New Study ‘demonstrates that CO2 is only a bit-player in the drama of world climate’
Full paper available here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1674987116300305
Excerpts below:
doi:10.1016/j.gsf.2016.04.004 – Open Access funded by China University of Geosciences (Beijing)
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The primary forcing agent regulating ice-age glaciation is precession.
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The primary feedback system regulating ice-age glaciation is albedo.
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Albedo modulation is controlled by desertification and dust contamination of ice sheets.
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Desertification and dust productions are caused by low CO2 concentrations.
We present here a simple and novel proposal for the modulation and rhythm of ice-ages and interglacials during the late Pleistocene. While the standard Milankovitch-precession theory fails to explain the long intervals between interglacials, these can be accounted for by a novel forcing and feedback system involving CO2, dust and albedo. During the glacial period, the high albedo of the northern ice sheets drives down global temperatures and CO2 concentrations, despite subsequent precessional forcing maxima. Over the following millennia more CO2 is sequestered in the oceans and atmospheric concentrations eventually reach a critical minima of about 200 ppm, which combined with arid conditions, causes a die-back of temperate and boreal forests and grasslands, especially at high altitude. The ensuing soil erosion generates dust storms, resulting in increased dust deposition and lower albedo on the northern ice sheets. As northern hemisphere insolation increases during the next Milankovitch cycle, the dust-laden ice-sheets absorb considerably more insolation and undergo rapid melting, which forces the climate into an interglacial period. The proposed mechanism is simple, robust, and comprehensive in its scope, and its key elements are well supported by empirical evidence.
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6. Summary and conclusions
The primary orbital cycle responsible for interglacial initiation is the precessional Great Summer, which can provide large increases in annual midsummer insolation in the northern hemisphere for several millennia. However, not all Great Summers produce a warming event, while full interglacials only occur every four or five cycles. The additional factor that can achieve this selective regulation is the high albedo of the northern ice sheets, which can reject and reduce the increased insolation of a Great Summer. In order for a Great Summer to generate a significant warming response the northern ice sheets need to be laden with dust, so that the increased insolation can get some leverage on the highly reflective ice. And the mechanism
Claim: ‘Brexit vote is result of climate refugee crisis’
There has been much discussion recently about Britain’s vote in a referendum held June 23 to exit from the European Union.
There has been little talk, however, about what likely was one of the major contributors to the Brexitvote’s outcome – climate change.
Immigration was the major concern driving those who voted against remaining in the EU.
But where are those immigrants coming from?
Although most of the recent immigrants to Britain have come from India, Poland and Pakistan, the latest immigration crisis has been the result of the EU’s inadequate response to refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war.
And what caused the Syrian civil war? According to Scientific American, a study published last year points the finger at the worst drought on record as being a major factor.
Unusually hot and dry weather resulted in crop failures, forcing people off of the land and raising food prices across the Middle East.
People rebelled in the so-called “Arab Spring.” Most of the rebellions failed to achieve any positive results. In Syria, the rebellion resulted in a protracted and violent government backlash, as well as considerable foreign involvement.
The destruction has forced millions to flee to other Middle East countries and to Europe.
If a person accepts that climate change is happening, then the mass movement of people is only beginning.
United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted that climate change will continue to make the Middle East hotter and drier.
That will mean that, instead of hundreds of thousands of refugees heading towards Europe, there could be tens of millions.
Similar mass migrations would happen elsewhere in the world.
Antarctica Expert Dr. Eric Steig: ‘Evidence Antarctic Glacier Retreat Due To AGW ‘Is Weak’
Antarctica Expert Dr. Eric Steig: “Evidence Antarctic Glacier Retreat Due To AGW “Is Weak”!
More “consensus” science: Antarctica not influenced by AGW By Kenneth Richard In recent years, the headlines of common news sources have austerely warned that West Antarctica is melting rapidly: “‘Nothing can stop retreat’ of West Antarctic glaciers” — BBC “The melting of Antarctica was already really bad. It just got worse.” — Washington Post “West Antarctic glacier loss: We have passed the point of no return“ — Christian Science Monitor “Antarctic ice melting so fast the whole continent may be at risk“ — The Guardian Then, last November (2015) a NASA study (Zwally et al., 2015*) was released indicating that the growth in the Antarctic ice sheet (AIS) has been exceeding the losses since the early 1990s, and that the net mass gains from the AIS were negatively contributing to sea level. This, of course, did not affirm the alarmist headlines. RealClimate, an AGW blog co-founded by Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann, necessarily cobbled together a response to the inconvenient study. After all, a growing polar ice sheet in response to anthropogenic global warming did not advance the cause. The result was an essay written by Jonathon Bamber – “So what is really happening in Antarctica?”** – which essentially characterized the Zwally et al. (2015) conclusion as a peculiar outlier. Most other papers on Antarctic ice sheet mass balance indicate that the AIS is losing about -50 to -100 Gt/year on average (which is the equivalent of about one inch per century of sea level rise contribution). These studies were characterized as more likely to be accurate than the NASA-sponsored paper that found a net AIS gain of about +100 Gt/year. In other words, “consensus” logic (the more people agree, the more likely they are to be right) was employed to “refute” the NASA study. This graph (below) from the RealClimate essay was featured as a visual representation of just how “out-there” the Zwally et al. (2015) paper was compared to the “consensus” conclusions of other scientists: Image: RealClimate.org. Sometimes, though, a thorough reading of entries on AGW blogs like RealClimate can prove enlightening. Buried in the comment section of this same essay — comment number 26 to be specific — was an admittance by Dr. Eric Steig (moderator of comments) that the evidence that the Antarctic ice sheet (AIS) responds to anthropogenic global warming, …
Thanks to climate change, the Arctic is turning green
Thanks to climate change, the Arctic is turning green
By Chris Mooney Energy and EnvironmentJune 27
Using 29 years of data from Landsat satellites, researchers at NASA have found extensive greening in the vegetation across Alaska and Canada. Rapidly increasing temperatures in the Arctic have led to longer growing seasons and changing soil for plants. (Cindy Starr/NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center)
Earlier this month, NASA scientists provided a visualization of a startling climate change trend — the Earth is getting greener, as viewed from space, especially in its rapidly warming northern regions. And this is presumably occurring as more carbon dioxide in the air, along with warmer temperatures and longer growing seasons, makes plants very, very happy.
Now, new research in Nature Climate Change not only reinforces the reality of this trend — which is already provoking debate about the overall climate consequences of a warming Arctic — but statistically attributes it to human causes, which largely means greenhouse gas emissions (albeit with a mix of other elements as well).
[Alaska’s huge climate mystery, and its global consequences]
The roughly three-decade greening trend itself is apparent, the study notes, in satellite images of “leaf area index” — defined as “the amount of leaf area per ground area,” as Robert Buitenwerf of Aaarhus University in Denmark explains in a commentary accompanying the study — across most of the northern hemisphere outside of the tropics, a region sometimes defined as the “extratropics.” Granted, there are a few patches in Alaska, Canada and Eurasia where greening has not been seen.…
Brexit Victory Boosts Climate Sceptics
http://www.thegwpf.com/brexit-victory-boosts-climate-sceptics/
Prominent leaders of the “leave” campaign — including Conservative MP and former London mayor Boris Johnson, now being touted as a potential prime minister — are viewed as climate skeptics, at least compared to their counterparts on the losing “remain” side, headed by British PM David Cameron.
Cameron has announced he will resign in the wake of his referendum defeat, setting off a race for leader of the Conservative party, who would also become PM.
While Johnson has never denied man-made climate change and described last year’s United Nations’ Paris climate treaty as “fantastic,” he also wrote in a Dec. 20 Telegraph column, quoting prominent U.K. climate skeptic Piers Corbyn, that human beings tend to confuse weather with climate and overestimate their impact on the natural world.…
Teen activism moves Minneapolis suburb to pass climate initiative
Officials in a Minneapolis suburb adopted an aggressive greenhouse-gas-reduction policy last month that was brought forth by a group of local high schoolers who are part of a national climate change movement.
Drafted by iMatter, a national youth-led group, the resolution aims for net-zero emissions by 2040 in St. Louis Park, a suburb immediately west of Minneapolis with a population of roughly 47,000. The resolution also commits the city to working with youth activists on its future goals and planning.
iMatter is a member of RE-AMP, which publishes Midwest Energy News.
The students were the first in the country to have a resolution passed that was prepared by iMatter, which is training high school students across the nation to lobby their communities to pass a “Climate Inheritance Resolution.” The group’s website says similar efforts are underway in cities in New York, Iowa, Illinois, California and Canada.
The measure passed the St. Louis Park city council unanimously. It calls for protection of “the children and grandchildren of this community from the risks of climate destruction.”…
Brexit worrisome for climate activists
Well before the U.K. voted to leave the E.U. last week, environmentalists and climate scientists were warning of the fallout for climate efforts should the country vote “leave”. Here, Blouin News provides a brief overview of the leading concerns among the environmental preservation community following the outcome of the Brexit referendum:
The National Geographic quotes Myles Allen of the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute noting a top worry for scientists:
My main concern in the big picture is potential damage to the U.K.’s reputation as a destination for top-flight researchers. Researchers put a lot of emphasis on the ability to recruit and ability to travel, and if these changes affect our ability to recruit the best and brightest of the world’s academics, then we’re in trouble.
The same concern can be applied to technologists in the U.K. who were hoping to elevate the country’s status as a major global player in tech. Many fear that the U.K.’s clean tech and green markets will suffer economically in addition to talent-wise with its departure from the E.U. (Note that the green economy in the U.K. has been steadily developing and the country has been paving the way for clean tech in vehicles.) The uncertainty as to how these markets will continue to build out runs deep.…
Warmist Joe Romm at ThinkProgress: Global Warming Caused Brexit
It only took four days after U.K. voters chose to leave the European Union for a liberal climate scientist and eco-activist to blame the whole event on — you guessed it — global warming.
Joe Romm, a climate scientist and writer for the liberal blog ThinkProgress, wrote an article Monday arguing the so-called “Brexit” and the rise of GOP candidate Donald Trump are driven by global warming.
“We’ve known for a while that there are scientific tipping points beyond which certain climate impacts — like the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet or the thawing of the carbon-rich permafrost — become unstoppable,” Romm wrote. “But it appears there may also be political tipping points, where certain climate impacts cause so much widespread harm simultaneously that they simply fragment the world.”
“In this fatally-fractured future, countries focus almost exclusively on the ever-worsening climate devastation to their country, destroying the possibility of collective action by the world to help those worst off,” he wrote.
Romm goes on to argue the Brexit movement was largely fueled by “scaremongering around the Syrian refugee crisis” — a crisis he says caused by global warming. Romm wrote:
The Syrian migrant crisis “had an outsized impact on the Brexit,” as NBC News political director Chuck Todd said Friday. You can see that in the pro-Brexit poster from the U.K. Independence Party (above) — which became a major advertising campaign of the referendum — featuring thousands of male refugees streaming from Croatia into Slovenia last October.
It bears repeating that a major 2015 study confirmed: “Human-caused climate change was a major trigger of Syria’s brutal civil war.” This study found that global warming made Syria’s 2006 to 2010 drought two to three times more likely. “While we’re not saying the drought caused the war,” the lead author explained. “We are saying that it certainly contributed to other factors — agricultural collapse and mass migration among them — that caused the uprising.”
And that mass migration ultimately fueled the mass refugee crisis of the last two years, a crisis the world has utterly failed to figure out how to handle.
Environmentalists and some scientists have tried to link the Syrian civil war to man-made global warming for years. The argument has been repeated by Democratic presidential candidates and even Secretary of State John Kerry as evidence for why the world needs to get serious about a warming climate.…
Australians Declare: ‘After Brexit — We Need Clexit’ – A ‘Climate Exit’ From UN Paris Agreement!
[It’s Coming! CLIMATE HUSTLE DVDs and Blu-rays are NOW AVAILABLE! Pre-order yours today! Order now: www.ClimateHustle.com]
Via: The Carbon Sense Coalition
After Brexit – We need Clexit
http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/clexit.pdf
Malcolm Turnbull signed Australia onto the Paris Climate Agreement. This appalling document should be forever draped around his neck like a dead albatross.
Now we learn he has engineered an Emissions Trading Scheme as part of our green tributes to Paris.
The ALP and the Greens would have gone even further than Turnbull into the European climate swamp. They should also be awarded the ODA – the Order of the Dead Albatross.
(Acknowledgements: Steve Hunter www.stevehunterillustrations.
Australia must withdraw from the dreadful Paris agreement before it can be ratified.
We need our own CLEXIT – climate exit from the energy vandals of Europe.
Read More:
The Lib/Lab/Green schemers strike secretly:
Lord Monckton on Brexit: http://www.theeuroprobe.org/2016-044-comment-by-lord-monckton-on-brexit/
Britain becomes more sceptical: http://www.thegwpf.com/brexit-victory-boosts-climate-sceptics/
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Related Links:
Warmist Joe Romm at ThinkProgress: Global Warming Caused Brexit
Warmist Eco-Author Spoke To AG About Global Warming Skeptics Before Exxon Reports
‘The sun goes blank again during the weakest solar cycle in more than a century’
Guardian: Old People Voting Against Climate or Brexit is ‘Intergenerational Theft’
Study: Canada’s extreme winters ‘within range of normal variations’ – ‘Speaks to the apparent slowdown in the rate at which the Earth is heating up’
Remember the polar vortex?
The term entered popular awareness during the winter of 2013-14, which brought biting cold to much of the country and saw record low temperatures around the Great Lakes region.
Now climate scientists at Environment and Climate Change Canada who have been studying the phenomenon to see whether something unusual was behind it have an answer: Such an extreme winter is within the range of normal for Canada.
The result has broad implications because it speaks to the apparent slowdown in the rate at which the Earth is heating up. The slowdown, or global warming “hiatus” as it is sometimes called, is a smaller-than-expected increase in global average surface temperature since about the year 2000. Observations suggest the planet is getting warmer, but not as quickly as predicted.
The Canadian study, published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, reinforces the idea that natural variability is behind the hiatus, too, since very cold winters in one region tend to drag down the global average. It implies that things could just as easily swing the other way in the future, causing temperatures to rise even faster than climate models predict. Such a reverse swing may be behind the searing heat that people are currently experiencing in the American southwest.
“Our findings don’t undermine the influence that humans have been having on the climate,” said John Fyfe, a senior research scientist at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis in Victoria. “But we shouldn’t be surprised to find that human-induced climate change is overlaid on top of a level of internal variability that can be quite large in magnitude and persistent.”
According to Dr. Fyfe, that persistence helps explain why a cluster of cold winters can crop up in close succession, as occurred with three out of the five winters between 2009 and 2014.
The study challenges a theory, put forward in 2014, that the cold winter of 2013-14 was triggered by an unusual warming in the western tropical Pacific that year.
Using the federal government’s own climate-system model, which runs on a dedicated supercomputer, Dr. Fyfe and a collaborator ran 200 detailed simulations of the Earth’s atmosphere, looking at the kinds of fluctuations that arise from year to year. They then zeroed in on four of those that most closely reproduced the kind of extreme winter conditions that occurred in North America during 2013-14.
What they …