Month: December 2017

Is the 97% climate consensus Fake News?

Watts Up With That?

Guest essay by Jim Steele

A recent survey conducted by Weather Central and George Mason University makes this claim: TV Weathercasters’ Views of Climate Change Appear to Be Rapidly Evolving

Meteorologists examine causes of weather change every day. They are the scientists most likely to understand when unusual weather extremes are weather or climate change. Thus they have been polled every year about climate change.

However most don’t respond. Basically three fourths of weather scientists choose NOT to get entangled in a political, non-scientific debate. In 2015 the response rate was 22%, just 32% in 2016 and in 2017 just 22%. And as true for most skeptics, most agreed climate change is happening. However the question is: What is the cause of that change?

Of 2017’s respondents, only 15% thought climate change was entirely due to humans, while 34% thought 60 to 80% could be attributed to human activity. However…

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2013 marks record year for the number of volcanoes erupting across the planet

The Extinction Protocol

V 2013
December 5, 2013 – GEOLOGY – This year will go down on record, as seeing the most volcanic eruptions recorded in modern history. The previous number was set in 2010, at 82 volcanic eruptions for the year. The number of volcanoes erupting across the planet has been steadily rising from a meager number of just 55 recorded in 1990. While most scientists may readily dismiss any significance to the latest figures and may be quick to say the planet is just experiencing normal geological activity, it does raise other concerns about just what may be transpiring within the interior of our planet. The average number of volcanic eruptions per year should be about 50 to 60; as of December 5, 2013, we already at 83. Volcanic eruptions are one way the planet dissipates a dangerous build-up of heat, magma, and pressurized gases. The planet’s outer core is thought to flirt with…

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Where The Temperature Rules The Sun

Watts Up With That?

I’ve held for a long time that there is a regulatory mechanism in the tropics that keeps the earth’s temperature within very narrow bounds on average (e.g. ± 0.3°C over the 20th Century). This mechanism is the timing and amount of the daily emergence of the cumulus cloud field, and the timing and emergence of thunderstorms.

Now, the current paradigm is that the sun rules the temperature, and our daily experience seems to bear that out. When the amount of sun reaching the surface goes up, the temperature goes up. This has led to the claim that the temperature must perforce follow the forcing in a linear fashion. For those interested in the math, the claim is that changes in temperature are equal to changes in forcing times a constant called the “climate sensitivity”. And much energy has been wasted trying to determine the value of that constant.

Despite hundreds…

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Study: finds a solar amplification mechanism by which solar activity & cosmic rays control climate

Watts Up With That?

The HockeySchtick writes: A paper published today in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics finds another potential solar amplification mechanism mediated by galactic cosmic rays [GCRs] (and distinct from Svensmark’s cosmic ray theory of climate). The author demonstrates:

  • Solar modulation of GCR [Galactic Cosmic Rays] is translated down to the Earth climate.
  • The mediator of solar influence are energetic particles.
  • GCR impacts the O3 [ozone] budget in the lower stratosphere.
  • O3 influences the temperature and humidity near tropopause, and greenhouse effect.
  • Effectiveness of this mechanism depends on geomagnetic field intensity.

“In this paper we show that bi-decadal variability of solar magnetic field, modulating the intensity of galactic cosmic ray (GCR) at the outer boundary of heliosphere, could be easily tracked down to the Earth’s surface. The mediator of this influence is the lower stratospheric ozone, while the mechanism of signal translation consists of: (i) GCR impact on the lower stratospheric…

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Wildfires: Separating Demagoguery from the Science

Watts Up With That?

Guest essay by Jim Steele Director emeritus Sierra Nevada Field Campus, San Francisco State University and author of Landscapes & Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism

Published in Range Magazine winter 2017/2018

In 2016 Climate Central, notorious global warming demagogues, published the article Climate Change’s Fingerprints All Over California Wildfires. Ignoring a well-documented history of natural climate change, ignoring the ill-advised 20th century policy of fire suppression, and ignoring the increased percentage (~80 to 90%) of fires ignited by humans, Climate Central tried to persuade the public that California fires, (as well as all recent fires) are “part of a dire global warming-fueled trend toward larger, more frequent and intense wildfires.”

Whether you believe recent warming was natural or caused by rising CO2, warmer temperatures have promoted better growing conditions and that has been good for man and beast. During the cold Little Ice Age tree lines retreated. From…

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