Wednesday, February 07, 2018



Many of the world’s coasts would become unviable if Antarctic ice continues to melt into sea

This is just prophecy.  Despite the slight warming over the last century or so, sea levels in many places have FALLEN.  Listen to an expert on the subject

MELTING ice poses one of the greatest threats to the modern world, a top Australian climate change professor has warned.

UNSW Sydney professor Matthew England is one of six keynote speakers at an international conference which kicked off in Sydney yesterday. The international gathering is seeking to address climate change and in particular is intent on looking for solutions to problems in the Southern Hemisphere.

Prof England says up to 15 metres of Antarctica ice could melt into the oceans if the Earth gets hot enough over the next several centuries. “And that’s enough to make many of the world’s coasts unviable if we do nothing to limit atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.”

“Tens of millions of people could be displaced.”

Sydney professor warns of the hidden threat contained in Antarctica if climate change persists.

Sydney professor warns of the hidden threat contained in Antarctica if climate change persists.Source:Supplied

It comes after 2017 research showed about eight islands in the Pacific Ocean have disappeared due to rising sea-levels, with many others being drastically reduced in size as their shorelines are swallowed by creeping oceans.

Past meetings of scientists at the national forum have led to global policies to ban the use of ozone-depleting chemicals, managing commercial activity to protect Southern Ocean ecosystems and have informed international discussions on climate change.

The other five keynote speakers have expertise in subjects ranging from space studies, atmospheric research, coral reef studies, climate science and weather extremes.

The 25th AMOS-ICSHMO 2018 will be the largest ever meeting of meteorologists, oceanographers and climate scientists in the Southern Hemisphere involving 35 countries.

Prof England received the Tinker-Muse Prize for Science and Policy in Antarctica for his research, leadership and advocacy in Antarctic science on Monday.

The conference runs until Friday at the University of NSW.

SOURCE





Already nearly 40K views of Dr. Will Happer's Prager U video on how it is impossible to predict future climate with computer models. "It's not science, it's science fiction."







No Evidence of an Anthropogenic Influence on Floods
 
Paper Reviewed: Hodgkins, G.A., Whitfield, P.H., Burn, D.H., Hannaford, J., Renard, B., Stahl, K., Fleig, A.K., Madsen, H., Mediero, L., Korhonen, J., Murphy, C. and Wilson, D. 2017. Climate-driven variability in the occurrence of major floods across North America and Europe. Journal of Hydrology 552: 704-717.

Model projections of future increases in precipitation from anthropogenic global warming have led to concerns that there will be corresponding increases in river flooding. Consequently, many researchers have begun to search for evidence of more frequent and/or severe flooding over the past several decades. The latest team of scientists to conduct such an investigation is Hodgkins et al. (2017), who examined trends in the occurrence of major floods across North America and Europe over the past eight decades.

In preparing for their analysis, the twelve researchers first made sure to build a proper database free of contaminating influences. This was accomplished by their using only those hydrologic stations that were located in minimally altered catchments. Such catchments, for example, had to contain (1) less than 10 percent urban area, (2) have no substantial flow alteration or changes in land cover, (3) less than 10 years of missing data and (4) good quality gauges capable of providing accurate peak-flow data. By sticking to these criteria, the authors were confident that any trends they found in the data would most likely be the result of climate-driven influences (either human-induced or natural in origin). This winnowing process led the authors to select 1204 hydrologic stations, which they utilized to examine for changes in major flood events over the period 1961-2010. They then repeated their analysis on a smaller subset of 322 stations over the longer time period of 1931-2010. And what did their results reveal?

Hodgkins et al. report that "there was no compelling evidence for consistent changes over time in major-flood occurrence during the 80 years through 2010," adding that "the number of significant trends in major-flood occurrence across North America and Europe was approximately [equal to] the number expected due to chance alone." Consequently, they conclude that "compelling evidence for increased flooding at a global scale is lacking." And this lack of evidence, we would add, disproves any and all attempts by climate alarmists to claim that major floods are currently increasing due to anthropogenic-induced climate change -- at least over this large portion of the globe!

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Shock Paper Cites Formula That Precisely Calculates Planetary Temps WITHOUT Greenhouse Effect, CO2

A more accurate and much simpler theory than the CO2 theory

In a new peer-reviewed scientific paper published in the journal Earth Sciences last December (2017), a Federation University (Australia) Science and Engineering student named Robert Holmes contends he may have found the key to unlocking our understanding of how planets with thick atmospheres (like Earth) remain “fixed” at 288 Kelvin (K), 740 K (Venus), 165 K (Jupiter)…without considering the need for a planetary greenhouse effect or changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

The Greenhouse Effect ‘Thought Experiment’

Perhaps the most fundamental conceptualization in climate science is the “thought experiment” that envisions what the temperature of the Earth might possibly be if there was no greenhouse effect, greenhouse gases, or atmosphere.

Dr. Gavin Schmidt, NASA: 

“The size of the greenhouse effect is often estimated as being the difference between the actual global surface temperature and the temperature the planet would be without any atmospheric absorption, but with exactly the same planetary albedo, around 33°C. This is more of a ‘thought experiment’ than an observable state, but it is a useful baseline.”

Simplistically, the globally averaged surface temperature clocks in at 288 K.   In the “thought experiment”, an imaginary Earth that has no atmosphere (and thus no greenhouse gases to absorb and re-emit the surface heat) would have a temperature of only 255 K.  The difference between the real and imagined Earth with no atmosphere is 33 K, meaning that the Earth would be much colder (and uninhabitable) without the presence of greenhouse gases bridging the hypothetical “heat gap”.

Of that 33 K greenhouse effect, 20.6 K is imagined to derive from water vapor droplets in the atmosphere (1,000 to 40,000 parts per million [ppm] by volume), whereas 7.2 K is thought to stem from the “natural” (or pre-industrial) 200-280 ppm atmospheric CO2 concentration (Kramm et al., 2017).

As a “thought experiment”, the critical heating role for water vapor droplets and CO2 concentrations lacks real-world validation.  For example, the Earth’s oceans account for 93% of the planet’s heat energy (Levitus et al., 2012), and yet no real-world physical measurements exist that demonstrate how much heating or cooling is derived from varying CO2 concentrations up or down over a body of water in volume increments of parts per million (0.000001).  Consequently, the CO2 greenhouse effect is a hypothetical, model-based conceptualization.

And in recent years, many scientific papers have been published that question the fundamentals of not only the Earth’s hypothetical greenhouse effect, but the role of greenhouse gases for other planets with thick atmospheres (like Venus) as well Hertzberg et al., 2017, Kramm et al., 2017, Nikolov and Zeller, 2017 , Allmendinger, 2017, Lightfoot and Mamer, 2017, Blaauw, 2017, Davis et al., 2018).   The Holmes paper highlighted here may just be among the most recent.

‘Extremely Accurate’ Planetary Temperature Calculations With Pressure/Density/Mass Formula

Holmes has argued that the average temperature for 8 planetary bodies with thick (0.1 bar or more) atmospheres can be precisely measured with “extreme” accuracy — an error range of just 1.2% — by using a formula predicated on the knowledge of 3 parameters: “[1] the average near-surface atmospheric pressure, [2] the average near surface atmospheric density and [3] the average mean molar mass of the near-surface atmosphere.”

Holmes used the derived pressure/density/mass numbers for each planetary body.   He then calculated the planets’ temperatures with these figures.

Venus’ temperature was calculated to be 739.7 K with the formula.  Its measured temperature is 740 K.  This indicates that the formula’s accuracy is within an error range of just 0.04% for Venus.

Given Earth’s pressure/density/mass, its calculated temperature is 288.14 K using Holmes’ formula.  Earth’s measured temperature is 288 K, an exact fit.

Saturn’s calculated temperature is 132.8 K.  Its measured temperature is 134 K — an error range of only 0.89%.

SOURCE





Critic of coral reef alarmism Raised $99K To Defend Freedom Of Speech In Just 48 Hours

Last week Professor Peter Ridd launched a GoFundMe to fundraise for his legal costs against James Cook University in the Federal Court.

Amazingly, after a public appeal, he has reached the required $95,000 to cover his defence in just 48 hours.

Institute of Public Affairs Executive Director, John Roskam, spoke to Alan Jones on 2GB this morning about Professor Ridd’s case.

In August last year Professor Ridd was interviewed by Alan Jones on Sky News about his chapter in a book Climate Change: The Facts 2017 published by the Institute of Public Affairs.  In his chapter, The Extraordinary Resilience of Great Barrier Reef Corals, and Problems with Policy Science, Professor Ridd wrote:

"Policy science concerning the Great Barrier Reef is almost never checked. Over the next few years, Australian government will spend more than a billion dollars on the Great Barrier Reef; the costs to industry could far exceed this. Yet the keystone research papers have not been subject to proper scrutiny. Instead, there is a total reliance on the demonstrably inadequate peer review process."

Professor Ridd said on Sky News:

"The basic problem is that we can no longer trust the scientific organisations like the Australian Institute of Marine Science, even things like the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies – a lot of this is stuff is coming out, the science is coming out not properly checked, tested or replicated and this is a great shame because we really need to be able to trust our scientific institutions and the fact is I do not think we can any more…

…I think that most of the scientists who are pushing out this stuff they genuinely believe that there are problems with the reef, I just don’t think they’re very objective about the science they do, I think they’re emotionally attached to their subject and you know you can’t blame them, the reef is a beautiful thing."

JCU claimed that Professor Ridd’s comments denigrated the university and the university directed him to make no future such comments.

Thanks to the contributions of many IPA members and supporters of Professor Ridd, he is able to defend scientific integrity and academic freedom in the Federal Court.

You can now read the Professor Ridd’s full chapter. The extraordinary resilience of Great Barrier Reef corals, and the problems with policy science, here

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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