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Previous pages: up to 2008
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"Quotes" | Hockey-Stick discussions |
last update:07 Dec 2017 |
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| Climate Change: The Rule in the Geological Record | With COP23 coming to steam, it would be a good idea to re-read the presentation by Prof. Alain Préat (ULB): "If one thing has been constant about Earth's climate over geological time, it is constant change." | |||
| Did European temperatures in 1540 exceed present days records? |
... asks René Orth and
co-authors from ETHZ, Uni. Giessen and Uni. Bern
in a paper published in IOP (open access).
The answer is probably yes (medium confidence in IPCC speak)! "Our results
show medium confidence that summer mean temperatures(TJJA) and maximum temperatures(TXx)
in Central Europe in 1540 were warmer than the
respective present-day mean summer temperatures
(assessed between 1966–2015)". (h.t. GWPF) |
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| Recent increases in terrestrial carbon uptake at little cost to the water cycle |
Higher atmospheric CO2 levels increase global
plant productivity and water usage efficiency,
according to Cheng et al. in Nature
Communications (July 2017, link to pdf) Read blog and this comment here |
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| Daring to Doubt |
Tony Abbott, former Australian prime minister,
gave on the 9th October 2017 a lecture at the GWPF in London. You might not agree with every statement made, but reflect on these two sentences: 1." Beware the pronouncement, “the science is settled”. It’s the spirit of the Inquisition, the thought-police down the ages." 2. "A market that’s driven by subsidies rather than by economics always fails. Subsidy begets subsidy until the system collapses into absurdity." Click for video. |
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| Are Climate Models Overstating Warming? |
Ross McKitrick (University of Guelph) has a
comment on Climate Etc. :
"The
model-observational discrepancy is real, and
needs to be taken into account especially when
using models for policy guidance." Read also here, here and here and this comment from Michel de Rougemont: "To date, no instrumental observations made in our climate system can disentangle anthropogenic effects and natural variations." |
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| The Little Boy |
New important publication by Prof. A. Tsonis (atmospheric science, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) on ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation) and its relation to climate change: "...the climate system consists of distinct subsystems whose interplay dictates decadal variability...ENSO and it's cousins do, however, underscore the importance of natural variability in climate change." The paper has very good non-mathematical explanations and descriptions of chaotic and coupled systems and its attractors |
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| Environmental Reporting in a Post Truth World. |
Dr. David Blackall (University of
Wollongong) has published an interesting paper
at Sage.
In a very clear and easy to understand language
he gives many examples how the media ignore
major scientific results that they find "inconveniant"
or ""dissenting". His conclusions: "...journalists
need to understand science...they need to
question the key players and to look to the
agendas that may be driving them..." (There are 2 errors at page 4: do you find them?) |
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| Climate-driven variability in the occurrence of major floods across North America and Europe |
Hurricanes and climate
change: Brand-new paper by Hodgins et al. "Climate-driven
variability in the occurrence of major floods
across North America and Europe" published in ScienceDirect: "The number of significant
trends was about the number expected due to
chance alone" Read Dr. Roy Spencer's comment here and this comment in the Spectator (UK) blog here. |
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| Transatomic White Paper 2.1. (Nov.2016) | TransAtomicPower is a new startup company created by former young MIT researchers. Its aim is to develop a molten salt nuclear reactor (a modification of the ORNL type) that is inherently safe, creates less than half spent fuel as the actual PWR's, is proliferation resistent and runs for decades providing stable, carbon-free base-load power, and possibly load following for grids impacted by intermittent wind/solar producers. | |||
| "Paleoclimate Cycles are Key Analogs for Present Day (Holocene) Warm Period" |
Renée Hannon, a geoscience advisor at the
University of Texas at Dallas, has a very good
guest comment at WUWT.
Look
what will happen when
this warm period is going to end similarly to
the previous one. I really appreciate her conclusion: "Because the astronomical processes affecting significant climate changes are beyond human control our focus should be on adaptation rather than climate manipulation. It is not a question if cooling will occur but simply a question of when." |
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It is with great sadness that I have to inform that Prof. Istvan Marko has passed
away on July 31th. I. Marko was a regular
professor of organic chemistry at the UCL (Université
catholique de Louvain, Belgium), and a
courageous and outspoken climate realist. His
many writings and presentations on climate
matters were first class science, crystal clear and often very
witty. Look at this
interview
(2016), and these two videos ([1]
[2]
in French, Agora Erasmus 2015). Here links to 4 pdf's, the last one being a presentation given for the Rotary Club in Luxembourg, 2016: [1] [2] [3] [4] Read also this comment on the NTZ blog |
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| Pronounced differences between observed and CMIP5 simulated multidecadal 2 climate variability in the twentieth century |
An important new
paper in GRL by Kravtsov & Callicutt on
the failure of the IPCC CMIP5 model ensemble to
correctly represent oceanic oscillations:"The observed internal variability
exhibits a pronounced multidecadal mode with a
distinctive spatiotemporal signature, which is
altogether absent in model simulations..." |
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| The Uncertainty has Settled |
Watch this excellent documentary from Marijn
POELS on Vimeo (video on demand, ~4.5 Euro)
questioning "modern" energy trends and changing
climate. Featuring Freeman Dyson, Piers Corbyn,
Hans von Storch and other scientists. |
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| What happened to the traditional role of skepticism in climate science? |
I am a great fan of Forrest M. MIMS III whom
I admire for his qualities of a long standing
exceptional "maker", his publications on
electronics and an outstanding book on the Mauna
Loa research station (look
here). This "hors norme" inventor and builder
is also the designer of the Microtops
instruments we use at meteoLCD for measuring the
total ozone column. He is a climate realist and a strong defender of the virtue of skepticism in science. Read here his comment in WUWT |
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| New Insights on the Physical Nature of the Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect Deduced from an Empirical Planetary Tempertaure Model |
A new paper by Nikolov and Zeller in "Environment Pollution and Climate Change" finds that global average near surface temperature for many celestial bodies depends only on solar irradiance and atmospheric pressure: no need to introduce greenhouse gases to explain the thermal enhancement at the surface! Read also blog on this important paper. |
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| Fatalities at wind turbines may threaten population viability of a migratory bat | A new paper by Frick et al. in Biological Conservation (Feb.2017) pours cold water on the naive beliefs that wind power may easily save the planet: "...we show that mortality from wind turbines may drastically reduce population size and increase the risk of extinction" | |||
| Private Benefit of CO2 and its Social Cost | New paper by Prof. Richard TOL (University of Sussex):"The private benefit of carbon (411 $/tCO2) is much higher than the social cost of carbon (12 $/tCO2)." | |||
| Nucléaire et Eolien: Etude comparée de démantèlement |
Very interesting article
(in French) by Jean Pierre Riou with surprising
results: cost for nuclear decommissioning: 1.85 €/MWh cost for wind turbine removal: 4.32 €/MWh Look also here. |
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| Acceleration in European Mean Sea Level? |
This is an excellent new paper by Phil
J. Watson in the Journal of Coastal Research
(Jan.2017) titled:
(note the question mark!).In short: no acceleration, relative sea-level
changes are modest and are negative in
regions where uplifting due to glacial rebound
is high (Baltic). |
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| Delayed warming hiatus over the Tibetan Plateau | New paper by An et al. finds that the Tibetan Plateau and China cooled down by about 0.2°C during last decade. | |||
| Diminishing number of weatherstations |
Look at this
graph from NOAA showing how the number of land-based
weather stations has plummeted during the
1990's. What is more intriguing is that the
percentage of air port located stations
increased from 40% to 75%: is the measured
warming a surprise? |
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| Berliner-Kreis: Klima- und Energie Standpunkt | A position of the "Berliner-Kreis" group of conservative CDU members which question and disagree with the official "Merkel" policy (02Jun2017) | |||
| About intellectuals and climate alarmism | From Frits Bolkestein, the former Dutch minister and European Commissioner. The link shows the English translation of the original Dutch article): "Censorship looms large in the field of climatology, which is not conducive to balanced decision-making...Why do so many intellectuals take pleasure in predicting catastrophes? Is it because they relish attention by the media? Or has it anything to do with Christian guilt feelings?" | |||
| Thoughts on the Public Discourse over Climat Change |
Discussion on an article by Prof. Richard Lindzen (emerited, MIT) published the 25th April 2017."The accumulation of false and/or misleading claims is often referred to as the ‘overwhelming evidence’ for forthcoming catastrophe." |
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| Tokamak Energy | A private UK company is developing a small tokamak-style fusion reactor and achieved its first plasma creation. The company plans to have a small fusion reactor ready to deliver energy into the electricity grid in 2030 | |||
| Was wäre wenn wir alle elektrisch fahren würden? |
Caustic article by physicist Vince Ebert in "Spektrum der Wissenschaften" (19 März 2017): "Um 30 Kilogramm Benzin zu ersetzen, brauchen Sie derzeit eine moderne Lithiumionen-Batterie, die rund 900 Kilogramm wiegt...wir bräuchten sogar knapp 140 neue Kraftwerke oder 220 000 Windräder oder eine Fotovoltaikanlage von der Größe des Saarlands, um den zusätzlichen Strombedarf zu decken" |
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| Cosmic Rays, Solar Activity and Changes in the Earth's Climate |
New 2017 paper by Russian scientists (Science
Academy, Moscow State University) Y.I.Stozhkov et al. (link
to paywalled version). They predict (as many
others did before) a coming cooling, based on spectral analysis of
past climate and correlation of global temperature change with the
measured flux of cosmic particles in the
lower 0.3 to 2.2 km atmosphere. This paper is
refreshingly short and very readable! A more extensive blog comment is here. |
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| Energiewende - Index Deutschland | A new report from McKinsey says that "...Die Kosten steigen weiter....Zentrale Ziele werden verfehlt und rücken in immer weitere Ferne...CO2 Ausstoss weit über dem Limit....das Preisniveau für deutschen Haushaltsstrom liegt 47.3% über dem europäischen Durchschnitt".This report bites and hurts! (more on the BLOG) | |||
| Climate models for the layman |
An excellent must read new briefing paper by Prof. Judith Curry (ex. GeorgiaTech): "... there is a secular warming trend at least since 1800 (and possibly as long as 400 years) that cannot be explained by carbon dioxide... " |
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| Exxon Mobile 2017 Outlook for Energy: A view to 2040 | The part of renewables remains rather modest (less than 15%, with wind and solar extremely poor), the total of carbon-free energy (which includes nuclear) about 22%, which leaves still 78% for fossil fuels. | |||
| "Tanktourismus-Bericht" Luxemburg 2016 | Dr. Dieter Ewringmann from the FiFo Institute (Köln) wrote a report on Luxembourg's pump tourism (i.e. the costs and benefits of selling large quantities of fuel at the pump to drivers from abroad). Read my comments here (with links to short and full versions of the report). All parts (1,2,3 and 4) of the discussion are now on-line. | |||
| Third Industrial Revolution Lëtzebuerg |
The great "Third Industrial Revolution Lëtzebuerg" report by Jeremy Rifkin has been released.I wrote a multi-part discussion of this 475 page blockbuster in my blog. Links to short and full version are included. |
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| Earth climate identification vs. anthropic global warming attribution |
Prof. Philippe de Larminat (from Ecole Centrale
de Nantes), a specialist in systems theory, has
published a very interesting paper in Elsevier's
"Annual Reviews in Control".
He applies systems theory to the climate data
and finds that, contrary to what the IPCC
says, "the natural contributions by solar and
internal variability could be the dominant
factor in recent global warming". Excellent and clear paper with some not too difficult maths! |
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