Great Barrier Reef More Resilient To Climate Change Than Previously Thought
In this newsletter:
1) Great Barrier Reef More Resilient To Climate Change Than Previously Thought
The Daily Telegraph, 29 November 2017
2) The Green Inquisition: Fears University May Sack Marine Scientist Over Comments On Great Barrier Reef Health
The Australian 26 August 2017
3) Great Barrier Reef Sceptic Takes University To Court Over Misconduct Investigations
The Australian, 22 November 2017
4) The Royal Society Of Climate Alarmism And Their Inventive Inventory Of More Bad News
Climate Scepticism, 29 November 2017
5) 2017 Global Cyclone Energy Almost 20% Below Normal
P. Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, 26 November 2017
6) Study: Satellites Show No Acceleration In Global Warming For 23 Years
Michael Bastasch, Daily Caller, 29 November 2017
7) Susan Crockford: Polar Bears Refused To Die As Predicted – False Prophets Are Angry
Polar Bear Science, 29 November 2017
8) Scientists Say Earth Is Doomed Without ‘Urgent’ Action — Just Like They Did 25 Years Ago
Editorial, Investor's Business Daily, 14 November 2017
Full details:
1) Great Barrier Reef More Resilient To Climate Change Than Previously Thought
The Daily Telegraph, 29 November 2017
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is more resilient to climate change and better able to regenerate itself than previously thought, scientists have said.
A new study has revealed a collection of 100 individual reefs spread throughout the 2,000 mile-long marine ecosystem that not only withstand warming seas and attacking starfish but also protect others.
Although only constituting around three per cent of the whole Great Barrier Reef, the newly discovered coral formations are being likened to the “cardiovascular system” of the World Heritage Site.
Above average ocean temperatures have caused unprecedented “bleaching” in recent years, where coral expels the algae that gives it colour and provides most of its energy.
The Great Barrier Reef has also suffered widespread outbreaks of coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish.
However, the new research by the University of Queensland found a collection of reefs lying in cooler areas able to supply their larvae – fertilised eggs – to other reefs via ocean currents.
Published in the journal PLOS Biology, it estimates the 100 reefs are able to supply larvae to almost half of the entire ecosystem in a single year.
“The presence of these well-connected reefs on the Great Barrier Reef means that the whole system of coral reefs possesses a level of resilience that may help it bounce back from disturbances, as the recovery of the damaged locations is supported by the influx of coral larvae from the non-exposed reefs,” said Dr Karlo Hock, who led the research.
The authors suggested that focusing on ways to support these reefs may hold a key to protecting the wider area.
Last week a separate team announced they had successfully bred “baby” coral on the Great Barrier Reef, producing more than a million larvae after collecting coral sperm and eggs produced during last November’s spawning period.
Full story
GWPF: How Climate Scientists Mislead The World About The Great Barrier Reef
See also GWPF coverage of the Great Barrier Reef Scare
2) The Green Inquisition: Fears University May Sack Marine Scientist Over Comments On Great Barrier Reef Health
The Australian 26 August 2017
Graham Lloyd
Outspoken marine scientist Peter Ridd has landed in hot water with James Cook University following a high-profile book tour in which he questioned the quality of Great Barrier Reef science.
Professor Ridd is understood to be under investigation for “serious misconduct” and colleagues fear he could be sacked. In a statement, JCU said “at this stage, the university cannot comment”.
Professor Ridd said he could not discuss whether a formal investigation was under way.
He was censured by JCU last June for “failing to act in a collegial way and in the academic spirit of the institution”.
His crime was to encourage the media to question two leading reef institutions, the Australian Institute of Marine Science and Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, on whether they knew that photos they had published and claimed to show the long-term collapse of reef health could be misleading and wrong.
Professor Ridd was disciplined for breaching Principle 1 of JCU’s code of conduct by “not displaying responsibility in respecting the reputations of other colleagues”. He was told that if he did it again, he might be found guilty of serious misconduct.
No details are available of the investigation, which is understood to have started earlier this week.
Full story
3) Great Barrier Reef Sceptic Takes University To Court Over Misconduct Investigations
The Australian, 22 November 2017
Graham Lloyd
Outspoken James Cook University professor Peter Ridd has taken Federal Court action claiming conflict of interest, apprehended bias and actual bias against vice-chancellor Sandra Harding.
Professor Ridd wants JCU to drop a misconduct investigation launched following his interview with Alan Jones on Sky News on August 1 in which he criticised the quality of Great Barrier Reef science.
In the interview, he said research findings by major institutions could not be trusted. “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.
“The science is coming out not properly checked, tested or replicated, and this is a great shame.”
JCU responded in late August by launching a formal investigation for misconduct which could result in Professor Ridd’s employment being terminated. […]
Professor Ridd said in correspondence to The Australian he hoped the court action would “draw attention to the quality assurance problems in science and the obligation of universities in general to genuinely foster debate, argument and the clash of ideas”.
“I think it is right to challenge our science institutions about whether their work is reliable and trustworthy,” he said.
A JCU spokesman said “it is not appropriate to comment on confidential matters’’.
Full post
4) The Royal Society Of Climate Alarmism & Their Inventive Inventory Of More Bad News
Climate Scepticism, 29 November 2017
The Royal Society has produced a new report to try to maintain the climate scare, providing an update on the last IPCC report (AR5) that came out in 2013. Unsurprisingly, the main message is “it’s worse then we thought”.
It’s in two parts, a document that summarises their main points in a non-technical way, starting off with “Climate change is one of the defining issues of our time” and a supporting document that includes references to new papers published since AR5.
Unsurprisingly, the main message is “it’s worse then we thought”. The authors include several of the familiar “usual suspects” with a solid track record in alarmism and exaggeration, such as Joanna Haigh, Ed Hawkins, Gabriele Hegerl and Brian Hoskins.
The report addresses 13 questions, some of which we have looked into, see below.
Climate Sensitivity (Paul)
The first question explored is How sensitive is global temperature to increasing greenhouse gases?
The summary claims that:
In 2013, the IPCC report stated that a doubling of pre-industrial carbon dioxide concentrations would likely produce a long-term warming effect of 1.5 to 4.5°C; the lowest end of that range now seems less likely.
The article explains what climate sensitivity is, and discusses the different ways of trying to estimate it. It points out that there tends to be a difference between estimates that are based on observations, and estimates that are based on computer models (see if you can guess which method gives the higher values – observations or computer models).
This figure is included, which shows a comparison of observations with models assuming an ECS of 2.1C, 2.8C and 3.7C.
Notice that the observations curve lies below all three of these, suggesting that the climate sensitivity is below 2.1C. Yet the Royal Society document claims that lower values of ECS are less likely. So the report has included a diagram that shows the opposite of what is claimed. Maybe it’s a typo, and the statement should have read “the highest end of that range now seems less likely” (unfortunately not — the section ends with a statement that values below 2C now seem less plausible).
Several recent papers are included in the reference list that look at the question of climate sensitivity.
Two of these are review articles, Forster (2016) and Knutti et al (2017). The first sentence of Forster’s abstract is
Recent attempts to diagnose equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) from changes in Earth’s energy budget point toward values at the low end of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report (AR5)’s likely range (1.5–4.5 K).
Again, this is the opposite of what is claimed in the RS report.
Full post
5) 2017 Global Cyclone Energy Almost 20% Below Normal
P. Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, 26 November 2017
Global accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) is currently running 19% below average and is only 73% of what it was at this time one year ago.
A look at Dr. Ryan Maue’s site here tells us a lot about how 2017 cyclone activity is doing as the Atlantic hurricane season winds down.
In September the Atlantic indeed saw some powerful hurricanes, such as Harvey, Irma and Maria, which led the media into a fit of Armageddon hysteria and calls to do something about climate change. It is true that the Atlantic saw an unusually active hurricane season, some 227% of what is normal in terms of energy, but the Atlantic is not the global situation.
Table showing 2017 accumulated cyclone energy for the 7 main basins globally. Source: Dr. Ryan Maue.
As the chart above shows, global accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) is currently running 19% below average and is only 73% of what it was at this time one year ago (2016).
This seems to fly in the face of all the warnings suggesting that global warming would intensify storm activity. Naturally 2017 is only one single year, and so it’s necessary to look at longer term trends.
At his site Maue refers to an abstract of a paper:
Geophys. Res. Lett. (2011) which tells us that cyclones don’t seem to be correlating with atmospheric CO2 at all:
“In the pentad since 2006, Northern Hemisphere and global tropical cyclone ACE has decreased dramatically to the lowest levels since the late 1970s. Additionally, the frequency of tropical cyclones has reached a historical low.”
Looking at the last 25 years, since 1992, the following chart tells us ACE globally, for the northern hemisphere and southern hemisphere have been trending significantly downward:
Downward cyclone trend over the past 25 years. Source: Dr. Ryan Maue.
Full post
6) Study: Satellites Show No Acceleration In Global Warming For 23 Years
Michael Bastasch, Daily Caller, 29 November 2017
Global warming has not accelerated temperature rise in the bulk atmosphere in more than two decades, according to a new study funded by the Department of Energy.
University of Alabama-Huntsville climate scientists John Christy and Richard McNider found that by removing the climate effects of volcanic eruptions early on in the satellite temperature record showed virtually no change in the rate of warming since the early 1990s.
“We indicated 23 years ago — in our 1994 Nature article — that climate models had the atmosphere’s sensitivity to CO2 much too high,” Christy said in a statement. “This recent paper bolsters that conclusion.”
Christy and McNider found the rate of warming has been 0.096 degrees Celsius per decade after “the removal of volcanic cooling in the early part of the record,” which “is essentially the same value we determined in 1994 … using only 15 years of data.”
The study is sure to be contentious. Christy has argued for years that climate models exaggerate global warming in the bulk atmosphere, which satellites have monitored since the late 1970s.
Christy, a noted skeptic of catastrophic man-made global warming, said his results reinforce his claim that climate models predict too much warming in the troposphere, the lowest five miles of the atmosphere. Models are too sensitive to increases in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere, he said.
“From our observations we calculated that value as 1.1 C (almost 2° Fahrenheit), while climate models estimate that value as 2.3 C (about 4.1° F),” Christy said.
While many scientists have acknowledged the mismatch between model predictions and actual temperature observations, few have really challenged the validity of the models themselves.
Full story
7) Susan Crockford: Polar Bears Refused To Die As Predicted – False Prophets Are Angry
Polar Bear Science, 29 November 2017
The polar bear experts who predicted tens of thousands of polar bears would be dead by now (given the ice conditions since 2007) have found my well-documented criticisms of their failed prophesies have caused them to lose face and credibility with the public.
Predicted sea ice changes (based on 2004 data) at 2020, 2050, and 2080 that were used in 2007 to predict a 67% decline in global polar bear numbers vs. an example of the sea ice extent reality experienced since 2007 (shown is 2012). See Crockford 2017 for details.
Although the gullible media still pretends to believe the doomsday stories offered by these researchers, the polar bear has fallen as a useful icon for those trying to sell a looming global warming catastrophe to the public.
Here’s what happened: I published my professional criticisms on the failed predictions of the polar bear conservation community in a professional online scientific preprint journal to which any colleague can make a comment, write a review, or ask a question (Crockford 2017). Since its publication in February 2017, not one of the people whose work is referred to in my paper bothered to counter my arguments or write a review.
They ignored me, perhaps hoping the veracity of my arguments would not have to be addressed. But it has not turned out that way. Now, too late, they have chosen a personal attack in the journal BioScience(Harvey et al. 2018 in press).
Harvey et al. (“Internet blogs, polar bears, and climate-change denial by proxy”) pretends to be a scientific analysis on internet blog posts about polar bears, climate change, and Arctic sea ice but single me out for their peculiar brand of “scientific” smearing because most of the polar bear content on the blogs they examined (80%, they estimate) came from me.
You wouldn’t know from the paper, for example, that I am a professional zoologist with a Ph.D. in evolution (with polar bears in my dissertation), only that the GWPF describes me as “an expert on polar bear evolution” (as if this is probably a lie).
The authors state: “Crockford vigorously criticize, without supporting evidence, the findings of several leading researchers who have studied polar bears in the field for decades.”
Anyone who reads my blog or has read my paper knows this is the opposite of what I do.
The fact that I criticize with supporting evidence is precisely why these “leading researchers” feel so threatened and why the paper had to be written.
These misrepresentations alone tell you all you need to know about the motive behind the paper and the accuracy of the rest of their statements about me and others.
The long list of co-authors joining in on this attack includes several psychologists, one of whom has written similar papers before, as well as serial-litagator/climate change champion Michael Mann.
Full post
8) Scientists Say Earth Is Doomed Without ‘Urgent’ Action — Just Like They Did 25 Years Ago
Editorial, Investor's Business Daily, 14 November 2017
This week, thousands of scientists issued a bleak and terrifying “second notice” to mankind about how we will destroy the planet unless we take “urgent” action. If this warning is as reliable as the first notice these scientists issued in 1992, we have nothing to worry about.
In an article published in the journal Bioscience, 15,364 scientists warned that we are “jeopardizing our future” and that “immediate action” is needed to “safeguard our imperiled biosphere.”
“Soon it will be too late to shift course away from our failing trajectory, and time is running out,” the scientists say.
The article is meant to be an update on a 1992 notice — ominously titled “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity” and signed by 1,700 leading scientists — that predicted environmental catastrophes to come if humans remained on the current course.
But the 1992 statement was wildly off the mark in its dire predictions.
Back then, the world’s leading scientists said that, if current trends continued, air pollution would get worse, water supplies would run short, the world’s supply of fish would sharply decline because of dying oceans, land would become less productive, vast acres of forests would be “gone in a few years,” mass extinctions would limit the ability to develop new medicines, and unchecked population growth would cause more to live in poverty and suffer malnutrition.
“No more than one or a few decades remain,” the scientists warned 2-1/2 decades ago, “before the chance to avert the threats we now confront will be lost and the prospects for humanity immeasurably diminished.”
Turns out that the world didn’t make any “fundamental changes” those scientists said were so urgently needed. If anything, it went faster in the same direction.
There was no concerted effort to control population, which grew by almost 1.9 billion — a 34% increase in 25 years. We didn’t “move away from fossil fuels” — global consumption climbed nearly 56% since 1992. We didn’t “greatly reduce overconsumption,” either.
Consumer spending on goods and services soared some 56% from 1990 to 2010.
And what happened to the “fragile planet” that was supposedly on the knife’s edge of permanent destruction?
Global supplies of clean water have increased. In 1990, 76% of the world’s population had reasonable access to drinking water. By 2010 that had increased to 89%, according to a report from the Food and Agricultural Organization at the U.N.
The per-capita supply of fish worldwide climbed roughly 30% over those years.
World hunger and poverty have dropped dramatically. The share of the global population that is undernourished declined more than 40% between 1990 and 2015, U.N. data show. The share of the global population living in abject poverty went down by more than 35%.
Land has gotten far more productive, not less. In fact, the share of land devoted to agriculture hasn’t budged since 1990, according to the U.N. report. Think about that for a minute: We are able to feed 34% more people, and feed them better than ever, using the same amount of land!
In the U.S. at least, air pollution is down since 1992 for every single pollutant the EPA measures. And our CO2 emissions are down since the mid-1990s, thanks not to government regulations, but because of the fracking innovation.
That massive deforestation predicted by scientists? The amount of forest land in the world declined by just 3% from 1990 to 2010, the U.N. report says. (In the U.S., it’s increased.)
How about the warning that we were cutting off new medicines by destroying species? The pharmaceutical industry is in a golden age of innovation, with more than 5,000 new treatments in the production pipeline.
What’s also interesting about the scientists’ 1992 warning is that it barely mentions global warming, which is the cause for all the current end-of-the-world predictions.
But today’s doomsday scientists are making the same fundamental mistake they made 25 years ago.
They are blind, apparently, to the fact that when people are emboldened by free-market capitalism they are amazingly innovative and will ceaselessly devise new technologies and new ways of doing things that are cheaper, less energy-intensive and less polluting.
There’s no need for the massive central planning or worldwide austerity these scientists keep demanding.
Our bet is that when 2042 comes around, the terrifying “second notice” from the world’s leading scientists will look just as ridiculous as the first one does today.
Full post
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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