GWPF Newsletter: Alarmists U-Turn

Scientists Confirm Great Barrier Reef Is Recovering From Bleaching

In this newsletter:

1) Alarmists U-Turn: Scientists Confirm Great Barrier Reef Is Recovering From Bleaching
Huffington Post, 10 December 2018 
 
2) Greenland Ice Sheet Sixth Highest On Record
Polar Portal Season Report 2018

 
3) The 1991 UK Climate Predictions
GWPF Observatory, 4 December 2018 
 
4) How Good Are The UK’s Predictions For Sea Level Rise?
GWPF Observatory, 5 December 2018
 
5) Jo Nova: How To Destroy A Perfectly Good Electricity Grid In Three Easy Steps
GWPF TV, 7 December 2018 
 
6) The One-Sided Worldview Of Eco-Pessimists
Joanna Szurmak and Pierre Desrochers, Quillette, December 2018
 
7) And Finally: Should We Listen To David Attenborough’s Climate Alarm?
Charles Moore, The Spectator, 5 December 2018 

Full details:

1) Alarmists U-Turn: Scientists Confirm Great Barrier Reef Is Recovering From Bleaching
Huffington Post, 10 December 2018 

The Great Barrier Reef fared better during an oceanic heat wave last year than during sizzling weather a year earlier that caused hundreds of miles of corals to bleach, according to a study published Monday that suggests the massive structure may be growing more tolerant to climate change.



The report in the journal Nature Climate Change analyzed how corals along the Great Barrier fared in back-to-back mass bleaching events. The reef ― a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the largest living structure on the planet ― was cooked by overheated seawater in 2016 and again in 2017, with images of sickly white coral horrifying people around the globe.

During the first event, which scientists likened to an underwater apocalypse, almost 30 percent of the reef died.

But the second event last year, which saw seas even hotter than 2016 in many places, didn’t harm the reef as badly as scientists expected. They speculated that the structure may be going through a forced evolution that has helped toughen it, at least in part.

“The good news is the Barrier Reef glass is still half-full,” said Terry Hughes, a lead author of the study and the director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. “Whether we’ll still have reefs in 50 years time … there’s a glimmer of hope that we will.”

Full story

see also GWPF coverage of coral reef science: Between hysteria and reality
 
2) Greenland Ice Sheet Sixth Highest On Record
Polar Portal Season Report 2018

In 2018, Greenland’s total  surface mass budget (SMB) is almost 150bn tonnes above the average for 1981-2010, ranking as sixth highest on record.



The Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) also performs daily simulations of how much ice or water the Ice Sheet loses or accumulates. Based on these simulations, an overall assessment of how the surface mass balance develops across the entire Ice Sheet is obtained (Fig. 4).

At the end of the 2018 season (31 August 2018), the net surface mass balance was 517 Gt, which means that 517 Gt more snow fell than the quantity of snow and ice that melted and ran out into the sea. This number only contains the balance at the surface, and thus not the total balance, which also includes melting of glaciers and calving of icebergs. The surface mass balance at the end of August 2018 is almost 150 Gt above the average for 1981-2010 of 368 Gt, and it makes the melting season of this year the sixth highest SMB result, just slightly less than the result for last year season, 2016-2017, when the SMB was 544 Gt. For comparison, the lowes measured SMB was 38 Gt in 2012. This clearly demonstrates how great a variation can occur in SMB from one year to the next.

Although the total SMB for the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 seasons are similar, development during the two seasons has been very different. Last year, the season began by gaining a lot of mass during the winter, whilst the development in SMB from the summer onwards reflected the long-term average. During the 2017-2018 season, SMB remained in line with the average from 1981-2010 until the summer, after which the development in SMB was higher than average.

Full post
 
3) The 1991 UK Climate Predictions
GWPF Observatory, 4 December 2018 
Andrew Montford, GWPF

The UK’s climate predictions from 1991 aren’t looking good

Last week, I looked at the UK’s official climate forecasts from 2002, noting that the expected warming hadn’t come to pass in the decade and a half since the forecast was released. I observed at the time that the series of official forecasts actually dated right back to 1991, when the UK Climate Change Impacts Review Group issued a 100-page report outlining the results of its analysis of entrails relating to future climate. I wondered how the prognostications of this earlier forecast would look 27 years on, with temperatures having risen for roughly the first decade post-forecast but with an little by way of any warming after that.

Fortunately, I have been able to lay my hands on a copy of the report, and I’ve now performed the analysis. The report says:

“In the summer season, the climate models indicate that temperature changes should be comparable to the global mean and spatially uniform over the the UK…”

The global temperature change is given for 2030 as “0.7°–2.0°C higher than at present” (the range is produced by using climate sensitivities of 2 for the low estimate and 4 for the high; CO2 concentrations used in the forecast look to be in line with the observed values).

Meanwhile, for winters, the report talks of “enhanced warming” and says:

“By the year 2030, winters in the UK could be approximately 1.5°-2.1°C warmer than at present (2.3°-3.5°C in 2050).”

And there is no doubt that “at present” has the meaning it would have in normal English, rather than any lawyerly evasion along the lines of “it means the 30-year mean ending in 1990”: the values for predicted global warming can be read directly from the graph in the report’s Figure 2.1 (as reproduced below).



So, here’s how it has worked out. First summer temperatures:



So observations are running below what UKCCIRG suggested would happen with a climate sensitivity of 2.

And what about that “enhanced warming” that was expected for UK winters? Here’s how things have panned out.



So the observed warming rate is not even half of what was predicted.
 
4) How Good Are The UK’s Predictions For Sea Level Rise?
GWPF Observatory, 5 December 2018
Andrew Montford, GWPF

An extrapolated forecast based on the actual trend to date might be more useful to planners than the Met Office’s predictions.

Over the last few days, I have been reviewing the official forecasts of climate change for the UK, going right back to the first iteration in 1991. It’s fair to say that so far we have seen nothing like the level of warming that has been predicted for the UK. Today I thought it might be interesting to see how the various forecasts for sea level rise have turned out.

Because local changes in sea level, due to rise and fall of land heights, are much more important for any particular location than the global change, the UK’s official forecasts tend to focus on the global changes, and it’s these that I will examine here.

Back in 1991, the forecast was a simple one-liner, and it’s fair to say it was very pessimistic, with observed sea level rise since that time barely more than half the predicted change (note that the observations only start in 1993, so the baselines are not quite in synch, but the trends are clear):



By the time of the UKCIP02 predictions, a more sophisticated approach had been adopted, in that a range of possible outcomes was given. This has had the desired effect in that the observations now fall squarely within the forecast range, although that range is so wide that I’m not sure that too much back-slapping is in order. Hitting a barn door is hardly cause for celebration. In particular, the worst-case scenario looks far too pessimistic.



If you look at where the observations were at the time of the next set of forecasts in 2009, you might have wondered whether the scientists involved would have been prompted to rein in the worst case somewhat (although they might now point to the slight acceleration thereafter). However, it is clear that they preferred to play safe (albeit at the cost of making the predictions rather less useful): examining UKCP09, it is clear that they have not altered the expectation at all.



I’m left with the overriding impression that a naive forecast based on the trend to date might be more useful to planners than the predictions given by the Met Office.

5) Jo Nova: How To Destroy A Perfectly Good Electricity Grid In Three Easy Steps
GWPF TV, 7 December 2018 

Australia has more energy resources per capita than almost any place on Earth, yet despite that benefit has managed to take top spot for electricity prices. In her recent talk to a Westminster audience Australian science writer Jo Nova explains what it takes to achieve state-wide blackouts, flying squads of diesel generators, and a tripling of wholesale electricity prices in just five years.



Click here or on the image above to watch the video
 
6) The One-Sided Worldview Of Eco-Pessimists
Joanna Szurmak and Pierre Desrochers, Quillette, December 2018

Prometheans like the Roslings posit that humanity can, and should, apply the intellects of its most creative individuals and the synergistic effects of large groups of people working to transform the environment in order to improve its lot.

This essay draws in part on the authors’ new book Population Bombed! Exploding the Link Between Overpopulation and Climate Change (Global Warming Policy Foundation, 2018).

The Pull of Environmental Narratives

In his critique of Hans Rosling’s optimistic take on the human condition (which Rosling co-authored with son Ola and daughter-in-law Anna Rosling Rönnlund), Christian Berggren scolds the late professor of international health for ignoring negative trends and for dodging the “preconditions and ecological consequences of the current techno-economic regime” as well as the risks inherent to “continued global population growth.” As Berggren further argues in the longer paper on which his Quillette essay is based, the Roslings illustrate the philosopher Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s apocryphal statement that “You do not see with your eyes; you see with your interests.” In this, he claims, the authors of Factfulness failed to present “the world and how it really is.”

Are Berggren’s critique and worldview any more accurate? His facts and positions are squarely in the lineage of thinkers such as Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834), William Vogt (1902–1968) and Paul Ehrlich (1932– ) who view human activities as inherently constrained by ecological limits. Environmental policy analyst John S. Dryzek labeled this perspective the survivalist discourse; it opposed the Promethean perspective developed by the likes of William Godwin (1756–1836), Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), Henry George (1839–1897) and Julian Simon (1932–1998). Prometheans like the Roslings posit that humanity can, and should, apply the intellects of its most creative individuals and the synergistic effects of large groups of people working to transform the environment in order to improve its lot.

Other sets of names and descriptions exist for both discourses but the most accessible are pessimists and optimists. While these perspectives are far from monolithic, their main narratives remain deeply at odds with one another over a significant point: the role of humanity in environmental change. The philosopher Alex Epstein contrasted them as follows: Pessimists see the goal of human activity as minimizing human impacts; optimists understand the goal of human activity to be maximizing human flourishing.

Full post
 
7) And Finally: Should We Listen To David Attenborough’s Climate Alarm?
Charles Moore, The Spectator, 5 December 2018 

‘Civilisation faces collapse, Attenborough warns UN.’ That was the Times headline on Tuesday about the great broadcaster’s speech at the latest climate change conference in Poland.



In theory, Sir David is always worth hearing. Nevertheless, his solemn warning was made less effective by the decision to print it at the bottom of page 17. I cannot help feeling that this adverse news judgment was entirely correct.

This is an extract from Charles Moore’s Spectator Notes

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.