Meteorologist: ‘Why the former Ice Age became global warming, then climate change’
Aussie repeal – a ‘severe blow’ for carbon taxes?
LA Times: ‘Suddenly, the sun is eerily quiet: Where did the sunspots go?’
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-the-sun-goes-eerily-quiet-20140718-story.html…
NOAA Thinks No Trend In Global Temperatures for Two Decades is a Steady Increase?
New Study finds ‘evidence that the mainstream reports on anthropogenic global warming are vastly exaggerated’
Abstract
Tourism scholars tend to endorse the most pessimistic assessments regarding climate change, despite the fact that it is a highly controversial scientific topic. This research note provides the balance that is missing from the overly alarmist studies on climate change and tourism. Notwithstanding the common notion in the academic tourism literature, recent research provides evidence that the mainstream reports on anthropogenic global warming are vastly exaggerated, and that human-induced greenhouse gas concentrations do not play a substantial role in climate change. In any case, whatever small degree of global warming is likely to occur, its net effects will most likely be positive for humans, plants and wildlife. Consequently, the recommendation to tourism scholars and policymakers is to exercise extra caution in the face of the fashionable belief of dangerous man-made climate change. In light of the current scientific literature, advocating and implementing radical environmental policies are likely to be ineffective, ill-timed and harmful to the tourism industry.…
Report: Australia Still has Carbon Taxation on Agenda – ‘Repealed legislation is apparently going to be replaced by the multi-billion dollar “Direct Action” climate change policy’
http://americanthinker.com/2014/07/australia_still_has_carbon_taxation.html…
Cornell U: Developing countries may contribute more to climate change than advanced societies by 2030
While developed countries and regions have long been culprits for Earth’s rising greenhouse gas emissions, Cornell researchers – balancing the role of aerosols along with carbons in the equation – now predict a time when developing countries will contribute more to climate change than advanced societies: 2030.
Published in Environmental Research Letters (July 11), the new study was designed to inform international policymakers on the role of aerosols, as opposed to strictly greenhouse gases, when consideringclimate change mitigation.
“Historically, between 1850 and 2010, the United States and the European Union have contributed the most to Earth’s climate change. But the portion of global surface temperature change from human activities attributable to developing countries is increasing,” said Dan Ward, Cornell postdoctoral researcher and the study’s lead author. Natalie Mahowald, associate professor of earth and atmospheric sciences, is the senior author.
“In light of all factors, including our understanding of aerosols, we estimate that developing countries will surpass the contribution from developed countries around year 2030,” Ward said.…
New paper finds only ~3.75% of atmospheric CO2 is man-made from burning of fossil fuels – Published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
New paper finds only ~3.75% of atmospheric CO2 is man-made from burning of fossil fuels
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2014/07/new-paper-finds-only-375-of-atmospheric.html
A paper published today in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics finds that only about 3.75% [15 ppm] of the CO2 in the lower atmosphere is man-made from the burning of fossil fuels, and thus, the vast remainder of the 400 ppm atmospheric CO2 is from land-use changes and natural sources such as ocean outgassing and plant respiration.
According to the authors,
We find that the average gradients of fossil fuel CO2 in the lower 1200 meters of the atmosphere are close to 15 ppm at a 12 km × 12 km horizontal resolution.
The findings are in stark contrast to alarmist claims that essentially all of the alleged 130 ppm increase in CO2 since pre-industrial times is of man-made origin from the burning of fossil fuels, finding instead that only 15 ppm or ~11.5% of the increase is of fossil fuel origin. The findings cast additional doubt upon the IPCC carbon-cycle Bern Model, previously falsified by the atomic bomb tests.
Furthermore, if use of fossil-fuels has contributed such a small part of total atmospheric CO2 levels, restricting use of fossil fuels will have little effect upon CO2 levels.
Full paper open access:
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 14, 7273-7290, 2014
www.atmos-chem-phys.net/14/7273/2014/
doi:10.5194/acp-14-7273-2014
Simulating the integrated summertime Δ14CO2 signature from anthropogenic emissions over Western Europe
D. Bozhinova1, M. K. van der Molen1, I. R. van der Velde1, M. C. Krol1,2, S. van der Laan3, H. A. J. Meijer3, and W. Peters1
1Meteorology and Air Quality Group, Wageningen University, the Netherlands2Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research Utrecht, Utrecht, the Netherlands3Centre for Isotope Research, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands
Abstract. Radiocarbon dioxide (14CO2, reported in Δ14CO2) can be used to determine the fossil fuel CO2 addition to the atmosphere, since fossil fuel CO2 no longer contains any 14C. After the release of CO2 at the source, atmospheric transport causes dilution of strong local signals into the background and detectable gradients of Δ14CO2 only remain in areas with high fossil fuel emissions. This fossil fuel signal can moreover be partially masked by the enriching effect that anthropogenic emissions of 14CO2 from the nuclear industry have on the atmospheric Δ14CO2 signature. In this paper, we investigate the regional gradients in 14CO2 over the European continent and quantify the effect of the emissions from nuclear industry. We simulate the emissions and …
Paper predicts increased precipitation in Antarctica will slow sea level rise by > 1 mm/yr
Paper predicts increased precipitation in Antarctica will slow sea level rise by > 1 mm/yr
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2014/07/paper-predicts-increased-precipitation.html
Comment by Frank Walters, elevated to a post: I found an interesting paper: Antarctic precipitation and climate-change predictions: horizontal resolution and margin vs plateau issues, by C. GENTHON, G. KRINNER, H. CASTEBRUNET (Annals of Glaciology 50 2009) The paper suggests that the INCREASE in snow and ice on the margins of Antarctica may cause the rate of rise in global sea level to be 1 mm per year LESS than the rate of rise otherwise expected..The increase in sea ice can be linked to increase in precipitation on the margins of Antarctica. This is what one would expect intuitively, since the melting of the grounded coastal ice in accompanied by an endothermic process that causes refreezing as sea ice.A buildup of snow on top of the glacier adds weight and causes strain within the ice (shear) and thus increases the amount of ice moving down slope and calving from the seaward margin of the grounded ice. What needs to be explained is the increase in precipitation over the margins of Antarctica. Since the interior of the continent is a desert, snowfall on the plateau can be ignored. Full paper available here:
Antarctic precipitation and climate-change predictions: horizontal resolution and margin vs plateau issues
C. GENTHON, G. KRINNER, H. CASTEBRUNET
ABSTRACT. All climate models participating in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as made available by the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI) as the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 3 (CMIP3) archive, predict a significant surface warming of Antarctica by the end of the 21st century under a moderate (SRESA1B) greenhouse-gas scenario. All models but one predict a concurrent precipitation increase but with a large scatter of results. The models with finer horizontal resolution tend to predict a larger precipitation increase. Because modeled Antarctic surface mass balance is known to be sensitive to horizontal resolution, extrapolating predictions from the different models with respect to model resolution may provide simple yet better multi-model estimates of Antarctic precipitation change than mere averaging or even more complex approaches. Using such extrapolation, a conservative estimate of the predicted precipitation increase at the end of the 21st century is +30 kg m–2 a–1 on the grounded ice sheet, corresponding to a > 1mm a–1 sea-level rise [i.e. equivalent to 1 mm less sea …
A flip-flop on Arctic permafrost thaws – actually a net cooling rather than a warming
A flip-flop on Arctic permafrost thaws – actually a net cooling rather than a warming
Since we discussed permafrost pingos today, I thought this story from the University of Alaska Fairbanks was a good sidekick story. It seems there’s a silver lining in melting permafrost after all. Study: Climate-chi ooling arctic lakes soak up greenhouse gases New University of Alaska Fairbanks research indicates that arctic thermokarst lakes stabilize climate change by […]…