Coalition of the Confused
Hosted by Jenifer (Zarknorph)
Confused malcontents swilling Chardonnay while awaiting the Zombie Apocalypse.
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The debate on Climate Change General Confusion
From: Jenifer (Zarknorph)
1/18/18
Even without El Nino, Earth sweltered again in 2017, UN's World Meteorological Organisation says
Last year was the second or third warmest on record behind 2016, and the hottest without an extra dose of heat caused by an El Nino event in the Pacific Ocean, the United Nations says.
Key points:
- Scientists say 2017 was the hottest year recorded without an El Nino boosting temperatures
- Global average temperature in 2017 was 14.7C, 0.84 degrees above the 20th century average
- Temperatures in both 2016 and 2015 were lifted by an El Nino event
Average surface temperatures in 2017 were 1.1 degree above pre-industrial times, creeping towards 1.5C, the most ambitious limit for global warming set by almost 200 nations under the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
The agreement has been weakened by a plan by US President Donald Trump, who doubts mainstream scientific findings that warming is driven by man-made greenhouse gases, to pull out.
The UN's World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said 2017 was indistinguishable from 2015 as the second or third warmest year behind 2016, and made 2017 "the warmest year without an El Nino" in records dating back to the late 19th century.
Temperatures in both 2016 and 2015 were lifted by an El Nino, a natural event which can disrupt weather patterns worldwide every few years and releases heat from the tropical Pacific Ocean into the atmosphere.
The WMO said 17 of the warmest 18 years since records began in the 19th century have now happened since 2000, confirming a warming trend driven by manmade greenhouse gases.
"We're in a long-term warming trend despite the ups and downs you get on an annual basis, even a decadal basis," said Gavin Schmidt, of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, whose data is used by the WMO.
"When even the 'colder' years are rewriting the warmest year record books, we know we have a problem," said Professor Dave Reay, chair in carbon management at the University of Edinburgh.
Among extreme weather events last year, the Caribbean and the United States suffered a battering from hurricanes, the Arctic ended 2017 with the least sea ice for mid-winter and tropical coral reefs suffered from high water temperatures.
From: ElDotardo
1/19/18
Oooooo, the UN, eh? Well then, I suppose the issue is settled, right?
The inconvenient truth is that catastrophists are wrong
Comment from Australia
It should come as a great relief to know the freezing temperatures recently experienced in the northern hemisphere do not signal an end to global warming.
Imagine if mankind’s increasingly costly attempts to arrest CO2 emissions were unnecessary. That the misallocation of productive resources, prolonging the misery of the world’s most vulnerable people, was nothing more than a cynical ideological exercise?
Hopefully, those global warming doubters in Florida watching frozen iguanas falling stiff from the trees now know that while they were freezing, according to Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology, little old Penrith in Sydney, Australia, was the warmest spot on the planet, recording its highest temperature ever, having “broken the all-time maximum temperature record for … the Sydney metropolitan area”.
Well, perhaps in all that excitement the bureau can be forgiven for overlooking the fact Penrith Lakes started recording temperatures only in 1995 and for missing a much higher temperature recorded in nearby Richmond in 1939. But they were right. It was hot.
In a hurried piece in Fairfax publications, the Climate Council of Australia’s Will Steffen throws hot water on any misconceptions that may have been drawn from abnormal snowfalls in Britain, Switzerland and Japan, the record-breaking cold snap in Canada and the US, and the expansion of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet.
He says: “Terms like ‘global warming’ and the mental images they trigger can be misleading when people attempt to understand what is happening to the climate. A far better term is ‘climate disruption’, which captures the real nature of the vast array of changes, many of them abrupt and unexpected, that are occurring.”
So fire and ice, it’s to be expected.
Of course you won’t be surprised to learn Steffen claims “the climate disruption we are increasingly experiencing is not natural. It is caused by the heat-trapping gases we humans are pouring into the atmosphere primarily by the burning of coal, oil and gas.”
On the day Steffen’s opinion piece appeared, this newspaper republished Matt Ridley’s article in The Times claiming “the Earth is very slowly slipping back into a proper ice age”. This confirms research by Henrik Svensmark, Australia’s David Evans and others, who correlated lo
From: Jenifer (Zarknorph)
1/19/18
Okay, Dotard.
What do you honestly, personally believe is happening to the planet?
Why are we experiencing so many extremes in the weather if the climate is not changing?
Or are you saying that none of it is real? We are NOT experiencing strange weather phenomenon at all?
Are you saying that all pollution is harmless? No, of course not.
You don't have to agree on Climate Change consensus to agree that pollution is bad for the planet.
Burning any fuel releases chemicals into the atmosphere.
So as "costly" and "inconvenient" as renewable energy infrastructure is, in the long run I feel it is worth it.
From: ElDotardo
1/20/18
What I believe has been plainly stated ad infinitum. Climate changes, sometimes precipitously - ever hear of the ICE AGE? It has done so over geologic time, and this natural cycle continues apace and without regard to the bad choices of us puny humans or our laudable efforts to reduce pollution.
What I also believe is that the AGW hoax is a scheme to attack freedom and replace it with the control of our lives by an all knowing STATE.
It's baloney, despite what the . . .
Experts sayYa gotta laugh! During the temperature rise of 2015/2016, Warmists sedulously ignored the influence of El Nino. They pretended that the rise was due to CO2 -- anthropogenic global warming. Now that temperatures are allegedly sinking back, the fall is all due to El Nino. To Warmists, having your cake and eating it too is a cinch! Let them eat cake!
So now they agree with what skeptics said from early 2015 onwards and completely wipe off the recent warming period as irrelevant to their anthropogenic global warming story -- and say that 2017 is still warm even AFTER El Nino has gone. But wait a minute! How do we define the El Nino period except via temperature? According to their own GISS data, temperatures (J-D) broke upward in 2014 and have stayed high ever since. So who decided that 2017 was not influenced by El Nino -- which is the whole point of the article below? Nobody knows. What we see below is the product of shifty definitions, nothing else.
In theory, you could detect El Nino by a detailed examination of sea levels but as we see here measuring sea levels is a mug's game. By choosing different reference points you can get widely different results. The earth is not a bowl and water does not lie flat on it. And I won't mention the matter of hokey "corrections" for isostatic balance.
So what appears to have actually happened is that 2014-2017 temperatures have suddenly broken upwards to a new plateau, which is a common natural occurrence in the temperature record.
So say we concede all that they tell us with their array of numbers below. Say that we really have moved to hotter average temperature levels after the temperature stasis of the first 13 years of the century. What caused that rise? Was it CO2? They offer no proof of that. It is all "Experts say". Experts say a lot of things that are often wrong. And Warmists have yet to make an accurate prediction. So relying on such "experts" is very cold comfort indeed. We could just be dealing with some of the many natural phenomena that we don't understand.
And what is the evidence for what "Experts say"? In the large and colorful article excerpted below I strangely can find not a single statistic for CO2, the supposed cause of global warming. Why? Are the 21st century temperature changes due to changing CO2 levels, as the experts say? Do the temperature changes correspond to CO2 changes? They do not. Philosopher David Hume insisted that the one precondition for detecting a cause was constant conjunction. But there is no constant conjunction between CO2 changes and temperature changes. So one did not cause the other.
Just for fun I have downloaded the CSV data file for monthly CO2 averages from Cape Grim. So is the temperature stasis up to 2013 matched by a plateauing of CO2 levels? Far from it. The levels show a steady rise up to the end of 2013 -- continuing to July 2016. It's only from July 2016 that the CO2 levels get "stuck" on 401 ppm. They don't resume rising until June 2017.
So what a laugh! There is NO resemblance between the CO2 and temperature records. The steady CO2 rise has now resumed and reached a new height in "cooling" August 2017, the last year for which there is data. No wonder that the Warmist journalist below sticks to "Experts say" rather than dive into that inconvenient data.
Note: My use of GISS and NOAA data does not constitute an endorsement of it. I use it because Warmists do. It amuses me to show that their own data does not support their madcap theory
Last year was the HOTTEST on record without an El Nino: New figures reveal man-made global warming has overtaken the influence of natural trends on the climate
From: Jenifer (Zarknorph)
1/20/18
Yes, the climate changes regardless of the species who inhabit the planet.
But to say that humans bear no responsibility flies in the face of the overwhelming evidence that supports it.
Look at India.
Also India:
This is Zabol, in Iran
Also Iran
.
So what's the overwhelming difference?
One place has tonnes of PEOPLE, the other doesn't.
I don't understand how this evidence is (in your mind) wrong.
The pollution is measured. It exists. You can SEE it.
The ice age happened because of orbital fluctuations that affected the temperature of the planet.
The climate changes if the overall planetary temperature changes.
If we raise the temperature by cooking the planet and pumping more CO2 and methane into the atmosphere than is normal, then the climate will change.
And we will bear some responsibility for that.
There is nothing we can do to outright STOP climate change. But we can do our best to NOT exacerbate it.
From: Jenifer (Zarknorph)
1/25/18
Oh for fuck's sake!
There was a hole in the ozone layer caused by CFCs.
People stopped using CFCs.
The hole is closing.
The heath and stability of the atmosphere of the planet is directly related to our protection from the sun's heat and radiation.
If you damage that atmosphere, you endanger the planet.
Pollution damages the atmosphere.
It is actually simpler than you believe.
.
From: Jenifer (Zarknorph)
1/26/18
No.
Pollution is not climate. I cede that obvious point.
But pollution directly affects climate.
If pollution makes living things sick - then why is the Earth exempt from that sickness?
Life cannot exist on planets within our own solar system if the atmosphere is toxic or nonexistent.
The sun is way too unforgiving and our apple-skin thin atmosphere is our only protection.
Burning that atmosphere away is counterproductive for the future of life on Earth.
From: ElDotardo
1/28/18
*heh*
Air pollution delays the age girls start their periods and makes their menstrual cycles more irregular, according to a studyGreenies have been pumping out studies like this for decades. Car exhaust has got to be bad for you! It's got those evil microparticles in it. It does. But are they harmful and at what concentration are they harmful? The study below does not allow those basic questions to be answered.
It did not in fact measure anybody's exposure to the particles. The researchers just looked at where people lived during their childhood. And if that area had a lot of pollution they theorized that people brought up there should have bad health. And they found it was so.
But correlation is not causation and they failed to look at WHY some people lived in more polluted areas. But we know why. Because they were poor. Leafy areas are for rich people. The poor live where they can afford it, beside major roads, industrial areas etc.
So what we are most likely seeing here is that it is the poor who have worse health, which has been known for years.
If the researchers had controlled for income they might have had a story but there seems to be no indication that they did. And the effects they observed were tiny anyway, making it highly likely that any control would wipe them out.
Control for income would only be a first step, however. I set out some other problems with this sort of study a month ago
Journal abstract follows the summary below
Air pollution delays the age girls start their periods, according to the first study of its kind.
Exposure to total suspended particulate (TSP), which are particles circulating in the air that measure 0.05mm, during girls' teenage years also makes their menstrual cycles less regular, a trial found.
TSP, which is largely made up of vehicle exhaust and coal combustion fumes, is thought to disrupt hormone production in people's bodies.
In females, this can cause excessive amounts of male sex hormones, such as testosterone, which the researchers believe could delay or disrupt girls' periods.
Study author Dr Shruthi Mahalingaiah from Boston University, said: 'While air pollution exposures have been linked to cardiovascular and pulmonary disease, this study suggests there may be other systems, such as the reproductive endocrine system, that are affected as well.'
Women exposed to air pollution before getting pregnant are nearly 20 percent more likely to have babies with birth defects, research suggested in January 2018.
Living within 5km of a highly-polluted area one month before conceiving makes women more likely to give birth to babies with defects such as cleft palates or lips, a study by University of Cincinnati found.