Supreme Irony #2 - Mauna Loa and Hawaiian Temperatures

Supreme irony #1 was of course "Assessing Recent Warming" which I posted on the 7th. of this month, in which I pointed out that the temperature at Washington Airport, just across the Potomac river from the capital, home of NOAA and the then president "Halt climate change" Barack Obama, had shown no warming since 1974. This time I start with the Mauna Loa Observatory, home of the "Keeling Curve" of atmospheric CO2 concentration. Here's a superb topographical map of Hawai'i Island, known in the state of Hawai'i as "Big Island", for obvious reasons - its area is greater than all the other islands of the archipelago put together. If you want to save a copy, click on it and right-click "save image as" or whatever your browser uses:

The red circle marks Lo'ihi, a "sea-mount", an active undersea volcano which will eventually break the surface (in at least decades) as a new addition to the island chain. Mauna Loa is the big brown peak in the middle, and a dirt track leads eastward to the town of Hilo, where there's Hilo Airport, home to an atmospheric weather station. There they record temperature etc, and launch radiosondes to measure temperature, humidity and ozone to 30-35 km altitude:

Steve about to release a radiosonde. Source: NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory.

Check out the link to ESRL - well worth a read, and abstracts of papers on the role of ozone in climate included. The big "hill" in the background is dormant volcano Mauna Kea, at 4205 metres the highest point in the islands. Notice the grey volcanic soil - it took a great deal of work from the 1920s onwards to level the site for the airport, cutting away hard volcanic rock. Read about that here if you're interested - it's another good read. Happily, all the fixed surface instruments are on grass - I'd imagine that soil would get hotter than tarmac in the sun. OK - enough background stuff - cut to the chase, and the temperature record for Hilo Airport since 1950 - the reason for the start date will become clearer later.

Hilo Airport 1950-2016.  Source: GISS

I've circled 1966 in red - no warming since then until 2015-6. Global Warming delayed by a mere 50 years. Next temperature station to the NW is at Kahului Airport on Mau'i Island:

Kahului Airport, Mau'i.  Source: GISS

No warming at all since 1977 - I can't use a Loess filter because of the gap from 2005 to 2009, so I've plotted a linear trend 1977-2016. It's essentially flat. Skip an island or two with no current data, and we come to Honolulu, the capital city, and of course UHI - Urban Heat Island effect. Has that affected the temperature record? Almost certainly, however:

Honolulu Airport 1950-2016.   Source: GISS

I've circled 1984 - no warming since then. Notice there's no 2015-16 "spike" either, as seen at Hilo. I suspect something has happened there to cause it. I'm checking it out. Last but not least, further to the NW is Lihue, Kaua'i Island:

Lihue, Kaua'i, 1950-2016.   Source: GISS

No warming since 1970 (circled). So there we have it - an entire US state with a documented lack of "Global Warming" - it never was global, and there are many places all round the globe showing either a total lack of late-20C warming, or even cooling. If many Sceptics would stop their incessant and negative complaining about GHCN/GISS adjusted and "homogenised" temperature data, and actually use the extensive unadjusted database, there's an Aladdin's cave of debunking material to be extracted and put to good use.

Why did I start most of the charts at 1950? I found a real little gem from the EPA, "What Climate Change Means for Hawaii". It kicks off:

Hawaii’s climate is changing. In the last century, air temperatures have increased between one-half and one degree (F).

Not a very good start - even though my charts above start at 1950, it's clear there's been a rise of around 1°C (almost 2°F) since then, and on full plots as much as 2°C (3.6°F) over the last 100 years. There's even a graphic to illustrate their error:

It's clear that Honolulu (top, brown) has increased from below 76°F to well over 77°F. There's no mention of the fact that even on this confused and confusing spaghetti-chart, it's clear that Honolulu hasn't warmed since the mid-1980s; that Hilo hasn't warmed since the mid-1960s; that Lihue hasn't warmed since about 1970, and that Kahului (grey, barely visible) hasn't warmed since the late 70s.

After some waffle about ocean warming (they say about 1°F) around Hawaii damaging coral reefs, there's this:

Greenhouse gases are also changing the world’s oceans and ice cover. Carbon dioxide reacts with water to form carbonic acid, so the oceans are becoming more acidic. The surface of the ocean has warmed about one degree during the last 80 years. Warming is causing snow to melt earlier in spring, and mountain glaciers are retreating. Even the great ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica are shrinking. Thus the sea is rising at an increasing rate.

Errr - CO2 reacts with sea-water, but it doesn't form carbonic acid (H2CO3). The author's using kindergarten science. Even highly-carbonated soft drinks have only very tiny amounts of carbonic acid in them. Most of the CO2 remains as CO2 in solution. Look it up, as I did, whereas this author, in common with many alarmists and their camp-followers, never have. Sea-water is strongly buffered, and the addition of CO2 reduces the alkalinity (negative pH) only a little.  Saying that CO2 increases "acidity" is like saying that a reduction in your bank overdraft has "increased your bank balance".

Warmer air can certainly hasten snow-melt in spring, but it would take decades to centuries for slightly warmer air to have any effect on glaciers and ice-shelves. Air simply hasn't got the heat capacity and therefore content to do it over a few years, despite what glaciologists touchingly believe - they do have very vivid imaginations, and clearly know no relevant physics. A strong negative feedback is that melted surface ice (water!) evaporates, cooling the water. Latent heat of evaporation for water is an order of magnitude greater than latent heat of fusion for ice. Glaciologists also touchingly believe that surface melt-water can "permeate cracks in the ice" to reach the bottom of a glacier and "lubricate the base", so the glacier will advance faster. Ice-cold water can somehow permeate ice which is below freezing point to reach the base? Yeah, right - more "settled science".

Try heating your bath water using a fan-heater in the bathroom (don't try this at home!). In a well-insulated room, it would take weeks for the water to reach equilibrium with the hot air temperature. Topic for a future post here!

"Thus the sea is rising at an increasing rate." - well it's not. The "great ice sheet" on Greenland was shrinking, but that's slowed in recent years, not accelerated.  The only part of the "great ice sheet" on Antarctica to display any melting was at the northern end of the Antarctic Peninsula - the very tip is even outside the Antarctic circle. Several papers published recently show that the "increasing temperatures" on the peninsula flattened off after 1990, and have been decreasing over the last 10-15 years. Topic for another post!

Satellite data shows global sea-level to be increasing at about 3 mm/year since 1993, and despite what some Sceptics would have you believe, in general, satellite data agrees fairly well with tide-gauge data. However, a big factor in the 3 mm/year figure was due to surface warming in the western Pacific, that's PDO and ENSO related, and both indices are reversing trend. Also, the satellites sample a lot of sea surface where there are no tide-gauges, and so it's likely that previous estimates of global rise have been under-stating the case for many decades. In general, tide-gauges show no late 20th.C acceleration correlating with atmospheric warming at all. Dozens of mainstream papers document that. I'll finish this post soon, I promise, just one last quote:

Since 1960, sea level has risen between two and eight inches relative to Hawaii’s shoreline. Sea level rise can make Hawaii’s existing coastal hazards—such as waves, hurricanes, tsunamis, and extreme tides—even worse. Additionally, rising sea level has accelerated coastal erosion, which has resulted in wetland migration and cliff collapse. Chronic erosion has affected more than 70 percent of Kauai and Maui’s beaches over the last century.

"Between two and eight inches" is a pretty wide estimate. Eight inches is the accepted estimate for global rise from 1880. I'll go into that in a post (in preparation) about sea-levels around the archipelago. I accept that many beaches have suffered "Chronic erosion", but I contend that the main reason is steeply-shelving beaches, which are prone to "Chronic erosion" whether sea-level is rising or not. That's well-documented. Have a look at this from the same EPA document:

Firstly, that pale golden sand is not Hawaiian sand. The islands are composed of very dark basaltic rocks - they're the tops of very large volcanoes. The natural colour is the same as the soil in the "balloon" picture above. The islands are famous for their "black beaches". Secondly, it's easy to see that the bottom shelves steeply down from the beach. This is the flank of a volcano, after all. The beaches aren't threatened by "climate change" but by natural erosion and longshore currents and rip-tides off the beaches - they're well documented too. Currents dangerous for swimmers erode beaches. Rising sea-levels must play a small part, and a gradually increasing part, but these exaggerated claims are just the usual "blame everything bad on climate change" meme. "What Climate Change Means for Hawaii" is just the usual alarmist nonsense, permeated by a few truths. Par for the course,

Green Elites, Trumped?

Her's an amazing article from The Wall Street Journal. I've reblogged it, without further comment, from Greenie Watch. It's by Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. Who he? His profile and list of WSJ articles is to be found here.

Green Elites, Trumped

The planet will benefit if the climate movement is purged of its rottenness.

Hysterical, in both senses of the word, is the reaction of greens like Paul Krugman and the Sierra Club to last week’s election. “The planet is in danger,” fretted Tom Steyer, the California hedge funder who spends his billions trying to be popular with green voters.

Uh huh. In fact, the climate will be the last indicator to notice any transition from Barack Obama to Donald Trump. That’s because—as climate warriors were only too happy to point out until a week ago—Mr. Obama’s own commitments weren’t going to make any noticeable dent in a putative CO2 problem.

At most, Mr. Trump’s election will mean solar and wind have to compete more on their merits. So what?

He wants to lift the Obama war on coal—but he won’t stop the epochal replacement of coal by cheap natural gas, with half the greenhouse emissions per BTU.

He probably won’t even try to repeal an egregious taxpayer-funded rebate for wind and solar projects, because red states like this gimme too. But Republican state governments will continue to wind back subsidies that ordinary ratepayers pay through their electric bills so upscale homeowners can indulge themselves with solar.

Even so, the price of solar technology will continue to drop; the lithium-ion revolution will continue to drive efficiency gains in batteries.

Mr. Trump wants to spend on infrastructure, and the federal research establishment, a hotbed of battery enthusiasts, likely will benefit.

In a deregulatory mood, he might well pick up an uncharacteristically useful initiative from the Obama administration. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission quietly is revisiting a scientifically dubious radiation risk standard that drives up the cost of nuclear power.

What a Trump election will do is mostly dismantle a green gravy train powered by moral vanity that contributes nothing to the public welfare.

A phenomenon like Trump, whatever its antecedents, is an opportunity—in this case to purge a rottenness that begins at the commanding heights. The New York Times last year published a feature entitled “short answers to the hard questions about climate change” that was notable solely for ignoring the hardest question of all: How much are human activities actually affecting the climate?

This is the hardest question. It’s why we spend tens of billions collecting climate data and building computerized climate models. It’s why “climate sensitivity” remains the central problem of climate science, as lively and unresolved as it was 35 years ago.

Happily, it only takes a crude, blunderbussy kind of instrument to shatter such a fragile smugness—and if Mr. Trump and the phenomenon he represents are anything, it’s crude and blunderbussy.

As with any such shattering, the dividends will not be appropriated only by one party or political tendency.

Democrats must know by now they are in a failing marriage. Wealthy investors like George Soros,Nat Simons and Mr. Steyer, who finance the party’s green agenda, have ridden the Dems into the ground, with nothing to show for their millions, and vice versa.

On the contrary, the WikiLeaks release of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails only dramatizes what a liability they’ve become, demanding attacks on scientists and even loyal Democrats who don’t endorse their climate-disaster scenarios. Their anti-coal, anti-pipeline, anti-fracking stance especially hurts Dems with union households, which turned out in record numbers for Mr. Trump.

It was always crazy to believe in an unprecedented act of global central planning to wean nations away from fossil fuels, but equally idiotic not to notice that our energy economy is ripe slowly to be transformed by technology anyway.

One greenie who is beyond the need for handouts is Bill Gates, who has made himself non grata by saying the current vogue for subsidizing power sources that will always need subsidies is a joke—an admission of defeat.

Honest warriors like Mr. Gates and retired NASA alarmist James Hansen insist real progress can’t be made without nuclear. Why haven’t others? Because the Tom Steyers and Bill McKibbens would sacrifice the planet 10 times over rather than no longer be fawned over at green confabs. That’s rottenness at work.

There’s a reason today’s climate movement increasingly devotes its time and energy to persecuting heretics—because it’s the most efficient way to suppress reasoned examination of policies that cost taxpayers billions without producing any public benefit whatsoever.

The theory and practice of climate advocacy, on one hand, has been thoroughly, irretrievably corrupted by self righteousness—blame Al Gore, that was his modus. Yet, on the other, it has allowed itself to become the agent of economic interests that can’t survive without pillaging middle-class taxpayers and energy users—exactly the kind of elitist cronyism that voters are sick of.

Without attributing any special virtue to Mr. Trump, he represents a chance for a new start. He might even turn out to be good for the planet.

Huge, I mean HUGE rally for "Climate Justice" in Washington

I've absolutely no idea what "Climate Justice" means, I suspect most people don't, and I suspect many who claim to support it don't know either. Back in August, WaPo (The Washington Post) breathlessly told us that "For Pope Francis’s D.C. visit, environmental rally of up to 200K planned".

Several environmental groups are planning a major climate rally that will draw hundreds of thousands to the National Mall on Sept. 24, the day Pope Francis speaks to Congress and is expected to address the public afterwards. 

The permit for the gathering — which will make the moral case for reducing greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming — is for 200,000 people. The Moral Action on Climate Network, along with the Earth Day Network, League of Conservation Voters, Sierra Club and other groups, have timed the rally on the Mall  the same day of the pope’s speech.  House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has said the pope “has expressed an interest” in making an appearance on the Capitol’s West Front.

Wow - "hundreds of thousands" that must have been some sight last Thursday! Well no, apparently "Climate Justice" is such a burning issue on a nice, warm day in Washington that "hundreds" turned up, or so ThinkProgress estimated - "Pope’s Visit To D.C. Inspires Hundreds To Rally For Climate Justice".

Source: Think Progress

On Thursday morning — as Pope Francis prepared to make history by addressing Congress — hundreds of activists gathered on the National Mall. Holding signs, petitioning for signatures, and offering spirited remarks to an expectant crowd, the activists represented a spectrum of causes and religious denominations, from young evangelicals to Black Lives Matter leaders. And they all came together for a common purpose: to demand action on climate change. “We realize that climate change is the upstream issue, and that downstream, it affects all of us. It is a global an issue as you’ll ever want to encounter. If you’re concerned about immigration, then you realize climate change creates so many climate refugees. If you’re a person who is interested in protecting animals, then you realize that if we didn’t eat animals, we’d be reducing our carbon emissions by almost as much as the entire transportation sector,” Lise Van Susteren, head of Moral Action on Climate Justice, the organization responsible for the rally, told ThinkProgress. “Each group recognizes that we have so much common ground, and that if we put our energies together, that we can see some real differences.”

WaPo was a little more generous with an estimate of 2,000.

For pope-cheering climate rally, a modest crowd. 

The faith-based climate rally that took place Thursday in Washington drew a much smaller crowd than anticipated, though organizers say they still managed to convey their message. 

The Moral Action on Climate Justice network, which worked with the Earth Day Network, League of Conservation Voters, Sierra Club. Friends of of the Earth and other groups to organize the event, originally asked the National Park Service for a permit for 50,000 attendees. But Park Service countered the permit should be closer to 200,000, organizers said, given the popularity of Pope Francis. 

In the end, according to several observers, the overall attendance was closer to 2,000. Think Progress — which is published by the liberal think tank Center for American Progress — estimated there were “hundreds of activists” on the Mall for the event, which started early Friday.

Apparently, erstwhile supporters were put off by "traffic".

According to Moral Action on Climate Justice’s head Lise Van Susteren, crowds were deterred by media reports and government warnings that downtown traffic would be snarled by road closures related to the pope’s visit.
“Everybody was saying it was going to be traffic armageddon,” she said in an interview Friday. “Traffic armageddon was the tornado.”
But Van Susteren said the fact that 100 journalists were credentialed for the event, and disparate groups including evangelical and Black Lives Matter activists came together on stage is what matters.
“It’s not how many people are on the ground, really. That’s like how many people come to my birthday, party,” she said. “The issue is people who do count are there.”

Silly me thought that it was precisely "how many people are on the ground" which mattered to the organisers and the press and media for a rally or public protest. Lise continued:

“The point is to bring in evangelicals” into the climate debate, Van Susteren added. “You’ve got to show it’s a big tent.”

Indeed, and the metaphorical "big tent" was almost empty. The article ends:

Van Susteren declined to disclose the total cost of the rally, which was shared among several environmental groups, but said the Park Service required organizers pay for a range of costs on the assumption that nearly 200,000 people would come. That included one portable toilet for every 300 people, multiple jumbotrons, security fees and insurance.

Now lemme see; estimated 200,000, one portaloo for every 300 attendees, which makes a total of 666 toilets. One for every three of the estimated 2,000 who turned up. Taking the piss is so easy and hygenic with so many portaloos on the ground.

Just one last soundbite from ThinkProgress by someone called "Moby", who's a Vegan (who woulda guessed?)

“Any other issue that’s important to anyone, be they progressive or conservative, pales in comparison to climate change. Nothing else that we care about can exist if the climate changes. If there’s no food and there are hurricanes with 250 mph winds, and if half the world’s population is displaced, and if political systems start to fail, everything else we care about just falls by the wayside,” he told ThinkProgress. “It’s almost like we have to fix climate change and then get back to all the other issues that we care about.”

"Nothing else that we care about can exist if the climate changes" - well no, it matters more than just a jot how much the climate changes, and in which direction. Don't these muppets realise the climate is always changing and has always changed? Into and out of ice-ages is a lotta change, and early humans managed to survive the last glacial, without apparently too much trouble. "If there's no food..." - then we'll all be dead. If there's no food, there won't be half the world's population to be displaced, and no political systems either. All dead, including of course the 198,000 "traffic refugees" who cared so much about "Climate Justice" they couldn't be bothered to turn up on a nice sunny day in Washington.

Boston sea-level rising at almost four times the global rate?

"Boston preparing for higher seas, more flooding from climate change", Beth Daley of the Boston Globe tells her readers.

Researchers say Boston and its densely developed shoreline are extremely vulnerable to more frequent and intense storms projected from global warming. The sea level is rising here at almost four times the global rate, adding to the urgency to protect properties soon.

Four times the global rate? Where did Beth, whose Globe profile states

Daley has covered the environment for the Globe since 2001 and has won numerous national journalism awards for reports on fishing, climate change, and environmental health, including being named a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2008. She spent the 2011-2012 academic year at Stanford University on a John S. Knight fellowship. She has been with the Globe since 1994 and previously covered urban education.

.... get that startling information? Her twitter page gives us a few clues, especially this one

Beth Daley ‏@GlobeBethDaley            Oct 30 

Climate change's impact on Sandy http://b.globe.com/SqZQzh

#bosandy

.... which takes us to Effects of climate change increase risk of storms’ impacts.

Climate change is probably part of Sandy’s story, scientists and environmentalists say, but there are also short-term weather forces conspiring to create the sprawling, powerful storm.

 and later

For example, rising sea levels in the Northeast, which are increasing three to four times faster than global rates, according to federal statistics, will bring more flooding and damaging storm surges that ride atop high seas. Warmer air can hold more water vapor, meaning storms could drop more precipitation.

That link is to the USGS (Salenger, et. al) paper whose abstract begins

Rates of sea level rise are increasing three-to-four times faster along portions of the U.S. Atlantic Coast than globally, according to a new U.S. Geological Survey report published in Nature Climate Change. 

All is now clear; Daley, who "previously covered urban education" can't understand plain (American) english. It's not sea-levels rising "three to four times faster than global rates", it's the rates which are (claimed to be) increasing "three-to-four times faster along portions of the U.S. Atlantic Coast", the so-called "North-east hotspot", and that's nothing like so big a deal, by a long wave [not a typo]. I poked a few statistical and logical holes in their narrative in Between a Rock and a Wet Place - The USGS Creates a Hockey-stick.

When I recently updated my "Glossary of Global Warming and Climate Terms", little did I realise how close my satirical description of an environmental reporter (Reject from the fashion desk) might come to reality in just a few days. I was a bit off the mark though, she's a reject from the urban education desk. I'd have thought her year-long John S. Knight fellowship might have honed her journalistic skills more than a little, especially in reading and comprehension, as well as factual reporting, but of course it didn't cover very elementary statistical concepts. She's not alone though, many rejects from various departmental desks have been drawing the wrong (but alarmingly convenient) conclusion ever since Salenger, et al hit the webosphere last June. I just couldn't be bothered to waste blog-space on ceaseless twittering by know-nothings about nothing much to get worried about.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Wiggly Lines

Visitors to this blog may wonder what my underlying motives and views are. I have only one motive; telling the truth. My views vary with time - anyone whose views on any subject don't vary, even a little with time, have a fixed mindset, which is not a good thing. My views change as I learn, and they change as I get a better viewpoint on the "bigger picture" . Anyone who tells you, or leads you to believe, that they know "pretty much all there is to know" on any subject whatever apart from the size of Algore's bank balance, is either a liar or an egotist, or both.

I chose to study the aspects of sea-level change some years ago. One reason was that I perceived that very few people, whether bloggers, their respondents, columnists or news reporters (whatever their title), know anything much at all on the subject. Many think it's pretty straightforward; just measuring the height of the sea at any one point, and plotting a few graphs and trends. How little they know.

Another reason was that I thought that even with a little knowledge, I might be able to shed a little light in an area of low understanding - which shows what little I knew. Sea level varies all around the globe; it varies from day to day, month to month, year to year, decadally and on longer time scales, and it varies from place to place. It varies for a variety of reasons; a change in the mass of water in the oceans, a change in the volume of that mass, with ocean basin volume due to tectonic movements, with temperature, wind strength, wind direction, barometric pressure and ocean currents, and even local gravity. If you think that changes in weather and climate are complex, but changes in sea level are not, think again.

Hurricane Sandy was a child of the ocean, and not of the atmosphere. Some climate scientists and climate modellers appear (and there's plenty of evidence to support my view) to think that the atmosphere controls the climate, and the climate modifies the oceans. How wrong they all are.

A seemingly trivial yet important fact is that the tides generated by the Moon, modified by the Sun, shift more water from place to place over a single tidal cycle of just over 12 hours than all the ocean currents combined do in a year. That tidal  shifting is an oscillation of course, but because the globe isn't covered completely in water, the continents and large islands "get in the way", and the tides modify currents at continental margins quite significantly, creating "eddies" which disrupt, spread, and even temporarily reverse the flow.

The oceans cover about 2/3 of the Earth's surface which gets most sunlight. The oceans also absorb more of the Sun's energy than does the land, and they absorb it to a far greater depth. The land surface warms and conducts to just a few centimetres depth during the daytime. The oceans absorbs visible light and short-wave infrared (about 50% of incident solar radiation, a fact known to few it seems), to a depth of tens of metres. The oceans have a heat capacity thousands of times that of the atmosphere. Physicist Lord Rutherford is reported to have said, in an argument about whether electrons orbited the relatively massive atomic nucleus, or vice versa, "When you've got a flea on an elephant, it's the flea that jumps". The oceans are the elephant, and the atmosphere is the flea.

Studying all aspects of the physics of the oceans is the key to understanding weather and climate. To ignore, marginalise or trivialise the role of the oceans is indeed to "ignore the elephant in the room". The oceans drive and control all the climate oscillations from ENSO to the AMO. Note that climate scientists and modellers study "atmospheric sciences". Draw your own conclusions from that - I already have.

Where is all this leading? Why my post title? I could show you 20 charts for tide gauges which show alarmingly high rates of sea-level rise, to prove something catastrophic is just over the horizon (apt metaphor?). I do not. I could show you 20 charts which show virtually no change for half-a-century, "nothing much is happening", yet I do not. I could show you 20 charts which show a fairly steady decrease over a century, to prove that "sea-level is not rising", and I do not. None of these collections would illustrate the truth, though many people would have you believe that their little collection does. Ignore them - their little collection of wiggly lines and "revealing" trends are only a "cherry-picked" and biased version of the truth; there's a very thin line between bias and lies.

Those of whatever persuasion who cherry-pick are guilty of misrepresentation at best, lying at worst. Those who cherry-pick should remember that their "evidence" may reveal more about them than their "hypothesis" does about the true situation. That their evidence may contain at least one "hidden message" which is visible to anyone who has a truly sceptical eye and a little knowledge, and which may be used to disprove their claims. Those who cherry-pick should remember that they may choke on the stones.

Climate Science Rapid Response Team can't tell the truth on sea level paper

Climate Science Watch posted on 17th. Dec. 2012; Sea level rise study misrepresented; humans still raising sea level

There is a new paper out in the Journal of Climate which some have hailed as proof that the global mean sea level is not influenced by human activity. However, this is exactly the opposite of what the study authors explain are the real results.

The following guest post is a briefing note by the Climate Science Rapid Response Team:

The study finds sea level rise is still continuing at a steady rate. Study author Dr. John Church has stated via email correspondence, “I would argue that there is an unhealthy focus on one single statistic -- an acceleration number -- and insufficient focus on the temporal history of sea level change.” 

........................ 

With a complete reading of the paper, it becomes apparent that acceleration is only one part of the larger picture. The planet is rapidly warming and the seas are rising. These researchers are refining our understanding of which factors are driving that rise, and in what proportions.

The study Twentieth-century global-mean sea-level rise: is the whole greater than the sum of the parts? indeed finds that "sea level rise is still continuing at a steady rate".

Abstract

Confidence in projections of global-mean sea-level rise (GMSLR) depends on an ability to account for GMSLR during the 20th century. There are contributions from ocean thermal expansion, mass loss from glaciers and ice sheets, groundwater extraction and reservoir impoundment. We have made progress towards solving the “enigma” of 20th-century GMSLR—that is, the observed GMSLR has been found to exceed the sum of estimated contributions, especially for the earlier decades. We propose that: thermal expansion simulated by climate models may previously have been underestimated owing to their not including volcanic forcing in their control state; the rate of glacier mass loss was larger than previously estimated, and was not smaller in the first than in the second half of the century; the Greenland ice-sheet could have made a positive contribution throughout the century; groundwater depletion and reservoir impoundment, which are of opposite sign, may have been approximately equal in magnitude. We show that it is possible to reconstruct the timeseries of GMSLR from the quantified contributions, apart from a constant residual term which is small enough to be explained as a long-term contribution from the Antarctic ice-sheet. The reconstructions account for the approximate constancy of the rate of GMSLR during the 20th century, which shows small or no acceleration, despite the increasing anthropogenic forcing. Semi-empirical methods for projecting GMSLR depend on the existence of a relationship between global climate change and the rate of GMSLR, but the implication of our closure of the budget is that such a relationship is weak or absent during the 20th century.

Note that last sentence and read the distorted logic and back-pedalling in the comments. One of the "Rapid response Team (RRT)" (equipped with hockey-stick maybe?), Dr. John Abraham ends his comment

In short, saying that the relationship between global climate change and sea level rise is weak is not the same as saying “climate change has nothing to do with sea level rise."

Well, no - the abstract says "weak or absent". Apparently "absent" is absent from Dr. Abraham's vocabulary. John Church, co-author of many sea-level papers cited in many reports including IPCC assessment reports and a co-author on this particular paper says

I basically agree with what John Abraham has written.

Sea level is more complex then just a simple linear relationship to surface temperatures. The physics is more complex than this and there are multiple time scales for each of the components contributing to sea level change. Glaciers are a good example. As temperatures continue to rise their contribution cannot continue to rise indefinitely because over time there will be a smaller glacier volume to contribute to sea level rise

I see a "straw man" surfacing from the rising waters - who on the CSW page or elsewhere mentioned "a simple linear relationship to surface temperatures"? No -one, though perhaps Abraham would say "it's not the same as saying there aren't any such statements".

Fundamentally, the "rapid-response team" is saying that "Semi-empirical methods for projecting GMSLR depend on the existence of a relationship between global climate change and the rate of GMSLR, but the implication of our closure of the budget is that such a relationship is weak or absent during the 20th century" doesn't mean what it so clearly does say. Even one of the co-authors "basically agree[s] with what John Abraham has written". Is he telling us that the abstract is in error? If so why hasn't it been corrected?

I, as a sceptical observer, would observe that if the correlation between climate change and sea-level rise in the 20th. century is "weak or absent", and that if climate change over that period is hypothesised to be driven by human activities, then the claimed correlation between those activities and sea-level rise is also "weak or absent". But then, I'm not a scientist, and not qualified to comment on a statement in a research paper which one of the authors agrees doesn't say what it clearly does say.

The RRT also says "this is exactly the opposite of what the study authors explain are the real results". How many authors explained "the real results"? Just the one, apparently. Big numbers are clearly not the RRT's strongest suit.

But what about the RRT statement "The planet is rapidly warming" and the comment from co-author John Church "As temperatures continue to rise"? - IPCC AR5 and any temperature dataset refute both of those claims (I'm being tactful using the word). Perhaps they'd both say that a chart which shows stasis or a slight fall in temperature during the 21st century "is not the same as saying there's no global warming" over the same period. "Post-normal science" is all around us, and rising rapidly.

'Extreme climate may wipe out mammals from Earth' - or maybe not

The Business Standard intones dramatically

Mammals could be at greater risk of extinction due to a higher frequency of extreme conditions such as cyclones and droughts spurred by climate change, scientists have warned.

Researchers from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) have mapped out land mammal populations, and overlapped this with information of where droughts and cyclones are most likely to occur. This allowed them to identify species at high risk of exposure to extreme weather.

The study describes the results of assessing almost six thousand species of land mammals in this way.

Bear in mind that land mammals have been exposed over millions of years, to more than one ice age with "extreme weather" (of the cold-induced variety) and at least one interglacial period during which temperatures were several degrees above those of today with "extreme weather" (of the heat-induced variety).

"Approximately a third of the species assessed have at least a quarter of their range exposed to cyclones, droughts or a combination of both," lead author of research, Eric Ameca y Juarez said.

"If these species are found to be highly susceptible to these conditions, it will lead to a substantial increase in the number of mammals classified as threatened by the IUCN under the category 'climate change and severe weather'," said Juarez in a statement.

In particular, primates - already among the most endangered mammals in the world - are highlighted as being especially at risk.

Just a minute though - "If these species are found to be highly susceptible to these conditions" implies, nay states, that the zoologists haven't actually assessed the vulnerability of land mammals to "extreme weather". Neither it seems, have they assessed the actual probability of the extremes they "predict", nor the extent or intensity of the extremes, nor specified the timescales over which those extremes might occur.

"This is the first study of its kind to look at which species are at risk from extreme climatic events. There are a number of factors which influence how an animal copes with exposure to natural disasters.

"It is essential we identify species at greatest risk so that we can better inform conservation management in the face of global environmental change," ZSL's research fellow Dr Nathalie Pettorelli said.

What does AR5 draft have to say about cyclones? Ch2 FAQ 2.2 says

Considering other extremes, such as tropical cyclones, the latest assessments show low confidence that any reported long-term increases in tropical cyclone activity are robust, after accounting for past changes in observing capabilities. There is some evidence, however, of an intensification of the most extreme storms, but records are currently very short.  

Over periods of a century or more, evidence suggests slight decreases in the frequency of tropical cyclones making landfall in the North Atlantic and the South Pacific, once uncertainties in observing methods have been considered. Little evidence exists of any longer-term trend in other ocean basins.

So much for the "increase in hurricanes/cyclones" meme touted as fact lately. What about droughts? Section 2.6.2.2 Floods, Droughts and Severe Local Weather Events:

On the whole the annual maximum number of consecutive dry days appears to be declining in most regions since the 1950s (Figure 2.33b). Using a measure which combines both dry spell length and precipitation intensity Giorgi et al. (2011) indicate that ‘hydroclimatic intensity’ (Chapter 7) has increased over the latter part of the 20th Century in response to a warming climate. They show that positive trends are most marked in Europe, India, parts of South America and East Asia although trends appear to have decreased in Australia and northern South America (Figure 2.33c). Data availability, quality and length of record remain issues in drawing conclusions on a global scale, however.

So where there are trends in tropical cyclones (includes hurricanes) they show decreased frequency - something many sceptics have been saying for years - based on the data. With regards to drought, "On the whole the annual maximum number of consecutive dry days appears to be declining in most regions since the 1950s".

Every so often, more often year on year it seems, I read of some "research" or other that produces an immediate reaction of "what a load of crap". This study is one such.

Permafrost - when does bullshit become lies?

It's easy to answer that question - when it's published by the Los Angeles Times, as in "Thawing permafrost may amplify global warming, U.N. reports". At least the title of the article is entirely truthful, but crap soon emerges from the frozen wastes of the author's mind. That mind is engaging itself with the just-released UNEP report Policy Implications of Warming Permafrost. The journalist Kenneth R. Weiss doesn't mess about - he's straight on the bullshit bandwagon with his first paragraph.

Think of broccoli that you’ve got in the freezer. As long as it’s frozen, it will remain stable for years. As soon as you pull it out, it’ll go mushy and soon begin to unleash the stench of decay.

That’s one way Kevin Schaefer likes to describe what’s happening to all the leaves and roots and other plant material locked in the frozen soils of the arctic tundra and forests since the last Ice Age.

"All the leaves and roots and other plant material"? No, just some of it, possibly - even probably.

As the planet warms, this permafrost is thawing, releasing huge amounts of carbon and methane, Schaefer explains in a new report. The United Nations Environment Program released the report Thursday to prod negotiators gathered in Doha, Qatar, to come up with a new international treaty to rein in rising greenhouse gases warming the planet.

"This permafrost is thawing, releasing huge amounts of carbon and methane"? No it isn't, as the report details and concludes. As "Schaefer explains in a new report"? No, he doesn't - the report's first conclusion states:

Permafrost around the world has begun to change, with TSP network observations indicating that permafrost temperatures have risen over the past few decades. CALM network observations are less conclusive, but show increases in active layer thickness at many sites. Overall, these observations indicate that large-scale thawing of permafrost may already have started.

"May already have started", and the report says nothing about the relatively small amount of existing thaw "releasing huge amounts of carbon and methane". Mr. Weiss is just making it up as he goes along. I'm not even going to display my bullshit button - this is waay beyond bullshit.

All this fuss is of course due to the assumption (which has merit, don't get me wrong) that the greenhouse gases released by decomposing organic matter in thawed permafrost would accelerate global warming, or whatever the fashionable term is nowadays.

I'm currently microbially digesting the organic matter of the UNEP report and will post on it ASAP, sans bullshit and lies of course. I'll end on a lighter note with a priceless quote from the report's lead author Kevin Schaefer.

“Once the organic matter thaws and decays away, there is no way to put it back into the permafrost,” said Schaefer, a scientist at the University of Colorado’s National Snow and Ice Data Center.

That's like saying that once you've spent your money there's no way to get it back. D'you mean the permafrost that's melted Kev? Gerraway.

Pine Beetles at it again - causing warming this time!

Yale Environment 360 tells us that Pine Beetle Attacks Cause Temperature Rise in Canadian Forests. Is it the beating of all those tiny wings creating heat? Their black carapaces (the shiny bits) absorbing more heat from the sun? No it's because trees naturally cool their environment. More beetles, fewer trees; fewer trees less cooling; less cooling, higher temperatures. Simple really, or so the researchers would have us believe. I just had to put down my dog-eared copy of "Only 100 days left to save the World - 101 things you didn't know about Global Warming" and read on.

The decimation of trees by mountain pine beetles in British Columbia has caused air temperatures in affected areas to climb by an average of 1 degree Celsius during the summer months, according to a new study. In an analysis of satellite and forest data collected between 1999 and 2010, scientists from the University of Toronto and University of California, Berkeley calculated that areas hit hardest by widespread pine beetle infestations have experienced even sharper temperature increases of several degrees Celsius, as regions are increasingly deprived of the natural cooling effect of trees. Since the evaporation of water through leaves prevents some of the sun’s radiation from heating the ground surface, the widespread loss of trees causes the temperature increases, said Holly Maness, a researcher at UC Berkeley and co-author of the study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience. And because warming temperatures and milder winters have helped pine beetles to flourish, these infestations are creating a feedback effect that is making the forests even more vulnerable. According to scientists, mountain beetles have affected 66,000 square miles in British Columbia, or 20 percent of the province’s total area.

That's pretty straightforward and convincing isn't it? What possible criticisms could I have? Well, for a start there's the chicken and egg business. (What's he talking about? - ed.). Did the pine beetles cause the warming or did the warming encourage the pine beetles to do what pine beetles do best (reproduce and eat, not necessarily in that order)? I ask only because "Global warming threatens pine forests, forcing federal officials to shift strategy" which I'd interpret as chicken -> egg whereas this paper seems to be claiming egg -> chicken -> bigger egg -> bigger chicken (feedback).

The thing that caught my eye was the apparently plausible warming mechanism outlined by Holly Maness - "Since the evaporation of water through leaves prevents some of the sun’s radiation from heating the ground surface, the widespread loss of trees causes the temperature increases". Now call me a sceptic, but I understood, as do many (most?) scientists and authors, that it was evapotranspiration wot dun it? Also, it's the leaves themselves which shade the ground below (simple really), and green chlorophyll absorbs sunlight, especially ultraviolet and infrared - the leaves are darker than grass, it's called the albedo effect. In a nutshell (how appropriate!)

Forests also influence local climate. Dependant on the latitude forest influences the temperature in a region: in the tropics forest have a net cooling effect through evapotranspiration while at higher altitudes, mainly boreal forests, there is a net warming effect because the relative dark colour of the canopies absorbs warmth from the sun (albedo effect).

When water evaporates through leaf pores, it absorbs heat (a lot of heat) thus cooling the leaves and the tree (and forest) canopy. Holly seems to think otherwise. It's true that the evaporated water vapour would absorb some short-wave infra-red from the Sun, but there's not a great deal of that radiation left by the time sunlight reaches the treetops; most is absorbed on its way through the atmosphere - by water vapour - lots more water vapour than the trees expire. Secondly, water vapour is the most abundant greenhouse gas (hasn't Holly heard that?), and absorption and emission of upward radiation from the forest canopy would certainly outweigh the small absorption of solar infra-red by the evaporated water vapour.

just a minute - surely the paper itself can't possibly say this can it?

The present mountain pine beetle infestation in forests in British Columbia ranks among the largest ecological disturbances recorded in Canada so far. These recent outbreaks are thought to have been favoured by large-scale climatic shifts, and may foreshadow outbreaks of a similar magnitude in North American forests over the coming decades. The associated forest dieback could result in substantial shifts in evapotranspiration and albedo, thereby altering the local surface energy balance, and in turn regional temperature and climate. Here we quantify the impact of the Canadian pine beetle disturbance on the local summertime surface energy budget, using measurements of evapotranspiration, albedo and surface temperature, obtained primarily through remote sensing. 

We show that over the 170,000 km² of affected forest, the typical decrease in summertime evapotranspiration is 19%. Changes to the absorbed short-wave flux are negligible, in comparison. As a result, outgoing sensible and radiative heat fluxes increased by 8% and 1%, respectively, corresponding to a typical increase in surface temperature of 1°C. These changes are comparable to those observed for other types of disturbance, such as wildfire, and may have secondary consequences for climate, including modifications to circulation, cloud cover and precipitation.

That would seem to set the record straight. Perhaps the article's author and one of the co-authors should have read the paper, or at least the abstract.

Would you believe a scientist who can't do simple maths?

Apparently (it's always apparently, may or could or might) the Earth is running out of plants. What's the Earth using the plants for, I hear you ask (well I asked it anyway). It's not the Earth using the plants at all, of course, but us. "Scientist claims Earth may run out of plants" wails CBS News uncritically, repeating an article "Will Earth Run Out of Plants?" in LiveScience, which begins

Humans may be very close to extracting all of the Earth's available plant resources, says a University of Montana researcher.

In fact, said Steven Running, a professor in the university's College of Forestry and Conservation, humanity may realistically have only 10 percent or so of our planet's annual plant resources in reserve, with little ability to boost yearly growth. The calculations don't suggest that humanity is on the verge of starvation, Running said, but they do indicate there are limits to our species' growth.

Note that he's in the College of Forestry and Conservation - I'll return to that factoid in a while.

Thanks to satellite measurements, researchers can now calculate how much vegetation the Earth produces each year. Over 30 years of observation, Running said, the number has stayed remarkably stable at 53.6 petagrams (one petagram is one trillion kilograms, or about 2.2 trillion pounds).

That's a lot of greenery. But humans use about 40 percent of it annually, Running said. The number would seem to offer plenty of wiggle room for humanity, but in fact, only about 10 percent of the remaining vegetation is up for grabs, he said.

That 10% of the remaining vegetation (60%) must be 6% of the whole, right? Nope - this is where the prof's arithmetic goes astray (or has already gone astray?).

"If humans are appropriating about 40 percent of annual production, if another 50 percent we can't harvest and appropriate, then that only leaves about 10 percent," Running said. "Well, that starts to sound a lot closer to a planetary boundary."

That sounds a lot closer to a mishtake, shurely? Is it 6% or is it 10% prof? In fact it isn't either. If, as the prof states, 10% is left, then we have 10% out of the 50% left to use - I make that 10/50 - 20% left from what we can use, or put another way, we could possibly increase our use by 10/40 or 25%. Doesn't seem quite so bad when you put it that way, does it? Why didn't the prof put it that way?

"What we've found is that the vast majority of that other 60 percent isn't available at all," he said. It's either locked up in root systems and unharvestable, conserved in national parks or wilderness areas crucial for biodiversity, or simply in far Siberia or the middle of the Amazon, where there are no roads and no way to harvest it.

No roads, eh? No hope for mankind then? "Far Siberia" where there are no roads, like the Trans-Siberian Highway and the Trans-Siberian Railway? I've heard of the Amazon - it's a big forest in South America, or something. Conservationists (remember College of Forestry and Conservation?) have been wailing for decades about forest clearance and the road building necessary to move in the equipment and transport to do the dirty deed. Doesn't deforestation decrease the vegetation he's talking about? If that's caused a decrease, as it must have, doesn't that mean that there has to have been an increase in other vegetation to keep the total "remarkably stable"? Bear with me, I'm just a simple chap, and obviously can't grasp the complex science involved.

There are arguments against this imminent vegetal limit, Running said: It's arguably possible that humanity could increase plant production with fertilizer or irrigation (though both of those are also in limited supply and have downsides such as pollution), or that we could construct more roads into the Amazon to avail ourselves of more natural resources.

Just a minute - we are increasing plant production with fertilizer and irrigation - crop yields are increasing worldwide. So if "we" construct more roads we could avail ourselves of more of the 50% of natural resources that he said "isn't available at all"?

"And again, you would question how far that would go and whether that's a planet we want, where every single acre from wall to wall has been completely harvested and is in some sort of controlled annual plant production cycle," he said.

"Controlled annual plant production cycle" - it's called agriculture, prof.

"Diseased trees new source of climate gas" - really?

Sometimes, I read of what's hailed as "ground-breaking" research and chuckle to myself. In this case, I laughed at loud. Eureka! Science News has the breathtaking details -

Diseased trees in forests may be a significant new source of methane that causes climate change, according to researchers at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies in Geophysical Research Letters. Sixty trees sampled at Yale Myers Forest in northeastern Connecticut contained concentrations of methane that were as high as 80,000 times ambient levels. Normal air concentrations are less than 2 parts per million, but the Yale researchers found average levels of 15,000 parts per million inside trees.

Really? Decaying plant matter produces methane in the absence of oxygen? You could have knocked me over with an anaerobic digester. That page I linked to says

Farms and ranches can use anaerobic digesters—also known as biodigesters—to recover methane (biogas) from animal manure for producing electricity, heat, and hot water. Anaerobic digesters not only reduce energy costs but also methane emissions, which contribute to global warming.

It's referring to animal manure produced on farms and ranches, but it's well known that decaying plant matter produces methane rather than carbon dioxide when there's too little (or no) oxygen to add the "dioxide" part of the CO2. It's the reason methane bubbles to the surface from the bottom of pools and lakes. It's the reason that peatlands produce methane from thick and airless deposits below the surface. It's the reason the methane clathrates form layers in the sea-bed, much feared by some alarmists as a vast source of one of their bogey-man greenhouse gases.

"These are flammable concentrations," said Kristofer Covey, the study's lead author and a Ph.D. candidate at Yale. "Because the conditions thought to be driving this process are common throughout the world's forests, we believe we have found a globally significant new source of this potent greenhouse gas."

"New source"? A search on Google for rotting trees methane garners 3,290,000 results, most of which are relevant in identifying rotting vegetation, especially trees, as a significant global source of methane.

"No one until now has linked the idea that fungal rot of timber trees, a production problem in commercial forestry, might also present a problem for greenhouse gas and climate change mitigation," said Mark Bradford, a co-author and Assistant Professor of Terrestrial Ecosystem Ecology at F&ES.

""No one until now..." says Mark Bradford? People like Messrs Bradford & Covey really need to get out more, and when they are in, read more.

"When Global Warming Ate My Life"

No, really, you must read this HuffPo piece in its entirety, but if you just can't bear to experience the "green machine", here're a few extracts. If you read a sentence, then look away, and repeat the process, you will most likely (>97%) get to the end of the page unaffected.

It was our sanctuary -- the safest, happiest place on earth. Later our children taught us to be green. We installed windmills and solar panels, recycled and composted, and became more mindful of our footprint. Still, we felt safe from the worst ravages of global warming in our bucolic corner of the "first" world here in New England. The real catastrophes were "out there" in sub-Saharan Africa, Bangladesh, the Andes or tiny Pacific islands. Then global warming crashed our party in paradise. 

Then a bolt of lightning crashed through the kitchen window, mowed me down like a freight train hurtling through my chest and triggered a blast so loud I thought the sound barrier had been breached somewhere between the crockery and the curtains. When I opened my eyes, I was lying on the floor. Then came smoke. Fifteen minutes later we were out in the storm, watching in disbelief as our beloved home vanished in a towering wall of flame.

I am not a climate change scientist, but I have come to understand that I am a climate change victim. Our daughter took the lead investigating destructive lightning in Maine. She found that the NASA Goddard Institute estimates a 5-6% change in global lightning frequencies for every 1 degree Celsius global warming. The Earth has already warmed .8 degrees Celsius since 1802 and is expected to warm another 1.1-6.4 degrees by the end of the century.

What's a "climate change scientist"? Oh nevermind, let's just get on with it -

Maine's temperatures rose 1.9 degrees Celsius in the last century and another 2.24 degree rise is projected by 2104. I learned from our insurance company that while the typical thunderstorm produces around 100 lightning strikes, there were 217 strikes around our house that night. I was shocked to discover that when it comes to increased lightning frequency and destructiveness, a NASA study concluded that eastern areas of North America like Maine are especially vulnerable. Scientists confirm a 10% increase in the incidence of extreme weather events in our region since 1949.

Is there just the teeniest, weeniest hint of a possibility that the storm wasn't a "typical thunderstorm"? "[T]here were 217 strikes around our house that night" - how does she (yes, it's a she) know? Did she count every one? Before the strike, and Including the period between the strike and opening her eyes? Was hubby counting? Were they both counting while their "beloved home vanished in a towering wall of flame"? Did the insurance company count 'em? Stick with me, not long to go, here's an NCDC temperature chart for Maine

Maine 1895-2011 Annual temperature

Clearly, that green (appropriate, huh?) trend line is horizontal because the scale is in Fahrenheit, not Celsius.

Was the lightning bolt in our kitchen caused by global warming? The facts are too compelling to ignore. It seems that global warming turned my family into refugees in our own lives, stripped of everything that once carried our memories and meaning. Since then I've learned some lessons that may help others reckon with the realities of climate change and the terrifying prospect that our future will be different from our past.

"The facts are too compelling to ignore" - what facts? "Since then I've learned some lessons..." - what lessons? She doesn't mention anything which might "help others reckon with the realities of climate change". Keeping it to herself, planning to make a fast buck out of other peoples fears, by the look of things.

I thought I could keep my children safe in this peaceful place. Now I know that no one of us can keep our children safe. There is no shelter from the storm of global warming. All we can do is learn how to pivot and impart that soulful skill to those we love. Breed it in their bones that they may become agents of adaptive change in these new times. We are all just earth travelers now: many addresses but only one home.

Aaaaah - sweet. "This peaceful place" where never-before-heard-of 217-strike storms incontrovertibly spawned by a 1.9 degrees Celsius in the last century warming, suddenly (did all the 1.9 degree warming occur in 2011?) burst out of nowhere (from the sky - Ed.) and destroy an idyllic farmstead. A farmstead with "windmills and solar panels" which are made of - plastic? Glass? Wood? Hershey bars? Obama campaign leaflets? No, metal, metal with wires attached. Wires leading into the idyllic farmstead through the walls and roof. Wires which conduct electricity. Lightning is electricity, big-time. They say lightning never strikes twice in the same place, but "they" didn't have a wooden farmhouse surrounded by tall metal windmills and with a roof covered in solar panels in mind. Even Ben Franklin knew enough not to surround his house with lightning conductors that were attached to it by wires.

Matterhorn scientist disintegrating in the face of global warming - the true story?

Four days ago, I expressed my astonishment (I was more than just surprised) that a scientist could think that he and his team had done groundbreaking (it's a pun) research on how thawing/freezing processes were cracking rock and creating rockfalls on Switzerland's iconic Matterhorn. Those processes are well understood, and have been for at least a hundred years, Yesterday, while searching for more Matterhorn images for my collection, I came across a real gem on ABC News - Is the Mighty Matterhorn Mountain Crumbling?

To understand how climate change is helping destabilize one of the world’s most famous mountains, Stephan Gruber of the University of Zurich offers a culinary visualization.

Imagine a piece of bread – or perhaps even better, a thick cut of raw steak – in an oven. Put a stick of frozen butter on top of it. And then turn the oven on.

Apart from the fact that I can't imagine anyone in their right mind putting a slice of steak, let alone bread in an oven with frozen butter on it, I'll go along with the analogy for now. I'm like that, broad-minded and receptive. Read on (my bold)

Two things happen:

The outside of the steak begins to cook relatively quickly. The inside stays raw for longer.

At the same time, the butter begins to melt – and seep into the steak.

Now, imagine that the steak is the mighty Matterhorn mountain, one of the most picturesque in Europe (and, yes, some of you may know it better as Disneyland’s original rollercoaster).

Climate change works in three ways:

As the world gets warmer – as the oven heats up – the outside of the Matterhorn heats up (the outside of the steak cooks). That, by itself, slowly breaks apart the ice that holds the mountain’s exterior rock surface together. So we are beginning to see more rock falls than ever before. (In 2003, a massive rock fall stranded 50 climbers.)

Does heat "break apart ice"? No, it melts it, and climate change can work in another way which doesn't even enter the closed minds of some - the world might get colder. At this point we should remind ourselves what the heated-up "outside" of the Matterhorn looks like in summer, when Herr Gruber's limited view of "climate change" is heating it up. This photo is from 2007.

The Matterhorn - East face. Source: Free Wallpaper Pic

It's clearly summer, which can be deduced from the high Sun angle. What's all the white stuff clinging to the "heated up" rock faces? Is it frozen butter? I'm keen to hear more:

Then, the butter starts melting. The butter is actually that same ice that holds much of the mountain together. As it melts, it seeps down into ice that doesn’t see the sun – say, the center of the steak – and helps cook it from the inside.

Thirdly, slowly but surely, the oven heat finally reaches the middle of the steak. Climate change finally helps warm the inside of the mountain.

And slowly but surely, the integrity of the mountain starts to diminish, both from the outside and from the inside-out.

In my total ignorance I thought it was rock that "holds much of the mountain together", but what do I and geologists know? There's more:

Before you think that this is some obscure thing that happens in places with very, very high elevations, consider this: The mountains where this is happening are located where millions of people – many in Asia – actually live.

Gruber recently released a study of how this happens – the first to show that typical patters[sic] of movement of ice exist on mountains like the Matterhorn.

That last sentence is a real killer - "the first to show that typical patterns of movement of ice exist on mountains like the Matterhorn". If they're "typical patterns" then they're already well known to exist, and they're well documented, so his study cannot be the "first". It's not "climate change" which melts ice in crevices on high mountains, it's the Sun, and it's the re-freezing at night in the summer, and in the winter which widens the cracks. Ice has a larger volume that the water which forms it. The writer himself needs a geography lesson - exactly how many of the "millions of people" are threatened in some way by rock falls at altitude?

Matterhorn disintegrating in the face of global warming - this is news?

The Independent, and cited researchers, have just discovered that freezing water weathers mountain rocks. This apparently is news. It is of course part of the Global Warming meme; perfectly natural and well-known processes that have been occurring since the earth solidified from a molten sphere are cited as evidence for "Global Warming" or "Climate Change". Not just any old "Global Warming" or "Climate Change", of course, which the earth has seen over it's non-molten history, but a new and dangerous kind which, if unchecked, will kill us all.

Matterhorn disintegrating in the face of global warming

With its four steep faces reflecting the compass points, the mighty Matterhorn has proven an irresistible and often deadly challenge to mountaineers.

But now, the mountain – one of Europe's tallest and most celebrated peaks – is falling to bits due to climate change, according to a new scientific report.

As with other Alpine mountains, experts have already documented the retreat of the peak's glaciers and the thinning of its permafrost in the wake of rising temperatures.

But scientists now say they have evidence that these rising temperatures are also prompting the physical disintegration of the mountain itself.

I first learned of frost-weathering of mountain rocks in primary school. I've been familiar with the term "frost-shattered rocks" for many decades. I've walked over mountain screes thousands to hundreds-of-thousands of years old. Scotland's mountains were once as high as the Matterhorn. The Matterhorn is ultimately destined to become deep-sea sediment. I love the "With its four steep faces reflecting the compass points" bit - how do they think the mountain got to be that shape? My school atlas from many decades ago has a picture of the Matterhorn, and an explanation for that shape - glaciers, ice, and freezing water. The normal becomes unprecedented, and history and past knowledge are dumped in favour of the "new discoveries". Not new, and you can't claim to have discovered something that's been common knowledge for several generations if not longer.

"There has been a big increase in the number of rock falls in the past decade that can't be explained simply by the fact that we're looking out for them more now," the lead researcher, Stephan Gruber, told The Independent.

His team's discovery of the key role that icy crevices play in the Matterhorn's decay suggests that global warming's deleterious effect on mountain ranges is greater than previously thought.

"We have shown the importance of icy crevices and the melting water entering them, in the process of rock falls," Mr Gruber said. "Unlike rock itself – changes to which take place over a very long period of time – just a few decades of temperatures rising by a degree or so are enough to affect the ice and water on the mountains."

"It's reasonable to expect the same processes are widespread elsewhere in the Alps at the same altitude," he added.

It's reasonable to expect the same processes are widespread elsewhere in the world and have been continuing since mountains and water and freezing temperatures came together in the same place at the same time. Climbers have been wary of ice-weakened rocks on the Matterhorn, in the Swiss Alps, and on mountains worldwide since people had the inclination to climb mountains other than to travel long distances. Here's the North face of the Matterhorn

The Matterhorn - east face. Source: Free Wallpaper Pic

See those grey mounds and slopes in the middle and foreground? They're screes - heaps of frost-shattered rock. Here they are in closeup

Screes on the slopes of the Matterhorn

They're covering the entire lower slopes of the mountain. There are buildings on them. A stream has cut its way through them. They've been growing for centuries at least. The mountain has that "four steep faces" pyramidal shape as a result of ice-weathering over millennia and longer.

"There has been a big increase in the number of rock falls in the past decade that can't be explained simply by the fact that we're looking out for them more now," the lead researcher, Stephan Gruber, told The Independent.

If they weren't "looking out for them" much in the past, how do they know there's been a "big increase"? There's been a big increase in unsubstantiated claims of the abnormal and unprecedented over the last decade too, but unlike these researchers and the Independent, I have been looking out for them. These guys need a reality pill. Reach for the Button:

The Sydney Opera House is bigger than you think

The Independent, that ever-reliable source of well-researched information dished up with a total lack of hyperbole, reports on "Earth Hour"

Sydney switches off lights for 60 minutes

Landmarks and buildings around the world were plunged into darkness yesterday as part of a campaign against climate change. 

For Earth Hour, organised by WWF, attractions such as Sydney Opera House turned their lights off for 60 minutes at 8.30pm. The event invites people to switch off all non-essential lighting to highlight the impact climate change is having on the globe.

It seems the "clam-shell" building now encompasses the whole of that great city. An analysis of electricity consumption for Sydney over the period which included Earth Hour 2012 shows no discernible reduction in consumption, nor for New South Wales, nor the entire country. This short article highlights the impact hyperbole and extreme exaggeration is having on the truth. This graphic highlights the reaction of most sensible people to such stretching of the truth

Stop Blogging and Emailing - you're killing us!

Tempo has an important message for all who use email, edit blogs or forums, or who comment online.

Earth Hour dilemma: When the ‘Like’ button harms the planet 

Green groups around the world are turning to social networking to drive their campaign for Earth Hour tomorow, when lights are turned off for an hour to signal concern about global warming.

But here’s the irony. With every email, every tweet, every appeal watched on YouTube or “liked“ on Facebook, environmentalists are stoking the very problem they want to resolve.

Each time we network, we emit carbon dioxide through the fossil fuels that are burned to power our computers and the servers and databanks that store or relay our message. That poses a small dilemma for the Australian-led campaign for Saturday’s switch-off.

In 130 countries around the world, people are being urged to turn off the lights for one hour at 8:30 p.m. local time as a show of concern about climate change. In emails alone, the typical office worker is responsible for 13.6 tons of CO2 or its equivalent per year, a French government agency for energy efficiency, ADEME, calculated last year.

That figure is based on a French company of 100 people who work 220 days a year and each receive 58 mails a day and send 33 per day, with an average mail size of one megabyte.

That's 91 emails a day for 220 days =  20020 emails a year per person, and it's apparently responsible for a staggering 13.6 tons of CO2, or 679 grams of CO2 per email.

That seemed a lot of CO2 to send or receive a few dozen lines of text. 1 megabyte also seemed rather large for an average email, as I've rarely sent or received one larger than 100kb in size, but we'll let that pass, perhaps French office workers send lots of pictures as attachments.

How much electricity does 679 grams of CO2 represent? The EPA says that a gas-powered station produces 1135 lbs CO2 per MWh (megawatt-hour). One pound is 453.6  grams, so 1 MWh produces 514826.92 grams, therefore I calculate 0.758 KWh per email. That's around 3 desktop computers running for an hour, the equivalent of a one-bar electric fire for 45.5 minutes, to send or receive a one megabyte email?

Every time I come across this type of claim, the maths doesn't support the claim, not just a little bit out, but often whole orders of magnitude.

Feel free to comment, safe in the knowledge you're not fuelling irreversible climate change (but stop breathing out CO2, just in case).

Where's the acceleration, dude?

We're constantly bombarded with portents of doom and gloom, and apparently, by extension "the end of civilisation as we know it". "Climate change" is accelerating, "global warming" is accelerating, sea level rise is accelerating, and (could, or may) threaten millions if not billions of people, "extreme weather events" are increasing in frequency and intensity. Of course, there's no actual evidence that these terrible events are occurring or that they will happen. They're all from model-based "projections", unjustified predictions, or just pure conjecture and general alarmism.

There's no doubt the Earth's been getting warmer in fits and starts, since the end of the last ice age. However, there's the flaw in the alarmists theories right there in that sentence - "fits and starts". The increase hasn't been on a relatively smooth upward trajectory; there's an irregular cycle built in, and no-one can explain the reasons behind the variability. Paleo-climatology has a stab at it, and there are some plausible theories, some "best-guesses", and some downright manipulation and cherry-picking of data, like Mann et. al.'s "hockey-stick". But there's no proof as to what caused the variations - there cannot be. Climatologists are looking back through a murky and distorting lens, and one which might be pointing in the wrong direction, or looking at the wrong data.

Let's look at some real data then, and see how the "x is accelerating" claims stack up. First temperature data, because most or at least may think this is the main indicator of things to come.

Latest Global Temps - UAH Satellite data to February 2012

HADCRUTt3 variance-adjusted global mean, 1979-present (Source: Wood for Trees)

I don't see much of an acceleration in either, rather a stasis, or a even a recent decline in the HADCRUT thermometer record, yet we are told "global warming has continued unabated, ar that it has accelerated. Where's the evidence for these assertions? "Habeus corpus" - "produce the body".

Variations in global mean sea level from a combination of TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1, and Jason-2 altimeter measurements, using 60-day and annual smoothing of 10-day average values. A glacial isostatic adjustment correction of 0.3 mm/year has been applied.
Source: Woodworth, P.L., W.R. Gehrels, and R.S. Nerem. 2011. Nineteenth and twentieth century changes in sea level. Oceanography 24(2):80–93, doi:10.5670/oceanog.2011.29

Where's the acceleration, dude?