GWPF Newsletter - Finnish Scientists: Effect Of Human Activity On Climate Change Is Insignificant

New Science: Clouds And Solar Cycles Play Greater Role Than Thought

In this newsletter:

1) Finnish Scientists: Effect Of Human Activity On Climate Change Is Insignificant
Helsinki Times, 14 July 2019
 
2) New Climate Science: Clouds And Solar Cycles Play Greater Role Than Thought 
Graham Lloyd, The Australian, 13 July 2019

 
3) CEI Files Formal Complaint Regarding Nasa’s Claim Of 97% Climate Scientist Agreement On Global Warming
Competitive Enterprise Institute, 10 July 2019
 
4) Global Investment In Green Energy Drops Sharply
Financial Times, 11 July 2019 
 
5) New World Record: Oversupply Of Coffee Beans Sends Global Prices Tumbling
City A.M., 10 July 2019 
 
6) Consistent Failure Of Apocalyptic Predictions Hasn’t Stopped Climate Alarmism
Nicolas Loris, CNS News, 8 July 2019 
 
7) Antarctic Ice Surprise
Dr David Whitehouse, GWPF Science Editor, 10 July 2019
 
8) And Finally: Climate Scientists’ Pre-Traumatic Stress Syndrome
Judith Curry, Climate Etc., 8 July 2019 

Full details:

1) Finnish Scientists: Effect Of Human Activity On Climate Change Is Insignificant
Helsinki Times, 14 July 2019

A new paper published by researchers form the University of Turku in Finland suggests that even though observed changes in the climate are real, the effects of human activity on these changes are insignificant. 

Figure 2. [2] Global temperature anomaly (red) and the global low cloud cover changes (blue) according to the observations. The anomalies are between summer 1983 and summer 2008. The time resolution of the data is one month, but the seasonal signal is removed. Zero corresponds about 15°C for the temperature and 26 % for the low cloud cover

The team suggests that the idea of man made climate change is a mere miscalculation or skewing the formulas by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Jyrki Kauppinen and Pekka Malmi, from the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Turku, in their paper published on 29th June 2019 claim to prove that the

“GCM-models used in IPCC report AR5 fail to calculate the influences of the low cloud cover changes on the global temperature. That is why those models give a very small natural temperature change leaving a very large change for the contribution of the green house gases in the observed temperature.”

Thus, in order to come to the results matching the actual climate change the IPCC has to “use a very large sensitivity to compensate a too small natural component. Further they have to leave out the strong negative feedback due to the clouds in order to magnify the sensitivity.” In addition, Kauppinen and Malmi claim that their paper proves that “the changes in the low cloud cover fraction practically control the global temperature.”

The authors argue that the IPCC has used computational results which can not be considered experimental evidence, and site this as the reason for contradictory conclusions.

“The IPCC climate sensitivity is about one order of magnitude (i.e. 10 times) too high, because a strong negative feedback of the clouds is missing in climate models. If we pay attention to the fact that only a small part of the increased CO2 concentration is anthropogenic, we have to recognise that the anthropogenic climate change does not exist in practice,” write Kauppinen and Malmi.

“The major part of the extra CO2 is emitted from oceans, according to Henry‘s law. The low clouds practically control the global average temperature. During the last hundred years the temperature is increased about 0.1℃ because of CO2. The human contribution was about 0.01℃.”

The paper has been criticised for not being peer reviewed and other climate scientists have refuted the conclusions reached by Kauppinen and Malmi. Critics have said that in addition to not being peer reviewed, Malmi and Kauppinen fail to provide correct physical explanation, have not linked to- or sited to enough sources to support their claims and although they denounce climate models, they use one themselves to prove their own points.

In a previous paper by the same scientists published last December, they discuss the effects of cloud cover and relative humidity on the climate change. In a separate study, Japanese scientists have also suggested a much more important role for low clouds cover caused by an increase in cosmic rays resulting form the weakening of the earths magnetic filed.

Prof. Masayuki Hyodo and his team Yusuke Ueno, Tianshui Yang and Shigehiro Katoh from the University of Kobe in Japan in their paper published this month in propose that the “umbrella effect” is the main factor behind climate change.

“When galactic cosmic rays increased during the Earth’s last geomagnetic reversal transition 780,000 years ago, the umbrella effect of low-cloud cover led to high atmospheric pressure in Siberia, causing the East Asian winter monsoon to become stronger. This is evidence that galactic cosmic rays influence changes in the Earth’s climate.”

“The Intergovernmental IPCC has discussed the impact of cloud cover on climate in their evaluations, but this phenomenon has never been considered in climate predictions due to the insufficient physical understanding of it”, comments Professor Hyodo. “This study provides an opportunity to rethink the impact of clouds on climate. When galactic cosmic rays increase, so do low clouds, and when cosmic rays decrease clouds do as well, so climate warming may be caused by an opposite-umbrella effect. The umbrella effect caused by galactic cosmic rays is important when thinking about current global warming as well as the warm period of the medieval era.”

Full story

See also: Henrik Svensmark: Solar Impact On Climate Greater Than Thought



 2) New Climate Science: Clouds And Solar Cycles Play Greater Role Than Thought 
Graham Lloyd, The Australian, 13 July 2019

Sand deposits near the Gobi Desert in China may seem a strange place to look for evidence that cosmic rays can control how clouds are formed and the impact they have on Earth’s climate.

But Japanese scientists have measured the size of sand grains and the distance they travelled 780,000 years ago to add a new level of understanding to one of the questions that continues to baffle climate science: clouds.

The findings, published in Nature, point to big trends in natural variation of past and future climate that operate apart from greenhouse gas levels.

The study adds weight to a contentious theory by Danish researcher Henrik Svensmark, of the Danish National Space Institute in Copenhagen, which uses cosmic rays and clouds to question the sensitivity of climate to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

And it follows a study of 120,000 years of solar cycles by Valentina Zharkova, of Britain’s Northumbria University, which says a natural sun cycle will add 2.5C warming to Earth’s climate in coming centuries on top of any impact from rising greenhouse gases.

Neither the researchers nor the Japanese research team dispute that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas with implications for the climate. But if they are to be believed, our understanding of the sun’s role in climate cycles is starting to burn brighter.

Zharkova’s research, published in Scientific Reports, concentrates on a cycle that varies the distance between the Earth and the sun. She was previously best known for research on sunspot cycles that indicate a cooling influence on the Earth’s climate across the next two decades. Through statistical analysis of data gathered during the sunspot research, Zharkova and her colleagues identified that this cycle of movement, known as a super-grand cycle, takes about 2000 years to complete.

She and her team have been able to re-create almost 60 super-grand cycles, going back 120,000 years. Their research has established that the current super-grand cycle began between 1645 and 1715, during the Maunder Minimum period in which the sun was experiencing far fewer sunspots and the Earth’s temperature decreased as a result.

The authors say we are now in the growing — or warming — phase of the cycle, which is expected to reach its peak by the year 2600. By this time the Earth’s temperature is expected to have increased by between 2.5C and 3C.

They say this rise is expected to happen in addition to any rise related to man-made activity such as carbon emissions.

The cycle then will enter the cooling phase, during which the sun will move slightly farther away from the Earth. This is expected to last until the year 3700.
Meanwhile, researchers at Japan’s Kobe University provide an opportunity to rethink the role of clouds in climate.

Lead author Masayuki Hyodo has found a new way to test a theory that when galactic cosmic rays increase, so do low clouds, and when cosmic rays decrease, clouds follow suit.

“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has discussed the impact of cloud cover on climate in their evaluations, but this phenomenon has never been considered in climate predictions due to insufficient physical understanding of it,” Hyodo says.

The research builds on the so-called Svensmark Effect, which is a hypothesis that galactic cosmic rays induce low cloud formation and influence the Earth’s climate.

In December 2017, Svensmark published research in Nature Communications he said indicated the impact of changes in solar activity on Earth’s climate was up to seven times greater than climate models suggested.
The claimed breakthrough was in understanding how cosmic rays from supernovas interact with the solar magnetic field, with variations in that magnetic field reflected in the intensity of cosmic rays reaching the Earth.

These variations influence the density of cloud cover, which in turn has an effect on the Earth’s climate.
This has implications for how sensitive climate is to rising levels of carbon dioxide.

It is an active field of study with different researchers arriving at different conclusions.

The IPCC reports have a wide range of possible figures for climate sensitivity.

Hyodo’s research approaches the same question posed by Svensmark but from a different, and unusual, perspective. He says tests based on recent meteorological observation data show only minute changes in the amounts of cosmic rays and cloud cover, making it difficult to prove the theory.

In an article based on the research, Hyodo explains how researchers went looking for clues during the last geomagnetic reversal transition three-quarters of a million years ago. The theory was that during the geomagnetic reversal the amount of cosmic rays increased dramatically and there was also a large increase in cloud cover. In China’s Loess Plateau, just south of the Gobi Desert near the border with Mongolia, dust has been transported for 2.6 million years to form layers of windblown silt up to 200m thick.

The researchers propose that winter monsoons would become stronger if there were increased cloud cover during the geomagnetic reversal. They found evidence that for a period of 5000 years during the reversal, coarser grains of silt had been deposited over a much greater distance.

The strong winter monsoons had coincided with the period during the reversal when the Earth’s magnetic strength fell to less than one quarter and cosmic rays increased by more than 50 per cent.

“This suggests that the increase in cosmic rays was accompanied by an increase in low-cloud cover, the umbrella effect of the clouds cooled the continent, and Siberian high atmospheric pressure became stronger,” researchers say. There was also evidence of an annual average temperature drop of 2C to 3C.

Svensmark tells Inquirer the latest research is independent confirmation of the role of cosmic rays on climate. He says Hyodo’s research deals with Earth’s magnetic field and is one of three possible ways cosmic rays can affect our planet’s atmosphere.

One is a change in the number of supernovas in the solar system’s neighbourhood; another is that solar activity can modulate the number of cosmic rays reaching the Earth; and the third is changes in the Earth’s magnetic field.

Svensmark says he is happy to see a new study that seems to find a connection.

Michael Asten, adjunct senior research fellow at Monash University’s school of Earth atmosphere and environment, says scientists have barely scratched the surface of the task of recognising and modelling natural cycles of climate change.

The association between cosmic ray activity and global climate is complex because the cosmic ray record tells us of energy reaching the top of Earth’s atmosphere.
Global climate variations are the result of variations in cloud cover, atmospheric circulation patterns and ocean circulation patterns as well as the actual luminosity of the sun.

Asten says Svensmark’s explanation is not accepted by the vast majority of researchers, but in time his theory may well be seen as a seminal part of new insights into an incredibly complex set of sun-Earth-climate interactions.

3) CEI Files Formal Complaint Regarding Nasa’s Claim Of 97% Climate Scientist Agreement On Global Warming
Competitive Enterprise Institute, 10 July 2019

The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) petitioned NASA to remove from its website the claim that 97 percent of climate scientists agree humans are responsible for global warming.

The petition, filed under the Information Quality Act (IQA), points out the major flaws in the studies cited by NASA to substantiate its claim. It requests the agency remove the claim from its website and stop circulating it in agency materials.

While NASA asserts the “97 percent” claim is supported by a number of studies, CEI contends that claim has major flaws that have been documented by critics. These include:

Incorrectly categorizing scientists who take “no-position” as endorsing the view that humans are responsible for climate change.

Failing to include relevant sources without explanation.

Failing to match the terms used as the basis for a study to the claim actually made by NASA.

 “The claim that 97% of climate scientists believe humans are the primary cause of global warming is simply false,” said CEI attorney Devin Watkins. “That figure was created only by ignoring many climate scientists’ views, including those of undecided scientists. It is time that NASA correct the record and present unbiased figures to the public.”

Under guidance released by Office of Management and Budget in April, NASA has 120 days to respond to CEI’s request for correction and its response must include a “point-by-point response to any data quality arguments” raised in the request.

You can read the full Request for Correction here.

4) Global Investment In Green Energy Drops Sharply
Financial Times, 11 July 2019 

Global investment in clean energy fell to its lowest levels in five years during the first half of 2019, because of a sharp drop in Chinese renewable energy projects.

Source: Bloomberg NEF.

Investment in clean energy slipped to $117.6bn, a decline of 14 per cent compared with the same period last year, according to new research from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

A sudden change in China’s renewable energy policies last year — when it curbed solar and wind subsidies — has dramatically reduced the number of new projects in the world’s largest market.

Clean energy investment in China was down 39 per cent during the first half of this year, compared with the same period last year.

However, those figures could improve later this year, suggested Justin Wu, BNEF’s head of Asia-Pacific.

“The slowdown in investment in China is real, but the figures for first-half 2019 probably overstate its severity,” he said. “We expect a nationwide solar auction happening now to lead to a rush of new [photovoltaic] project financings.”

Europe and the US also experienced declines, with clean energy investment falling 4 per cent and 6 per cent in those areas, respectively.

Full story
 
5) New World Record: Oversupply Of Coffee Beans Sends Global Prices Tumbling
City A.M., 10 July 2019 

So much coffee is now being produced in the world that global prices are crashing, according to new data.

click on image to watch GWPF video: Roasting the Coffee Apocalypse

A record seasonal surplus of beans being produced pushed down coffee futures to their lowest levels in more than a decade during April, with a rise in demand for caffeinated drinks failing to stem the plummeting prices.

In Brazil, the world’s largest producer of coffee, a surge in production of arabica and robusta beans, as well as a weak currency, has led to a dramatic oversupply of the commodity within the world market, putting a downward pressure on prices.

Producers in traditional coffee heartlands in Central America, Colombia and Ethiopia have been reportedly considering to call time on the coffee business in the wake of the price slump, sparking fears for the future of the industry and local economies.

“C” arabica futures, one benchmark for global coffee prices, tumbled 29 per cent from October 2018 to April, when they hit a 13-and-a-half year low, according to IHS Markit’s Agribusiness Intelligence.

Meanwhile, coffee production rose to a record 174.6m bags of 60 kilogram beans during the current season, marking an eight per cent rise on the previous year.

Full post

6) Consistent Failure Of Apocalyptic Predictions Hasn’t Stopped Climate Alarmism
Nicolas Loris, CNS News, 8 July 2019 

In the 1970s, Americans were told we were in a global cooling crisis and if something wasn’t done, we’d enter a new ice age.

When that didn’t happen, a few decades later we were told that entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend was not reversed by the year 2000.

Despite the consistent failure of these apocalyptic warnings, that hasn’t stopped climate change alarmism.

We’re now being told we only have 12 years to combat climate change, and the solution is to fundamentally dismantle the system of free enterprise. That means Washington controls things like how we produce our energy, what food we eat, and what type of cars we drive.

The question is, even if we believed their alarmist, catastrophic predictions, would their proposals work?
Not according to the climate scientists’ own models. Based on those models, even if the United States cut its carbon dioxide emissions to zero, it would only avert global warming by a few tenths of a degree Celsius—in 80 years.

We would see no noticeable difference in the climate, yet it would come at an enormous cost to the American people.

Climate change is happening, and human activity undoubtedly plays a role, but big-government climate policies are all economic pain, no environmental gain.
After all, the purpose of climate change regulations is to drive energy prices higher so families and businesses use less energy.

Abundant energy sources such as coal, oil, and natural gas have allowed Americans to affordably drive to their jobs, light and heat their homes, and power their refrigerators, computers, and iPhones.

On the other hand, more heavy-handed climate regulations would drive up electricity bills and prices at the pump.

Families would be hurt multiple times over, paying not just more for energy but also more for food, clothing, and health care, as energy is critical for every stage of planting, harvesting, manufacturing, and transporting goods to consumers.

These rising costs would stifle economic growth, one of the most important factors for maintaining a cleaner environment.

As a country’s economy grows, the financial ability of its citizens to take care of the environment grows, too. So creating more economy-killing climate regulations and taxes would not only harm the livelihoods of the American people, it would also harm our ability to protect our environment.

Instead, government should focus on keeping the economy strong by reducing taxes and eliminating regulatory barriers to energy innovation.

Full post

7) Antarctic Ice Surprise
Dr David Whitehouse, GWPF Science Editor, 10 July 2019

Nature is complicated and often contradictory. Even with such an all-encompassing theory like Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) not every result and observation points in the same direction.

It’s these observations that contain new information, especially in the netherlands between AGW forcing and natural climate variability.

The recent decline in Antarctic sea ice is remarkable given that it has been slowly increasing since satellite observations of its extent commenced in 1979.

Things seemed normal until the end of 2016 when over a three month period an additional 4 million square kilometres melted. This is more than the entire accumulation since records began at the average rate of 11,200 +/- 2,100 square kilometres per year. This was followed by a rebound, but not back to the level it was beforehand. Nothing like this has ever been seen since satellite observations began in the late 1970s.

During the last couple of decades, many scientists expressed their surprise that in the era of anthropogenic global warming Antarctic ice was increasing rather than decreasing. A recent paper by Parkinson (2019) detailing the recent developments concluded:

“These increases have been far more puzzling than the Arctic sea ice decreases and have led to a variety of suggested explanations.”

So what could have caused this recent event?

Many suggestions have been made; links to the Ozone Hole, El Nino, the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation, variations seen in the Amundsen Sea. Parkinson (2019) says that,

“None of these has yet yielded a consensus view of why the long-term Antarctic sea ice increases occurred.”

Of the two greatest masses of ice on our planet Arctic sea ice has been declining, with half of the effect put down to AGW, whilst Antarctic sea ice was expanding for a reason nobody knows. What is more, climate models predicting sea ice extent didn’t get it right as the decrease was far more than they predicted.

Looking at the sea ice data from various regions in the Southern Ocean it’s apparent that the main effect is seen in the Weddell Sea, with lesser effects seen elsewhere.

Being a little more accurate with the dates is illuminating. Looking at the monthly rather than yearly sea ice data it becomes evident that the sea ice extent descended into unknown territory at the end of 2016. A few months earlier the intense 2015/16 El Nino had declined, although the world had remained warm. If the rapid decline is associated with the end of the El Nino, then it is unprecedented since the other two comparable extreme El Nino’s in 1997-98 and 1982-83 did not trigger such a dramatic decline. Then again we know so little about El Nino’s, especially the extreme ones.

Parkinson (2019) acknowledge that there is
“no assurance that the 1979 – 2014 overall positive trend in the Southern Ocean has reversed to a long-term negative trend.”

In short, the Antarctic Ice puzzlement continues.

Feedback: david.whitehouse@thegwpf.com

8) And Finally: Climate Scientists’ Pre-Traumatic Stress Syndrome
Judith Curry, Climate Etc., 8 July 2019 

It’s getting worse.

About 5 years ago, I wrote two blog posts on climate scientists’ pre-traumatic stress syndrome:

Pre-traumatic stress syndrome: climate trauma survival trips

Pre-traumatic stress syndrome: climate scientists speak out

Mother Jones has a new article on the same topic It’s the end of the world as they know it: The distinct burden of being a climate scientist.

The following scientists were interviewed: Kim Cobb, Priya Shukla, Peter Kalmus, Sarah Myhre, Jacquelyn Gill, Katharine Wilkinson, Eric Holthaus, David Grinspoon, Ken Caldeira.

Lots of ‘trauma,’ read the article to get a flavor. This sentence pretty much sums things up:

“There’s deep grief and anxiety for what’s being lost, followed by rage at continued political inaction, and finally hope that we can indeed solve this challenge. There are definitely tears and trembling voices.”

End of civilization?

The title of the article is:  “It’s the end of the world as they know it.”  Some selected quotes:

“I’m tired of processing this incredible and immense decline”

” . . . knows of a looming catastrophe but must struggle to function in a world that does not comprehend what is coming and, worse, largely ignores the warnings of those who do.”

“it’s deep grief—having eyes wide open to what is playing out in our world”

“I lose sleep over climate change almost every single night”

“Climate change is its own unique trauma. It has to do with human existence.”

“I have no child and I have one dog, and thank god he’ll be dead in 10 years.”

Soooo . . .  have any of these scientists read the IPCC Reports?  I’m not seeing this level of ‘alarm’ anywhere in the IPCC Reports?  Where the heck does this ‘end of civilization’ stuff come from?

In a tweet about the article, Lucas Bergkamp asked:

“How can these scientists produce any reliable, objective data?”

Gotta wonder.  Sarah Myhre states:

“I have anxiety exacerbated by the constant background of doom and gloom of science. It’s not stopping me from doing my work, but it’s an impediment.”

Apart from ‘impediments’, what about flat-out bias in research introduced by this extreme world view?

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.