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# Thongchai Thailand

## Archive for October 2019

### The Incredible Pervective Power of Multimerization

Posted on: October 31, 2019

[RELATED POST ON THE URBAN HEAT ISLAND EFFECT]

[RELATED POST ON THE MEDIEVAL WARM PERIOD]

[WEBSITE OF MICHAEL AND RONAN CONNOLLY]

Scafetta, Nicola, and Richard C. Willson 2014 Addendum: Figure 16

1. Irishmen Michael Connolly, the father, and Ronan Connolly, the son (photo above), hold doctorate degrees, Ronan in Chemistry and Michael in an unknown field of study. Together, they have formed a research organization with the acronym “CERES” {Center for Environmental Research and Earth Sciences} (logo above). The founders, Michael and Ronan, are the only members of CERES. Their research in atmospheric physics and climate change is carried out in this context as CERES researchers. Their research is published in an online journal called {Open Peer Review Journal} of which they are the founders and only authors. These works are also posted on Researchgate.net where full text pdf files are available for download.
2. This post is a review of their claim that their analysis shows that the GHG effect of CO2, the foundation of the catastrophic AGW fear-based activism against fossil fuels, is not the primary driver of climate change as assumed in AGW theory and as required to serve as the rationale for the proposed climate action of changing the energy infrastructure from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
3. They found that in the study period 1881 to 2013, when the Hoyt & Schatten TSI {total solar irradiance} data are used in conjunction with CO2 forcing, TSI can explain the current warming with or without the CO2 effect with almost equal precision. Very high correlations of ρ≥0.7 are found for TSI alone against temperature. The authors of this post tested the validity of the correlation with detrended correlation analysis and found detrended correlations ≥0.45 with strong statistical significance. More importantly, the addition of CO2 forcing did not make a significant improvement in the correlation.
4. The results imply that long term temperature trends in surface temperature data are driven almost entirely by variability in total solar irradiance (TSI) when the Hoyt&Schatten proxy data are used. The dramatic difference between the Kopp&Lean and the Hoyt&Schatten TSI data are depicted in the chart above (Figure 16 in Scafetta and Willson 2014). The  greater variability of Hoyt&Schatten is able to explain the current warming event with greater precision than the Kopp&Lean TSI data and without the use of CO2 GHG forcing. The important contribution of this work to the AGW discussion is that it may encourage a greater attention to solar variability in the understanding of climate change that now relies on the Lacis principle that climate change can and must be understood solely in terms of fossil fuel emissions and CO2 forcing.  Related posts on this site are : [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK][LINK] [LINK]
5. However, it is important in this context to pay attention to the issue of uncertainty in proxy paleo data in general and in reconstructions of TSI in particular. The large differences seen in the chart above between the Hoyt&Schatten and Kopp&Lean TSI proxy data are not anomalous but rather what one would normally expect in paleo proxy reconstructions. Therefore, that a single proxy reconstruction exists that supports the Connolly hypothesis requires confirmation with different proxy data sources. This aspect of proxies is a generic problem with paleo data that has been described most clearly by Professor Carl Wunsch [LINK].
6. He writes that “Thousands of papers do document regional changes in proxy concentrations, but almost everything is subject to debate including, particularly, the age models, geographical integrity of regional data, and the meaning of the apparent signals that are often transformed in complicated ways on their way through the atmosphere and the ocean to the sediments. From one point of view, scientific communities without adequate data have a distinct advantage because they can construct interesting and exciting stories and rationalizations with little or no risk of observational refutation. Colorful, sometimes charismatic, characters come to dominate the field, constructing their interpretations of a few intriguing, but indefinite observations that appeal to their followers, and which eventually emerge as “textbook truths.” Therefore, although high correlations between TSI proxies and temperature have been shown with the Hoyt&Schatten proxy data, this relationship will gain greater credibility if it can be shown to exist in other proxies or in direct observations.
7. Yet another consideration is that the study examines five distinct regions with  mean temperature data for China, USA, the Arctic, the Northern Hemisphere, and sea surface temperature. AGW is a theory about global mean temperature and it would seem important that a test of that hypothesis should include a test of global mean temperature. Thus, in the selection of proxies to use and in the selection of regions to study, the methodology leaves open a possibility of data selection bias that would imply a circular reasoning issue in the form of the so called Texas Sharpshooter fallacy in the sense that data selection may have played a role in the success of the empirical test in proving what the authors had apparently set out to prove.
8. Another area of research by the Connolly family is the urban heat island effect. In that work they find that much of the warming being attributed to CO2 driven AGW is actually an “urbanization effect” caused by a rising urban heat island effect in the instrumental temperature series driven by growth in urban areas and thereby a growing heat island effect. The data presented are global average GHCN temperatures that show higher warming rates in urban areas than in rural areas. As a quick check of this result, one can compare the warming rates in Northern Hemisphere land areas in the reconstruction from the instrumental record (as in CRUTEM) with UAH satellite data for the same regional description. Since the Northern Hemisphere land areas have undergone significant urbanization over the period 1979-2018 one would expect to see a rising difference between the warming rates in these two temperature series. However that test showed a difference in warming rates of 0.0145C/yr in the full span of the data, 0.0137C/yr in the first half, 0.0172C/yr in the mid half, and the lowest rate of 0.0105C/yr in the second half of the time series. This result is inconsistent with the proposed urbanization bias that would be expected to create increasing differences between instrumental warming rate (CRUTEM) and the satellite data that is free of the urban heat island effect ((UAH). These results are displayed graphically below.
9. With respect to sea level rise, they write that “The main estimates of long-term sea level changes are based on data from various tidal gauges located across the globe. These estimates apparently suggest a sea level rise of about 1 to 3mm a year since records began. This works out at about 10-30cm (4-12 inch) per century, or about a 1 foot rise every 100-300 years. Importantly, the rate still seems to be about the same as it was at the end of the 19th century, even though carbon dioxide emissions are much higher now than they were during the 19th century. The last sentence is an interesting observation supported by a statistical analysis presented for the relationship between emissions and sea level rise at this site [LINK]  where we show that the proposition by climate science that sea level rise can be moderated by cutting emissions is not supported by the data.
10. In “The Physics of the Earth’s Atmosphere” section, the Connolly family writes that they looked at data from weather balloons to study the phenomenon of temperature change with height and found that it is explained by changes in water content and the existence of a previously unreported phase change. They state that this finding shows that the temperatures at each height are completely independent of the greenhouse gas concentrations. This part of their work is somewhat mysterious. The mystery deepens when they explain the chemistry of these changes in terms of “multimerization” of oxygen and/or nitrogen” and a mechanism called “pervection” explaining that  energy is transmitted throughout the atmosphere faster than the speed of light by pervective power and that this mechanism is not considered in the greenhouse effect theory, or in the current climate models and that explains why the greenhouse effect theory doesn’t workA detailed bibliography of their work and related works is presented below.

TEST OF THE URBANIZATION BIAS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Hoyt, Douglas V., and Kenneth H. Schatten. “Group sunspot numbers: A new solar activity reconstruction.” Solar physics 179.1 (1998): 189-219. In this paper, we construct a time series known as the Group Sunspot Number. The Group Sunspot Number is designed to be more internally self-consistent (i.e., less dependent upon seeing the tiniest spots) and less noisy than the Wolf Sunspot Number. It uses the number of sunspot groups observed, rather than groups and individual sunspots. Daily, monthly, and yearly means are derived from 1610 to the present. The Group Sunspot Numbers use 65941 observations from 117 observers active before 1874 that were not used by Wolf in constructing his time series. Hence, we have calculated daily values of solar activity on 111358 days for 1610–1995, compared to 66168 days for the Wolf Sunspot Numbers. The Group Sunspot Numbers also have estimates of their random and systematic errors tabulated. The generation and preliminary analysis of the Group Sunspot Numbers allow us to make several conclusions: (1) Solar activity before 1882 is lower than generally assumed and consequently solar activity in the last few decades is higher than it has been for several centuries. (2) There was a solar activity peak in 1801 and not 1805 so there is no long anomalous cycle of 17 years as reported in the Wolf Sunspot Numbers. The longest cycle now lasts no more than 15 years. (3) The Wolf Sunspot Numbers have many inhomogeneities in them arising from observer noise and this noise affects the daily, monthly, and yearly means. The Group Sunspot Numbers also have observer noise, but it is considerably less than the noise in the Wolf Sunspot Numbers. The Group Sunspot Number is designed to be similar to the Wolf Sunspot Number, but, even if both indices had perfect inputs, some differences are expected, primarily in the daily values.
2. Schatten, Kenneth, and Douglas Hoyt. Solar cycle 23 forecast update Geophysical research letters 25.5 (1998): 599-601.  Solar activity, although virtually impossible to forecast a month in advance, has succumbed to scientific methods on long time scales, much as climate or seasonal weather predictions are simpler than weekly weather forecasting. Moderately accurate solar activity forecasts on decadal time scales now seem possible. The methods that work fall into a class of prediction techniques called “precursor methods.” We utilize solar, interplanetary field, and geomagnetic precursors to update our cycle 23 prediction to provide a mean smoothed sunspot number of 153 ± 30 and mean smoothed Fl0.7 cm Radio flux of 200 ± 30. This is comparable to, but somewhat smaller than, the NOAA SEC panel findings that the next solar cycle would peak at a sunspot number near 160 ± 30. This paper also provides some discussion relating solar and interplanetary field components to serve as a bridge in interplanetary space, helping to forge Sun‐Earth connections.
3. Fröhlich, C., and J. Lean. “Solar irradiance variability and climate.” Astronomische Nachrichten 323.3‐4 (2002): 203-212Since November 1978 a complete set of total solar irradiance (TSI) measurements from space is available, yielding a time series of more than 23 years. From measurements made by different space‐based radiometers (HF on NIMBUS 7, ACRIM I on SMM, ACRIM II on UARS and VIRGO on SOHO) a composite record of TSI is compiled with an overall precision of order 0.05 Wm–2 and a secular trend uncertainty of ±3 ppm/year. This time series is compared with an empirical model of irradiance variability based on sunspot darkening and brightening due to faculae and network. From this comparison the model is calibrated and used to estimate possible changes of TSI in the past, using historical proxies of solar activity. For this purpose, stellar observations provide information about the possible range of solar variability over the last millennium when changes of Earth’s climate are well documented. Together, the paleo solar and climate data enable a discussion of the extent of global climate change that can be explained by a variable Sun.
4. Haigh, Joanna D. “The effects of solar variability on the Earth’s climate.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 361.1802 (2002): 95-111.  The absolute value of total solar irradiance is not known to better than ca.0.3% but measurements from satellite instruments over the past two solar cycles have shown that it varies by ca.0.1% on this time-scale. Over longer periods its value has been reconstructed using proxy measures of solar activity, and these suggest that during the Maunder minimum in solar activity of the late 17th century it was 3−4 W m−2 lower than at present. Observational data suggest that the Sun has influenced temperatures on decadal, centennial and millennial time-scales, but radiative forcing considerations and the results of energy-balance models and general circulation models suggest that the warming during the latter part of the 20th century cannot be ascribed entirely to solar effects. However, chemical and dynamical processes in the middle atmosphere may act to amplify the solar impact. An analysis of zonal mean temperature data shows that solar effects may be differentiated from those associated with other factors such as volcanic eruptions and the El Niño Southern Oscillation.
6. de Jager, Cornelis, and Ilya Usoskin. “On possible drivers of Sun-induced climate changes.” Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 68.18 (2006): 2053-2060.  We tested the validity of two current hypotheses on the dependence of climate change on solar activity. One of them states that variations in the tropospheric temperature are caused directly by changes of the solar radiance (total or spectral). The other suggests that cosmic ray (CR) fluctuations, caused by the solar/heliospheric modulation, affect the climate via cloud formation. Confronting these hypotheses with seven different sets of the global/hemispheric temperature reconstructions for the last 400 years, we found that the former mechanism is in general more prominent than the latter. Therefore, we can conclude that in so far as the Sun–climate connection is concerned tropospheric temperatures are more likely affected by variations in the UV radiation flux rather than by those in the CR flux.
7. Roy, Indrani, and Joanna D. Haigh. “Solar cycle signals in sea level pressure and sea surface temperature.” Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 10.6 (2010): 3147-3153.  We identify solar cycle signals in 155 years of global sea level pressure (SLP) and sea surface temperature (SST) data using a multiple linear regression approach. In SLP we find in the North Pacific a statistically significant weakening of the Aleutian Low and a northward shift of the Hawaiian High in response to higher solar activity, confirming the results of previous authors using different techniques. We also find a weak but broad reduction in pressure across the equatorial Pacific. In SST we identify a weak El Niño-like pattern in the tropics for the 155 year period, unlike the strong La Niña-like signal found recently by some other authors. We show that the latter have been influenced by the technique of compositing data from peak years of the sunspot cycle because these years have often coincided with the negative phase of the ENSO cycle. Furthermore, the date of peak annual sunspot number (SSN) generally falls a year or more in advance of the broader maximum of the 11-year solar cycle so that analyses which incorporate data from all years represent more coherently the difference between periods of high and low solar activity on these timescales. We also find that studies of the solar signal in SST over the second half of the 20th century may alias as ENSO signal if this is not properly taken into account.
8. Shapiro, A. I., et al. “A new approach to the long-term reconstruction of the solar irradiance leads to large historical solar forcing.” Astronomy & Astrophysics 529 (2011): A67The variable Sun is the most likely candidate for the natural forcing of past climate changes on time scales of 50 to 1000 years. Evidence for this understanding is that the terrestrial climate correlates positively with the solar activity. During the past 10 000 years, the Sun has experienced the substantial variations in activity and there have been numerous attempts to reconstruct solar irradiance. While there is general agreement on how solar forcing varied during the last several hundred years – all reconstructions are proportional to the solar activity – there is scientific controversy on the magnitude of solar forcing.We present a reconstruction of the total and spectral solar irradiance covering 130 nm–10 μm from 1610 to the present with an annual resolution and for the Holocene with a 22-year resolution. We assume that the minimum state of the quiet Sun in time corresponds to the observed quietest area on the present Sun. Then we use available long-term proxies of the solar activity, which are 10Be isotope concentrations in ice cores and 22-year smoothed neutron monitor data, to interpolate between the present quiet Sun and the minimum state of the quiet Sun. This determines the long-term trend in the solar variability, which is then superposed with the 11-year activity cycle calculated from the sunspot number. The time-dependent solar spectral irradiance from about 7000 BC to the present is then derived using a state-of-the-art radiation code. We derive a total and spectral solar irradiance that was substantially lower during the Maunder minimum than the one observed today. The difference is remarkably larger than other estimations published in the recent literature. The magnitude of the solar UV variability, which indirectly affects the climate, is also found to exceed previous estimates.We discuss in detail the assumptions that lead us to this conclusion.
9. Scafetta, Nicola, and Richard C. Willson. “ACRIM total solar irradiance satellite composite validation versus TSI proxy models.” Astrophysics and Space Science 350.2 (2014): 421-442.  The satellite total solar irradiance (TSI) database provides a valuable record for investigating models of solar variation used to interpret climate changes. The 35-year ACRIM total solar irradiance (TSI) satellite composite time series has been revised using algorithm updates based on 13 years of accumulated mission experience and corrections to ACRIMSAT/ACRIM3 results for scattering and diffraction derived from recent testing at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics/Total solar irradiance Radiometer Facility (LASP/TRF). The net correction lowers the ACRIM3 scale by ∼3000 ppm, in closer agreement with the scale of SORCE/TIM results (average total solar irradiance ≈1361.5 W/m2). Differences between the ACRIM and PMOD TSI composites are investigated, particularly the decadal trending during solar cycles 21–22 and the Nimbus7/ERB and ERBS/ERBE results available to bridge the ACRIM Gap (1989–1992), are tested against a set of solar proxy models. Our findings confirm the following ACRIM TSI composite features: (1) The validity of the TSI peak in the originally published ERB results in early 1979 during solar cycle 21; (2) The correctness of originally published ACRIM1 results during the SMM spin mode (1981–1984); (3) The upward trend of originally published ERB results during the ACRIM Gap; (4) The occurrence of a significant upward TSI trend between the minima of solar cycles 21 and 22 and (5) a decreasing trend during solar cycles 22–23. The same analytical approach does not support some important features of the PMOD TSI composite: (1) The downward corrections applied to the originally published ERB and ACRIM1 results during solar cycle 21; (2) The step function sensitivity change in ERB results at the end-of-September 1989; (3) The downward trend of ERBE results during the ACRIM Gap and (4) the use of ERBE results to bridge the ACRIM Gap. Our analysis provides a first order validation of the ACRIM TSI composite approach and its 0.037 %/decade upward trend during solar cycles 21–22. The implications of increasing TSI during the global warming of the last two decades of the 20th century are that solar forcing of climate change may be a significantly larger factor than represented in the CMIP5 general circulation climate models.

11. Connolly, Michael, and Ronan Connolly. “The physics of the Earth’s atmosphere I. Phase change associated with tropopause.” Open Peer Rev. J. 19 (2014).  Atmospheric profiles in North America during the period 2010-2011, obtained from archived weather balloon radiosonde measurements, were analysed in terms of changes of molar density (D) with pressure (P). This revealed a pronounced phase change at the tropopause. The air above the troposphere (i.e., in the tropopause/stratosphere) adopted a “heavy phase”, distinct from the conventional “light phase” found in the troposphere. This heavy phase was also found in the lower troposphere for cold, Arctic winter radiosondes. Reasonable fits for the complete barometric temperature profiles of all of the considered radiosondes
could be obtained by just accounting for these phase changes and for changes in humidity. This suggests that the well-known changes in temperature lapse rates associated with the tropopause/stratosphere regions are related to the phase change, and not “ozone heating”, which had been the previous explanation.
Possible correlations between solar ultraviolet variability and climate change have previously been explained in terms of changes in ozone heating influencing stratospheric weather. These explanations may have to be revisited, but the correlations might still be valid, e.g., if it transpires that solar variability influences the formation of the heavy phase, or if the changes in incoming ultraviolet radiation are redistributed throughout the atmosphere, after absorption in the stratosphere. The fits for the barometric temperature profiles did not require any consideration of the composition of atmospheric trace gases, such as carbon dioxide, ozone or methane. This contradicts the predictions of current atmospheric models, which assume the temperature profiles are strongly influenced by greenhouse gas concentrations. This suggests that the greenhouse effect plays a much smaller role in barometric temperature profiles than previously assumed. [FULL TEXT PDF]
12. Connolly, Michael, and Ronan Connolly. “The physics of the Earth’s atmosphere II. Multimerization of atmospheric gases above the troposphere.” Open Peer Rev. J. 22 (2014).  In a companion paper, a pronounced phase transition was found to occur between the troposphere and the tropopause/stratosphere regions. In this paper, it is argued that this phase change is due to the formation of multimers of the main atmospheric gases (N2 and O2) in the tropopause/stratosphere. This has several implications for our current understanding of the physics of the Earth’s atmosphere: 1. It offers a more satisfying explanation as to why stratospheric temperatures increase with altitude, than the conventional “ozone heating” explanation. 2. It provides an additional mechanism for the emission of infra-red and microwave radiation from the tropopause/stratosphere. 3. It suggests a faster mechanism for the formation of ozone in the ozone layer than the conventional Chapman mechanism. 4. It provides new insights into a number of weather phenomena, e.g., cyclonic/anti-cyclonic behaviour, tropical cyclones, polar vortices and the jet streams. [FULL TEXT PDF]
13. Connolly, Ronan, and Michael Connolly. “Global temperature changes of the last millennium.” Open Peer Review Journal 16 (2014).  A review of the various global (or hemispheric) millennial temperature reconstructions was carried out.
Unlike previous reviews, technical analyses presented via internet blogs were considered in addition to the conventional peer-reviewed literature. There was a remarkable consistency between all of the reconstructions in identifying three climatically distinct periods. These consisted of two relatively warm periods – the “Medieval Warm Period” (c. 800-1200 AD) and the “Current Warm Period” (c. 1900 AD on) – and a relatively cool period – the “Little Ice Age” (c. 1500-1850 AD). Disagreement seems to centre over how the two warm periods compare to each other, and exactly how cold, and continuous the cool period was. Unfortunately, many of the assumptions behind the reconstructions have still not been adequately justified. Also, there are substantial inconsistencies between the different proxy data sources, and between proxy-based and thermometer-based estimates. Until these issues have been satisfactorily resolved, all of the current millennial temperature reconstructions should be treated with considerable Caution[FULL TEXT PDF]
14. Connolly, Ronan, and Michael Connolly. “Urbanization bias I. Is it a negligible problem for global temperature estimates?.” Open Peer Rev. J. 28 (2014).  Several studies have claimed that the warming bias introduced to global temperature estimates by urbanization bias is negligible. On the basis of this claim, none of the groups calculating global temperature estimates (except for NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies) explicitly correct for urbanization bias. However, in this article, by re-evaluating these studies individually, it was found that there was no justification for this. There is considerable evidence that there has been global warming since the late 1970s. The urbanization bias problem is sometimes incorrectly framed as being a question of whether there has recently been global warming or not. However, the recent warming appears to have followed a period of global cooling from an earlier warm period which ended in the 1940s. So, resolving the urbanization bias problem is necessary to address issues such as how the recent warm period compared to the early 20th century warm period. If the earlier warm period was comparable to the recent warm period, then claims that recent global temperature trends are unprecedented or unusual will need to be re-evaluated. [FULL TEXT PDF]
15. Connolly, Ronan, and Michael Connolly. “Urbanization bias II. An assessment of the NASA GISS urbanization adjustment method.” Open Peer Rev. J. 31 (2014).  NASA GISS are currently the only group calculating global temperature estimates that explicitly adjust their weather station data for urbanization biases. In this study, their urbanization adjustment procedure was considered. A number of serious problems were found with their urbanization adjustments: 1.) The vast majority of their adjustments involved correcting for “urban cooling”, whereas urbanization bias is predominantly a warming bias. 2.) The net effect of their adjustments on their global temperature estimates was unrealistically low, particularly for recent decades, when urbanization bias is expected to have increased. 3.) When a sample of highly urbanized stations was tested, the adjustments successfully removed warming bias for the 1895-1980 period, but left the 1980s-2000s period effectively unadjusted. In an attempt to explain these unexpected problems, a critical assessment of their adjustment procedure
was carried out. Several serious flaws in their procedure were identified, and recommendations to overcome these flaws were given. Overall, NASA GISS’ urbanization adjustments were found to be seriously flawed, unreliable and inadequate. Until their adjustment approach is substantially improved, their global temperature estimates should be treated with considerable caution. [FULL TEXT PDF]
16. Connolly, Ronan, and Michael Connolly. “Urbanization bias III. Estimating the extent of bias in the Historical Climatology Network datasets.” Open Peer Rev. J. 34 (2014).  The extent to which two widely-used monthly temperature datasets are affected by urbanization bias was considered. These were the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) and the United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN). These datasets are currently the main data sources used to construct the various weather station-based global temperature trend estimates. Although the global network nominally contains temperature records for a large number of rural stations, most of these records are quite short, or are missing large periods of data. Only eight of the records with data for at least 95 of the last 100 years are for completely rural stations. In contrast, the U.S. network is a relatively rural dataset, and less than 10% of the stations are highly urbanized. However, urbanization bias is still a significant problem, which seems to have introduced an artificial warming trend into current estimates of U.S. temperature trends. The homogenization adjustments developed by the National Climatic Data Center to reduce the extent
of non-climatic biases in the networks were found to be inadequate, inappropriate and problematic for urbanization bias. As a result, the current estimates of the amount of “global warming” since the Industrial Revolution have probably been substantially overestimated. [FULL TEXT PDF]
17. Soon, Willie, Ronan Connolly, and Michael Connolly. “Re-evaluating the role of solar variability on Northern Hemisphere temperature trends since the 19th century.” Earth-Science Reviews 150 (2015): 409-452. Debate over what influence (if any) solar variability has had on surface air temperature trends since the 19th century has been controversial. In this paper, we consider two factors which may have contributed to this controversy: Factor#1: Several different solar variability datasets exist. While each of these datasets is constructed on plausible grounds, they often imply contradictory estimates for the trends in solar activity since the 19th century. Factor#2: Although attempts have been made to account for non-climatic biases in previous estimates of surface air temperature trends, recent research by two of the authors has shown that current estimates are likely still affected by non-climatic biases, particularly urbanization bias.With these points in mind, we first review the debate over solar variability. We summarise the points of general agreement between most groups and the aspects which still remain controversial. We discuss possible future research which may help resolve the controversy of these aspects. Then, in order to account for the problem of urbanization bias, we compile a new estimate of Northern Hemisphere surface air temperature trends since 1881, using records from predominantly rural stations in the monthly Global Historical Climatology Network dataset. Like previous weather station-based estimates, our new estimate suggests that surface air temperatures warmed during the 1880s–1940s and 1980s–2000s. However, this new estimate suggests these two warming periods were separated by a pronounced cooling period during the 1950s–1970s and that the relative warmth of the mid-20th century warm period was comparable to the recent warm period. We then compare our weather station-based temperature trend estimate to several other independent estimates. This new record is found to be consistent with estimates of Northern Hemisphere Sea Surface Temperature (SST) trends, as well as temperature proxy-based estimates derived from glacier length records and from tree ring widths. However, the multi-model means of the recent Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) climate model hindcasts were unable to adequately reproduce the new estimate — although the modelling of certain volcanic eruptions did seem to be reasonably well reproduced. Finally, we compare our new composite to one of the solar variability datasets not considered by the CMIP5 climate models, i.e., Scafetta and Willson, 2014’s update to the Hoyt and Schatten, 1993 dataset. A strong correlation is found between these two datasets, implying that solar variability has been the dominant influence on Northern Hemisphere temperature trends since at least 1881. We discuss the significance of this apparent correlation, and its implications for previous studies which have instead suggested that increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide has been the dominant influence. [FULL TEXT PDF] .
18. Soon, Willie Wei-Hock, et al. “Comparing the current and early 20th century warm periods in China.” Earth-Science Reviews 185 (2018): 80-101.  Most estimates of Chinese regional Surface Air Temperatures since the late-19th century have identified two relatively warm periods – 1920s–40s and 1990s–present. However, there is considerable debate over how the two periods compare to each other. Some argue the current warm period is much warmer than the earlier warm period. Others argue the earlier warm period was comparable to the present. In this collaborative paper, including authors from both camps, the reasons for this ongoing debate are discussed. Several different estimates of Chinese temperature trends, both new and previously published, are considered. A study of the effects of urbanization bias on Chinese temperature trends was carried out using the new updated version of the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) – version 4 (currently in beta production). It is shown that there are relatively few rural stations with long records, but urbanization bias artificially makes the early warm period seem colder and the recent warm period seem warmer. However, current homogenization approaches (which attempt to reduce non-climatic biases) also tend to have similar effects, making it unclear whether reducing or increasing the relative warmth of each period is most appropriate. A sample of 17 Chinese temperature proxy series (12 regional and 5 national) is compared and contrasted specifically for the period since the 19th century. Most proxy series imply a warm early-20th century period and a warm recent period, but the relative warmth of these two periods differs between proxies. Also, with some proxies, one or other of the warm periods is absent. [FULL TEXT PDF] .

URBAN HEAT ISLAND BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Parker, David E. “Urban heat island effects on estimates of observed climate change.” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 1.1 (2010): 123-133.  Urban heat islands are a result of the physical properties of buildings and other structures, and the emission of heat by human activities. They are most pronounced on clear, calm nights; their strength depends also on the background geography and climate, and there are often cool islands in parks and less‐developed areas. Some old city centers no longer show warming trends relative to rural neighbourhoods, because urban development has stabilised. This article reviews the effects that urban heat islands may have on estimates of global near‐surface temperature trends. These effects have been reduced by avoiding or adjusting urban temperature measurements. Comparisons of windy weather with calm‐weather air temperature trends for a worldwide set of observing sites suggest that global near‐surface temperature trends have not been greatly affected by urban warming trends; this is supported by comparisons with marine surface temperatures. The use of dynamical‐model‐based reanalyses to estimate urban influences has been hindered by the heterogeneity of the data input to the reanalyses and by biases in the models. However, improvements in reanalyses are increasing their utility for assessing the surface air temperature record. High‐resolution climate models and data on changing land use offer potential for future assessment of worldwide urban warming influences. The latest assessments of the likely magnitude of the residual urban trend in available global near‐surface temperature records are summarized, along with the uncertainties of these residual trends. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

EXCERPTS FROM [GLOBALWARMINGSOLVED DOT COM]

1. 11/13/2013: WHAT DOES THE IPCC SAY?: The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (or IPCC) have published a series of reports, which are widely assumed to represent the scientific consensus on man-made global warming.Since these reports are quite long and tedious, many of the people who have looked at the reports have mostly just considered the “Summary for Policymakers” (“SPM”) sections of the reports. These sections are assumed to accurately summarise the main findings of the entire reports. In their most recent Summary for Policymakers (September 2013), the IPCC claimed that it is more than 95% likely, i.e., “extremely likely” that “… human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century”. They also claimed that this global warming will become much greater during the 21st century if nothing is done to slow down CO2 emissions. Because thousands of top climate scientists are involved in the writing of the IPCC reports, these Summary for Policymakers claims are widely assumed to represent the views of all the top climate scientists. However, in this essay, we show that this assumption is a mistake. Those views are certainly expressed by many of the IPCC scientists who are heavily involved in the report writing. But, most IPCC scientists are never even asked for their views on those claims. Indeed, several IPCC scientists are prominent man-made global warming critics who openly disagree with a number of the claims made in the Summary for Policymakers. The problem is that the IPCC adopt a hierarchical system which gives a relatively small number of scientists the power to dismiss the views of other IPCC contributors, if they disagree with them. So, even though thousands of scientists have some involvement in the writing of the IPCC reports, the final views expressed by the reports are dominated by the views of a few dozen scientists. [FULL TEXT PDF]
2. 11/13/2013: IS THE ARCTIC MELTING?: Since satellite records began, there seems to have been a general decline in average Arctic sea ice extent. Interestingly, this hasn’t occured for Antarctic sea ice. The satellite records only began in October 1978, however. This coincided with the start of a recent warming trend in the Arctic. Before that, from the 1950s-1970s, Arctic temperatures were cooling. So, it is quite likely that in the decades immediately before the satellite records began, average Arctic sea ice extent was actually increasing, but we just weren’t monitoring it. It seems that the Arctic sea ice extent naturally goes through periods of expansion, followed by periods of contraction. In case you’re unsure about which is which, the Arctic is the polar region in the north (the one with polar bears, etc.) and the Antarctic is the polar region in the south (the one with penguins, etc.)In this essay, we look at what we know about Arctic sea ice extent.
3. 11/19/2013: THE PHYSICS OF THE EARTH’S ATMOSPHERE: In this essay, we will briefly summarise the analysis in our three “Physics of the Earth’s atmosphere” papers, which we have submitted for peer review at the Open Peer Review Journal.In Paper 1, we developed new analytical techniques for studying weather balloon data. Using these techniques, we found that we were able to accurately describe the changes in temperature with height by just accounting for changes in water content and the existence of a previously unreported phase change. This shows that the temperatures at each height are completely independent of the greenhouse gas concentrations. This disproves the greenhouse effect theory. It also disproves the man-made global warming theory, which is based on the greenhouse effect theory. In Paper 2, we suggest that the phase change we identified in Paper 1 involves the “multimerization” of oxygen and/or nitrogen in the air above the “troposphere” (the lower part of the atmosphere). This has important implications for a number of important phenomena related to the atmosphere, e.g., ozone formation, the locations of the jet streams, and how tropical cyclones form. In Paper 3, we identify a mechanism by which energy is transmitted throughout the atmosphere, which we call “pervection”. This mechanism is not considered in the greenhouse effect theory, or in the current climate models. We carried out laboratory experiments to measure the rates of pervection in air, and find that it is much faster than radiation, convection and conduction. This explains why the greenhouse effect theory doesn’t work. [FULL TEXT PDF] .
4. 11/21/2013: What is happening to sea levels? Hollywood and the media have helped created a popular perception that humans are causing dramatic sea level rises by man-made global warming. This perception comes from an exaggeration of more modest, though still dramatic, computer model predictions of 1-2 metre rises by the end of the 21st century. However, the actual experimental data shows, at most, a slow and modest increase in sea levels, which seems completely unrelated to CO2 concentrations. The main estimates of long-term sea level changes are based on data from various tidal gauges located across the globe. These estimates apparently suggest a sea level rise of about 1 to 3mm a year since records began. This works out at about 10-30cm (4-12 inch) per century, or about a 1 foot rise every 100-300 years, hardly the scary rates implied by science fiction films like The Day After Tomorrow (2004) or Waterworld (1995). Importantly, the rate still seems to be about the same as it was at the end of the 19th century, even though carbon dioxide emissions are much higher now than they were during the 19th century. Moreover, there are a number of problems in using the tidal gauge data which have not been resolved yet. So, despite claims to the contrary, it is still unclear if there has actually been any long term trend! In this essay, we will summarise what is actually known about current sea level trends.  [FULL TEXT PDF]
5.  11/27/2013: Is there a scientific consensus on global warming? By promoting the idea that climate scientists are all in agreement on man-made global warming theory, it might create the impression that there is scientific consensus. But, it hides the wide range of different views that are actually held by the scientific community. Many people (including many scientists) believe that there is a strong scientific consensus that increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations cause dangerous man-made global warming, and that if we don’t urgently reduce our carbon footprint, it will get much worse. But, while it is true that a substantial fraction of climate scientists hold this view, there is actually a wide range of opinions on man-made global warming in the scientific community. For instance, some scientists believe there has been man-made global warming, but that the media descriptions are seriously exaggerated, and that it isn’t an urgent issue. Other scientists believe that global warming is probably due to natural climate variability. In this essay, we present examples of some of the different views actually held by climate researchers.
6. 11/29/2013: Has poor station quality biased U.S. temperature trend estimates?In this essay, we will briefly summarize the analysis in our “Has poor station quality biased U.S. temperature trend estimates?” paper, which we have submitted for peer review at the Open Peer Review Journal. A recent voluntary project, called the Surface Stations project, led by the meteorologist and blogger, Anthony Watts, has found that about 70% of the weather stations in the U.S. Historical Climatology Network are currently sited in locations with artificial heating sources less than 10 metres from the thermometer, e.g., buildings, concrete surfaces, air conditioning units. We found that this poor station quality bias increased the mean U.S. temperature trends of the raw records by about 32%. Some researchers have argued that these biases have been removed by a series of artificial “homogenization” adjustments which had been applied to one version of the U.S. Historical Climatology Network. However, we found that these adjustments were inappropriate and led to “blending” of the biases amongst the stations. While this blending reduced the biases in the most biased stations, it introduced biases into the least biased stations, i.e., the adjustments just spread the biases uniformly between the stations, rather than actually removing the biases. It seems likely that similar siting biases also exist for the rest of the world. So, poor station quality has probably led to an exaggeration of the amount of “global warming” since the 19th century. [FULL TEXT PDF]
8. 12/11/2013: Is man-made global warming causing more hurricanes? [Wikipedia Graphic: Flood damage in New Orleans, Louisiana (USA) after Hurricane Betsy 1965]. In the mid-2000s, a number of researchers claimed that man-made global warming was leading to an increase in the frequency and intensity of hurricanes, typhoons and other tropical storms. These claims seemed to agree with observations that the cost of damages from tropical storms had been dramatically increasing over the years. In 2005, when Hurricane Katrina devastated the city of New Orleans (USA), this was conclusive proof for many people. As a result, it is now widely believed that global warming is causing an unusual increase in tropical cyclone activity. Now, it seems that whenever a heavy tropical storm makes landfall (e.g., 2012’s Hurricane Sandy or 2013’s Typhoon Haiyan), it is routinely assumed to be somehow related to our fossil fuel usage. However, in this essay, we will show how this belief is seriously flawed for several reasons: It is true that the devastation caused by hurricanes, typhoons and other tropical storms has been dramatically increasing. However, this is because the number of people living in at-risk coastal areas has substantially increased, as has the value of property and infrastructure in those regionsThere has indeed been a general increase in the number of recorded tropical cyclones, but much of this increase is due to improvements in our ability to detect cyclones through the use of satellites, aircraft surveillance and better computer analysis Coincidentally, the 1970s seem to have been a relatively quiet era for tropical cyclones, while the 1995-2005 period was relatively active. So, in the mid-2000s, it seemed that there had been a continuous trend from the 1970s. However, 2005 seems to have marked the peak in that active era, and tropical cyclone activity seems to have gone relatively quiet since then. More recent studies have suggested that the proposed link between global warming and cyclone activity is not as straightforward as had been originally thought. The tragedies of recent tropical cyclones such as Hurricane Katrina (2005), Cyclone Nargis (2008), Hurricane Sandy (2012) and Typhoon Haiyan (2013) are bitter reminders of how we should be actively working to improve our ability to adapt and respond to tropical storms. We should also continue researching into better hurricane monitoring and prediction. But, this should be done regardless of global warming. [FULL TEXT PDF]
9. 5/31/2017: Progress report from the Global Warming Solved team: We haven’t been updating this blog much since early 2014 when we first published our climate science findings. However, while the blog hasn’t been very active, we have been very busy continuing our climate research, discussing our findings with climate scientists around the world and collaborating with other researchers. So, we thought we should write a short post to let you all know how we’ve been getting on since 2014. While the public are still being inundated with claims that “the science is settled”, and that “climate change is man-made and dangerous”, our own experience since we’ve started discussing our findings has mostly been one of encouragement and appreciation from the scientists we’ve met. Most of the scientists we’ve met are usually very interested in our findings, and happy to discuss our work. In this post, we will provide some brief observations on what we’ve found from our discussions. We also include a brief summary of two new papers we’ve published since 2014: W. Soon, R. Connolly & M. Connolly, 2015. Re-evaluating the role of solar variability on Northern Hemisphere temperature trends since the 19th century. Earth-Science Reviews. Vol. 150, 409-452. R. Connolly, M. Connolly & W. Soon, 2017. Re-calibration of Arctic sea ice extent datasets using Arctic surface air temperature records. Hydrological Sciences Journal. In press. [FULL TEXT PDF]

### Climate Wars

Posted on: October 30, 2019

THE REAL CLIMATE CRISIS IS NOT GLOBAL WARMING BUT GLOBAL COOLING.

On , the climate blog WUWT published a guest article with the title “The Real Climate Crisis Is Not Global Warming, It Is Cooling, And It May Have Already Started”. The article is a critical evaluation of AGW theory and the climate movement.  The full text of the article is available online [LINK] . In it the authors present their case against catastrophic AGW saying that CAGW is a failed hypothesis and scientific fraud with no credible evidence to support its outrageous claims, and that it is a politically motivated alarmist movement that takes advantage of the gullibility of the masses to fear based activism. The authors claim that they have “ample evidence that the CAGW hypothesis has been falsified”.

CLAIM#1: “Global warming has slowed since the mid-1990s”. RESPONSE: This is an interesting point and generally accepted. It is easily verified for example by comparing the first half and the second half trends in UAH global mean temperatures 1979-2018 shown below. The blue line shows the trends in the first half of the sample period for each calendar month labeled 1 to 12. The 13th point is the average trend for the 12 calendar months. The corresponding data for the 2nd half appear in red. The comparison shows warming in both halves but with the warming in the 2nd half 1999-2018 slower than in the first half 1979-1998. We conclude from the chart below that the rate of global warming has slowed. However, a comparison of warming rates in two consecutive 20-year periods of convenience has no implication for or against the theory of AGW. For example, this comparison in itself does not imply that this is the beginning of the end of AGW or that the slowing will continue until the warming is over. As shown in a related post on “trend profiles” [LINK] , long term warming trends are the net result of decadal and multi-decadal cycles of warming at very different rates such that slowing or rising of decadal warming rates have no interpretation in terms of the overall long term temperature trend.

CLAIM#2: “Temperatures were much higher during the Medieval Warm Period. RESPONSE: The paleo data clearly show a very warm period ≈800 to ≈1400 AD and it very well might have been warmer than today. However, this issue has become contentious and this acrimonious debate survives because of large uncertainties in the paleo data. The literature shows a general agreement of large uncertainties in the data such that the selection of the type of proxy data (eg tree ring, sediment, borehole, or climate model) and the geographical location where data were gathered strongly influences findings. It is uncertain whether it was global or localized in Europe and if so whether it was all of Europe or just Northern Europe. It is also uncertain as to exactly when the MWP occurred and for how long it lasted. Most of all it is uncertain as to exactly how warm it got specifically with respect to the current 20th century warming of “the industrial economy since pre-industrial times”. Uncertainty of course creates controversy and given the the large stake for the climate science argument for human cause that the current warming is “unprecedented in the last two millennia” , the MWP issue has generated a great deal of acrimonious debate. This controversy is partisan and sustained by the so called “Texas Sharpshooter” fallacy because uncertainty allows different researchers to pay more attention to the portion of the uncertainty band that supports their hypothesis. Thus it is not clear that “Temperatures were much higher during the Medieval Warm Period”. A literature review of this issue is presented in a related post [LINK] and a general overview of the violent and chaotic cycles of warming and cooling at centennial and millennial time scales seen in the Holocene is presented in yet another related post [lLINK] that sets the context for Holocene climate variability.  The current warming does not appear anomalous in that context. Also the issue is not how strong the warming is but whether it is explained by fossil fuel emissions. The intensity of warming is not a human cause determinant. Strong warming does not prove human cause and weak warming does not prove absence of human cause. The MWP is a nonsensical issue in the AGW debate.

CLAIM#3: The hottest USA surface temperature records occurred in the 1930’s, before fossil fuel combustion accelerated circa 1940RESPONSE: The AGW issue is about long term trends in global mean surface temperature. Regional warming events have no direct interpretation in that context.

CLAIM#4: Fossil fuel combustion accelerated strongly at the start of World War II, and global temperatures COOLED significantly from 1940 to 1977. This cooling event disproves the causal link between fossil fuel emissions and warming. RESPONSE: It is true that there was an explosive growth in emissions in the post war economic boom. The observed cooling at a time of rising emissions is a high profile issue and generally recognized as an anomaly in AGW. However, the issue is more complex in light of the Schneider 1971 argument about aerosols discussed in a related post on this site [LINK] . Stephen Schneider, (may he rest in peace) had argued that both the war itself and the explosive post war economic growth on both sides of the Atlantic that involved a sharp increase in industrialization and coal burning with no environmental constraints, caused a spike in stratospheric aerosols that explained the net cooling even in the presence of AGW warming. In the late 1960s and early 1970s environmental legislation and control of industrial pollution virtually removed the supply of aerosols – particularly that of sulfate aerosols that are known to have a very strong cooling effect. The temporary cooling and the resumption of warming was thus explained. Therefore, the 1970s cooling anomaly case against AGW is not complete without a response to the Schneider aerosol argument.

CLAIM#5: Christy & McNider (2017) and Lewis & Curry (2018) have shown that the maximum possible value of Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity is ECS=1 but climate scientists have presented AGW theory and its catastrophic consequences based on sensitivity values of 3<ECS<5, much higher than ECS=1. Therefore AGW is false and simply a fear mongering device because no dangerous runaway warming is possible at ECS≤1.  RESPONSE: The low values of ECS reported here are not anything new as a review of the ECS literature that goes back to Manabe and Wetherald 1964 shows. The extant literature shows ECS values over a large range that includes ECS≤1.  In related posts on this site are cited a large number of works that report ECS values of ECS<1 to ECS>10   [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] . A specific issue in the literature is found in Andronova 2000 where she reports ECS = [2.0-5.0] with the note that more than half of that figure can be explained by solar variability. That leaves her with residual CO2 sensitivity ECS=[0.94-2.35]. This finding weakens the role of human cause in AGW but in the context of a body of research that has failed to identify the value of ECS. The real ECS issue may therefore be not what its value is but whether such a parameter exists. Please see: [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK]

CLAIM#6: Global temperature is certainly NOT primarily driven by increasing atmospheric CO2, because CO2 changes LAG global temperature changes in time, both in the ice core proxy record and also in the modern data record. The Vostok ice core record shows a lag of CO2 after temperature of ~~800 years.  RESPONSEThat CO2 lags temperature by 800 years in the ice core record is often cited as an argument against AGW. If this lag serves as evidence that the causation is in reverse – that warming causes CO2 – then a causation mechanism at a time scale of 800 years must be presented. Without that detail, the 800 year lag in the proxy record has no interpretation in terms of AGW.

CLAIM #8: The velocity of changes of atmospheric CO2 [dCO2/dt] varies contemporaneously with changes in global temperature. Therefore the integral of dCO2/dt, changes in atmospheric CO2, lag changes in global atmospheric temperature by ~9 months. The very close relationship of dCO2/dt (red) vs global temperature (blue) is clearly apparent. Major volcanoes (some VEI5 and most VEI6 events) disrupt the relationship. Integrating the dCO2/dt data gives changes in CO2, which lag changes in temperature by ~9 months. The 12-month delta in CO2 is used to allow for the “seasonal sawtooth” in the Keeling Curve. Therefore, changes in atmospheric CO2 does not cause warming but rather, warming causes changes in atmospheric CO2. And that proves that AGW is a flawed theory and therefore a falsehood.  RESPONSE: The issue raised here, that changes in atmospheric CO2 are responsive to surface temperature, is an interesting one because higher temperatures increase the equilibrium partial pressure of carbon dioxide in the oceans as well as on wetlands. Therefore the amount of CO2 added to the atmosphere by the carbon cycle from these sources in any year would depend on the temperature of these sources. And in fact, correlation analysis does show that relationship as seen in the two charts below where annual change in atmospheric CO2 for each calendar month is compared with surface temperature using correlation analysis. The first chart uses the HADCRUT4 global surface temperature as suggested by the authors of CLAIM#8. The second chart uses the HADSST3 global sea surface temperature series. The numbers from 1 to 12 along the bottom of each chart identifies the calendar month. The calendar months are analysed separately because their behavior in deltaCO2, temperature, and the relationship between the two vary significantly among the calendar months. Here we see that, as claimed by the authors of CLAIM#8, there is indeed a correlation and the correlations do survive into the detrended series for 5 of 12 calendar months in the case of global surface temperature and for 11 of 12 calendar months for global sea surface temperature. In this case the authors have made an interesting point about the temperature dependence of year to year changes in atmospheric CO2 that has an interpretation in terms of carbon cycle dynamics. However, the further interpretation of this finding in terms of AGW, that it disproves the heat trapping effect of atmospheric CO2 has no basis. That surface temperature changes carbon cycle dynamics is not inconsistent with the GHG effect of CO2. It is also noted that the claim by the authors that there is no GHG effect of CO2 is inconsistent with their earlier claim that the GHG effect of CO2 is governed by a climate sensitivity of ECS=1.

CLAIM#9: Predictions of Imminent Global Cooling, Starting Anytime Soon. Allan MacRae also published on September 1, 2002, based on a conversation with Dr. Tim Patterson, the prediction that global cooling, which happened from ~1940 to 1977, would recommence by 2020-2030: RESPONSE: This claim is part of an obsession with the solar cycle by grand-solar-minimum enthusiasts, armed with the works of Zharkova, that “we are entering a cooling phase” that will prove AGW wrong. Yet, this claim has no support in global mean temperature data as shown in a related post [LINK] although it is true that the works of Zharkova and others do imply a relationship between the solar cycle and surface temperature [LINK] .

### Southern Annular Mode Causes Antarctic Peninsula Ice to Melt

Posted on: October 25, 2019

RELATED POST  [THE FIRE BELOW]

THIS POST IS A REVIEW OF DICKENS ET AL 2019 PUBLISHED IN NATURE-RESEARCH SCIENTIFIC REPORTS [LINK] {CITATION AND ABSTRACT BELOW}.

1. W. A. Dickens, G. Kuhn, M. J. Leng, A. G. C. Graham, J. A. Dowdeswell, M. P. Meredith, C.-D. Hillenbrand, D. A. Hodgson, S. J. Roberts, H. Sloane & J. A. Smith, “Enhanced glacial discharge from the eastern Antarctic Peninsula since the 1700s associated with a positive Southern Annular Mode”, Scientific Reports volume 9, Article number: 14606 (2019)  [LINK TO FULL TEXT]
2. ABSTRACT: The Antarctic Peninsula Ice Sheet is currently experiencing (2019) sustained and accelerating loss of ice. Determining when these changes were initiated and identifying the main drivers is hampered by the short instrumental record (1992 to present). Here we present a 6,250 year record of glacial discharge based on the oxygen isotope composition of diatoms (δ18Odiatom) from a marine core located at the north-eastern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. We find that glacial discharge – sourced primarily from ice shelf and iceberg melting along the eastern Antarctic Peninsula – remained largely stable between ~6,250 to 1,620 cal. yr BP, with a slight increase in variability until ~720 cal. yr. BP. An increasing trend in glacial discharge occurs after 550 cal. yr BP (A.D. 1400), reaching levels unprecedented during the past 6,250 years after 244 cal. yr BP (A.D. 1706). A marked acceleration in the rate of glacial discharge is also observed in the early part of twentieth century (after A.D. 1912). Enhanced glacial discharge, particularly after the 1700s is linked to a positive Southern Annular Mode (SAM). We argue that a positive SAM drove stronger westerly winds, atmospheric warming and surface ablation on the eastern Antarctic Peninsula whilst simultaneously entraining more warm water into the Weddell Gyre, potentially increasing melting on the undersides of ice shelves. A possible implication of our data is that ice shelves in this region have been thinning for at least ~300 years, potentially predisposing them to collapse under intensified anthropogenic warming.
3. GRIST REPORT ON DICKENS ET AL 2019:  The publication of Dickens 2019 was quickly followed by an article on the climate alarmism publication GRIST with the breathless claim that “New study: Antarctica’s tipping point is closer than we thought: By Nathanael Johnson on Oct 24, 2019. Antarctic ice sheets have been melting rapidly for hundreds of years, much longer than scientists previously thought, according to a study out Thursday. The findings suggest that estimates for global sea-level rise need to be reworked and that we’re even closer to the day that fish start chasing each other through New York City’s subway tunnels. So natural climate change had cued up the massive Antarctic ice shelves to collapse before human-caused climate change turned up the heat. A random shift in wind patterns has been melting the ice caps for the last 300 years, the scientists wrote, “potentially predisposing them to collapse under intensified anthropogenic warming.” [FULL TEXT]

REVIEW COMMENTS ON DICKENS ET-AL 2019

1. The paper says that (1) the Antarctic Peninsula is experiencing sustained and accelerating loss of ice in 2019 and (2) this loss of ice is explained by unusually strong westerly winds caused by unusually strong Positive Southern Annular Mode (PSAM) cycles.
2. That “unusually strong” PSAM causes “unusual ice loss on the Antarctic Peninsula implies that  normal PSAM causes normal ice loss on the Antarctic Peninsula. Therefore an ice melt cycle must exist on the Antarctic Peninsula synchornized with the Southern Annular Mode (SAM). Yet, no evidence for such a cyclical ice melt cycle on the Antarctic Peninsula exists much less one that is synchronized with the SAM.  (Bibliography below).
3. The continued effort by climate scientists to explain Antarctic ice melt events in terms of atmospheric phenomena is the product of the atmosphere bias of atmospheric scientists such that known geological features of the Antarctic Peninsula that provide a more rational explanation of ice melt events are overlooked as described in a related post [LINK] .
4. The assumption that Antarctic Peninsula ice melt events are cyclical  and synchronized with cyclical atmospheric phenomena of convenience is inconsistent with the highly localized and random nature of such ice melt events; but consistent with the randomness of geothermal activity.
5. The graphic below is a map of Antarctica overlaid with markings that identify locations of known geologically active areas. The black hash-marked area is the West Antarctic Rift. It is a region of intense geological activity  with more than 150 known active land and sub-marine volcanoes A rift is a linear section of the lithosphere where it is being pulled apart by magmatic forces with release of heat. This geologically active area includes all of the Antarctic Peninsula and most of West Antarctica. The associated fault lines extend into the ocean as well as to the islands off the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula shown in the map below the chart for the West Antarctic Rift.
6. Of particular note are the South Georgia Island where three volcanoes erupted simultaneously in 2016, and and the South Shetland Island where the Deception Island Collapse Caldera is located. A specific feature of volcanic activity along the West Antarctic Rift are sub glacial eruptions that create dramatic glacial melt and ice shelf melt events often interpreted in the media in terms of anthropogenic global warming and sea level rise as described in a related post [LINK] .
7. In this response to explanation of ice melt events in the Antarctic Peninsula in terms of the Southern Annular Mode we argue that in a geologically active area of this nature with localized and random ice melt events, atmospheric explanations of ice melt can only be considered when geological explanations fail. In other words, for a SAM explanation of ice melt on the Antarctic Peninsula, it must first be shown that no geological explanation exists and that therefore an external cause of the ice melt event must be found. In general, such highly localized and random ice melt events do not have an atmospheric explanation particularly so in a known geologically active area known for geothermal ice melt events.

SOUTHERN ANNULAR MODE BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Southern Annular Mode (or SAM) is a ring of climate variability that encircles the South Pole and extends out to 45 South Latitude. The SAM creates alternating windiness and storm activity in the middle latitudes and higher latitudes, over the southern oceans and Antarctic sea ice zone (50–70˚S). In its positive phase, the SAM is associated with relatively light winds and more settled weather over the mid latitudes, together with enhanced westerly winds over the southern oceans. In the negative phase, the westerlies increase in the mid latitudes, with more unsettled weather, while windiness and storm activity ease over the southern oceans” (David Thompson)
1. Baldwin, Mark “Annular modes in global daily surface pressure” Geophysical Research Letters 28.21 (2001): 4115-4118Annular modes are patterns characterized by synchronous fluctuations in surface pressure of one sign over the polar caps and the opposite sign at lower latitudes. The Southern Annular Mode (SAM) and Northern Annular Mode (NAM, also called the Arctic Oscillation) patterns are the leading empirical orthogonal functions (EOFs) of slowly‐varying, hemispheric, cold‐season, sea‐level pressure anomalies (deviations from climatology). Daily indices of the SAM and NAM are a measure of the similarity between surface pressure anomaly patterns and the annular modes. Here it is shown that the first two EOF time series of daily, global, year‐round, zonally‐averaged surface pressure are nearly identical to the SAM and NAM indices. Together they account for more than 57% of the daily variance of zonally‐averaged surface pressure. The SAM and NAM patterns extend through the tropics, well into the opposite hemispheres. Fluctuations of the SAM and NAM indices are accompanied by inter-hemispheric transfer of mass.
2. Kwok, Ron, and Josefino C. Comiso. “Spatial patterns of variability in Antarctic surface temperature: Connections to the Southern Hemisphere Annular Mode and the Southern Oscillation.” Geophysical Research Letters 29.14 (2002): 50-1.  The 17‐year (1982–1998) trend in surface temperature shows a general cooling over the Antarctic continent, warming of the sea ice zone, with moderate changes over the oceans. Warming of the peripheral seas is associated with negative trends in the regional sea ice extent. Effects of the Southern Hemisphere Annular Mode (SAM) and the extrapolar Southern Oscillation (SO) on surface temperature are quantified through regression analysis. Positive polarities of the SAM are associated with cold anomalies over most of Antarctica, with the most notable exception of the Antarctic Peninsula. Positive temperature anomalies and ice edge retreat in the Pacific sector are associated with El‐Niño episodes. Over the past two decades, the drift towards high polarity in the SAM and negative polarity in the SO indices couple to produce a spatial pattern with warmer temperatures in the Antarctic Peninsula and peripheral seas, and cooler temperatures over much of East Antarctica. [FULL-TEXT]
3. Marshall, Gareth J. “Trends in the Southern Annular Mode from observations and reanalyses.” Journal of Climate 16.24 (2003): 4134-4143. Several papers have described a significant trend toward the positive phase of the Southern Hemisphere annular mode (SAM) in recent decades. The SAM is the dominant mode of atmospheric variability in the Southern Hemisphere (SH) so such a change implies a major shift in the broadscale climate of this hemisphere. However, the majority of these studies have used NCEP–NCAR reanalysis (NNR) data  (2003), which are known to have spurious negative trends in SH high-latitude pressure. Thus, given that the SAM describes the relative atmospheric anomalies at mid- and high southern latitudes, these errors in the NNR data have the potential to invalidate the published findings on changes in the SAM. Therefore, it is important that a “true” benchmark of trends in the SAM is available against which future climate scenarios as revealed through climate models can be examined. In this paper this issue is addressed by employing an empirical definition of the SAM so that station data can be utilized to evaluate true temporal changes: six stations are used to calculate a proxy zonal mean sea level pressure (MSLP) at both 40° and 65°S during 1958–2000. The observed increase in the difference in zonal MSLP between 40°S (increasing) and 65°S (decreasing) is shown to be statistically significant, with the trend being most pronounced since the mid-1970s. However, it is demonstrated that calculated trends in the MSLP difference between 40° and 65°S and the SAM itself are exaggerated by a factor of 3 and 2, respectively, in the NNR. The SH high-latitude errors in the early part of this reanalysis are greatest in winter as are subsequent improvements. As a result, the NNR shows the greatest seasonal trend in the SAM to be in the austral winter, in marked contrast to observational data, which reveal the largest real increase to be in summer. Equivalent data from two ECMWF reanalyses, including part of the new ERA-40 reanalysis, are also examined. It is demonstrated that ERA-40 provides an improved representation of SH high-latitude atmospheric circulation variability that can be used with high confidence at least as far back as 1973—and is therefore ideal for examining the recent trend in the SAM—and with more confidence than the NNR right back to 1958.
4. Gillett, N. Pꎬ, T. Dꎬ Kell, and P. D. Jones. “Regional climate impacts of the Southern Annular Mode.” Geophysical Research Letters 33.23 (2006).  Previous work on the influence of the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) on surface climate has focused mainly on individual countries. In this study we use station observations of temperature and rainfall to identify the influence of the SAM on land regions over the whole of the Southern Hemisphere. We demonstrate that the positive phase of the SAM is associated with a significant cooling over Antarctica and much of Australia, and a significant warming over the Antarctic Peninsula, Argentina, Tasmania and the south of New Zealand. The positive phase of the SAM is also associated with anomalously dry conditions over southern South America, New Zealand and Tasmania, due to the southward shift of the stormtrack; and to anomalously wet conditions over much of Australia and South Africa. These influences on populated regions of the Southern Hemisphere may have implications for weather and seasonal forecasting, and for future climate change. [[FULL TEXT] .
5. Thompson, David. “The southern annular mode and New Zealand climate.” Water & Atmosphere 14.2 (2006): 24-25.  The Southern Annular Mode (or SAM) is a ring of climate variability that encircles the South Pole and extends out to the latitudes of New Zealand. (Its counterpart, the NAM, centres on the North Pole and affects climate in the northern hemisphere.) The SAM involves alternating changes in windiness and storm activity between the middle latitudes, where New Zealand lies (40–50˚S), and higher latitudes, over the southern oceans and Antarctic sea ice zone (50–70˚S). In its positive phase, the SAM is associated with relatively light winds and more settled weather over New Zealand latitudes, together with enhanced westerly winds over the southern oceans. In the opposite (negative) phase, the westerlies increase over New Zealand, with more unsettled weather,while windiness and storm activity ease over the southern oceans. [FULL TEXT PDF]
6. Arblaster, Julie M., and Gerald A. Meehl. “Contributions of external forcings to southern annular mode trends.” Journal of climate 19.12 (2006): 2896-2905.  An observed trend in the Southern Hemisphere annular mode (SAM) during recent decades has involved an intensification of the polar vortex. The source of this trend is a matter of scientific debate with stratospheric ozone losses, greenhouse gas increases, and natural variability all being possible contenders. Because it is difficult to separate the contribution of various external forcings to the observed trend, a state-of-the-art global coupled model is utilized here. Ensembles of twentieth-century simulations forced with the observed time series of greenhouse gases, tropospheric and stratospheric ozone, sulfate aerosols, volcanic aerosols, solar variability, and various combinations of these are used to examine the annular mode trends in comparison to observations, in an attempt to isolate the response of the climate system to each individual forcing. It is found that ozone changes are the biggest contributor to the observed summertime intensification of the southern polar vortex in the second half of the twentieth century, with increases of greenhouse gases also being a necessary factor in the reproduction of the observed trends at the surface. Although stratospheric ozone losses are expected to stabilize and eventually recover to pre-industrial levels over the course of the twenty-first century, these results show that increasing greenhouse gases will continue to intensify the polar vortex throughout the twenty-first century, but that radiative forcing will cause widespread temperature increases over the entire Southern Hemisphere[FULL TEXT] .
7. Marshall, Gareth J. “Half‐century seasonal relationships between the Southern Annular Mode and Antarctic temperatures.” International Journal of Climatology: A Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 27.3 (2007): 373-383. In this short communication, we examine the relationship between the Southern Hemisphere Annular Mode (SAM) and Antarctic near‐surface temperatures using data from Antarctic stations for 1957–2004. This near half‐century period is significantly longer than those analysed in previous studies. Furthermore, the four seasons are considered independently while the longer datasets allow the temporal stability of the relationship to be investigated. A general pattern of positive (negative) correlations between the strength of the SAM and temperatures in the northern Antarctic Peninsula (East Antarctica) is shown to be valid for the last half‐century but detailed differences are established between the seasons. These include a seasonal change in the sign of the relationship at one station, while at others there are single seasons when temperatures there are, or, in some cases, are not, significantly related to the SAM. Generally, SAM–temperature correlations are stronger across Antarctica in austral autumn and summer. Estimates of the contribution that trends in the SAM have made to Antarctic near‐surface temperature change between 1957 and 2004 are greatest in autumn: in this season they exceed 1°C at half the 14 stations examined with a maximum change of − 1.4 °C. There does not appear to have been any significant long‐term change in the strength of SAM‐temperature relationships over the period examined, even with the onset of ozone depletion. However, on an annual basis, the long‐term relationship between the SAM and near‐surface temperatures can be disrupted and even reversed at some stations although coastal East Antarctica appears stable in this respect. These findings give support to the exploitation of appropriate ice core data to determine long‐term changes in the SAM based upon transfer functions derived from recent data. Copyright © 2006 Royal Meteorological Society.
8. Lenton, Andrew, and Richard J. Matear. “Role of the southern annular mode (SAM) in Southern Ocean CO2 uptake.” Global Biogeochemical Cycles 21.2 (2007).  A biogeochemical ocean general circulation model, driven with NCEP‐R1 and observed atmospheric CO2 history, is used to investigate and quantify the role that the Southern Annular Mode (SAM), identified as the leading mode of climate variability, has in driving interannual variability in Southern Ocean air‐sea CO2 fluxes between 1980 and 2000. Our simulations show the Southern Ocean to be a region of decreased CO2 uptake during the positive SAM phase. The SAM induces changes in Southern Ocean CO2 uptake with a 2‐month time lag explaining 42% of the variance in the total interannual variability in air‐sea CO2 fluxes. Our analysis shows that the response of the Southern Ocean to the SAM is primarily governed by changes in ΔpCO2 (67%), and that this response is driven by changes in ocean physics that control the supply of nutrients to the upper ocean, primarily Dissolved Inorganic Carbon (DIC). The SAM is predicted to become stronger and more positive in response to climate change and our results suggest this will decrease the Southern Ocean CO2 uptake by 0.1PgC/yr per unit change in the SAM.
9. Meneghini, Belinda, Ian Simmonds, and Ian N. Smith. “Association between Australian rainfall and the southern annular mode.” International Journal of Climatology: A Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 27.1 (2007): 109-121. In this study, we explore the relationships between seasonal Australian rainfall and the Southern Annular Mode (SAM). We produce two seasonal indices of the SAM: the Antarctic Oscillation Index (AOI), and an Australian regional version (AOIR) using ERA‐40 mean sea‐level pressure (MSLP) reanalysis data. The seasonal rainfall data are based on gridded monthly rainfall provided by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. For the period 1958–2002 a significant inverse relationship is found between the SAM and rainfall in southern Australia, while a significant in‐phase relationship is found between the SAM and rainfall in northern Australia. Furthermore, widespread significant inverse relationships in southern Australia are only observed in winter, and only with the AOIR. The AOIR accounts for more of the winter rainfall variability in southwest Western Australia, southern South Australia, western and southern Victoria, and western Tasmania than the Southern Oscillation Index. Overall, our results suggest that changes in the SAM may be partly responsible for the current decline in winter rainfall in southern South Australia, Victoria, and Tasmania, but not the long‐term decline in southwest Western Australian winter rainfall. Copyright © 2006 Royal Meteorological Society.
10. Lovenduski, Nicole S., et al. “Enhanced CO2 outgassing in the Southern Ocean from a positive phase of the Southern Annular Mode.” Global Biogeochemical Cycles 21.2 (2007). We investigate the interannual variability in the flux of CO2 between the atmosphere and the Southern Ocean on the basis of hindcast simulations with a coupled physical‐biogeochemical‐ecological model with particular emphasis on the role of the Southern Annular Mode (SAM). The simulations are run under either pre‐industrial or historical CO2 concentrations, permitting us to separately investigate natural, anthropogenic, and contemporary CO2 flux variability. We find large interannual variability (±0.19 PgC yr−1) in the contemporary air‐sea CO2 flux from the Southern Ocean (<35°S). Forty‐three percent of the contemporary air‐sea CO2 flux variance is coherent with SAM, mostly driven by variations in the flux of natural CO2, for which SAM explains 48%. Positive phases of the SAM are associated with anomalous outgassing of natural CO2 at a rate of 0.1 PgC yr−1 per standard deviation of the SAM. In contrast, we find an anomalous uptake of anthropogenic CO2 at a rate of 0.01 PgC yr−1 during positive phases of the SAM. This uptake of anthropogenic CO2 only slightly mitigates the outgassing of natural CO2, so that a positive SAM is associated with anomalous outgassing in contemporaneous times. The primary cause of the natural CO2 outgassing is anomalously high oceanic partial pressures of CO2 caused by elevated dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) concentrations. These anomalies in DIC are primarily a result of the circulation changes associated with the southward shift and strengthening of the zonal winds during positive phases of the SAM. The secular, positive trend in the SAM has led to a reduction in the rate of increase of the uptake of CO2 by the Southern Ocean over the past 50 years.
11. Stammerjohn, Sharon E., et al. “Trends in Antarctic annual sea ice retreat and advance and their relation to El Niño–Southern Oscillation and Southern Annular Mode variability.” Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans 113.C3 (2008).  Previous studies have shown strong contrasting trends in annual sea ice duration and in monthly sea ice concentration in two regions of the Southern Ocean: decreases in the western Antarctic Peninsula/southern Bellingshausen Sea (wAP/sBS) region and increases in the western Ross Sea (wRS) region. To better understand the evolution of these regional sea ice trends, we utilize the full temporal (quasi‐daily) resolution of satellite‐derived sea ice data to track spatially the annual ice edge advance and retreat from 1979 to 2004. These newly analyzed data reveal that sea ice is retreating 31 ± 10 days earlier and advancing 54 ± 9 days later in the wAP/sBS region (i.e., total change over 1979–2004), whereas in the wRS region, sea ice is retreating 29 ± 6 days later and advancing 31 ± 6 days earlier. Changes in the wAP/sBS and wRS regions, particularly as observed during sea ice advance, occurred in association with decadal changes in the mean state of the Southern Annular Mode (SAM; negative in the 1980s and positive in the 1990s) and the high‐latitude response to El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO). In general, the high‐latitude ice‐atmosphere response to ENSO was strongest when ‐SAM was coincident with El Niño and when +SAM was coincident with La Niña, particularly in the wAP/sBS region. In total, there were 7 of 11 ‐SAMs between 1980 and 1990 and the 7 of 10 +SAMs between 1991 and 2000 that were associated with consistent decadal sea ice changes in the wAP/sBS and wRS regions, respectively. Elsewhere, ENSO/SAM‐related sea ice changes were not as consistent over time (e.g., western Weddell, Amundsen, and eastern Ross Sea region), or variability in general was high (e.g., central/eastern Weddell and along East Antarctica).
12. Reboita, Michelle Simões, Tércio Ambrizzi, and Rosmeri Porfírio da Rocha. “Relationship between the southern annular mode and southern hemisphere atmospheric systems.” Revista Brasileira de Meteorologia 24.1 (2009): 48-55.  Seasonal relationship between the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) and the spatial distribution of the cyclone systems over Southern Hemisphere is investigated for the period 1980 to 1999. In addition, seasonal frontogenesis and rainfall distribution over South America and South Atlantic Ocean during different SAM phases were also analyzed. It is observed that during negative SAM phases the cyclone trajectories move northward when compared to the positive one, and in the South America and South Atlantic sector there is intense frontogenetic activity and positive anomaly precipitation over the Southeast of the South America. In general, SAM positive phase shows opposite signals.
13. Visbeck, Martin. “A station-based southern annular mode index from 1884 to 2005.” Journal of Climate 22.4 (2009): 940-950Atmospheric pressure observations from the Southern Hemisphere are used to estimate monthly and annually averaged indexes of the southern annular mode (SAM) back to 1884. This analysis groups all relevant observations in the following four regions: one for Antarctica and three in the subtropical zone. Continuous surface pressure observations are available at a number of locations in the subtropical regions since the end of the nineteenth century. However, year-round observations in the subpolar region near the Antarctic continent began only during the 1940–60 period. The shorter Antarctic records seriously compromise the length of a traditionally estimated SAM index. To improve the situation “proxy” estimates of Antarctic sea level pressure anomalies are provided based on the concept of atmospheric mass conservation poleward of 20°S. This allows deriving a longer SAM index back to 1884. Several aspects of the new record, its statistical properties, seasonal trends, and the regional pressure anomaly correlations, are presented. [FULL TEXT]
14. Abram, Nerilie J., et al. “Evolution of the Southern Annular Mode during the past millennium.” Nature Climate Change 4.7 (2014): 564.  The Southern Annular Mode (SAM) is the primary pattern of climate variability in the Southern Hemisphere1,2, influencing latitudinal rainfall distribution and temperatures from the subtropics to Antarctica. The positive summer trend in the SAM over recent decades is widely attributed to stratospheric ozone depletion2; however, the brevity of observational records from Antarctica1—one of the core zones that defines SAM variability—limits our understanding of long-term SAM behaviour. Here we reconstruct annual mean changes in the SAM since AD 1000 using, for the first time, proxy records that encompass the full mid-latitude to polar domain across the Drake Passage sector. We find that the SAM has undergone a progressive shift towards its positive phase since the fifteenth century, causing cooling of the main Antarctic continent at the same time that the Antarctic Peninsula has warmed. The positive trend in the SAM since AD 1940 is reproduced by multimodel climate simulations forced with rising greenhouse gas levels and later ozone depletion, and the long-term average SAM index is now at its highest level for at least the past 1,000 years. Reconstructed SAM trends before the twentieth century are more prominent than those in radiative-forcing climate experiments and may be associated with a teleconnected response to tropical Pacific climate. Our findings imply that predictions of further greenhouse-driven increases in the SAM over the coming century3 also need to account for the possibility of opposing effects from tropical Pacific climate changes.
15. Amy E Hessl, Kathryn Jane Allen, Tessa R. VanceReconstructions of the southern annular mode (SAM) during the last millennium: November 2017 Progress in Physical Geography 41(3):030913331774316.  The leading mode of atmospheric variability in the Southern Hemisphere is the Southern Annular Mode (SAM), which affects the atmosphere and ocean from the mid-latitudes to the Antarctic. However, the short instrumental record of the SAM does not adequately represent its multi-decadal to centennial-scale variability. Long palaeoclimatic reconstructions of the SAM would improve our understanding of its low frequency behavior and its effects on regional temperature, rainfall, sea ice, and ecosystem processes. In this progress report, we review three published palaeoclimatic reconstructions available for understanding multi-decadal to centennial-scale variability of the SAM. Reconstructions reviewed here show similar patterns of decadal SAM variability during the last two centuries, but earlier centuries are less coherent. Reconstructions clearly maintain similar trends towards more positive SAM states since the onset of significant anthropogenic climate forcing from rising greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations and ozone depletion and these excursions appear unprecedented over at least the last 500 years. We describe how new multi-proxy reconstructions of the SAM could further improve our understanding of its long-term variability and effects across all geographic sectors of the Southern Hemisphere. Here, we recommend careful selection and development of proxies in SAM-sensitive regions and seasons. In particular, proxies related to cool-season conditions and from the poorly-sampled Indian Ocean sector would allow for a true circumpolar and year-round reconstruction of past SAM variability. [FULL TEXT]
16. Dätwyler, Christoph, et al. “Teleconnection stationarity, variability and trends of the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) during the last millennium.” Climate dynamics 51.5-6 (2018): 2321-2339.  The Southern Annular Mode (SAM) is the leading mode of atmospheric interannual variability in the Southern Hemisphere (SH) extra-tropics. Here, we assess the stationarity of SAM spatial correlations with instrumental and paleoclimate proxy data for the past millennium. The instrumental period shows that temporal non-stationarities in SAM teleconnections are not consistent across the SH land areas. This suggests that the influence of the SAM index is modulated by regional effects. However, within key-regions with good proxy data coverage (South America, Tasmania, New Zealand), teleconnections are mostly stationary over the instrumental period. Using different stationarity criteria for proxy record selection, we provide new austral summer and annual mean SAM index reconstructions over the last millennium. Our summer SAM reconstructions are very robust to changes in proxy record selection and the selection of the calibration period, particularly on the multi-decadal timescale. In contrast, the weaker performance and lower agreement in the annual mean SAM reconstructions point towards changing teleconnection patterns that may be particularly important outside the summer months. Our results clearly portend that the temporal stationarity of the proxy-climate relationships should be taken into account in the design of comprehensive regional and hemispherical climate reconstructions. The summer SAM reconstructions show no significant relationship to solar, greenhouse gas and volcanic forcing, with the exception of an extremely strong negative anomaly following the AD 1257 Samalas eruption. Furthermore, reconstructed pre-industrial summer SAM trends are very similar to trends obtained by model control simulations. We find that recent trends in the summer SAM lie outside the 5–95% range of pre-industrial natural variability. Our proxy data and reconstruction results are available at the NOAA paleoclimatology database (https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/study/23130). The input proxy databases are available at https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo-search/study/16196 (data labelled N14 in SM Table S4 and S5),  (P17), https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo-search/study/13673 (V12), and https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/study/22589 (S17).

382_2017_4015_MOESM1_ESM.pdf (3.7 mb)

Supplementary material 1 (PDF 3806 KB)

### AGW Correlation between Forcings and Temperature

Posted on: October 22, 2019

1. The October 14 2019 issue of the Oxford “Global Climate Change Collection” provides natural and anthropogenic forcings for global warming and tests them against the HadCRU temperature reconstructions from 1850 to 2017. In the presentation, regression analysis is used to show evidence of a close agreement between forcings and observed temperature. This result is shown below in Figure 1, Figure 2, and Figure 3. Regression analysis shows good agreement between forcings and temperature in support of the AGW hypothesis that anthropogenic forcing contributes significantly to the observed warming. A bibliography of selected works in the study of the contribution of anthropogenic forcing in the warming “since pre-industrial times” is included below .
2. In this work, the correlation  presented with regression analysis in the Oxford document is tested with detrended correlation analysis and the split half test for reliability of the observed correlations with temperature of the anthropogenic forcings and total forcings (anthropogenic plus natural forcings) included in the Oxford document. Source data correlation derives from responsiveness at an annual time scale (the object variable in the causation test) as well as a contribution derived from shared trends. Detrended correlation removes the contribution from shared trends so that only the responsiveness of temperature to forcings at an annual time scale is considered. The split half test for reliability provides information on whether observed full span correlations indicate a uniform relationship across the full span of the data. The results are summarized in Figure 4, Figure 5, Figure 6, and Figure 7.
3. The table in Figure 4 is a summary of the results of correlation analysis. Correlation and detrended correlation between HadCRUT4 mean global surface temperature reconstructions 1850-2017 with two combinations of the three forcings provided by the Oxford Climate Change Collection. These correlations are computed between temperature and anthropogenic forcings and also between temperature and “total forcings” computed as the sum of anthropogenic and natural forcings provided in the Oxford document. Three different time spans are studied as full span, first half, and second half. The data in the table of Figure 4 are displayed graphically in the three charts that follow for easy visualization. It is noted that the source data correlations as well as detrended correlations of temperature with anthropogenic forcings are very strong and much higher than those between temperature and total forcings, (anthropogenic + natural forcings).
4. Figure 5 shows the correlations and detrended correlations in the full span of the data 1850-2017 between temperature and anthropogenic forcings (ANTHRO) and between temperature and total forcings computed as the sum of anthropogenic and natural forcings (TOTAL). Here we see the anomalous result that both correlation and detrended correlation are much stronger for ANTHRO than for TOTAL with the odd interpretation that inclusion of known natural forcings weakens the causal relationship between forcings and temperature.
5. However, this relationship is exactly in reverse in the first half of the time span 1850-1933 shown in Figure 6 where we find that total forcings (anthropogenic + natural) show higher correlations than anthropogenic forcings alone. Yet these results too are odd in the sense that the expected results show much lower correlations than the anomalous results in Figure 5.
6. Results for the second half of the time span (1934-2017) appear in Figure 7. They show the same odd pattern seen for the full span in Figure 5 but with higher correlation values indicating that the full span results are likely influenced mostly by the second half that contain high anthropogenic forcing values than natural forcing values. This pattern is the likely source of the popular claim by climate scientists that empirical evidence for AGW warming that in theory must be evaluated “since pre-industrial times” should instead be evaluated in some later period when the correlations are stronger. This issue is discussed in three related posts where it is shown that the empirical evidence thus presented contains the circular reasoning fallacy [LINK]  [LINK] [LINK] .
7. Conclusion: Correlation analysis shows that anthropogenic forcing alone explains warming since 1850 better than total forcing computed as the sum of anthropogenic forcing and natural forcing. This anomalous pattern in the correlation analysis of forcings against temperature may indicate that the the observed warming since 1850 is not well understood and that the anthropogenic forcings published in the Oxford document may have been “tuned” to the HadCRUT4 temperatures in the sense that the temperature data may have played a role in their estimation; with the very same temperature data then used to test the validity of the forcings thus derived.  If that is the case the the regression analysis presented for the test of forcings that supports the validity of AGW as having a significant anthropogenic component is an exercise in circular reasoning.

FIGURE 1: DISPLAY OF CORRELATION BETWEEN FORCING & TEMPERATURE

FIGURE 2: REGRESSION RESULTS FOR ANTHROPOGENIC FORCING

FIGURE 3: REGRESSION RESULTS FOR NATURAL FORCING

FIGURE 4: DETRENDED CORRELATION ANALYSIS: SUMMARY OF RESULTS

FIGURE 5: RESULTS FOR THE FULL SPAN: 1850-2017

FIGURE 6: RESULTS FOR THE FIRST HALF OF THE SPAN: 1850-1933

FIGURE 7: RESULTS FOR THE 2ND HALF OF THE SPAN: 1934-2017

ANTHROPOGENIC FORCING BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Wigley, T. M. L., R. L. Smith, and BDl Santer. “Anthropogenic influence on the autocorrelation structure of hemispheric mean temperatures. Science 282.5394 (1998): 1676-1679.  It is shown that lagged correlations for and cross-correlations between observed hemispheric-mean temperature data differ markedly from those for unforced (control-run) climate model simulations. The differences can be explained adequately by assuming that the observed data contain a significant externally forced component involving both natural (solar) and anthropogenic influences and that the global climate sensitivity is in the commonly accepted range. Solar forcing alone cannot reconcile the differences in autocorrelation structure between observations and model control-run data.
2. Folland, Chris K., et al. “Influences of anthropogenic and oceanic forcing on recent climate change.” Geophysical Research Letters 25.3 (1998): 353-356.  We report a new approach to climate change detection and attribution using an atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM), complementary to the traditional approach using coupled ocean‐atmosphere models (CGCM). Ensembles of simulations were run with an AGCM forced with the observed history of sea‐surface temperature (SST) and sea‐ice extent and repeated with a variety of forcing factors added incrementally. SST changes alone give a warming of only about 0.15°C in annual global land surface air temperature between 1950 and 1994. Addition of changing greenhouse gases, including off‐line calculations of tropospheric ozone, give a further warming of 0.15°C, still 0.2 °C less than observed. This deficit in warming derives from the Northern Hemisphere (NH) winter half‐year as the summer half‐year NH temperature is well‐simulated. In the lower stratosphere, little cooling is simulated using the observed changes of SST alone but increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases and decreasing the concentration of stratospheric ozone leads to a cooling close to that observed. Inclusion of changes to tropospheric ozone with other forcing factors, the first time this has been attempted, gives good simulations of tropospheric and stratospheric temperature changes; these are significantly more similar to observations than using SST variations alone. Despite the uncertainties, these simulations strongly indicate a discernible anthropogenic effect on the annual mean thermal structure of the atmosphere, the first time this has been shown in the presence of the observed variations of SST and sea‐ice extent.
3. Stott, Peter A., et al. “External control of 20th century temperature by natural and anthropogenic forcings.” science 290.5499 (2000): 2133-2137A comparison of observations with simulations of a coupled ocean-atmosphere general circulation model shows that both natural and anthropogenic factors have contributed significantly to 20th century temperature changes. The model successfully simulates global mean and large-scale land temperature variations, indicating that the climate response on these scales is strongly influenced by external factors. More than 80% of observed multidecadal-scale global mean temperature variations and more than 60% of 10- to 50-year land temperature variations are due to changes in external forcings. Anthropogenic global warming under a standard emissions scenario is predicted to continue at a rate similar to that observed in recent decades.
4. Zorita, E., et al. “Natural and anthropogenic modes of surface temperature variations in the last thousand years.” Geophysical Research Letters 32.8 (2005).  The spatial patterns of surface air‐temperature variations in the period 1000 to 2100, simulated with the ECHO‐G atmosphere‐ocean coupled model, are analyzed. The model was driven by solar, volcanic and greenhouse gas forcing. The leading mode of temperature variability in the pre-industrial period represents an almost global coherent variation of temperatures, with larger amplitudes over the continents and Northern Hemisphere. This mode also describes a large part of the spatial structure of the warming simulated in the 21st century. However, in the 21st century, regional departures from this spatial structure are also present and can be ascribed to atmospheric circulation responses to anthropogenic forcing in the last decades of the 21st century.
5. Pasini, Antonello, Massimo Lorè, and Fabrizio Ameli. “Neural network modelling for the analysis of forcings/temperatures relationships at different scales in the climate system.” Ecological Modelling 191.1 (2006): 58-67.  A fully non-linear analysis of forcing influences on temperatures is performed in the climate system by means of neural network modelling. Two case studies are investigated, in order to establish the main factors that drove the temperature behaviour at both global and regional scales in the last 140 years. In particular, our neural network model shows the ability to catch non-linear relationships among these variables and to reconstruct temperature records with a high degree of accuracy. In this framework, we clearly show the need of including anthropogenic inputs for explaining the temperature behaviour at global scale and recognise the role of El Niño southern oscillation for catching the inter-annual variability of temperature data. Furthermore, we analyse the relative influence of global forcing and a regional circulation pattern in determining the winter temperatures in Central England, showing that the North Atlantic oscillation represents the driven element in this case study. Our modelling activity and results can be very useful for simple assessments of relationships in the complex climate system and for identifying the fundamental elements leading to a successful downscaling of atmosphere–ocean general circulation models.
6. Meehl, Gerald A., Julie M. Arblaster, and Claudia Tebaldi. “Contributions of natural and anthropogenic forcing to changes in temperature extremes over the United States.” Geophysical Research Letters 34.19 (2007)Observations averaged over the U.S. for the second half of the 20th century have shown a decrease of frost days, an increase in growing season length, an increase in the number of warm nights, and an increase in heat wave intensity. For the first three, a nine member multi‐model ensemble shows similar changes over the U.S. in 20th century experiments that combine anthropogenic and natural forcings, though the relative contributions of each are unclear. Here we show results from two global coupled climate models run with anthropogenic and natural forcings separately. Averaged over the continental U.S., they show that the observed changes in the four temperature extremes are accounted for with anthropogenic forcings, but not with natural forcings (even though there are some differences in the details of the forcings). This indicates that most of the changes in temperature extremes over the U.S. are likely due to human activity.
7. Zhou, Liming, et al. “Detection and attribution of anthropogenic forcing to diurnal temperature range changes from 1950 to 1999: comparing multi-model simulations with observations.” Climate Dynamics 35.7-8 (2010): 1289-1307.  Observations show that the surface diurnal temperature range (DTR) has decreased since 1950s over most global land areas due to a smaller warming in maximum temperatures (T max) than in minimum temperatures (T min). This paper analyzes the trends and variability in T maxT min, and DTR over land in observations and 48 simulations from 12 global coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation models for the later half of the 20th century. It uses the modeled changes in surface downward solar and longwave radiation to interpret the modeled temperature changes. When anthropogenic and natural forcings are included, the models generally reproduce observed major features of the warming of T max and T min and the reduction of DTR. As expected the greenhouse gases enhanced surface downward longwave radiation (DLW) explains most of the warming of T max and T min while decreased surface downward shortwave radiation (DSW) due to increasing aerosols and water vapor contributes most to the decreases in DTR in the models. When only natural forcings are used, none of the observed trends are simulated. The simulated DTR decreases are much smaller than the observed (mainly due to the small simulated T min trend) but still outside the range of natural internal variability estimated from the models. The much larger observed decrease in DTR suggests the possibility of additional regional effects of anthropogenic forcing that the models can not realistically simulate, likely connected to changes in cloud cover, precipitation, and soil moisture. The small magnitude of the simulated DTR trends may be attributed to the lack of an increasing trend in cloud cover and deficiencies in charactering aerosols and important surface and boundary-layer processes in the models.
8. Kaufmann, Robert K., et al. “Reconciling anthropogenic climate change with observed temperature 1998–2008.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108.29 (2011): 11790-11793.  Given the widely noted increase in the warming effects of rising greenhouse gas concentrations, it has been unclear why global surface temperatures did not rise between 1998 and 2008. We find that this hiatus in warming coincides with a period of little increase in the sum of anthropogenic and natural forcings. Declining solar insolation as part of a normal eleven-year cycle, and a cyclical change from an El Nino to a La Nina dominate our measure of anthropogenic effects because rapid growth in short-lived sulfur emissions partially offsets rising greenhouse gas concentrations. As such, we find that recent global temperature records are consistent with the existing understanding of the relationship among global surface temperature, internal variability, and radiative forcing, which includes anthropogenic factors with well known warming and cooling effects.

### Funding the Climate Denial Industry

Posted on: October 21, 2019

THIS POST IS A LITERATURE REVIEW AND ASSESSMENT OF THE PROPOSITION THAT THE CHALLENGE TO THE AGW CATASTROPHE THEORY OF CLIMATE CHANGE BY SO CALLED CLIMATE DENIERS IS A CONSPIRACY FUNDED BY DARK MONEY MOSTLY FROM THE FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY THAT SEES AGW AS A THREAT.

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1. From 1997 to 2005, retired Boston Globe journalist and passionate environmentalist Ross Gelbspan wrote two books on what he calls “the climate crisis”. They are  {Gelbspan, Ross. The heat is on: The climate crisis, the cover-up, the prescription. Basic Books, 1998} and {Gelbspan, Ross. Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists, and Activists Have Fueled a Climate Crisis–and What We Can Do to Avert Disaster. Basic Books, 2005}. The thesis of these books appears to be that there is a crisis in climate change and that crisis is that there is a large, international, well organized, and well funded climate denial industry that challenges the catastrophic man made global warming theory and thereby stands in the way of its timely resolution with climate action which would consist essentially of ridding the world of fossil fuels. He argues that the source of the funds that has created this crisis in the climate change movement can be traced back to the fossil fuel industry and other capitalist big money institutions that profit from climate destroying business models. These ideas have given rise to a cottage industry of climate denialism research that traces their funding to the fossil fuel industry and to other vested interests where short term profiteering interests overcome long term environmental concerns. A bibliography of research in this area is presented below.
2. A Scientific American article on this topic with the title “Dark Mondy” was published in December 2014. It cites the Brulle 2014 paper (listed in the bibliography below) to present Gelbspan’s  argument anew with respect to the challenge to climate action posed by the climate denial industry and the sinister conspiracy of their funding sources, The article presents Brulle’s data on the finances of climate denial organizations and their funding sources. The full text of the Scientific America article appears below. This Scientific American article is now the primary citation of climate activists when they make the charge of fossil fuel funding against persons or organizations that question the catastrophic man made climate change orthodoxy[LINK TO SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN ARTICLE]
3. FULL TEXT OF SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN ARTICLE: The largest, most-consistent money fueling the climate denial movement are a number of well-funded conservative foundations built with so-called “dark money,” or concealed donations, according to an analysis released Friday afternoon. The study, by Drexel University environmental sociologist Robert Brulle, is the first academic effort to probe the organizational underpinnings and funding behind the climate denial movement. It found that the amount of money flowing through third-party, pass-through foundations like DonorsTrust and Donors Capital, whose funding cannot be traced, has risen dramatically over the past five years. In all, 140 foundations funneled $558 million to almost 100 climate denial organizations from 2003 to 2010. Meanwhile the traceable cash flow from more traditional sources, such as Koch Industries and ExxonMobil, has disappeared. The study was published Friday in the journal Climatic Change. “The climate change countermovement has had a real political and ecological impact on the failure of the world to act on global warming,” Brulle said in a statement. “Like a play on Broadway, the counter-movement has stars in the spotlight – often prominent contrarian scientists or conservative politicians – but behind the stars is an organizational structure of directors, script writers and producers.” “If you want to understand what’s driving this movement, you have to look at what’s going on behind the scenes. To uncover that, Brulle developed a list of 118 influential climate denial organizations in the United States. He then coded data on philanthropic funding for each organization, combining information from the Foundation Center, a database of global philanthropy, with financial data submitted by organizations to the Internal Revenue Service. According to Brulle, the largest and most consistent funders where a number of conservative foundations promoting “ultra-free-market ideas” in many realms, among them the Searle Freedom Trust, the John Williams Pope Foundation, the Howard Charitable Foundation and the Sarah Scaife Foundation. Another key finding: From 2003 to 2007, Koch Affiliated Foundations and the ExxonMobil Foundation were “heavily involved” in funding climate change denial efforts. But Exxon hasn’t made a publically traceable contribution since 2008, and Koch’s efforts dramatically declined, Brulle said. Coinciding with a decline in traceable funding, Brulle found a dramatic rise in the cash flowing to denial organizations from DonorsTrust, a donor-directed foundation whose funders cannot be traced. This one foundation, the assessment found, now accounts for 25 percent of all traceable foundation funding used by organizations promoting the systematic denial of climate change. Jeffrey Zysik, chief financial officer for DonorsTrust, said in an email that neither DonorsTrust nor Donors Capital Fund “take positions with respect to any issue advocated by its grantees.” “As with all donor-advised fund programs, grant recommendations are received from account holders,” he said. “DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund ensure that recommended grantees are IRS-approved public charities and also require that the grantee charities do not rely on significant amounts of revenue from government sources. DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund do not otherwise drive the selection of grantees, nor conduct in-depth analyses of projects or grantees unless an account holder specifically requests that service.” In the end, Brulle concluded public records identify only a fraction of the hundreds of millions of dollars supporting climate denial efforts. Some 75 percent of the income of those organizations, he said, comes via unidentifiable sources. And for Brulle, that’s a matter of democracy. “Without a free flow of accurate information, democratic politics and government accountability become impossible,” he said. “Money amplifies certain voices above others and, in effect, gives them a megaphone in the public square.” Powerful funders, he added, are supporting the campaign to deny scientific findings about global warming and raise doubts about the “roots and remedies” of a threat on which the science is clear. “At the very least, American voters deserve to know who is behind these efforts.” 4. CONCLUSION: Climate science and climate activism in particular are surprised by the growth and influence of the climate denial industry and concerned that it may have grown into a significant obstacle to the implementation of climate action in terms of carbon budget prescriptions and their enforcement worldwide. It is estimated that more than$900 million a year are flowing into climate denial organizations in the USA alone and it is thought that the power and influence of climate denialism thus created can be controlled by identifying the funding sources as conspiratorial and by discrediting denialism organizations for accepting funds from such sources and thus becoming the agents of capitalist profit seeking against the greater good of environmentalism contained in climate action policies.

CLIMATE DENIAL FUNDING CONSPIRACY BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Dunlap, Riley E., and Aaron M. McCright. “Climate change denial: sources, actors and strategies.” Routledge handbook of climate change and society. Routledge, 2010. 270-290.  Climate change denial has taken various forms over the past two decades – including the denial of global warming, the denial of its anthropogenic sources and the denial of its seriousness – as climate science and socio-political contexts have evolved. While it originated in the US, climate change denial has spread gradually to a range of nations, creating something of an international movement. Initially funded primarily by the fossil fuels industry (Gelbspan 1997), {Gelbspan, Ross. The heat is on: The climate crisis, the cover-up, the prescription. Basic Books, 1998.} & {Gelbspan, Ross. Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists, and Activists Have Fueled a Climate Crisis–and What We Can Do to Avert Disaster. Basic Books, 2005}.over time conservative foundations and think-tanks have become major supporters and promoters of climate change denial. Conservative think-tanks in particular have facilitated and promoted the efforts of a small number of ‘contrarian’ scientists in an effort to provide the forces of denial with the guise of scientifi c credibility, magnifying the visibility and impact of the contrarians’ views (McCright and Dunlap 2000, 2003). The activities of the contrarians have supplied vital ammunition for attacking mainstream climate science, symbolised by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and thus the scientifi c underpinnings of calls for policy-making to deal with climate change (Begley 2007).
2. Dunlap, Riley E., and Aaron M. McCright. “Organized climate change denial.” The Oxford handbook of climate change and society 1 (2011): 144-160
3. Dunlap, Riley E. “Climate change skepticism and denial: An introduction.” American behavioral scientist 57.6 (2013): 691-698. The complex nature of human-caused or anthropogenic global warming (AGW) and uncertainties in the risks it poses make it challenging for laypersons to understand its causes, perceive its impacts, and take actions that might help alleviate future warming (Gifford, 2011; Norgaard, 2011; Pidgeon & Fischhoff, 2011; Weber, 2010). re These characteristics of AGW also make formulating and implementing measures that might be effective in limiting the degree and impact of continued warming modifficult for policy makers, leading to AGW being termed a “super-wicked problem” (Lazarus, 2009). This has contributed to the current situation in which there is a significant disjunction between the public’s views of AGW and those of the scientific community (Weber & Stern, 2011) as well as policy stalemate (Pooley, 2010). Even though climate science has now firmly established that global warming is occurring, that human activities contribute to this warming, and that current and future warming portend negative impacts on both ecological and social systems (National Research Council, 2010), a significant portion of the American public remains ambivalent or unconcerned (Leiserowitz, Maibach, Roser-Renouf, & Hmielowski, 2012) and many policy makers (especially in the United States) deny the necessity of taking steps to reduce carbon emissions (Brownstein, 2010).
4. Brulle, Robert J. “Institutionalizing delay: foundation funding and the creation of US climate change counter-movement organizations.” Climatic change 122.4 (2014): 681-694.  This paper conducts an analysis of the financial resource mobilization of the organizations that make up the climate change counter-movement (CCCM) in the United States. Utilizing IRS data, total annual income is compiled for a sample of CCCM organizations (including advocacy organizations, think tanks, and trade associations). These data are coupled with IRS data on philanthropic foundation funding of these CCCM organizations contained in the Foundation Center’s data base. This results in a data sample that contains financial information for the time period 2003 to 2010 on the annual income of 91 CCCM organizations funded by 140 different foundations. An examination of these data shows that these 91 CCCM organizations have an annual income of just over $900 million, with an annual average of$64 million in identifiable foundation support. The overwhelming majority of the philanthropic support comes from conservative foundations. Additionally, there is evidence of a trend toward concealing the sources of CCCM funding through the use of donor directed philanthropies.
5. van der Linden, Sander L., et al. “The scientific consensus on climate change as a gateway belief: Experimental evidence.” PloS one 10.2 (2015): e0118489.  There is currently widespread public misunderstanding about the degree of scientific consensus on human-caused climate change, both in the US as well as internationally. Moreover, previous research has identified important associations between public perceptions of the scientific consensus, belief in climate change and support for climate policy. This paper extends this line of research by advancing and providing experimental evidence for a “gateway belief model” (GBM). Using national data (N = 1104) from a consensus-message experiment, we find that increasing public perceptions of the scientific consensus is significantly and causally associated with an increase in the belief that climate change is happening, human-caused and a worrisome threat. In turn, changes in these key beliefs are predictive of increased support for public action. In short, we find that perceived scientific agreement is an important gateway belief, ultimately influencing public responses to climate change.
6. Farrell, Justin. “Corporate funding and ideological polarization about climate change.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113.1 (2016): 92-97.  Ideological polarization around environmental issues—especially climate change—has increased in the last 20 years. This polarization has led to public uncertainty, and in some cases, policy stalemate. Much attention has been given to understanding individual attitudes, but much less to the larger organizational and financial roots of polarization. This gap is due to prior difficulties in gathering and analyzing quantitative data about these complex and furtive processes. This paper uses comprehensive text and network data to show how corporate funding influences the production and actual thematic content of polarization efforts. It highlights the important influence of private funding in public knowledge and politics, and provides researchers a methodological model for future studies that blend large-scale textual discourse with social networks.. Drawing on large-scale computational data and methods, this research demonstrates how polarization efforts are influenced by a patterned network of political and financial actors. These dynamics, which have been notoriously difficult to quantify, are illustrated here with a computational analysis of climate change politics in the United States. The comprehensive data include all individual and organizational actors in the climate change countermovement (164 organizations), as well as all written and verbal texts produced by this network between 1993–2013 (40,785 texts, more than 39 million words). Two main findings emerge. First, that organizations with corporate funding were more likely to have written and disseminated texts meant to polarize the climate change issue. Second, and more importantly, that corporate funding influences the actual thematic content of these polarization efforts, and the discursive prevalence of that thematic content over time. These findings provide new, and comprehensive, confirmation of dynamics long thought to be at the root of climate change politics and discourse. Beyond the specifics of climate change, this paper has important implications for understanding ideological polarization more generally, and the increasing role of private funding in determining why certain polarizing themes are created and amplified. Lastly, the paper suggests that future studies build on the novel approach taken here that integrates large-scale textual analysis with social networks.

### Ben Deniston Interviews Madhav Khandekar

Posted on: October 20, 2019

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Question: Nature on IPCC SR15: This new IPCC report means that without aggressive action, the world could become an almost impossible place for most people to live. Do you agree with that?

Answer: I was an UPCC reviewer in 2005 and 2006 for the AR4 report. When that report was published in 2007, I was very disappointed. Among several things my disappointment was because I had suggested several changes to be made in the final document. Sadly, no one single change I had suggested was incorporated in the IPCC final document. Thereafter, I lost interest in the IPCC Assessment Reports and stopped reading them and stopped taking them seriously. I did browse through the most recent report of 2013 the AR5 and found it repetitious and repetitious. There is nothing new. It has all been said before but apparently needs saying again that we have to reduceCO2 emissions if you want the climate to behave smoothly. What does that mean? There will always be extreme weather. Extreme weather is an integral part of the earth’s climate system. Why bother reducing CO2 at enormous cost and at the end of the day what do you get out of that is nothing.

Question: Outside of climate models where these relationships are programmed in, is there empirical evidence in the observational data that human emission of CO2 is the major driver of the climate?

Answer: No! In fact, this hypothesis of CO2 driven warming was first suggested by the IPCC in its 1995 Assessment Report. Before that, they did not do that. In the 1995 assessment report, the IPCC wrote that “there is a discernable human influence on the earth’s climate. That sentence has been debated and extensively studied by a large number of scientists on both sides of the argument. And most scientists who are skeptical of the IPCC view have shown again and again that the warming of the earth’s climate roughly from around 1977 to 1998 was quite possibly due to natural variability. More El Ninos occurred during that period and warming due to human CO2 emissions was possibly minimal at best. That is my personal view.

Question: Are climate models overstating the impact of human CO2 emissions on climate?

Answer: That is very correct. I am not an expert on climate models I have done some modeling work during my career with Environment Canada more than 20 years ago and I have since been retired. But my modeling of oceanic impact on climate was primarily for marine operations and our forecasts were for two or three days at most depending on how good the winds are. When I was studying meteorology at Florida State University, a leading meteorologist of our time (at MIT) was studying the predictability of the climate system. He came to the conclusion that climate was not predictable beyond a 2-week forecast boundary. Climate models are not capable of predicting weather or climate beyond that horizon. But they say that they can predict global mean surface temperature out to 2050 and 2075 and even out to 2100 but I have my doubts about these claims. In fact, more and more scientists have shown that a high sensitivity of temperature to CO2 is built into these models so that if you track their performance against data you find that they show higher rates of warming than we see in the data.

Question: Does the IPCC have any scientific credibility at this point? Is the IPCC really an independent, objective, scientific assessment based on an honest scientific investigation?

Question: Higher atmospheric CO2 has caused a global greening and it is going to have a positive impact on photosynthesis and plane growth.

Answer: That is so very true. Satellite imagery shows again and again an enrichment of world forestry. World forestry is getting greener, the planet is getting greener, because of higher CO2. In an ironical way, people refer to renewable energy such as wind and solar, as “green technology” and yet the planet is becoming greener by virtue of what green technology is supposed to replace. I wouldn’t want to touch wind farms with a ten-foot pole. Wind is unreliable because we don’t know how hard it will blow at any given time and whether that will match our demand curve. There are also problems with those large turbines. Solar has done better but that too has problems particularly at the greater latitudes. There is an airport in South India called Kochi that runs on 100% solar and serves a thousand flights a week. It is run efficiently. So maybe there are niche applications for wind and solar.

Question: These policies have a huge impact around the world. The latest IPCC report said hat 50 to 120 trillion dollars must be invested to get rid of carbon emissions by 2050. That is an enormous investment. A huge percentage of the world’s population is already suffering from the lack of electric power supply, lack of energy, and the changes being pushed by the IPCC can only curtail the availability of energy in poor countries.

Answer: Reducing carbon dioxide emissions will have no measurable effect on the earth’s climate. There are now several studies in peer reviewed journals that show that even if all nations abide by the Paris Agreement, then by the year 2100 the amount of cooling thus achieved will be 0.05C. It is an insignificant temperature effect at enormous cost. Why do it. Adaptation makes more sense than mitigation. Let us come up with a comprehensive adaptation strategy that should include early warning systems. If we can improve our short range weather forecasting and climate prediction models extending the forecast horizon to weeks and even months, it will make extreme weather more bearable and less injurious. We can already predict drought conditions a few months ahead of time but not heat waves. We can predict heat waves a few weeks ahead of time. If we can minimize the risk of extreme weather with better forecasting it will make adaptation a better option than costly mitigation. With respect to sea level rise due to melting glaciers and ice sheets, the dangers of it has been exaggerated. My estimate is that we are facing a sea level rise by 2100 of about 25 centimeters. It’s not going to be an adaptation issue. Other forecasts I have seen in the journals run as low as 10 cm in a hundred years but with high uncertainty levels such that the uncertainty bars are +/- 15 cm that derives mostly from uncertainty in the warming forecast. Then there is the forecast of a Grand Solar minimum in solar activity. That could bring about an extended cooling period. Besides that, my estimate is that the temperature has stabilized and that there is no warming threat and we may be in for some cooling.

Question: So the best way to deal with this is adaptation and we should build up our economies and build up our infrastructure to be able to deal with the possible effects of global warming in the form of adaptation rather than mitigation.

Answer: That is so true. I do agree that we need to develop infrastructure including shelters where people can go in the case of things like strong hurricanes and tropical cyclones as for example in the Bay of Bengal where the so called Bhola cyclone of 1970 swept away more than 250,000 people out to sea. To this day, this 1970 tropical cyclone still holds the record in the number of fatalities from a single weather event. Incidentally, the 1970 Bhola cyclone struck not during warming but during the 1945 to 1977 cooling period. It was in fact, a period of rapid rise in atmospheric CO2. Climate scientists don’t like to talk about this. Then the climate warmed from 1977 to 1998 in sync with rising CO2 but in the last 20 years, according to most climate scientists, there has not been a statistically significant warming of the earth’s climate. We can call this period the “global warming hiatus”, a period of time when warming took a break that has continued to the present as we speak. The expectation of rapid and dangerous warming in the next 20 to 50 years is almost preposterous. If the climate was getting ready to warm by that much, I think we would be seeing some evidence of that. The reality is that we are seeing rising incidence of extreme cold events. Boston in 2015 for example contrary to the IPCC 2005 report which says that snow will be gone from land areas of the earth in a few decades. Like so many other such scary forecasts, it turned out to be very wrong indeed.

570 comments by viewers of the video.

IPCC is a political body not a scientific one.

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An obvious truth not obvious to most. https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/08/11/ipccisun/

I do not get how people chose to lissten to a hysterical puppet teen rather than people like this that actually know what they are talking about.

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Johan because those idiots will say oh he is paid off by the fossil fuel companies. It’s just like they don’t believe ex Muslims about Islam Ppl are funny but cause they may not believe in climate change cause they know of the lies but other things they don’t research into or believe ppl can be paid off about. And I’m meaning vaccines No money in cures but there will always be money in sickness All I’m saying is if one side is always pushing something while shutting down others via labels and more so if msm is supporting it and pushing it then you better do some serious research into it. Think about what I just said We know we can’t trust anything when money is involved or an agenda to make money and get power,question everything. And I mean everything.

Good that mention was made of the effect of the Sun on the climate, and the Solar Minimum which will cause global cooling. Climate changes CAN be predicted by solar cycles.

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The climate change fanatics are worried about a non toxic gas in the concentration of 400 ppm or 0.0004%?

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Climate change another reason for more taxes.

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I support the climate hysteria zealots. When I see them, I tell them they should volunteer to feed the worms and completely eliminate their own carbon foot prints to save the planet.

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Getting sick and tired of CLIMAPHOBIC HYSTERIA

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Climate models are simulations which are “tweaked” to produce the result specified by the climate alarmist funders. Any individual who supports an unfalsifiable hypothesis (anthropogenic global warming) should seek a career other than science.

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As soon as the banksters started introducing carbon trading it was obvious it was a money making scam, scientists just provided the numbers for politicians to act. Tell the left that they are saving the planet and they’ll stick their head in the oven.

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As the climate religion fails to gain traction, they believe that if they amp up the fear rhetoric they will convince people.

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UN: If we want to be a global government let’s find some global problems which only we can solve …. cue the IPCC … cue the immigrants crisis … cue the etc But hold on – people aren’t stupid they don’t all believe U

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We all know Human responsibility of the Climate change is very Little. ICE Core Science Shows Clearly First Climate warming then CO2 is following. Second geological science shows that rapid climate change in between 20 Years already happened ice core science of the arctic shoes that. Third melting glaciers in the alps show trees that are 3-5000years old . We see here that the tree limited zone was far higher than today and therefore it must have been far hotter than today. Science means data, analysis but today pseudoscience rules the media. Politic is the mirror of society . The society has no clue about real science and therefore our politicians also have no clue about true science.

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It’s all a scam to redistribute more money to the elite!!! Wake up and think for yourself!!

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Climate change has become a religion for city dwellers. Politicians use this new religion to get votes but are very careful not to implement their climate promises as they know the climate is not due to become dangerous to humanity.

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IPCC has an agenda at odds with the truth. Don’t believe a word the IPCC preaches. They are more of a religious organization rather than an independent scientific investigative body.

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“10 years ago I simply parroted what the IPCC told us. One day I started checking the facts and data – first I started with a sense of doubt, but then I became outraged when I discovered that much of what the IPCC and the media were telling us was sheer nonsense, and was not supported by any scientific facts, or measurements. To this day I still feel shame that as a scientist I made presentations of their science, without first checking it. Scientifically it is sheer absurdity to think we can get a nice climate, by turning a C02 adjustment knob”. GERMAN PHYSICIST AND METEOROLOGIST : KLAUS-ECKHART PULS

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Is there any proof of this man’s credentials and that he was, in fact, a member of the IPCC?

The way alarmists make out we’re at the edge of a cliff it should be 120 degrees in spring. People dropping dead in cities because the temperature is wya beyond anything we’ve ever seen. It should be obvious we have problems. What we see is nothing.

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Search Youtube for “The Climate of Science – Interview with Shiva Ayyadurai”. This explains why science (actual science) does not exist any. Also nealry 50% of all peer reviewed science literature is false or not duplicatable.

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only a crazy liberal who suspends thier own mind and believes baloney buys into man made climate change. The idea itself is ABSURD, but if you frame it that people are “saving the planet” people will fall in line like sheep even though its complete rubbish

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When “extreme actions” are simply sending money, it is hogwash.

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Dr. Khandekar says he has been retired for 20 years, and reviewed the IPCC report way back in 2007 !! That is 12 years ago !! You were unable to dredge up someone a bit more recent and relevant?! He admits being disappointed (disgruntled) because his suggestions weren’t used in the 2007 report … he says he has barely glanced at any recent reports. Wow you guys are scraping the bottom of the barrel! He says CO2 is great because “India is producing lots of grain”. How is that relevant to Climate Change around the entire globe ?! Last time I looked, India is currently experiencing extreme droughts followed by severe flooding which India’s government attributes to Climate Change. This gentleman may have been relevant and on top of his game 30 years ago, but he is clearly completely out of touch with the current impact of Climate Change.

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Global warming is a scam, nothing is wrong with the climate, it’s a lot wrong with the tax imposed on poor people, people are sick and tired with the lies, and the scammers.

Exactly!! Our models are good for 10 days, yet they claim to “know” with 1/10 of a degree over 100 years

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They brainwashed the children already. Look at Greta. My friend has her picture on his wall. I flipped, l called him out. He claims he is awake but watches that TV like its his spouse. I got rid of TV. Best thing ever. Think for yourself. Man cant do all these things like control climate or Travel through space. The lies run so deep its generational.

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This business has to be seen for what it is , Global Revolution. The division is Left versus Right, the IPCC is Left. The US withdrew from the Paris Accord because POTUS is Right.

When the Al Gore’s of the world move out of their mansions, and travel like the rest of us, then perhaps I’ll believe.

co² religion is in full swing believe it or not facts do not matter anymore simple facts greenhouse effect is only in greenhouses possible co² is foundation for all life on this planet still we not able to predict nor to change weather climate are 30 years weather data noting more

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Imagine how many wilderness areas we could protect, old growth forests, fragile habitats, endangered species, wild rivers, etc with trillions of dollars. All the people we could raise up from poverty with Molten Salt Reactors. When you see what an obvious diversion it is, it’s sickening

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Some are in love with Faked news as they are with “False Facts”!!

PLS NEVER FORGET CO2 AND NO2 ARE FOOD FOR NATURE. THE LESS THERE IS, THE LESS QUICKLY THE VEGETATION GROWS.

Sensible argument at last. Grand solar minimum the cooling of the climate is more likely to happen before the heating. We need to clean up the world and provide good shelter to people whatever climate they live in and share the food around the world when the weather becomes extreme …….as it will and always will.

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The best way to save the planet… tell the lefties to jump from high clifs to lower their carbon footprint.

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We’re being fed lies all the time about the c02 and climate change .it’s alll a way of making money and controlling people in what they do and not to do.our freedoms are being taken away every day with all this bull.time to wake up and see the big picture.

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“the scientific industrial complex” The other half of a famous quote the left always forgets

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Earth’s climate was cooling due to the increased albedo from industrial pollution, especial sulfur dioxide, but other particulates as well. Increased regulation on air pollution has lowered the the reflection of solar radiation. Stop spreading lies, you know damn well why the Earth was cooling back then.

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The only qualification that is meaningful in discussing the cause of climate change is not the 97% of scientists he referenced but proper degree holding climatologists. Im sick of having a consensus b academics and others that CO2 causes the climate change we are experiencing.

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correlation is not causation

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Every minute a hundred more humans r born and zero orangutans on our planet r born. Humans r like a virus infecting planet earth.

Feelings woah feelings.

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Follow the money. When banks stop funding building ocean front condos. Stop putting billions into vacation places like the Maldives, then you can believe it. But the opposite is happening. Development of these areas is increasing

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Thanks for the interview! Very informative. 👏💐

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How much money has already been waisted

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FSU – GO NOLES. 😉

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I’m 62, and I remember in the late 70s and early 80s, I had a blue tick foxhound for 5 years and couldn’t get a snowfall to save my life. Mud, mud, mud, all winter, and Leonard Nimoy was saying we’re entering an ice age that was all backed by science and data. It’s all BS. God is in control of the weather, not puny little men with cars and BBQ grills.

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How old is this weatherman dude? Retired for 20 years. You can do better.

When i see a peer reviewed study that shows climate change in terms of the number of tons of carbon added to the atmosphere and the subsequent temperature changes, i will have made my decision on this topic.

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If you listen closely to the introduction, you can search for the source of the outrage You would be forgiven to think it was the IPCC actually, all this outrage is about some ones reaction to the IPCC In other words… someone READ the IPCC report Then Helpfully told us what they thought was the unstated meaning of the report Which then this video is responding to as if there is no distinction between a reaction, vs what the IPCC report actually says

Jeeeeeez……. try checking out potholer’s videos on climate change (and follow the many sources in his video-discriptions). This unscientific opinionated i drivel could do with some Peer reviewing in, for instance, Nature, rather than the unimpressive open source imagazines I’m sure were paid to publish it. The connection between CO2 and global warming is well documented, and the level of CO2 is at the moment higher than it has been for sveral million years.

Does more CO2 in the atmosphere make the planet warmer? Probably to some small degree but plants require it and do better if there is more. Could we possibly conduct business as usual by forcefully turning to wind and solar faster than the energy market could digest? Hell no, that would be the real catastrophe.

It’s not just C02 though, is it? It’s all the greenhouse gases and pollution of all kinds, including the oceans choking on plastics. Whether or not Earth’s climate is changing, and who or what might be responsible, shouldn’t we invest in learning to manage our biosphere before it becomes uninhabitable for the less than .01% of all life as ever existed on Earth that is not yet extinct?

Pulp Fiction: eine Amoklauf Gruppe hat diesen Film mehrfach vor Attentat geschaut. Wurde ernsthaft über Verbot des Films diskutiert. Diese Leute verstehen nix von Mathe (Schnittmengen) und Statistik (Korrelation vs Kausalität).

🤣🤣😉😉😉😓😓😓😢😢😢😍😍😍🦍🦍🦍🦍

AOC is a climatologist said I quote: we only have 8 years to live in this world.

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i’m still far from educated on this very (now with extinction rebeliion) public topic…and i’m still all ears… i know how in the scientific world people iike to study the in vouge topic and there are those that get off on challenging the mainstream….Rememeber this chap is one intellegent chap with theories……..and he was upset with the IPCC beacuse they ignored all his theories…..there are many more intriguing scientists on both sides of the debate…..this debate is not over yet!

Who does he work for now I’m going to look it up

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The Shiller institute? Seriously,? Wow, that’s really funny.

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Pure denier propaganda.

Notice the YouTube ‘Global warming’ Wikipedia interjection below the video? Just goes to show that big tech are heavily invested in the climate emergency scam.

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It’s just another tactic communists have invented to scare people into giving up their freedom to a global government.

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IPCC doesn’t examine any of the natural causes. IT’S UNSCIENTIFIC!

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Does taxing CO2 reduce CO2 ?

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Please recklessly burn Brazil’s rainforests so people can have more cows to eat. Billions of people need to live somewhere and I think Antarctica and Greenland should be developed and utilised for us hungry and greedy people.

What if the object of the IPCC is not to save humanity but to destroy it? Let’s have a look at the “Green” goals. 1. Have a Global government run by a select few who know what is best for everyone. 2. Reduce industrialisation and mining. 3. Reduce human population. How can this be achieved? 1. Create a panel of bureaucrats that dictate what a final report should support, not what actual scientific data suggests. If the data doesn’t support the wanted conclusion then falsify the data and shut any dissenters down. Convince everyone that the panel has the only solution to correct the conclusion. 2. Put forward policy that shuts down cheap energy production and makes industrialisation too expensive to run in first world countries thus destabilising industry all together. Stop third world countries from taking advantage of cheap energy and shut down mining by “protest groups” thus reducing the availability of raw materials for the industrial complex altogether. 3. Introduce policy that destroys the family unit by removing the father and convinces females to not have babies or kill off any babies that are conceived all in the name of “family planning”. Encourage females into work so that the labour market is in glut causing a drop in wages for all, separates the mother from the child for 40 hours a week and into the hands of state run institutions for political indoctrination. 4. Enforce through violent political action and silencing of dissent policies that brings down the CO2 level down to where plants cannot grow quickly thus create famine to reduce population. 5. Encourage political division into “tribal” groups and “intersectionality” to break social cohesion and cooperation. 6. Move social structure back to a feudal system where the peasants supply the energy required to keep the elite in luxury and destroy the democratic system so that the peasants no longer have a say in what happens in the world. Does any of this sound familiar?

If nutty Al Gore and the hysterical Greta were to become extinct..the world might be saved.

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FWIW. This guy is · Dr. Madhav Khandekar

Mass corruption by the UN encouraged by the vast amounts of money to be made once they demand that everyone and every company has to buy carbon credits to balance their carbon output. It wont of course reduce carbon output but there is a hanger-load of money to be made out of it and the rich nations will fail while the poor nations will almost – nearly – flourish

The Satanists will keep pushing this lie and cause so much chaos in human society that wars will start wiping out humanity There you are folks object achieved

People, just study basic atmospheric physics, and you’ll instantly recognize the specific declarative statements which are deliberate frauds and scare tactics. Example: Global Warming and a less temp gradient between Equator and Poles, guarantee much more mild frontal storms. See Baroclinic Instability. The list of erroneous atmospheric physics assertions goes on and on. They are Scare Tactics, to scare Cobgress into shelling out billion per year. It’s THEFT BY FRAUD.

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CO2 at 0.04% in our atmosphere…. It is NOT a lot, is it? I would like to see a proper scientific display of the refraction index of CO2 with all appropriate light frequencies, in particular the range of infrared light, to prove that CO2 can really efficiently reflect these rays to the extent the alarmists seem to believe. 0.04%….. Not convinced about that at all. Is there a video about that?

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Grand solar minimum is already underway. It is characterised by extremes of weather, which we are already seeing, increased tectonic activity, earthquakes, volcanoes etc, which we are beginning to see also, an increase in electrical storms, and a cooling trend in the Earth’s temperature, which we are already seeing. The temperature has been dropping for the last two years. The global warming business is just that- a business.

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Yes, human activity, try Geoengineering. That’s more than any CO2 issue.

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6CO2+6H2O+Sun+Plant=C6H12O6 +6O2. If you remove one of these factors All animal and plant life on earth dies. CO2 is the source of all carbon life on earth and to treat it as a pollutant is madness. Our industrial creation of CO2 by use of fossil fuels is in fact Greening the earth. Photosynthesis and Oxidation/Combustion are complementary reactions and without the radiant heat retention of the gases CO2. CH4 and H2O we would freeze to death every night from the -270 degrees of space less than 100 km just above our heads. The UN and Globalists are scamming the whole world and mainly uneducated and ignorant women and children are falling for I

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Okay so another comment. This video discredited the IPCC on the basis that they rejected seven changes suggested by this man. One can infer some of these points from what he said, but he never actually said what they were. To discredit the IPCC, you’d have to explain his suggestions, compare them to the literature, and see if they’re founded. This wasn’t done, so the IPCC wasn’t discredited. On the note about grain production, the predictions are longer term. A temporary increase (and in some areas, a permanent increase due to several factors) in grain production doesn’t discredit the IPCC’s claim.

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None of the ideas he states here are published as peer reviewed scientific papers, regardless of previous accomplishments. Einstein was a pretty good scientist. His equations predicted black holes, he didn’t believe they really existed. Climate deniers are the equivalent of flat earthers that believe in Santa Claus. Be good you guys, Santa’s elves are watching!

If you don’t think it’ll upset you too much, look at the evidence for yourself. Maybe you understand, perhaps not.

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The honest scientists are saying the same thing about climate models. The science may be so complicated that experts have a hard time parsing it out, but what is a no brainer is that if they can’t accurately predict the local weather for a week at a time, the claim that they can predict global climate w/ so many more variables accurately for a decade or several decades is utter hubris. Everyone knows their local forecast falls apart w/in a week, just think of the implications of what it means when they can barely predict local weather, but claim to predict global climate for decades. Not only that, expensive and far reaching policies are based on these faulty weather models. Carbon taxes are enforced, economies falter, smooth running and economical power grids are abandoned for so called clean energy that is undependable and so much more expensive. Decades later the so-called clean energy is found to not be clean and has a bigger carbon footprint, as well as sky high cost passed on to the poorest, all because of faulty climate models that are used for political and monetary reasons.

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That IPCC statement is BS!

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pure bull

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Climate change is a fraud but why aren’t you taking into account the Geoengineering that has been taking place for decades? The planet is NOT greening , the trees are dying from the toxins in the rain! Weather warfare is very real and they are using it to destroy the food producing areas across the country. Forests are dying! It is manmade , but not from fossil fuels. They will do anything to get their New World Order, and that is exactly what they have been doing . Rosalind Peterson spoke on this at the UN years ago , did anyone listen?

I love global warming, more global warmth is needed !

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This climate crise is manmade! Yes, it’s all made up! By man! And guess why? Follow the money, follow the power. It’s people. I scratch your back if you scratch mine…

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Why don’t all of the skeptics build a greenhouse in their backyard and continue to pump CO2 into it day after day, week after week, year after year and report what the temperature does? Then we can have a real discussion.

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Unfortunately there is a big deception going on in the lie about human CO2 induced enhanced global warming… the RAW DATA un-doctored by the collective frauds shows no change in trends…

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Well I guess he is just not part of the “97%”.

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I have several comments to make, but I’ll make one for now. You say that recent decades (I’m assuming, because you offered no actual scale) refute IPCC models. Could you explain how that works since the models are based on former climate variations? If the models don’t help explain the recent past, that which they are designed with, then sure, they might not work. But they are designed with the recent past in mind, sooooo…false premise…

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The actual situation about the properties of the singular environment capable of harbouring humankind is by far and large more alarming than the already alarming report of IPCC. As for the former scientist of IPCC, I would like to say something well known in the scientific community, that is, that the number of published scientific papers has nothing in common with the quality of scientific to work, far otherwise. Since not able to publish anything of true importance, he fell into hypergraphia wasting the time of those idle and uninformed. If you are really keen on learning something on the subject, frequent NASA portal regarding climate change.

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cc is so true they won’t even mention a CO2 ppm number. 4+ billion dollars and no number.

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Some truth for a change. It’s healthy and factual rather than all this alarmist nonsense. Yes, it’s true the planet is greening.

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search tony heller for the truth instead of this bs

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We know that Earth’s biosphere is warming. The melting of ages old ice and permafrost proves that. What’s problematic is the idea that the onset and increase of average global temperatures is merely incidental when considering the data showing that the occurrence correlates exactly with the degree of increasing release levels of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, et al. Search: samslair blogspot thermokarst flow

When 7.7 billion people realize they’ve been lied to by fossil fuel apoogists they will be very angry and possibly vengeful.

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Oil money got to this guy. Shilling for the fossil fool industry.

So, a “former expert REVIEWER for IPCC” becomes “Former IPCC Scientist”? Anyone “expert” or otherwise can be a reviewer for IPCC. Dr Khandekar, all you have to do is publish your ideas in a respectable journal. However, your views are all in CEI, Heartland, GWPF sites and videos. Why is that? A global conspiracy amongst scientists? Give me a break. Did you guys hear that the UK got more electricity from renewables + nuclear than from fossil fuel burning, for the first time since the 1880s? EVs are here and are fantastic — we can do this! Anyway, on Dr Khandekar, from DeSmogBlog: “Madhav Khandekar is a retired Environment Canada scientist. The Heartland Institute describes him as “an environmental consultant on extreme weather events and a scientist with the Natural Resources Stewardship Project.” [2] According to leaked documents from Heartland, Khandekar has been receiving \$1,000 per month from the Heartland Institute, an organization at the forefront of climate change science denial.” Sources: https://www.desmogblog.com/madhav-khandekar https://www.heartland.org/about-us/who-we-are/madhav-khandekar Oh… Lyndon LaRouche, ça s’explique. I wrote “hilarious” above — but this is really very sad.

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Agenda 30 of The New World Order ! !

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He also does not cite any peer reviewed science journal articles I. His info section. He is just regurgitating already debunked claims

People gotta wake up to the lies about co2 s it’s really about us agreeing to UN Agenda 2030.

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A credible voice free of globalist agenda. Refreshing.

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There are two hard facts: 1. Fossil Fuels are a finite resource, we will eventually run out of them, Climate Crisis or not. 2. Electric Vehicles (EVs) are cheaper to operate than Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) vehicles, and soon they’ll be driving themselves, how cool is that? Another often ignored fact is that the Oil Cartel is the one that’s making billions in profits and spending millions on denying climate science for decades… naturally they’re pulling the old ‘projection politics’ maneuver on this subject by pointing the finger at climate scientists and claiming they’re making millions off this to distract from not only their own greed but also to obscure the horrific regime change wars we’re waging in the Middle East because of our thirst for oil!

Why should we humans ever expect climate or weather to be forever pleasant, “beautiful” perfect or unchanging,, let alone be in a position to control it? We are merely  one very small speck of dust hurtling thru space around an average star that converts 5mill tonnes of mass into energy every second? There are some 30 plus, unique,  parameters that make our fragile earth life supporting, not least our  ever diminishing rainforests and carbon cycle That some alarmists or  control freaks think we can  manipulate  just one tiny component of one parameter (CO2) and “save” the planet (from what?) , is laughable. Of course under a banner of “saving the planet” what they really want is to control it, to control governments and thus where your taxes go. It’s just a clever charade to change the power base of world politics, by scare-mongering, and force if necessary. CO2, that single atmospheric component is barely 1 part in 2500, 0.04%. To claim it is partly or solely responsible, is merely a conclusion drawn from highly speculative virtual computer models, not real science data. In fact, CO2 is not a pollutant but food for all plants and reason all carbon based lifeforms like us, exist. Morever, to expect the “average” temperature  to not vary 1 degree C in 100years when it ranges between minus 50 to plus 50c across the planet, is madness. If the demand wasn’t so tragic and dangerous, it would be laughable. In another post I’ll discuss how that “average” temp’ is fudged.

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There are other scientific discoveries being the biggest concern like the Earth’s electromagnetic field has been weakening causing fissures allowing more of the Sun’s heat and radiation through… plus there is the Polar Shifting having a direct and indirect impact on global weather…The fossil resources is making the situation worse in addition to these other factors!

When they said that it would be very uncomfortable for humans if we do not pass this climate change Environmental fraud. You’re thinking weather wise. They’re thinking they’re minions of Plenty are going to start causing some serious problems like setting forest fires and other things more militant scale and violence. You have to know who’s speaking to you to know what they’re talkin about. For them to fundamentally change the world in a new direction to where they could have total control over natural resources, they have to pass this fraud. They have spent hundreds of millions of their wealth to get this through. They will stop at nothing. This is what they’re talkin about they’re telling their minions. But they know that you have an ear listening, get it yet. They’ve infiltrated our government’s paid people off to put people in positions to help their cause they’re taking over the UN and the unions around the world have been funneling money to them for the last 30 years not to mention out the back door of America’s arsehole. Do you get it yet it’s all about the Bloodlines and who’s going to be on top when they decide to drain the population of the world. Read some of their writings and look at the actions I have taken.actions always speak louder than words.

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You people are so off the mark. Guess what, there’s a satellite in space measuring kw energy reflecting back from earth. And, one on earth measuring kw energy absorbed by the earth, so there accurate measurements indicating the difference in kw energy according to CO2 levels. You are misleading people. Shame

Plants aren’t made from CO2 and sunlight alone. They also release most of the CO2 as they rot. This is all you need to know to question his claims. There is no way to have modern life and reduce CO2. There is no way to “capture carbon” without expending more energy, and expelling more carbon, to do it. CO2 is a stable molecule. Increasing the amount of eggs in a recipe does not give you more, or better, cake. Increasing CO2 does not create a stable increase in plant growth. Nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulphur are also minimally necessary for life. Climate change is real, there is no fix, and there is no way to continue modern life and stop feeding into it.

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So 99% of scientists are wrong and you (a high school dropout) knows best?

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Madhav Khandekar is a denialist linked with the Heartland Institute, “Friends of Science” and the fossil fuel industry.

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Complete nonsense. The only thing wrong with the Report is that it under estimates the trajectory and likley extent of warming by leaving the effects of some major feedback loops out of the model. The extent of human impact on the climate will be much worse than the IPCC are saying.

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Climate change is a hoax – please keep up the good work.

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AHAHAHAHA. The Heartland Institute of climate science deniers managed to find a senile old crackpot. The Koch money keeps flowing.

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This rubbish about the elites, let’s just drop it. There are elites against and for climate change, let’s just stick to the facts. What the scientists say and they overwhelmingly say we have a serious problem. We can change and we will, let’s just look forward rather than trying to go backwards.

It isn’t rocketscience… we massively put co2 into the atmosphere where o2 is present. Trees absorb co2 and convert it to oxygen. When we cut big areas of trees plus still pump major volumes of co2 in the atmosphere, the C in co2 can’t be absorbed and stays in the air. Because co2 is a more heavy element than oxygen it holds more and more heat in the atmosphere from the sun and in time heats the earth. If the earth heats up by a few degrees, the oceancurrents will shift and THAT holds direct relations with the climate. If we let this go, NO, it will not wipe out everything instantly, but be prepared to have much more deserts on which we can’t grow crops to feed ourselves. So although people will try to avoid this logical chain of events affecting nothing… they are wrong.

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Old fool with hurting ego because they didn’t consider his “changes” in the report as valuable. So he goes around and whine that whole report is not true. Like a little, spoiled brat. He is great example what is wrong with the world now. Grumpy baby boomer angry that not everything is about him and thus willing to risk future generetion exsitence so he can get some attention and shine as a “rebel”. Pathetic.

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He is a math teacher. He denied C02 has any effect on the atmosphere. I can prove him wrong with computer simulations. Anyone can! LMFAO!

He works for Heartland Institute, funded by oil and gas. The claims he makes are ridiculous. Furthermore: “Expert reviewer for the IPCC” doesn’t mean that they asked him to review material – all it means is that he asked to see the draft report. The only real requirement to be a reviewer is to sign an agreement not to publicly comment on the draft.”

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9 out 10 people tell you that your house is on fire and if you don’t do anything, everyone you love in this world will die, and if you make some s sacrifices and work hard, you can prevent this horrible event from happening. Do you act on the overwhelming evidence, or do you trust the one outlier with your loved ones fate?

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Should be called shiller institute because he’s shilling for the fossil fuel industry! Please stop ignoring the consensus and elevating the kooks and industry lapdogs.

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climate models are a hell of lot better than personal opinion !

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dangerous nonsense from someone who has worked on weather models but not climate models. Evidence of climate change in the past 20 years is very clear. Trillions of tonnes of ice have melted. The sea level has risen measurabliy by several cm. Frequency and severity of severe westher has definitely increased. eg cat 5 hurricanes. Mitigation measures are important and in Bangladesh as quoted mitigation measures are more urgent than CO2 reduction. but it is unmistakable that CO2 warms the planet both historically and by calculation. and the only explanation for the unprecedented rate of rise in CO2 level is that we are experiencing is the trillions of tonnes of CO2 that has been created by burning fossil fuel in the past approx. 200 years. Isotopic analysis proves that the extra CO2 must have come from fossil fuel. All natural processes such as solar variation and Milankovitch cyles are either too weak or too slow to be the cause.

### The New Face of Eco Wacko Activism

Posted on: October 19, 2019

ALLISON WATT SELF PORTRAIT

THIS POST IS A REVIEW OF AN ARTICLE IN SCIENCE MAGAZINE ABOUT CLIMATE SCIENTISTS GRIEVING FOR MOTHER EARTH BECAUSE OF THE CLIMATE IMPACTS SHE FACES IN THE ABSENCE OF THE CLIMATE ACTION PRESCRIBED BY CLIMATE SCIENCE [LINK] . THE THESIS OF THIS POST IS THAT

CLIMATE SCIENCE IS THE NEW FACE OF ECO WACKO ACTIVISM

1. The Science Magazine article of 11/10/2019 states that “Environmental scientists tend to respond to degradation of the natural world by ignoring, suppressing, or denying the resulting painful emotions while at work”. The assessment is supported by a number of citations including “Head, Lesley, and Theresa Harada. “Keeping the heart a long way from the brain: The emotional labour of climate scientists.”  Emotion, Space and Society 24 (2017): 34-41. The paper is about increased understanding of emotions and climate change through a study of the emotional management strategies employed by a sample of Australian climate scientists. We bring three broad areas of literature into conversation in order to think more productively about climate change and emotion: recent applications of the concept of emotional labour, studies of the role of emotion in science, and feminist perspectives on the performative role of emotions. In response to contextual drivers that include the social norms of science, a strong climate denialist influence and the preservation of self and family, these scientists mobilize a range of behaviours and strategies to manage their emotions around climate change and the future. These include emphasizing dispassion, suppressing painful emotions, using humour and switching off from work. Emotional denial or suppression of the consequences of climate change worked to enable the scientists to persevere in their work. This study suggests that painful emotions (anxiety, fear, loss) around climate change need to be acknowledged and discussed.
2. Ms Head is also the author of a 2016 book on the subject “Head, Lesley. Hope and Grief in the Anthropocene: Re-conceptualising human–nature relations. Routledge, 2016″. She is not alone. It is generally acknowledged that climate scientists are emotionally involved in their work and are motivated mostly by the need to save the planet from destruction by fossil fueled runaway climate change as seen in the short list of citations in the bibliography below. The bibliography also shows a concern among climate scientists that the fear of climate impacts that they had promoted in their work may present a mass psychological problem in the affected people that they had not anticipated.
3. The emotional involvement of climate scientists in their work particularly having to do with promoting costly climate action by raising the fear of climate change impacts to which many climate scientists themselves are victim provides additional evidence in support of the thesis in a related post on climate activism by climate scientists. Their strong emotional attachment to the hypothesis makes it impossible for climate scientists to carry out its objective, unbiased, and credible evaluation.
4. In the related post it is argued that the involvement of climate scientists in climate change activism is antithetical to the scientific credentials of climate science because emotional and activism needs and aspirations of climate scientists that are related to their research question make it impossible for them to carry out unbiased and objective scientific inquiry in that same research question. The credibility of climate science as a science can be rejected on this basis alone.
5.  [LINK TO RELATED POST ON ACTIVISM IN SCIENCE] . EXCERPT: Unbiased and objective scientific inquiry is not possible if the scientist has an agenda related to the research question in terms of his or her activism needs. In climate science the hidden hand of activism favors findings that support activism against fossil fuels. In this case, the researcher’s activism needs can be served with an excessive reliance on climate models. This is because climate models are pre-programmed with a well connected causation sequence from CO2 emissions to rising atmospheric CO2 concentration to warming driven by way of climate sensitivity. Thus, empirical tests of theory will always support the theory because climate models are an expression of theory. This is why objective scientific inquiry requires that empirical tests of theory must be independent of theory. In climate science, the use of climate models corrupts this fundamental principle of empirical tests.

POSTSCRIPT

CLIMATE SCIENTIST: I LOOK AT THIS ISSUE THROUGH THE LENS OF MY BABY NIECES WHO ARE 1-1/2 AND 3 YEARS OLD. AND WHEN I LOOK AT THESE BABIES AND I THINK ABOUT WHAT THE WORLD WILL BE LIKE IN 20 YEARS IF WE DON’T ACT, I AM REALLY AFRAID.

A CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS RESPONSE: HOW FAR THE TERMITES HAVE SPREAD!  AND HOW LONG AND WELL THEY HAVE DINED!

CLIMATE SCIENCE GRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Randall, Rosemary. “Loss and climate change: The cost of parallel narratives.” Ecopsychology 1.3 (2009): 118-129. Climate change discourses present two parallel narratives—one about the problems of climate change and the other about the solutions. In narratives about the problem of climate change, loss features dramatically and terrifyingly but is located in the future or in places remote from Western audiences. In narratives about solutions, loss is completely excised. This article suggests that this division into parallel narratives is the result of a defensive process of splitting and projection, which protects the public from the need to truly face and mourn the losses associated with climate change. Its effect is to produce monstrous and terrifying images of the future accompanied by bland and ineffective proposals for change now. A more sophisticated understanding of the processes of loss and mourning, which allowed them to be restored to public narratives, would help to release energy for realistic and lasting programs of change. Psychoanalytic models of grief and loss may be particularly helpful in achieving this understanding. Drawing on practical work with small groups in Cambridge, UK, the article proposes that William Worden’s typology of the tasks of mourning and their negatives provides an appropriate model both for developing a culture of truthfulness, leadership, and appropriate support and for developing practical programs that would help members of the public to work through acceptance of changes that may threaten aspiration, culture, security, and identity.
2. Höijer, Birgitta. “Emotional anchoring and objectification in the media reporting on climate change.” Public Understanding of Science 19.6 (2010): 717-731.  Using the framework of social representations theory — more precisely the concepts of anchoring and objectification — this article analyses the emotions on which the media reporting on climate change draws. Emotions are thereby regarded as discursive phenomena. A qualitative analysis of two series in Swedish media on climate change, one in a tabloid newspaper and one in public service television news, is presented showing how the verbal and visual representations are attached to emotions of fear, hope, guilt, compassion and nostalgia. It is further argued that emotional representations of climate change may on the one hand enhance public engagement in the issue, but on the other hand may draw attention away from climate change as the abstract, long-term phenomenon of a statistical character that it is.
3. Doherty, Thomas J., and Susan Clayton. “The psychological impacts of global climate change.” American Psychologist 66.4 (2011): 265.  An appreciation of the psychological impacts of global climate change entails recognizing the complexity and multiple meanings associated with climate change; situating impacts within other social, technological, and ecological transitions; and recognizing mediators and moderators of impacts. This article describes three classes of psychological impacts: direct (e.g., acute or traumatic effects of extreme weather events and a changed environment); indirect (e.g., threats to emotional well-being based on observation of impacts and concern or uncertainty about future risks); and psychosocial (e.g., chronic social and community effects of heat, drought, migrations, and climate-related conflicts, and postdisaster adjustment). Responses include providing psychological interventions in the wake of acute impacts and reducing the vulnerabilities contributing to their severity; promoting emotional resiliency and empowerment in the context of indirect impacts; and acting at systems and policy levels to address broad psychosocial impacts. The challenge of climate change calls for increased ecological literacy, a widened ethical responsibility, investigations into a range of psychological and social adaptations, and an allocation of resources and training to improve psychologists’ competency in addressing climate change–related impacts.
4. Willox, Ashlee Cunsolo. “Climate change as the work of mourning.” Ethics & the Environment 17.2 (2012): 137-164.  Climate change discourse often negates grief and mourning associated with the resulting environmental alterations. Mourning, however, holds potential for expanding climate change discourse in politically and ethically productive ways. This article extends the analysis of mourning to non-humans through a recognition of shared vulnerability, and examines the ways in which constituting non-humans as mournable expands climate change discourse, research, ethics, and politics. By transcending humanism to ground an ethical ecology of mourning, the ways in which thinking climate change as the work of mourning can contribute to an ecological democracy-to-come, and achieve a more inclusive political order, will be considered.
5. Willis, Alette. “Constructing a story to live by: ethics, emotions and academic practice in the context of climate change.” Emotion, Space and Society 5.1 (2012): 52-59. Starting from the concept of the narrative-self, this paper explores the everyday ethics of research and academic practice as seen through the storied-experiences of two women who have chosen their careers through their desire to contribute meaningfully to the resolution of environmental issues. Selves are embedded in language, in relationships, in societies, in places and in ecologies. However, selves are also co-constructed in dialogue between teller and listener or writer and reader. In the intersubjective space opened up through dialogue lies the potential for change at both personal and societal levels. Enacting a narrative ethics of reading and writing that draws on counselling practices, this paper brings my own affective, embodied story into dialogue with the published memoir of Alison Watt. As we both struggle to find stories we can live by within the contexts of specific academic and research communities we begin to challenge the narratives and discourses that dominate our respective fields of field biology and human geography. The emotional and embodied practice of narrative ethics is offered as one possible response to the overemphasis on technical rationality within our society and its institutions. I argue that the development of practical wisdom (phronesis) is essential to addressing issues such as climate change, which are not simply technical problems but are fundamentally rooted in the human condition.
6. Moser, Susanne C. “Reflections on climate change communication research and practice in the second decade of the 21st century: what more is there to say?.” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 7.3 (2016): 345-369.  Appreciable advances have been made in recent years in raising climate change awareness and enhancing support for climate and energy policies. There also has been considerable progress in understanding of how to effectively communicate climate change. This progress raises questions about the future directions of communication research and practice. What more is there to say? Through a selective literature review, focused on contributions since a similar stock‐taking exercise in 2010,1 the article delineates significant advances, emerging trends and topics, and tries to chart critical needs and opportunities going forward. It describes the climate communication landscape midway through the second decade of the 21st century to contextualize the challenges faced by climate change communication as a scientific field. Despite the important progress made on key scientific challenges laid out in 2010, persistent challenges remain (superficial public understanding of climate change, transitioning from awareness and concern to action, communicating in deeply politicized and polarized environments, and dealing with the growing sense of overwhelm and hopelessness). In addition, new challenges and topics have emerged that communication researchers and practitioners now face. The study reflects on the crucial need to improve the interaction between climate communication research and practice, and calls for dedicated science‐practice boundary work focused on climate change communication. A set of new charges to climate communicators and researchers are offered in hopes to move climate change communication to a new place—at once more humble yet also more ambitious than ever before, befitting to the crucial role it could play in the cultural work humanity faces with climate change.
7. Cunsolo, Ashlee, and Neville R. Ellis. “Ecological grief as a mental health response to climate change-related loss.” Nature Climate Change 8.4 (2018): 275.  Climate change is increasingly understood to impact mental health through multiple pathways of risk, including intense feelings of grief as people suffer climate-related losses to valued species, ecosystems and landscapes. Despite growing research interest, ecologically driven grief, or ‘ecological grief’, remains an underdeveloped area of inquiry. We argue that grief is a natural and legitimate response to ecological loss, and one that may become more common as climate impacts worsen. Drawing upon our own research in Northern Canada and the Australian Wheatbelt, combined with a synthesis of the literature, we offer future research directions for the study of ecological grief.

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