GWPF Report: Current Global Warming Is ‘Not Outside The Range Of Natural Variations’
In this newsletter:
1) New Report: Current Global Warming Is ‘Not Outside The Range Of Natural Variations’
The Daily Caller, 22 March 2017
2) GWPF TV: State Of The Climate In 2016
GWPF TV, 23 March 2017
3) Last Year's Weather Proves Climate Change Is Real, Says WMO
Not A Lot Of People Know That, 22 March 2017
4) Ocean Surface Temperatures: How Low Will They Go?
Science Matters, 18 March 2017
5) Oren Cass: The Problem With Climate Catastrophizing
Foreign Affairs, 21 March 2017
6) And Finally: 3.6 Million More Penguins Live In Antarctica Than Thought
National Geographic, 15 March 2017
The Daily Caller, 22 March 2017
2) GWPF TV: State Of The Climate In 2016
GWPF TV, 23 March 2017
3) Last Year's Weather Proves Climate Change Is Real, Says WMO
Not A Lot Of People Know That, 22 March 2017
4) Ocean Surface Temperatures: How Low Will They Go?
Science Matters, 18 March 2017
5) Oren Cass: The Problem With Climate Catastrophizing
Foreign Affairs, 21 March 2017
6) And Finally: 3.6 Million More Penguins Live In Antarctica Than Thought
National Geographic, 15 March 2017
Full details:
1) New Report: Current Global Warming Is ‘Not Outside The Range Of Natural Variations’
The Daily Caller, 22 March 2017
Michael Bastasch
A UK-based climate policy group has put out an annual climate assessment “exclusively on observations rather than climate models” to serve as a counterpoint to those put out by the United Nations and government agencies that warn of unabated global warming.
The Daily Caller, 22 March 2017
Michael Bastasch
A UK-based climate policy group has put out an annual climate assessment “exclusively on observations rather than climate models” to serve as a counterpoint to those put out by the United Nations and government agencies that warn of unabated global warming.
The Global Warming Policy Foundation’s (GWPF) climate assessment, like the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), noted 2016 was likely the warmest year on record due to an incredibly strong El Niño warming event that boosted tropical ocean temperatures starting in 2015.
That’s about all the GWPF’s report has in common with the WMO’s assessment for 2016, which warns “the influence of human activities on the climate system has become more and more evident.”
“There is little doubt that we are living in a warm period,” said Ole Humlum, a physical geography professor at the University Centre in Norway and author of the GWPF report.
Humlum is a global warming skeptic who’s spent decades studying glaciers and climate. Humlum argues that while the world is warming, it’s well within the bounds of natural variability.
“However, there is also little doubt that current climate change is not abnormal and not outside the range of natural variations that might be expected,” Humlum said.
Humlum found that while 2016 was the warmest year on record, it was mostly due to the incredibly strong El Niño. The WMO, on the other hand, claims El Niño only contributed between 0.1 to 0.2 degrees Celsius to 2016’s record 1.1 degree Celsius anomaly.
He argues El Niño was the main driver behind record high temperatures last year because “global air temperatures were essentially back to the level of the years before the recent 2015–16 oceanographic El Niño episode.”
In general, the WMO’s report takes a more ominous tone in general when describing climatic conditions in 2016. WMO reported the “increase in global temperature is consistent with other changes in the climate system.”
“Globally averaged sea-surface temperatures were also the warmest on record; global sea levels continued to rise; and Arctic sea-ice extent was well below average for most of the year,” WMO reported.
“The year was marked by severe droughts that affected agricultural production and left people exposed to food insecurity in southern and eastern Africa and Central America,” WMO reported, also mentioning Hurricane Matthew, heavy flooding in Asia and coral reef bleaching.
Humlum counters that unseasonably high temperatures in the Arctic were driven by El Niño. Heat transported from the tropics to the poles. Both poles saw record-low sea ice levels, but that could also be driven by natural cycles.
“In the Arctic, a 5.3-year periodic variation is important, while for the Antarctic a cycle of about 4.5 years duration is important,” Humlum wrote. “Both these variations reached their minima simultaneously in 2016, which explains the recent minimum in global sea-ice extent.”
Humlum also noted how surface-based temperature datasets have diverged from satellite-based readings since 2003. Surface data shows about o.1 degree Celsius more warming than satellites.
Full post
2) GWPF TV: State Of The Climate In 2016
GWPF TV, 23 March 2017
The GWPF has published the world’s first State of the Climate survey based exclusively on observations rather than climate models. Compiled by Professor Ole Humlum, the new climate survey is in sharp contrast to the habitual alarmism of other reports that are mainly based on computer modelling and climate predictions. Here is a short video about the new report.
Full video
3) Last Year's Weather Proves Climate Change Is Real, Says WMO
Not A Lot Of People Know That, 22 March 2017
Paul Homewood
From the “A bit of bad weather proves climate change” Dept.
An unbelievably crass piece from the failed Independent (and doubtlessly the BBC and the rest of the dismal MSM):
There is “no room for doubt”. The astonishing weather experienced by the world last year and advances in climate science demonstrate conclusively that fossil fuel emissions are causing global warming – and something must be done about it.
That was the reaction from scientist after scientist to a new report by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), which documented record-breaking droughts, heatwaves, rainfall, melting of sea ice and a host of tangible signs observed in 2016 that the Earth’s climate has changed.
Amid fears that Donald Trump will withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement on climate change, the Secretary-General of the WMO said it was “vital” to slash carbon emissions and prepare for increasingly dangerous weather.
Writing in the report’s foreword, Petteri Taalas said: “The influence of human activities on the climate system has become more and more evident.
“This influence is increasingly being demonstrated by attribution studies for some of the most critical weather and climate extremes, in particular extremes related to heat.” [....]
The Independent’s readers are a pretty naive lot, but even some of them can see through this nonsense, judging by some of the comments.
Full post
4) Ocean Surface Temperatures: How Low Will They Go?
Science Matters, 18 March 2017
Ron Clutz
We have seen lots of claims about the temperature records for 2016 and 2015 proving dangerous man made warming. At least one senator stated that in a confirmation hearing. Now that HadSST3 data is complete through February 2017, let’s see how obvious is the ocean’s governing of global average temperatures.
The best context for understanding these last two years comes from the world’s sea surface temperatures (SST), for several reasons:
The ocean covers 71% of the globe and drives average temperatures;
SSTs have a constant water content, (unlike air temperatures), so give a better reading of heat content variations;
A major El Nino was the dominant climate feature the last two years.
HadSST is generally regarded as the best of the global SST data sets, and so the temperature story here comes from that source, the latest version being HadSST3.
The chart below shows the last two years of SST monthly anomalies as reported in HadSST3, along with the first two months of 2017.
Note that higher temps in 2015 and 2016 are first of all due to a sharp rise in Tropical SST, beginning in March 2015, peaking in February 2016, and steadily declining back to its beginning level. Secondly, the Northern Hemisphere added two bumps on the shoulders of Tropical warming, with peaks in August of each year. Also, note that the global release of heat was not dramatic, due to the Southern Hemisphere offsetting the Northern one.
Finally, the oceans are starting 2017 only slightly lower than a year ago, but this year with much cooler Tropics. Notice that both the Tropics and also the Northern Hemisphere continue to cool. The Global average warmed slightly, pulled upward by the Southern Hemisphere which reaches its summer peak at this time.
Full post
5) Oren Cass: The Problem With Climate Catastrophizing
Foreign Affairs, 21 March 2017
The case for keeping calm.
Climate change may or may not bear responsibility for the flood on last night’s news, but without question it has created a flood of despair. Climate researchers and activists, according to a 2015 Esquire feature, “When the End of Human Civilization is Your Day Job,” suffer from depression and PTSD-like symptoms. In a poll on his Twitter feed, meteorologist and writer Eric Holthaus found that nearly half of 416 respondents felt “emotionally overwhelmed, at least occasionally, because of news about climate change.”
For just such feelings, a Salt Lake City support group provides “a safe space for confronting” what it calls “climate grief.”
Panicked thoughts often turn to the next generation. “Does Climate Change Make It Immoral to Have Kids?” pondered columnist Dave Bry in The Guardian in 2016. “[I] think about my son,” he wrote, “growing up in a gray, dying world—walking towards Kansas on potholed highways.” Over the summer, National Public Radio tackled the same topic in “Should We Be Having Kids In The Age Of Climate Change?” an interview with Travis Rieder, a philosopher at Johns Hopkins University, who offers “a provocative thought: Maybe we should protect our kids by not having them.” And Holthaus himself once responded to a worrying scientific report by announcing that he would never fly again and might also get a vasectomy.
Such attitudes have not evolved in isolation. They are the most intense manifestations of the same mindset that produces regular headlines about “saving the planet” and a level of obsession with reducing carbon footprints that is otherwise reserved for reducing waistlines. Former U.S. President Barack Obama finds climate change “terrifying” and considers it “a potential existential threat.”
He declared in his 2015 State of the Union address that “no challenge—no challenge—poses a greater threat to future generations.” In another speech offering “a glimpse of our children’s fate,” he described “Submerged countries. Abandoned cities. Fields that no longer grow. Political disruptions that trigger new conflict, and even more floods of desperate peoples.” Meanwhile, during a presidential debate among the Democratic candidates, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders warned that “the planet that we’re going to be leaving our kids and our grandchildren may well not be habitable.” At the Vatican in 2015, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio shared his belief that current policy will “hasten the destruction of the earth.”
And yet, such catastrophizing is not justified by the science or economics of climate change. The well-established scientific consensus that human activity is causing the climate to change does not extend to judgments about severity. The most comprehensive and often-cited efforts to synthesize the disparate range of projections—for instance, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Obama administration’s estimate of the “Social Cost of Carbon”—consistently project real but manageable costs over the century to come. To be sure, more speculative worst-case scenarios abound. But humanity has no shortage of worst cases about which people succeed in remaining far calmer: from a global pandemic to financial collapse to any number of military crises.
What, then, explains the prevalence of climate catastrophism?
Full post
6) And Finally: 3.6 Million More Penguins Live In Antarctica Than Thought
National Geographic, 15 March 2017
Sarah Gibbens
New data collected by researchers at the University of Adelaide in Australia estimates the population number at nearly six million—almost four million higher than previous estimates.
That’s about all the GWPF’s report has in common with the WMO’s assessment for 2016, which warns “the influence of human activities on the climate system has become more and more evident.”
“There is little doubt that we are living in a warm period,” said Ole Humlum, a physical geography professor at the University Centre in Norway and author of the GWPF report.
Humlum is a global warming skeptic who’s spent decades studying glaciers and climate. Humlum argues that while the world is warming, it’s well within the bounds of natural variability.
“However, there is also little doubt that current climate change is not abnormal and not outside the range of natural variations that might be expected,” Humlum said.
Humlum found that while 2016 was the warmest year on record, it was mostly due to the incredibly strong El Niño. The WMO, on the other hand, claims El Niño only contributed between 0.1 to 0.2 degrees Celsius to 2016’s record 1.1 degree Celsius anomaly.
He argues El Niño was the main driver behind record high temperatures last year because “global air temperatures were essentially back to the level of the years before the recent 2015–16 oceanographic El Niño episode.”
In general, the WMO’s report takes a more ominous tone in general when describing climatic conditions in 2016. WMO reported the “increase in global temperature is consistent with other changes in the climate system.”
“Globally averaged sea-surface temperatures were also the warmest on record; global sea levels continued to rise; and Arctic sea-ice extent was well below average for most of the year,” WMO reported.
“The year was marked by severe droughts that affected agricultural production and left people exposed to food insecurity in southern and eastern Africa and Central America,” WMO reported, also mentioning Hurricane Matthew, heavy flooding in Asia and coral reef bleaching.
Humlum counters that unseasonably high temperatures in the Arctic were driven by El Niño. Heat transported from the tropics to the poles. Both poles saw record-low sea ice levels, but that could also be driven by natural cycles.
“In the Arctic, a 5.3-year periodic variation is important, while for the Antarctic a cycle of about 4.5 years duration is important,” Humlum wrote. “Both these variations reached their minima simultaneously in 2016, which explains the recent minimum in global sea-ice extent.”
Humlum also noted how surface-based temperature datasets have diverged from satellite-based readings since 2003. Surface data shows about o.1 degree Celsius more warming than satellites.
Full post
2) GWPF TV: State Of The Climate In 2016
GWPF TV, 23 March 2017
The GWPF has published the world’s first State of the Climate survey based exclusively on observations rather than climate models. Compiled by Professor Ole Humlum, the new climate survey is in sharp contrast to the habitual alarmism of other reports that are mainly based on computer modelling and climate predictions. Here is a short video about the new report.
Full video
3) Last Year's Weather Proves Climate Change Is Real, Says WMO
Not A Lot Of People Know That, 22 March 2017
Paul Homewood
From the “A bit of bad weather proves climate change” Dept.
An unbelievably crass piece from the failed Independent (and doubtlessly the BBC and the rest of the dismal MSM):
There is “no room for doubt”. The astonishing weather experienced by the world last year and advances in climate science demonstrate conclusively that fossil fuel emissions are causing global warming – and something must be done about it.
That was the reaction from scientist after scientist to a new report by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), which documented record-breaking droughts, heatwaves, rainfall, melting of sea ice and a host of tangible signs observed in 2016 that the Earth’s climate has changed.
Amid fears that Donald Trump will withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement on climate change, the Secretary-General of the WMO said it was “vital” to slash carbon emissions and prepare for increasingly dangerous weather.
Writing in the report’s foreword, Petteri Taalas said: “The influence of human activities on the climate system has become more and more evident.
“This influence is increasingly being demonstrated by attribution studies for some of the most critical weather and climate extremes, in particular extremes related to heat.” [....]
The Independent’s readers are a pretty naive lot, but even some of them can see through this nonsense, judging by some of the comments.
Full post
4) Ocean Surface Temperatures: How Low Will They Go?
Science Matters, 18 March 2017
Ron Clutz
We have seen lots of claims about the temperature records for 2016 and 2015 proving dangerous man made warming. At least one senator stated that in a confirmation hearing. Now that HadSST3 data is complete through February 2017, let’s see how obvious is the ocean’s governing of global average temperatures.
The best context for understanding these last two years comes from the world’s sea surface temperatures (SST), for several reasons:
The ocean covers 71% of the globe and drives average temperatures;
SSTs have a constant water content, (unlike air temperatures), so give a better reading of heat content variations;
A major El Nino was the dominant climate feature the last two years.
HadSST is generally regarded as the best of the global SST data sets, and so the temperature story here comes from that source, the latest version being HadSST3.
The chart below shows the last two years of SST monthly anomalies as reported in HadSST3, along with the first two months of 2017.
Note that higher temps in 2015 and 2016 are first of all due to a sharp rise in Tropical SST, beginning in March 2015, peaking in February 2016, and steadily declining back to its beginning level. Secondly, the Northern Hemisphere added two bumps on the shoulders of Tropical warming, with peaks in August of each year. Also, note that the global release of heat was not dramatic, due to the Southern Hemisphere offsetting the Northern one.
Finally, the oceans are starting 2017 only slightly lower than a year ago, but this year with much cooler Tropics. Notice that both the Tropics and also the Northern Hemisphere continue to cool. The Global average warmed slightly, pulled upward by the Southern Hemisphere which reaches its summer peak at this time.
Full post
5) Oren Cass: The Problem With Climate Catastrophizing
Foreign Affairs, 21 March 2017
The case for keeping calm.
Climate change may or may not bear responsibility for the flood on last night’s news, but without question it has created a flood of despair. Climate researchers and activists, according to a 2015 Esquire feature, “When the End of Human Civilization is Your Day Job,” suffer from depression and PTSD-like symptoms. In a poll on his Twitter feed, meteorologist and writer Eric Holthaus found that nearly half of 416 respondents felt “emotionally overwhelmed, at least occasionally, because of news about climate change.”
For just such feelings, a Salt Lake City support group provides “a safe space for confronting” what it calls “climate grief.”
Panicked thoughts often turn to the next generation. “Does Climate Change Make It Immoral to Have Kids?” pondered columnist Dave Bry in The Guardian in 2016. “[I] think about my son,” he wrote, “growing up in a gray, dying world—walking towards Kansas on potholed highways.” Over the summer, National Public Radio tackled the same topic in “Should We Be Having Kids In The Age Of Climate Change?” an interview with Travis Rieder, a philosopher at Johns Hopkins University, who offers “a provocative thought: Maybe we should protect our kids by not having them.” And Holthaus himself once responded to a worrying scientific report by announcing that he would never fly again and might also get a vasectomy.
Such attitudes have not evolved in isolation. They are the most intense manifestations of the same mindset that produces regular headlines about “saving the planet” and a level of obsession with reducing carbon footprints that is otherwise reserved for reducing waistlines. Former U.S. President Barack Obama finds climate change “terrifying” and considers it “a potential existential threat.”
He declared in his 2015 State of the Union address that “no challenge—no challenge—poses a greater threat to future generations.” In another speech offering “a glimpse of our children’s fate,” he described “Submerged countries. Abandoned cities. Fields that no longer grow. Political disruptions that trigger new conflict, and even more floods of desperate peoples.” Meanwhile, during a presidential debate among the Democratic candidates, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders warned that “the planet that we’re going to be leaving our kids and our grandchildren may well not be habitable.” At the Vatican in 2015, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio shared his belief that current policy will “hasten the destruction of the earth.”
And yet, such catastrophizing is not justified by the science or economics of climate change. The well-established scientific consensus that human activity is causing the climate to change does not extend to judgments about severity. The most comprehensive and often-cited efforts to synthesize the disparate range of projections—for instance, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Obama administration’s estimate of the “Social Cost of Carbon”—consistently project real but manageable costs over the century to come. To be sure, more speculative worst-case scenarios abound. But humanity has no shortage of worst cases about which people succeed in remaining far calmer: from a global pandemic to financial collapse to any number of military crises.
What, then, explains the prevalence of climate catastrophism?
Full post
6) And Finally: 3.6 Million More Penguins Live In Antarctica Than Thought
National Geographic, 15 March 2017
Sarah Gibbens
New data collected by researchers at the University of Adelaide in Australia estimates the population number at nearly six million—almost four million higher than previous estimates.
Using a combination of aerial and ground surveys, as well as automated camera images, researchers were able to collect more accurate population counts over several breeding seasons and revise their estimated totals.
“Non-breeding birds are harder to count because they are out foraging at sea, rather than nesting in colonies on land,” Louise Emmerson, a seabird ecologist with the Australian Antarctic Division, says in a press release.
Until this most recent study, scientists drew their estimates by counting breeding pairs. However, this means previous counts missed non-breeding penguins.
“Non-breeding birds are harder to count because they are out foraging at sea, rather than nesting in colonies on land,” Louise Emmerson, a seabird ecologist with the Australian Antarctic Division, says in a press release.
Until this most recent study, scientists drew their estimates by counting breeding pairs. However, this means previous counts missed non-breeding penguins.
The London-based Global Warming Policy Forum is a world leading think tank on global warming policy issues. The GWPF newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.thegwpf.com.
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