progress on emissions reductions all but impossible.

Meanwhile, last fall, French officials pledged to phase out all oil and gas production by 2040; they notably did not promise to stop importing and refining fossil fuels from other countries. It is consumption of course that is key to global carbon output, not where the production takes place.

Meanwhile, the Germans have set lofty targets for using renewables to generate electricity, only to find that the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine. Consequently, they have had to burn lignite, one of the dirtiest fuels on the planet, to satisfy their demand for power. Needless to say, like the French, the Germans have missed their emission goals.

It is tiresome to be lectured by the EU, a region that is facing serious, ongoing tensions. The Brussels wizards who readily criticize U.S. policies have not faced up to the block’s structural problems revealed during the financial crisis.

Just last week, anti-EU election results in Italy caused market turbulence; voter impatience with Europe’s bureaucrats is unlikely to disappear.

President Trump has upset conventions in some areas that should have been challenged decades ago. That is uncomfortable for those reliant on U.S. largesse, but should be cheered by Americans.

Summary

It is really remarkable to see a non-politician businessman operate with instincts for finding leverage and using it to strike new arrangements.  And Trump also shows how peer pressure and disapproval, so effective in cowing those who care, rolls off his back like nothing.  They truly don’t know what game he is playing because he is not wired like them, and they have seriously underestimated his capacities and determination.  Those who accuse him of polarizing the situation are mistaken; he is revealing the conflicts of interest that have been papered over and never challenged by previous Presidents.  As they say, “You can’t change until you first acknowledge the problem.”

 

Ontario Voters Sack Climate-Obsessed Premier

Posted on by Ron Clutz

A number of posts here (linked at bottom) described how Ontario’s liberal government spent taxpayers’ and ratepayers’ money like drunken sailers looking to score in International circles.  It seems chickens do come home to roost, and those politicians are out in a landslide.  The story from CBC (warmists all) is Ontario vote will hamper prime minister’s efforts on climate change (Ya think?) Excerpts below with my bolds.

Voters in the province of Ontario have sent a stinging rebuke to the ruling Liberal Party reducing it to a rump, and they voted massively for populist Doug Ford and his Progressive Conservatives. Ford has promised to take Ontario out of its carbon cap-and-trade agreement with California and the province of Quebec, and he is against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s plan to oblige all provinces to levy a carbon tax.

“Now what you have is Doug Ford leading…the biggest province in the country…Now as premier of Ontario, he has one of the largest voices in the country when it comes to issues on the environment, the economy—all of these things that the premiers of the country and the prime minister have to sit down and talk about. Doug Ford now has the biggest voice at that table,” says Jordan Press, parliamentary reporter with The Canadian Press.

‘How do you meet..international agreements?’

“In much the same way that he (Trudeau) has an issue dealing with (U.S. President) Donald Trump on the environment, now Justin Trudeau faces a domestic issue as well, that how do you meet those international agreements that you have promoted. How do you continue to be that progressive leader on the world stage when at home, you are facing opposition to some of your plans,” asks Press.

Environment Minister Catherine McKenna with Justin Trudeau in the choir.

Less tax, cheaper beer promised

During the election campaign, Ford promised to cut taxes, reduce gasoline prices by 10 cents a litre, reduce the high price of electricity and offer beer for one dollar a bottle. He was criticized for not providing a clear plan for how he would pay for these promises. The province of Ontario already carries a massive debt load.

But people seem to have appreciated his promise to defend “the little guy” and ignored a lawsuit launched by his brother’s widow alleging Ford mismanaged the family’s business costing millions from the estate.

Some people compare Ford to Trump and debate about that will likely be vigorous long into the future.

In the final tally, Progressive Conservatives were elected in 76 ridings and the New Democratic Party took 40. After ruling for 15 years, the Liberal Party lost official party status and the funding that comes with it by winning only seven seats. The Green Party took one.

Former Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne.

Background

Electrical Madness in Green Ontario

Ontario Jammed by Rent-Seekers and Ratepayers

Ontario Climate Policy Refugees

Ontario Coal Phase-out: All Pain, No Gain

Another wheel flies off Ontario’s green energy bus

US House Votes Down Social Cost of Carbon

Posted on by Ron Clutz

 

The House GOP on Friday took a step forward in reining in the Obama administration’s method of assessing the cost of carbon dioxide pollution when developing regulations.

The House voted 212-201, along party lines, to include a rider blocking the use of the climate change cost metric to an energy and water spending bill.

The amendment offered by Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert bars any and all funds from being used under the bill to “prepare, propose, or promulgate any regulation that relies on the Social Carbon analysis” devised under the Obama administration on how to value the cost of carbon. (Source Washington Examiner, here)

To clarify: the amendment in question defunds any regulation or guidance from the federal government concerning the social costs of carbon.

Background: 
The Obama administration created and increased its estimates of the “Social Cost of Carbon,” invented by Michael Greenstone, who commented on the EPA Proposed Repeal of CO2 emissions regulations.  A Washington Post article, October 11, 2017, included this:

“My read is that the political decision to repeal the Clean Power Plan was made and then they did whatever was necessary to make the numbers work,” added Michael Greenstone, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago who worked on climate policy during the Obama years.

Activists are frightened about the Clean Power Plan under serious attack along three lines:
1. No federal law governs CO2 emissions.
2. EPA regulates sites, not the Energy Sector.
3. CPP costs are huge, while benefits are marginal.

Complete discussion at CPP has Three Fatal Flaws.

Read below how Greenstone and a colleague did exactly what he now complains about.

Social Cost of Carbon: Origins and Prospects

The Obama administration has been fighting climate change with a rogue wave of regulations whose legality comes from a very small base: The Social Cost of Carbon.

The purpose of the “social cost of carbon” (SCC) estimates presented here is to allow agencies to incorporate the social benefits of reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions into cost-benefit analyses of regulatory actions that impact cumulative global emissions. The SCC is an estimate of the monetized damages associated with an incremental increase in carbon emissions in a given year. It is intended to include (but is not limited to) changes in net agricultural productivity, human health, property damages from increased flood risk, and the value of ecosystem services due to climate change. From the Technical Support Document: -Technical Update of the Social Cost of Carbon for Regulatory Impact Analysis -Under Executive Order 12866

A recent Bloomberg article informs on how the SCC notion was invented, its importance and how it might change under the Trump administration.
How Climate Rules Might Fade Away; Obama used an arcane number to craft his regulations. Trump could use it to undo them. (here). Excerpts below with my bolds.

scc-working-group

In February 2009, a month after Barack Obama took office, two academics sat across from each other in the White House mess hall. Over a club sandwich, Michael Greenstone, a White House economist, and Cass Sunstein, Obama’s top regulatory officer, decided that the executive branch needed to figure out how to estimate the economic damage from climate change. With the recession in full swing, they were rightly skeptical about the chances that Congress would pass a nationwide cap-and-trade bill. Greenstone and Sunstein knew they needed a Plan B: a way to regulate carbon emissions without going through Congress.

Over the next year, a team of economists, scientists, and lawyers from across the federal government convened to come up with a dollar amount for the economic cost of carbon emissions. Whatever value they hit upon would be used to determine the scope of regulations aimed at reducing the damage from climate change. The bigger the estimate, the more costly the rules meant to address it could be. After a year of modeling different scenarios, the team came up with a central estimate of $21 per metric ton, which is to say that by their calculations, every ton of carbon emitted into the atmosphere imposed $21 of economic cost. It has since been raised to around $40 a ton.

Trump can’t undo the SCC by fiat. There is established case law requiring the government to account for the impact of carbon, and if he just repealed it, environmentalists would almost certainly sue.

There are other ways for Trump to undercut the SCC. By tweaking some of the assumptions and calculations that are baked into its model, the Trump administration could pretty much render it irrelevant, or even skew it to the point that carbon emissions come out as a benefit instead of a cost.

The SCC models rely on a “discount rate” to state the harm from global warming in today’s dollars. The higher the discount rate, the lower the estimate of harm. That’s because the costs incurred by burning carbon lie mostly in the distant future, while the benefits (heat, electricity, etc.) are enjoyed today. A high discount rate shrinks the estimates of future costs but doesn’t affect present-day benefits. The team put together by Greenstone and Sunstein used a discount rate of 3 percent to come up with its central estimate of $21 a ton for damage inflicted by carbon. But changing that discount just slightly produces big swings in the overall cost of carbon, turning a number that’s pushing broad changes in everything from appliances to coal leasing decisions into one that would have little or no impact on policy.

According to a 2013 government update on the SCC, by applying a discount rate of 5 percent, the cost of carbon in 2020 comes out to $12 a ton; using a 2.5 percent rate, it’s $65. A 7 percent discount rate, which has been used by the EPA for other regulatory analysis, could actually lead to a negative carbon cost, which would seem to imply that carbon emissions are beneficial. “Once you start to dig into how the numbers are constructed, I cannot fathom how anyone could think it has any basis in reality,” says Daniel Simmons, vice president for policy at the American Energy Alliance and a member of the Trump transition team focusing on the Energy Department.

David Kreutzer, a senior research fellow in energy economics and climate change at Heritage and a member of Trump’s EPA transition team, laid out one of the primary arguments against the SCC. “Believe it or not, these models look out to the year 2300. That’s like effectively asking, ‘If you turn your light switch on today, how much damage will that do in 2300?’ That’s way beyond when any macroeconomic model can be trusted.”

Another issue for those who question the Obama administration’s SCC: It estimates the global costs and benefits of carbon emissions, rather than just focusing on the impact to the U.S. Critics argue that this pushes the cost of carbon much higher and that the calculation should instead be limited to the U.S.; that would lower the cost by more than 70 percent, says the CEI’s Mario Lewis.

Still, by narrowing the calculation to the U.S., Trump could certainly produce a lower cost of carbon. Asked in an e-mail whether the new administration would raise the discount rate or narrow the scope of the SCC to the U.S., one person shaping Trump energy and environmental policy replied, “What prevents us from doing both?”

See Also:

Six Reasons to Rescind Social Cost of Carbon

SBC: Social Benefits of Carbon

drain-the-swamp

From Russia With Climate Love

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Sputnik News spins climate alarmism in this current article New Climate Change Report Says We’re Screwed Even if Paris Accord Goals Met Text in italics with my bolds, images and titles.

A recently published study on climate change predicts catastrophic changes to the planet’s ecology, even if global temperatures rise by only 1.5 degrees Celsius, a cap on warming the Paris Climate Accord aims to secure.

Foretelling the Future

The new study, performed by an international research group and published in the journal Nature on June 7, predicts catastrophic changes to the planet even if Paris Accord emission targets are met.

According to Phys.org, many studies predict that a 2 degree increase would lead to massive climatic and ecological changes, but few have examined what would happen if the temperature rose by only 1.5 degrees instead. While this fraction of a degree might seem unimportant, it actually means a lot on a global scale, researchers say.

Apocalypse Now

If today’s temperature trend continues until 2100, then many inhabited islands as well as many coastal cities will be swallowed by the sea, with the Maldives being just one example. The Paris Agreement was signed with the stated aim of preventing this catastrophe by limiting global warming to only 1.5 C.

However, the new study says that while a hard limit keeping the temperature increase fewer than 2 C would avert drastic changes, such as the Mediterranean drying up or US cities getting 5 C hotter than they are now, the exact character of the global warming curve is more important to overall climate change effects than most people understand. For example, if global temperature even briefly increases by 2 C overall but then falls back, that would also cause irreparable damage.

“The extinction of species during a phase of excess temperatures couldn’t be undone, even if the level of warming was then reduced and limited to a 1.5 C increase,” says ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) professor Sonia Seneviratne, one of the lead authors of the study.

No Escape, No Silver Bullet

According to Seneviratne, many existing scenarios on climate change mitigation actually allow for a temporary 2 C degree increase and also involve vast CO2-reducing measures, which include reforestation, carbon capture and storage operations (CCS). However, CCS is not yet a viable option, as humanity does not have any effective and scalable means to return carbon from the air to the ground for good. Even the much-advertised “negative emissions” power plant in Iceland is not as great in reality as it looks on paper. Besides, even in theory, CCS needs so much space to work that it’s comparable to the world’s food production operations.

Therefore, Seneviratne says, the only way to save the world now is to immediately and dramatically cut CO2 emissions.

“It’s clear that we must urgently reduce emissions if we want to stand a chance of meeting the 1.5 C goal and keeping any temperature overshoot as low as possible,” Seneviratne emphasized.

The Usual Bad Guys

In 2015, China was the number one carbon dioxide-emitting country, with almost 30 percent of the world’s fossil fuel CO2 emissions, according to the data from the EU’s Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research. The US took second place, emitting almost half as much as China does, slightly below 15 percent of the world’s total. Despite all their efforts, the European Union as a whole takes proud third place with 9.6 percent, followed by India, which produces 6.8 percent of the world’s fossil fuel carbon emissions.

Women, Children and Minorities Hit Hardest By the World Ending

Unfortunately, drastic carbon emission cuts will also mean drastic changes to modern social and economic life, consequences the US has recently and notably refused to countenance by backing out of the global climate accord.

 

Pope Francis Has Climate Change Backwards

Posted on by Ron Clutz

150928believer

Reblogged from Town Hall Pope Francis has it Exactly Backwards on Climate Change by Gregory Whitestone. Text in italics with my bolds.

This week Pope Francis will host a gathering of executives from major oil companies and investment firms at the Vatican to have a dialogue on climate and more specifically on transitioning away from fossil fuels. Already confirmed to attend were leaders of BP, ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell and mega-investment firm Black Rock. That these major companies would attend such a meeting shows just how successful the constant world-wide drum beat of climate alarmism has been. I doubt that these oil executives would agree to bring the rope to their own hanging, but they certainly appear to be ready to negotiate the terms of their own demise.

This pope has a long history of supporting the notion of catastrophic man-made global warming and using his interpretation of biblical teaching to support it. In 2015 he wrote his encyclical Laudato Si, on climate change and man’s responsibilities to the planet as a warning to his flock of the dangers of our “sins of emission” through our use of fossil fuels and in praise of renewable energy and living a more spartan existence. This more than 100-page manifesto reads like it could have been co-authored by Al Gore, Karl Marx and Chicken Little and depicts an Earth that is spiraling quickly into man-made climate hell which can only be saved by radically reducing our carbon footprint and curbing our wasteful habits.

The document contains bitter condemnations on human failures that are supposedly harming the planet including the usual litany of a lack of clean water, soils that are despoiled by pesticides, increasing air pollution, desertification and drought, to name a few. In it he states that we must, “… hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor. These situations have caused sister earth, along with all the abandoned of our world, to cry out, pleading that we take another course. Never have we so hurt and mistreated our common home as we have in the last two hundred years.”

The encyclical professes to speak for the poor but in truth, it will be the poor that will bear the brunt of the very policies the Pope endorses. Pope Francis’ endorsement of climate agreements like the Paris Climate Accord will necessarily limit and reduce the availability of inexpensive, reliable energy that can help lift the billions of the poorest out of staggering poverty. Nearly a billion people do not have the benefit of electricity and another 2 billion have very limited access to the energy standards we expect in the western world. In addition, the living standards of all peoples benefit from inexpensive, dependable energy from fossil fuels.

The Pope recommends that we move away from low-cost, reliable energy provided through fossil fuels and embrace expensive, intermittent “green” energy. In developed countries, the poor pay a higher percentage of their income on energy than others, so in effect, the policies proposed are a regressive form of taxation with higher costs to the poor than the wealthy. It is estimated that pollution from dirty, inefficient cooking and heating fuels, often dung, lead to about 4 million premature deaths a year. Policies such as that proposed by Francis condemn these unfortunates to more generations of poverty, disease and despair.

The Pope has it exactly backwards. A prospering of the human condition requires full use of all of God’s Creation. Reliable, inexpensive energy is part of the solution which can lift billions of God’s creatures out of systemic poverty and disease. Instead of promoting fruitless and harmful policies to control global temperature, Christian leadership should embrace responsible environmental stewardship, make energy and all its benefits more affordable, and thereby free the poor to rise out of poverty.

Cooling Ocean Air Temps

Posted on by Ron Clutz

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

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

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

The UAH dataset includes temperature results for air above the oceans, and thus should be most comparable to the SSTs. The graph below shows monthly anomalies for ocean temps since January 2015.

UAH May2018

Open image in new tab to enlarge.

The anomalies have reached the same levels as 2015.  Taking a longer view, we can look at the record since 1995, that year being an ENSO neutral year and thus a reasonable starting point for considering the past two decades.  On that basis we can see the plateau in ocean temps is persisting. Since last October all oceans have cooled, with upward bumps in Feb. 2018, now erased.

UAHv6 TLT 
Monthly Ocean
Anomalies		 Average Since 1995 Ocean 5/2018
Global 0.13 0.09
NH 0.16 0.33
SH 0.11 -0.09
Tropics 0.12 0.02

As of May 2018, global ocean temps are slightly lower than April and below the average since 1995.  NH remains higher, but not enough to offset much lower temps in SH and Tropics (between 20N and 20S latitudes).  Global ocean air temps are now the lowest since April 2015, and SH the lowest since May 2013.

The details of UAH ocean temps are provided below.  The monthly data make for a noisy picture, but seasonal fluxes between January and July are important.

Click on image to enlarge.

The greater volatility of the Tropics is evident, leading the oceans through three major El Nino events during this period.  Note also the flat period between 7/1999 and 7/2009.  The 2010 El Nino was erased by La Nina in 2011 and 2012.  Then the record shows a fairly steady rise peaking in 2016, with strong support from warmer NH anomalies, before returning to the 22-year average.

Summary

TLTs include mixing above the oceans and probably some influence from nearby more volatile land temps.  They started the recent cooling later than SSTs from HadSST3, but are now showing the same pattern.  It seems obvious that despite the three El Ninos, their warming has not persisted, and without them it would probably have cooled since 1995.  Of course, the future has not yet been written.

 

California Climate Lawsuits on Life Support May 25

Posted on by Ron Clutz

OK my headline is not the report from activists who are crowing because the judge asked for more discovery during the next sixty days. A closer look reveals both sides will have that burden.  A more balanced report comes from Kurtis Alexander in the SF Chronicle

Oil companies want SF, Oakland climate lawsuits dismissed  Excerpts with my bolds.

Five of the world’s largest oil producers urged a federal judge Thursday to dismiss lawsuits by San Francisco and Oakland that seek to hold the companies liable for climate change, arguing that the issue is one for Congress, not the courts.

San Francisco and Oakland are among a handful of communities nationwide, including New York City and King County, Wash., squaring off over global warming with the fossil fuel industry, and now the Trump administration. An attorney for the Department of Justice stood with industry lawyers in the federal courthouse in San Francisco, echoing their request that the cases be dropped.

The communities accuse the oil industry of knowingly selling products that emit damaging heat-trapping gases, and they’re suing for billions of dollars to address such problems as sea-level rise. The companies counter that greenhouse gas emissions are regulated under the Clean Air Act and remain the purview of lawmakers.

“Global warming is a serious issue, but it’s not one that can be solved by a lawsuit,” said attorney Ted Boutrous, who represents Chevron of San Ramon and also represented ExxonMobil, BP, Shell and ConocoPhillips on Thursday. “The plaintiffs are asking the courts to wade into the clear territory of Congress. To say the least, that’s a big ask.”

Boutrous not only argued that the nation’s environmental laws are the proper way to deal with industrial emissions, but also said that if a judge takes up the matter of fossil fuels, the court would be reaching too far into issues of national energy policy and national security, topics best handled by Washington.

After nearly three hours of arguments, U.S. District Judge William Alsup did not rule on whether the lawsuits would move forward. He asked both sides for more information. In addition, he authorized the cities to collect information from the out-of-state oil companies, which also argued that liability for California issues shouldn’t extend beyond the state’s border.

The San Francisco and Oakland cases are the furthest along of roughly a dozen similar legal efforts and they’re being closely watched across the nation. The suits have put global warming on unprecedented legal ground and have huge stakes for how the localities will cover the rising costs of climate change.

San Francisco alone estimates that $10 billion of public property and as much as $39 billion of private land are threatened by rising seas. The city wants money to repair its seawalls, control drainage, and relocate streets and infrastructure.

“It’s hard to know what’s going to happen with the suits,” said Sean Hecht, co-executive director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the UCLA School of Law. “We have not had a case like this that has gotten beyond the motion-to-dismiss phase.”

The attorneys for the oil companies sought to justify their pleas for dismissal with prior court cases. Many of the rulings they cited, including the 2011 decision in American Electric Power Co. vs. Connecticut, found that corporations can’t be sued for greenhouse gas emissions because Congress has laws, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, to regulate pollutants.

San Francisco and Oakland, however, are making a slightly different legal case than the earlier suits. They’re going after the oil companies not for greenhouse gas emissions but for producing and promoting fossil fuels.

Attorneys for the cities said that putting fossil fuels on the market and encouraging their use, when the companies knew they were damaging, constitutes a “public nuisance” that is within the court’s jurisdiction.

“We’re going to prove that they understood that they were causing global warming and they took actions to harm us,” said Steve Berman, one of the attorneys representing the cities.

The cities have likened the actions of the oil industry to tobacco companies, which sought to cover up research into lung cancer and have been held responsible for the health damage caused by smoking.

While Alsup hasn’t ruled on whether the cases will proceed, he acknowledged in a March decision, which put the matter in federal court instead of state court, that the suits are different than previous emissions cases. He also held an unprecedented “tutorial” on climate science to better prepare the court for handling the cases.

But on Thursday, Alsup questioned whether it makes sense to sue the oil industry for a product most people want and need.

“If we didn’t have fossil fuels, we would have lost that war (World War II) and every other war,” he told the courtroom. “Planes wouldn’t fly. Trains wouldn’t run. And we’d be back in the Stone Age.”

Alsup wrestled aloud with how to reconcile the benefits of fossil fuels with the damage they’re causing, and he wants both sides to provide additional information on the matter.

In a friend-of-the-court brief filed this month, the Justice Department argued that the importance of oil and gas is one of the reasons the issue is not one for the courts to address.

“Balancing the nation’s energy needs and economic interests against the risks posed by climate change should be left to the political branches of the federal government,” the federal attorneys wrote.

The attorneys also argued that if San Francisco and Oakland are successful in their suits, it would invite countless other legal challenges.

“If these cities may properly allege injuries from climate change, then so can every person on the planet,” they wrote. “Federal courts are poorly equipped to handle this multitude of cases and the associated complex scientific, economic, and technical issues.”

Most of the communities that have filed suits like San Francisco’s and Oakland’s are in California, including the cities of Richmond, Santa Cruz and Imperial Beach, and the counties of San Mateo, Marin and Santa Cruz. None have moved to trial. In most of the cases, judges are still deciding whether federal or state court is the appropriate venue.

The lawsuits come as the Trump administration has vowed to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, an international pact aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. President Trump has often downplayed the threat of climate change, even suggesting that the planet is not warming.

Good News! Skeptical Ontario.

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Ontario provincial elections are June 7, and a recent poll illuminates how liberals intent on saving the planet have turned the electorate into single issue voters.  The story comes from Global News: Climate change is the issue of our times — unless you’re an Ontario voter

This site has several posts describing how the electrical system has been mangled by green ideologues, and they have no one but themselves to blame.
Link to play Global video:  https://globalnews.ca/video/embed/4232314/

The article is written by a hand-wringing climatist, upset that the social proofs are failing at voters’ wallets.

One of the signature policies of the incumbent Liberal Party is leadership on climate change. And, since most of us care about helping the world’s climate, this should be a winning issue for the Liberals.

Not in Ontario though. At least not now. That’s because the effects of the Liberal’s approach to dealing with carbon, including changes to hydro rates and carbon pricing, has helped to galvanize a potential winning coalition around Doug Ford and the PC Party.

For many voters this no longer about helping the climate, it’s about increasing taxes, affordability, and government mismanagement.

What’s also happened in this election is that the emphasis in the phrase “carbon tax” has moved from the “carbon” to the “tax.” And, since voters are more concerned about taxes than climate today, the cure for too many seems worse than the disease. This is especially the case for voters who are more pessimistic about the economy.

Evidence of how public views have aligned against the Liberal’s management of the climate issue emerges when you ask Ontarians if the carbon tax is just a tax grab: 72 per cent agree.

This includes 85 per cent of PC voters, 72 per cent of NDP voters, and even 54 per cent of Liberal voters.

Another 68 percent of Ontario voters also agree that a carbon tax is nothing but a pointless gesture that won’t help the earth’s climate.

When you add it up then, carbon pricing has become a political millstone around the neck of the Ontario Liberal Party in this election.

This won’t end with the Ontario election. That’s because the Trudeau Liberals, like the Wynne Liberals, have made carbon pricing a cornerstone issue for their mandate.

Based on what we’re now seeing, this issue could also represent an electoral liability for the federal Liberals in Ontario. And, the situation won’t be helped by a Premier Doug Ford who has vowed to fight the pending federal climate tax if he is elected on June 7.

Are people finally seeing the light?

Chicxulub asteroid Apocalypse? Not so fast.

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The Daily Mail would have you believe Apocalyptic asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago triggered 100,000 years of global warming
Chicxulub asteroid triggered a global temperature rise of 5°C (9°F).

This notion has been around for years, but dredged up now to promote fears of CO2 and global warming. And maybe it’s because of a new Jurassic Park movie coming this summer.  But it doesn’t take much looking around to discover experts who have a sober, reasonable view of the situation.

Princeton expert Gerta Keller, Professor of Geosciences at Princeton, has studied this issue since the 1990s and tells all at her website CHICXULUB: THE IMPACT CONTROVERSY Excerpts below with my bolds.

Introduction to The Impact Controversy

In the 1980s as the impact-kill hypothesis of Alvarez and others gained popular and scientific acclaim and the mass extinction controversy took an increasingly rancorous turn in scientific and personal attacks fewer and fewer dared to voice critique. Two scientists stand out: Dewey McLean (VPI) and Chuck Officer (Dartmouth University). Dewey proposed as early as 1978 that Deccan volcanism was the likely cause for the KTB mass extinction, Officer also proposed a likely volcanic cause. Both were vilified and ostracized by the increasingly vocal group of impact hypothesis supporters. By the middle of the 1980s Vincent Courtillot (Physique de Globe du Paris) also advocated Deccan volcanism, though not as primary cause but rather as supplementary to the meteorite impact. Since 2008 Courtillot has strongly advocated Deccan volcanism as the primary cause for the KTB mass extinction.

(Overview from Tim Clarely, Ph.D. questioning the asteroid) In secular literature and movies, the most popular explanation for the dinosaurs’ extinction is an asteroid impact. The Chicxulub crater in Mexico is often referred to as the “smoking gun” for this idea. But do the data support an asteroid impact at Chicxulub?

The Chicxulub crater isn’t visible on the surface because it is covered by younger, relatively undeformed sediments. It was identified from a nearly circular gravity anomaly along the northwestern edge of the Yucatán Peninsula (Figure 1). There’s disagreement on the crater’s exact size, but its diameter is approximately 110 miles—large enough for a six-mile-wide asteroid or meteorite to have caused it.

Although some of the expected criteria for identifying a meteorite impact are present at the Chicxulub site—such as high-pressure and deformed minerals—not enough of these materials have been found to justify a large impact. And even these minerals can be caused by other circumstances, including rapid crystallization4 and volcanic activity.

The biggest problem is what is missing. Iridium, a chemical element more abundant in meteorites than on Earth, is a primary marker of an impact event. A few traces were identified in the cores of two drilled wells, but no significant amounts have been found in any of the ejecta material across the Chicxulub site. The presence of an iridium-rich layer is often used to identify the K-Pg (Cretaceous-Paleogene) boundary, yet ironically there is virtually no iridium in the ejecta material at the very site claimed to be the “smoking gun”!

In addition, secular models suggest melt-rich layers resulting from the impact should have exceeded a mile or two in thickness beneath the central portion of the Chicxulub crater. However, the oil wells and cores drilled at the site don’t support this. The thickest melt-rich layers encountered in the wells were between 330 and 990 feet—nowhere near the expected thicknesses of 5,000 to 10,000 feet—and several of the melt-rich layers were much thinner than 300 feet or were nonexistent.

Finally, the latest research even indicates that the tsunami waves claimed to have been generated by the impact across the Gulf of Mexico seem unlikely.

Summary from Geller

The Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary (KTB) mass extinction is primarily known for the demise of the dinosaurs, the Chicxulub impact, and the frequently rancorous thirty years-old controversy over the cause of this mass extinction. Since 1980 the impact hypothesis has steadily gained support, which culminated in 1990 with the discovery of the Chicxulub crater on Yucatan as the KTB impact site and “smoking gun” that proved this hypothesis. In a perverse twist of fate, this discovery also began the decline of this hypothesis, because for the first time it could be tested directly based on the impact crater and impact ejecta in sediments throughout the Caribbean, Central America and North America.

Two decades of multidisciplinary studies amassed a database with a sum total that overwhelmingly reveals the Chicxulub impact predates the KTB mass extinction. It’s been a wild and frequently acrimonious ride through the landscape of science and personalities. The highlights of this controversy, the discovery of facts inconsistent with the impact hypothesis, the denial of evidence, misconceptions, and misinterpretations are recounted here. (Full paper in Keller, 2011, SEPM 100, 2011).

Chicxulub Likely Happened ~100,000 years Before the KTB Extinction

Figure 42. Planktic foraminiferal biostratigraphy, biozone ages calculated based on time scales where the KTB is placed at 65Ma, 65.5Ma and 66Ma, and the relative age positions of the Chicxulub impact, Deccan volcanism phases 2 and 3 and climate change, including the maximum cooling and maximum warming (greenhouse warming) and the Dan-2 warm event relative to Deccan volcanism.

Most studies surrounding the Chicxulub impact crater have concentrated on the narrow interval of the sandstone complex or so-called impact-tsunami. Keller et al. (2002, 2003) placed that interval in zone CF1 based on planktic foraminiferal biostratigraphy and specifically the range of the index species Plummerita hantkeninoides that spans the topmost Maastrichtian. Zone CF1. The age of CF1 was estimated to span the last 300ky of the Maastrichtian based on the old time scale of Cande and Kent (1995) that places the KTB at 65Ma. The newer time scale (Gradstein et al., 2004) places the KTB at 65.5Ma, which reduces zone CF1 to 160ky.

By early 2000 our team embarked on an intensive search for impact spherules below the sandstone complex throughout NE Mexico. Numerous outcrops were discovered with impact spherule layers in planktic foraminiferal zone CF1 below the sandstone complex and we suggested that the Chicxulub impact predates the KTB by about 300ky (Fig. 42; Keller et al., 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2009; Schulte et al., 2003, 2006).

Time scales change with improved dating techniques. Gradstein et al (2004) proposed to place the KTB at 65.5 Ma, (Abramovich et al., 2010). This time scale is now undergoing further revision (Renne et al., 2013) placing the KTB at 66 Ma, which reduces zone CF to less than 100ky. By this time scale, the age of the Chicxulub impact predates the KTB by less than 100ky based on impact spherule layers in the lower part zone CF1. See Fig. 42 for illustration.

Unfortunately, this wide interest rarely resulted in integrated interdisciplinary studies or joint discussions to search for common solutions to conflicting results. Increasingly, in a perverse twist of science new results became to be judged by how well they supported the impact hypothesis, rather than how well they tested it. An unhealthy US versus THEM culture developed where those who dared to question the impact hypothesis, regardless of the solidity of the empirical data, were derided, dismissed as poor scientists, blocked from publication and getting grant funding, or simply ignored. Under this assault, more and more scientists dropped out leaving a nearly unopposed ruling majority claiming victory for the impact hypothesis. In this adverse high-stress environment just a small group of scientists doggedly pursued evidence to test the impact hypothesis.

No debate has been more contentious during the past thirty years, or has more captured the imagination of scientists and public alike, than the hypothesis that an extraterrestrial bolide impact was the sole cause for the KTB mass extinction (Alvarez et al., l980). How did this hypothesis evolve so quickly into a virtually unassailable “truth” where questioning could be dismissed by phrases such as “everybody knows that an impact caused the mass extinction”, “only old fashioned Darwinian paleontologists can’t accept that the mass extinction was instantaneous”, “paleontologists are just bad scientists, more like stamp collectors”, and “it must be true because how could so many scientists be so wrong for so long.” Such phrases are reminiscent of the beliefs that the Earth is flat, that the world was created 6000 years ago, that Noah’s flood explains all geological features, and the vilification of Alfred Wegner for proposing that continents moved over time.

Update Published at National Geographic February 2018 By Shannon Hall Volcanoes, Then an Asteroid, Wiped Out the Dinosaur

What killed the dinosaurs? Few questions in science have been more mysterious—and more contentious. Today, most textbooks and teachers tell us that nonavian dinosaurs, along with three-fourths of all species on Earth, disappeared when a massive asteroid hit the planet near the Yucatán Peninsula some 66 million years ago.

But a new study published in the journal Geology shows that an episode of intense volcanism in present-day India wiped out several species before that impact occurred.

The result adds to arguments that eruptions plus the asteroid caused a one-two punch. The volcanism provided the first strike, weakening the climate so much that a meteor—the more deafening blow—was able to spell disaster for Tyrannosaurs rex and its late Cretaceous kin.

A hotter climate certainly helped send the nonavian dinosaurs to their early grave, says Paul Renne, a geochronologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the study. That’s because the uptick in temperature was immediately followed by a cold snap—a drastic change that likely set the stage for planet-wide disaster.

Imagine that some life managed to adapt to those warmer conditions by moving closer toward the poles, Renne says. “If you follow that with a major cooling event, it’s more difficult to adapt, especially if it’s really rapid,” he says.

In this scenario, volcanism likely sent the world into chaos, driving many extinctions alone and increasing temperatures so drastically that most of Earth’s remaining species couldn’t protect themselves from that second punch when the asteroid hit.

“The dinosaurs were extremely unlucky,” Wignall says.

But it will be hard to convince Sean Gulick, a geophysicist at the University of Texas at Austin, who co-led recent efforts to drill into the heart of the impact crater in Mexico. He points toward several studies that have suggested that ecosystems remained largely intact until the time of the impact.

Additionally, a forthcoming paper might make an even stronger case that the impact drove the extinction alone, notes Jay Melosh, a geophysicist at Purdue University who has worked on early results from the drilling project. It looks as though the divisive debate will continue with nearly as much ferocity as the events that rocked our world 66 million years ago.

Summary:

So if the Chicxulub asteroid didn’t kill the dinosaurs, what did? Paleontologists have advanced all manner of other theories over the years, including the appearance of land bridges that allowed different species to migrate to different continents, bringing with them diseases to which native species hadn’t developed immunity. Keller and Addate do not see any reason to stray so far from the prevailing model. Some kind of atmospheric haze might indeed have blocked the sun, making the planet too cold for the dinosaurs — it just didn’t have to have come from an asteroid. Rather, they say, the source might have been massive volcanoes, like the ones that blew in the Deccan Traps in what is now India at just the right point in history.

For the dinosaurs that perished 65 million years ago, extinction was extinction and the precise cause was immaterial. But for the bipedal mammals who were allowed to rise once the big lizards were finally gone, it is a matter of enduring fascination.

This science seems as settled as climate change/global warming, and with many of the same shenanigans.