‘Arctic Methane Bomb’ Claims Show Quality Control At journal Nature And Mainstream Media Is Fatally Flawed
“Arctic Methane Bomb” Shows Quality Control At Nature And Mainstream Media Is Fatally Flawed
Earlier in the week news poured out from the media about a commentary appearing in Nature by Gail Whiteman, Chris Hope, and Peter Wadhams, who claim that methane released by “thawing permafrost beneath the East Siberian Sea, off northern Russia, alone comes with an average global price tag of $60 trillion in the absence of mitigating action — a figure comparable to the size of the world economy in 2012.” Absurd.
Nature devolves to a science-fantasy tabloid.
In school we were taught when solving a science problem to ask yourself if the answer you got really made sense. For example: How big would John’s bucket need to be if he wanted to fill the bath tub with it in 15 minutes? If the answer you get is something 5000 cubic meters, then you can be sure the answer is wrong. If a student is unable to recognize that, then he/she needs to go back a few grades.
This appears to be the case with the “answers” Whiteman, Hope, and Wadhams came up with. Worse, the mainstream media and Nature editors could not even recognize the absurd dimensions of their claims. This is the sad state that the media and communicators of science have devolved to. The journal Nature has degenerated to a tabloid level.
The claims made by Whiteman, Hope, and Wadhams are so far out in left field that even notoriously warmist scientists such as Gavin Schmidt are embarrassed about them, and have publicly dismissed them in no uncertain terms.
The New York Times’ Andrew Revkin titled his blog commentary: “Arctic Methane Credibility Bomb“.
Judith Curry here called the claims “impossible”.
German energy think-tank and warmist Oliver Geden tweeted: “We’ll see more of these hypes until #COP21“.
Geden reveals what this is really all about. It is not about sloppy quality control at Nature, but rather it’s about having thrown all quality standards overboard so that even highly imaginative fantasies about the future can find their way into the pages of Nature. It’s last desperate attempt by catastrophe obsessed ideologues to get attention over a dying narrative.
For some media, what appears in a once prestigious journal must still be good enough to pass on as news for the public without any scrutiny, just as Christoph Seidler of Spiegel demomnstrates. The flagship German news …
Cooling Poles – Top 3 Coldest Arctic Summers Will Have All Occurred In Past 5 Years
Cooling Poles – Top 3 Coldest Arctic Summers Will Have All Occurred In Past 5 Years
The Arctic, we are told, is the canary in the climate coal mine. No place on the planet is supposed to warm faster. As global warming takes hold, we are really supposed to see it at the Earth’s poles. If that’s true, then we should really be opening up our minds to the real possibility of a cooling planet because summertimes at the North Pole are cooling.
Three of the last five Arctic summers have been the coldest on record. Graphics snipped form the dmi.dk.
Arctic summers can been examined going back to 1958 using data from the Danish Meteorological Institute here. It turns out the 3 coldest Arctic summers have all occurred in the last 5 years. Not even the summers of the 1960s were colder. 2013 still has about three weeks to go, yet the forecasts show that it’s place in the record books is pretty much secured.
So why has Arctic sea ice extent reached record lows over the past 5 years, we might ask? Sea ice melt involves a lot more than just surface atmospheric temperature. Historical records show that a major force is ocean cycles. From 1980 to 2000, both the AMO and PDO saw warm phases, and so the Arctic ice melt was likely caused by the warmer surface sea water. But now that the PDO has flipped to its cool phase and the AMO is transitioning to its cool phase, we can expect the Arctic to begin its recovery over the next 2 decades – just like it did during the 1950s and 60s. There’s likely a decade or so lag between Arctic surface temperatures and sea ice coverage.
I’d bet a good bottle of Scotch that we’ll be seeing a rising Arctic sea ice trend over the next 10 years.
Finally, not only the North Pole is chilling out, but so is the South Pole, which has been setting record highs for sea ice extent. See here.
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Winter To Make An Early Return To The Arctic, Forecast Shows
Winter To Make An Early Return To The Arctic, Forecast Shows
http://notrickszone.com/2013/07/22/winter-to-make-an-early-return-to-the-arctic-forecast-shows/
The calendar says it’s summertime in the Arctic. But looking at the latest weather forecast, you’d never know it. In fact it looks more like September.
Here’s what the temperature forecasting chart shows today:
The above chart based on the NCEP shows frosty days up ahead for the Arctic. Source: http://wxmaps.org
Ellesmere island, the 12th largest island in the world, will be about 5°C below normal over the coming week. A large part of the Arctic will be below freezing by early August, according to forecasts. This flies in the face of “accelerated warming” that is supposed to occur in the Arctic. Sea ice as a whole will come close to a modern low, but so has the temperature!
Steve Goddard at his website has written on multiple occasions about how it’s been the coldest summer in the Arctic on the (modern) record. Here’s the summer temperature chart for this year thus far:
Coldest Arctic summer on record. Source: http://ocean.dmi.dk
Now here’s the temperature chart for the Arctic back in 1979 when all was “normal” up in the Arctic and the polar bears had more sea ice than they knew what to do with:
Summertime temperature for the year 1979 – back when Arctic sea ice was at a maximum. Source: http://ocean.dmi.dk.
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Walter Russell Mead: We Really Don’t Understand Our Climate. ‘The warming plateau is exposing our limited understanding of climate and it’s effectively killing the rationale for green policies that limit growth’
Walter Russell Mead: We Really Don’t Understand Our Climate
http://www.thegwpf.org/walter-russell-mead-dont-understand-climate/
The warming plateau is exposing our limited understanding of climate and it’s effectively killing the rationale for green policies that limit growth.
Scientists are still struggling to explain the slower-than-predicted global warming over the past decade. It’s a puzzle with enormous implications: we know that we’re emitting greenhouse gases in record quantities, and we know that these gases trap more of the sun’s heat, yet global surface temperatures are significantly lower than what our climate models predicted. If our models are otherwise correct, then where is this heat going? A group of UK climate scientists have some ideas:
A range of factors have been pinpointed for what has come to be called the “hiatus” or “pause” in warming, which the scientists said they expected to be temporary.
These include small airborne particles known as aerosols from volcanic eruptions that have a cooling effect as they reflect sunlight back into space; the impact of the regular cycle of solar activity; the sensitivity of the climate to greenhouse gases, and the way the oceans absorb heat.
There are innumerable variables in the climate system that could be responsible for the warming slowdown. These scientists have identified some of the likeliest culprits, but one professor admitted that they “don’t fully understand the relative importance of these different factors.”
That’s a big problem, considering most green legislation aimed at reducing emissions calls for measures to prevent very specific degrees of warming. This recent warming plateau is exposing our limited understanding of climate, and it’s effectively killing the rationale for green policies that limit growth and, at the most basic level, try to force people to do things they would rather not do.
Via Meadia, 23 July 2013
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Is the Arctic Melt Going to Cost Us Dearly? ‘Greens are very good at making dire predictions that don’t come true’
Is the Arctic Melt Going to Cost Us Dearly?
http://www.thegwpf.org/arctic-melt-cost-dearly/
Greens are very good at making dire predictions that don’t come true — otherwise we’d all be starving and shivering in the dark in a world of peak oil and population bombs.
The melting Arctic could release vast reserves of methane into the atmosphere, ultimately costing the world’s economy $60 trillion, according to a new study. Released last week in the journal Nature, the study’s authors paint a grim portrait of a world in which melting Arctic ice leads to permafrost thawing in Russia, exposing mass quantities of the extremely potent greenhouse gas methane to the atmospheric mix.
The scientists behind the paper weren’t satisfied with just predicting the amount of methane that could be released; they modeled the methane’s potential financial impact. The FT reports:
[T]he group felt it was important to assess the possible economic impact of such changes, said Peter Wadhams, a professor of ocean physics at Cambridge who believes the Arctic sea ice could completely vanish in summers as early as 2015. […]
The researchers assessed the impact of higher methane emissions with a newer version of the economic model used in the UK government’s 2006 Stern Review on the economics of climate change, which concluded the benefits of curbing global warming early far outweigh the potential costs of not acting.
Depending on how much methane was emitted, they calculated its potential cost was likely to be $60tn, with 80 per cent of the damage occurring in developing countries least able to curb the impact of more floods, droughts and storms.
We’ve written about the melting of the Arctic before, pointing out that the warmer northern ocean would provide new access to vast stores of oil and gas, and offer up new, more direct international shipping lanes. But this new paper suggests that the financial costs are likely to “outstrip any benefits by three or more orders of magnitude.”
That’s a bold claim, especially considering recent failures of climate models in predicting surface temperatures. These failures point to the enormous difficulty of understanding our climate and how sensitive it is to greenhouse gases. The authors of this new paper appear unfazed by these modeling shortfalls and are confidently predicting catastrophe.
There are a lot of variables at play here: the relationship between warmer Arctic waters and permafrost, the rate of permafrost thawing, the amount of methane …
US Army switching to ‘green’ bullets — ‘“This makes the projectile environmentally-friendly’
US Army switching to ‘green’ bullets — ‘“This makes the projectile environmentally-friendly’
The Daily Caller reports: The U.S. Army is taking the expression “get the lead out” quite literally and switching to lead-free, environmentally-friendly bullets. The Army’s Picatinny Arsenal is working on a “green” version of the M80A1 7.62 mm bullet, which troops are supposed to start being issued in 2014, according to an Army press release. […]…