Polar bear mating season winds down with lots of sea ice habitat available
Habitat for polar bears is abundant worldwide as the prime feeding season passes its peak and mating season for sexually mature bears winds down. Battle among polar bear males for the right to mate, from this 2011 DailyMail story here .
Source: Polar bear mating season winds down with lots of sea ice habitat available…
EPA Science Advisers Resign After Trump Dismisses Top Board Member
…4 Graphs That Demonstrate Why The IPCC Climate Models Will NEVER Be Accurate
…Video: ‘Journalists Are Key Players In The Global Warming Scam’
…ANTARCTIC ICE EXPANSION SHOWS CLIMATE MODELS ARE UNRELIABLE
Despite a 20 percent increase in atmospheric CO2, and model predictions to the contrary, sea ice in the Antarctic has expanded for decades. Such observations are in direct opposition to the model-based predictions of the IPCC. This should give pause for thought about climate alarmism in general.
While there have been thousands of legacy media stories about the very real decline in summer sea-ice extent in the Arctic Ocean, we can’t find one about the statistically significant increase in Antarctic sea ice that has been observed at the same time.
Also, comparisons between forecast temperature trends down there and what’s been observed are very few and far between. Here’s one published in 2015:
Observed (blue) and model-forecast (red) Antarctic sea-ice extent published by Shu et al. (2015) shows a large and growing discrepancy, but for unknown reasons, their illustration ends in 2005.
For those who utilize and trust in the scientific method, forming policy (especially multi-trillion dollar policies!) on the basis of what could or might happen in the future seems imprudent.
Sound policy, in contrast, is best formulated when it is based upon repeated and verifiable observations that are consistent with the projections of climate models. As shown above, this does not appear to be the case with the vast ice field that surrounds Antarctica.
According to the most recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), CO2-induced global warming will result in a considerable reduction in sea ice extent in the Southern Hemisphere. Specifically, the report predicts a multi-model average decrease of between 16 and 67 percent in the summer and 8 to 30 percent in the winter by the end of the century (IPCC, 2013).
Given the fact that atmospheric CO2 concentrations have increased by 20 percent over the past four decades, evidence of sea ice decline should be evident in the observational data if such model predictions are correct. But are they?
Thanks to a recent paper in the Journal of Climate by Josefino Comiso and colleagues, we now know what’s driving the increase in sea-ice down there. It’s — wait for it — cooling temperatures over the ocean surrounding Antarctica.
This team of six researchers set out to produce an updated and enhanced dataset of sea ice extent and area for the Southern Hemisphere
The New York Times warms to climate change skepticism
To the consternation of alarmists, New York Times op ed writer Bret Stephens openly questioned the “consensus” that has demanded uniform acceptance without question of the global warming/climate change orthodoxy. As CFACT policy analyst Larry Bell reports, Stephens asserts that ordinary citizens have a right to be skeptical of an “overweening scientism.” He wisely warns us to remember that “history is littered with the human wreckage of scientific errors married to political power.”
Source: The New York Times warms to climate change skepticism…
Sec. of State Rex Tillerson sows confusion over Trump’s climate policy
http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/15/trump-needs-to-get-a-grip-on-his-communications-and-cabinet/
What is President Donald Trump’s policy on climate change and does he think the United States should be encouraged — or even obliged — to follow the dictates of the Paris climate accord? Well, truly it depends who you talk to and no issue better illustrates the cleavage in the Trump administration between liberal progressives and conservatives who are ardently opposed to big government solutions.
So what was Tillerson up to this week? Well, he journeyed to Alaska to have a summit with something called the Arctic partners. While there he signed the Fairbanks Declaration: a document that explicitly endorses the objectives of the Paris Accord. Tillerson was not just complicit in the declaration, nor was his participation reluctant or somehow coerced; no, Tillerson led the discussion and enthusiastically forged unity among those present.
It always concerns me when a U.S. secretary of state earns the unbridled praise of a member of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet. But Foreign Affairs Minsiter Chystia Freeland was absolutely effusive in her praise of Tillerson’s tremendous efforts on behalf of the climate change cause, clearly believing that he was not only exhibiting his own environmental fervor but that of his government.
Trump needs to clarify his environmental position with the same speed and zest that he applies to his Twitter activities. The climate change movement does not just represent an utterly unrealistic political objective but it remains potentially the largest tax grab in history as we are expected to somehow reduce carbon emissions by paying more for gas. The objective of course is to reduce the population to a stone-age lifestyle that is bereft of any carbon-producing modern convenience or warmth-emitting fuel.
Of course, even if this transformation is achieved, it will not offset the increasing industrialization of China and India but we in the West will certainly feel the pain of doing our part. It is not so much a climate change war as …
COSMIC RAYS ON THE RISE AS SOLAR MINIMUM APPROACHES
By Meteorologist Paul Dorian – Vencore, Inc.
vencoreweather.com
Overview
Today marks the 6th day in a row that the sun is blank and the 36th time this year – already more spotless days than all of 2016. In what has turned out to be a historically weak solar cycle (#24), the sun continues to transition away from its solar maximum phase and towards the next solar minimum. In April 2010, the sun was emerging from the last solar minimum which was historically long and deep. The blank look to the sun will increase in frequency over the next couple of years leading up to the next solar minimum – probably to be reached in late 2019 or 2020. By one measure, the current solar cycle is the third weakest since record keeping began in 1755 and it continues a weakening trend since solar cycle 21 peaked in 1980. One of the impacts of low solar activity is the increase of cosmic rays that can penetrate into the Earth’s upper atmosphere and this can have many important consequences.
Third weakest solar cycle since 1755
A recent publication has analyzed the current solar cycle and has found that when sunspot anomalies are compared to the mean for the number of months after cycle start, there have been only two weaker cycles since observations began in 1755. Solar cycle 24 began in 2008 after a historically long and deep solar minimum which puts us more than eight years into the current cycle. The plot (above) shows accumulated sunspot anomalies from the mean value after cycle start (97 months ago) and only solar cycles 5 and 6 had lower levels going all the way back to 1755. The mean value is noted at zero and solar cycle 24 is running 3817 spots less than the mean. The seven cycles preceded by solar cycle 24 had more sunspots than the mean.