Kerry off to Greenland ‘to bring attention to the dangers of climate change’
ABOARD THE HDMS THETIS, Greenland (AP) — Sailing through fields of large icebergs aboard a Danish naval vessel, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry brought his tour of the Arctic to Greenland on Friday, visiting the Northern Hemisphere’s largest glacier to bring attention to the dangers of climate change.
Hazarding a brief June snow and hail flurry in Disko Bay off Greenland’s third largest city of Ilulissat, population 4,500, some 220 miles (350 kilometers) north of the Arctic Circle, Kerry was meeting with scientists researching the dramatic erosion of the Sermeq Kujalleq Glacier that is contributing to global sea rise. The icecap has receded 12.4 miles (20 kilometers) since 2001, with a large increase since 2002.
A number of factors, including increasing air temperatures, the rise of black carbon emissions that discolor the ice and make it absorb more heat, and the introduction of warm sub-surface water from the Gulf Stream which erodes the ice sheet from below, have all contributed to the retreat of the glacier, which is the most active outside Antarctica in terms of iceberg production.
“There is profound change throughout the Arctic region,” said Kerry, clad in a green thermal parka and aviator sunglasses as Her Danish Majesty’s Ship Thetis cruised around the bay. “There are combined forces having this impact, but we also know that human beings, by the choices we are making to provide our power, our energy, are having a profound negative impact. There is a gigantic transformation taking place.”…
STUDY: Networks ignore job losses, bankruptcies in coal in 95% of stories
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/business/julia-seymour/2016/06/14/95-percent-time-networks-ignore-job-losses-bankruptcies-coal…
British news outlet says take the ‘no-shower challenge’
British news outlet says take the ‘no-shower challenge’
http://www.cfact.org/2016/06/16/british-news-outlet-says-take-the-no-shower-challenge/
The Guardian, Britain’s wildly anti-fossil fuel news site, floated the idea on Tuesday of taking the “no-shower challenge” as a way to alleviate water shortages and heal environmental degradation.
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Top Scientists: CO2-Induced Warming Is “Weak” To Non-Existent For Greenland, Antarctica!
Top Scientists: CO2-Induced Warming Is “Weak” To Non-Existent For Greenland, Antarctica!
By Kenneth Richard We routinely read about “highest ever” Arctic ice sheet and sea ice melt rates in the Arctic. And about rapid, “faster-than-expected” melting of ice shelves in West Antarctica. And then, of course, we’re told that sea levels are rising at an accelerating rate — a catastrophically accelerating rate — due to the amplified warming at the poles, or “polar amplification”. The predominant cause of these alarming climate changes is almost invariably attributed to anthropogenic CO2 emissions, of course. These headlines are now commonplace, designed to grab our attention and stir us to action. But does the scientific evidence confirm that the polar climate is predominantly determined by the rise in anthropogenic CO2 emissions? A warming and cooling Arctic As documented in the below Climate4you graph (HadCRUT4), the Arctic climate has followed a roughly 60-year oscillation in the last century. Arctic (70-90 N) temperatures warmed during the 1920s to 1940s, cooled during the 1950s to1990s, and then returned to a warming trend from the mid-1990s onward. Source: Climate4You Back in the early 1990s, the failure of the Arctic region to warm during the previous ~40 years (1950-1990) despite the concomitant increase in anthropogenic CO2 emissions was puzzling to scientists publishing in the journal Nature (Kahl et al., 1993: “Absence of evidence for greenhouse warming over the Arctic Ocean in the past 40 years“), leading them to question whether the models for the CO2 greenhouse warming hypothesis could adequately explain climate fluctuations for the polar regions. Below are some excerpts from the Kahl et al. (1993) paper. In particular, we do not observe the large surface warming trends predicted by models; indeed, we detect significant surface cooling trends over the western Arctic Ocean during winter and autumn. This discrepancy suggests that present climate models do not adequately incorporate the physical processes that affect the polar regions. Conclusion Kahl et al., 1993: The lack of widespread significant warming trends leads us to conclude that there is no strong evidence to support model simulations of greenhouse warming over the Arctic Ocean for the period 1950-1990. Our results, combined with the inconsistent performance of model simulations of Arctic climate indicate a need to understand better the physical processes that affect polar regions, especially atmosphere-ice-ocean interactions, ocean heat transfer and cloud radiative effects“ A cooling Antarctica, Southern Ocean since 1979 In …
Rigged Contest… French Government Disqualifies Skeptic Climate Project, Claiming It “Did Not Fulfill Criteria”!
Rigged Contest… French Government Disqualifies Skeptic Climate Project, Claiming It “Did Not Fulfill Criteria”!
Now the latest on the French government removing a skeptic project from a contest. In a contest set up to find the best solutions to a “problem”, it is not always wise to propose irrefutable scientific evidence that shows the “problem” does not exist, thus making it a waste of money and resources… and especially if your chances of winning are good! Dr. Sebastian Lüning informs that he has received a letter from the French government (see below with my translation), explaining why his project was disqualified. ==================================== Emergency brakes: French Government removes Medieval Warm Period Map project from climate project competition As reported on several occasions already at this site, the French government is holding a competition that allows people to vote via the Internet to support projects on climate change. Our Medieval Warm Period (MWP) Map was among the voting. The voting runs from June 6 to July 6, 2016. Many readers have already cast their votes. We would like to thank these readers for their support. Also internationally there has been vibrant interest for the project after notrickszone.com reported on the contest. Unfortunately we must inform you that all votes cast for the MWP project up to now have been declared invalid by the French Federal Ministry for Environment, Energy and the Oceans. One week after voting began on June 13, 2016, we received a letter from the Ministry stating that the project had to be taken out of the competition. Reason: It did not fulfill the criteria of the competition. It was signed by the French General Commissar for Sustainable Development. You can see a copy of the original letter below, which we provide in its entirety in the spirit of sustainable transparency. Since then only an error message appears at the original project page of the ‘100 Projects for the Climate’ site. On the background for the reasons behind the move, one can only speculate. Presumably the MWP Map project received such a great number of votes that the organizers got scared and panicked. Obviously public demands a scientific clarification of the pre-industrial climate development, which up to now has not been available to this degree of detail and user-friendliness – despite the millions that have been poured into climate research. Obviously it is not a welcome development that the …
106-Year-Old Photo Makes Global Warming Alarmists Think Twice About Paris Floods
106-Year-Old Photo Makes Global Warming Alarmists Think Twice About Paris Floods
“More than 100 years ago, the Seine River rose a record breaking 8.6 m (roughly 20 feet) above usual levels, causing the catastrophe known as the 1910 Great Flood of Paris.” From the Daily Caller:
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Climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer: If Skeptics can be Prosecuted for Fraud, So can Alarmists
If Skeptics can be Prosecuted for Fraud, So can Alarmists
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2016/06/if-skeptics-can-be-prosecuted-for-fraud-so-can-alarmists/
I’m glad to see this news report today, and I’ve been saying the same thing ever since the whole Attorneys General flap started: “If Democratic attorneys general can pursue climate change skeptics for fraud, then also at risk of prosecution are climate alarmists whose predictions of global doom have failed to materialize. The cuts both ways argument was among those raised by 13 Republican attorneys general in a letter urging their Democratic counterparts to stop using their law enforcement power against fossil fuel companies and others that challenge the climate change catastrophe narrative. Consider carefully the legal precedent and threat to free speech, said the state prosecutors in their letter this week, headed by Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange. If it is possible to minimize the risks of climate change, then the same goes for exaggeration, said the letter. If minimization is fraud, exaggeration is fraud. The popular comparison of legitimate skepticism and uncertainty over the causes of climate change with hiding the risks of tobacco use is just so silly. No one can be demonstrated to have been harmed by manmade climate change, partly because there is no way to establish causation, there has been no demonstrable increase in severe weather events, etc. Besides, can any investor in Exxon Mobil really claim they never heard of the possible risks of anthropogenic climate change? That’s all we’ve been hearing in the news for the last 30 years. “But Dr. Spencer! It can be demonstrated that flash floods have killed more and more people in their cars over the last 150 years!” Sheesh. If you really think this is a valid argument, I can’t help you. In fact, to the extent that recent climate change has been partly caused by humans (which I do believe…even though I cannot prove it), the positive externalities have likely outweighed the negative externalities (cold weather still kills more people than hot, crop productivity goes up with increasing CO2). That is in addition to the fact that we have no large-scale replacements for fossil fuels yet, and to the extent we force expensive renewables on people, we make poverty worse. And poverty does kill. Environmental groups that have pressured decision makers into bed with them on the issue should be held accountable for their deceit.
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GOP AGs warn Dems that if climate skeptics can be prosecuted for ‘fraud,’ so can alarmists
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jun/16/gop-ags-dems-climate-alarmists-can-be-prosecuted/…