Climate: LNG in B.C. vs Alberta tarsands

[agentaqua]

http://www.theguardian.com/environm...gn-wealth-fund-dumps-dozens-of-coal-companies
World's biggest sovereign wealth fund dumps dozens of coal companies
Norway’s giant fund removes investments made risky by climate change and other environmental concerns, including coal, oil sands, cement and gold mining

BEH89X Spitsbergen, Svalbard, Longyearbyen, remains of the old coal mine

Part of a mining platform at a disused coal mine in Spitsbergen, Svalbard, Norway. The country’s £556bn sovereign wealth fund, GPFG, has published its divestment details in its first report on responsible investing. Photograph: Alamy

Damian Carrington
@dpcarrington
Thursday 5 February 2015 17.43 GMT

The world’s richest sovereign wealth fund removed 40 coal mining companies from its portfolio in 2014, citing the risk they face from regulatory action on climate change.

Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), worth $850bn (£556bn) and founded on the nation’s oil and gas wealth, revealed a total of 114 companies had been dumped on environmental and climate grounds in its first report on responsible investing, released on Thursday. The companies divested also include tar sands producers, cement makers and gold miners.

As part of a fast-growing campaign, over $50bn in fossil fuel company stocks have been divested by 180 organisations on the basis that their business models are incompatible with the pledge by the world’s governments to tackle global warming. But the GPFG is the highest profile institution to divest to date.

A series of analyses have shown that only a quarter of known and exploitable fossil fuels can be burned if temperatures are to be kept below 2C, the internationally agreed danger limit. Bank of England governor Mark Carney, World Bank president Jim Yong Kim and others have warned investors that action on climate change would leave many current fossil fuel assets worthless.

“Our risk-based approach means that we exit sectors and areas where we see elevated levels of risk to our investments in the long term,” said Marthe Skaar, spokeswoman for GPFG, which has $40bn invested in fossil fuel companies. “Companies with particularly high greenhouse gas emissions may be exposed to risk from regulatory or other changes leading to a fall in demand.”

She said GPFG had divested from 22 companies because of their high carbon emissions: 14 coal miners, five tar sand producers, two cement companies and one coal-based electricity generator. In addition, 16 coal miners linked to deforestation in Indonesia and India were dumped, as were two US coal companies involved in mountain-top removal. The GPFG did not reveal the names of the companies or the value of the divestments.

“One of the largest global investment institutions is winding down its coal interests, as it is clear the business model for coal no longer works with western markets already in a death spiral, and signs of Chinese demand peaking,” said James Leaton, research director at the Carbon Tracker Initiative, which analyses the risk of fossil fuel assets being stranded.

A report by Goldman Sachs in January also called time on the use of coal for electricity generation: “Just as a worker celebrating their 65th birthday can settle into a more sedate lifestyle while they look back on past achievements, we argue that thermal coal has reached its retirement age.” Goldman Sachs downgraded its long term price forecast for coal by 18%.

On Wednesday, a group of medical organisations called for the health sector to divest from fossil fuels as it had from tobacco. The £18bn Wellcome Trust, one of the world’s biggest funders of medical research , said “climate change is one of the greatest challenges to global health” but rejected the call to divest or reveal its total fossil fuel holdings.

In January, Axa Investment Managers warned the reputation of fossil fuel companies were at immediate risk from the divestment campaign and Shell unexpectedly backed a shareholder demand to assess whether the company’s business model is compatible with global goals to tackle climate change.

 

[agentaqua]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/glob...-first-step-for-universities/article22799215/
HARRISON, HOBERG AND TINDALL
Getting rid of petroleum stocks is a crucial first step for universities

KATHRYN HARRISON, GEORGE HOBERG AND DAVID TINDALL
Contributed to The Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, Feb. 05 2015, 7:40 AM EST
Last updated Thursday, Feb. 05 2015, 7:40 AM EST

Kathryn Harrison, George Hoberg, and David Tindall are faculty members in, respectively, Political Science, Forest Resources Management and Sociology at the University of British Columbia.

Faculty members at the University of British Columbia are voting this week on a resolution calling on the university to divest its endowment from fossil-fuel stocks over a period of five years. UBC students voted overwhelmingly in favour of divestment last year.

In our experience, critics of divestment by universities and other public institutions typically offer three arguments: That moral principles have no place in institutional investments; that those who advocate divestment are naive, or even hypocritical, because they rely on fossil fuels themselves; and that the focus on fossil-fuel producers is misplaced because they are only serving consumer demand. We have considered and reject each of these three points.

First, it’s true that the divestment movement is predicated on a moral argument. Our students do not want their education – an investment in their future – to be funded by profits from industries whose activities are inherently detrimental to that future. The fact that others might be happy to consume or profit from fossil fuels does not detract from that principled position.

Some have argued that while individuals are free to invest their own money according to their principles, public institutions must seek only to maximize returns. We disagree. Universities, churches, and governments make moral decisions on behalf of their communities all the time. We see no reason that investments should be any different. Nor should the status quo be exempt from moral scrutiny. That universities currently seek to profit from fossil fuels is not morally neutral. It is a choice to support activities that their own researchers have concluded are antithetical to ecological sustainability, human welfare and social justice.

Second, it is true that those who call for divestment rely on fossil fuels in their own lives. It is impossible to avoid reliance on fossil fuels in today’s economy, however committed one is to reducing one’s personal carbon footprint. But to argue that by living in the modern world one forgoes the right to call for change is to dismiss out of hand almost all possibilities for social change.

Third, it’s often argued that divestment simply won’t work, because today’s consumers will continue to demand fossil fuels. But that can and must change. Just as tobacco companies worked feverishly to challenge the scientific conclusion that cigarettes cause cancer and to thwart public policies to deter smoking, so too have fossil-fuel companies led the charge against equally certain climate science and policies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Divestment challenges those firms’ social license, just as anti-smoking campaigns did for the tobacco industry. It alerts individuals, as both consumers and citizens, to the impact of their decisions.

That is critical because, at the end of the day, there is no question that divestment is a second-best solution. Government action, ideally via a national carbon price, is the preferred response to climate change.

Unfortunately, government leadership on climate change has been in short supply in Canada. We have seen ten national climate plans over 25 years, none of which has even come close to meeting its targets. In the meantime, Canada’s emissions have increased steadily. Policies have been promised but not implemented, a trend exemplified by the federal government’s recent abandonment of its commitment to regulate emissions from oil production – a sector that accounts for most of Canada’s emissions growth.

Today’s youth are understandably impatient with this leadership vacuum. In creating the divestment movement they are also facilitating the preferred solution of government action. In mobilizing principled rejection of an unsustainable industry, divestment helps to undermine the political influence of fossil-fuel companies and thus to create greater political space for elected leaders to adopt much-needed policies to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.

The divestment movement has emerged as a powerful voice for our students’ generation, demanding, justifiably, that their universities, markets and ultimately our elected representatives do better. We stand with them.

 

[agentaqua]

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/j...e=fb&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=socialmedia

Jackson Morris’s Blog

Pennsylvanians Overwhelmingly Want To Cut Carbon Emissions From Existing Power Plants, Promote Clean Energy
Jackson Morris
Posted February 5, 2015

The idea of a state-crafted plan to curb carbon pollution from existing power plants is wildly popular among Pennsylvanians. So, too, is clean energy--energy efficiency along with pollution-free sources such as wind and solar power. That's the big news out in a bipartisan poll released today. And it's news many grandstanding state and national decision-makers should listen to as they promote legislation that would make it more difficult to comply with the EPA's Clean Power Plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants or would nullify it entirely. While some think they'll score points with constituents by opposing the CPP, and by opposing the creation of state carbon-cutting plans that are an integral part of it, an overwhelming majority of Pennsylvanians--83 percent--say our state should craft an effective, clean-energy-focused plan to meet the new standards. (The survey was conducted by the bipartisan polling team of Public Opinion Strategies and Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates.)

Pennsylvania solar.jpgPennsylvanians overwhelmingly support using clean energy, like the 105 solar panels being installed at Littlestown Veterinary Hospital in Littlestown, to help the cut dangerous carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants. (Photo: U.S. Department of Agriculture)

My fellow Pennsylvanians are smart people and they know that the benefits of getting on board with the Clean Power Plan abound: More than six in 10 say clean energy sources such as wind and solar power will create jobs here in Pennsylvania. And a plurality--almost 50 percent--says using these sources will cut energy costs, rather than raise them. (Its important to note that one of the best ways for individual states, Pennsylvania included, to maximize these benefits is through a so-called "mass-based," regional approach like the successful Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which you can read more about here. It's proven to substantially cut power-plant pollution while bringing impressive job and economic growth to the nine-state Northeast/Mid-Atlantic region. Not only that, compliance costs using a regional approach would be 30 percent lower than a single-state approach, according to a recent analysis by our regional electric grid operator, PJM. Pennsylvania is uniquely positioned to play a key role in these regional PJM compliance discussions with neighboring states).

The benefits of the CPP don't stop with new jobs and lower energy costs, either. Complying with the EPA's plan can save the lives of as many as 3,300 Pennsylvanians between 2020 and 2030 and prevent 710 hospitalizations, by cutting down on dangerous co-pollutants--sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter--that spew out of power-plant smokestacks along with the carbon dioxide. Indeed, the health impacts of power-plant pollution and the global warming it fuels should be of significant concern to us Keystone Staters, as a new fact sheet NRDC released yesterday, about climate change's impact on Pennsylvanians' health, demonstrates. From Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, from Erie to Chester, we are vulnerable to climate-related health threats from worsening air quality, extreme heat, dangerous storms and flooding, and increasing exposures to serious, insect-borne illnesses such as Lyme disease and West Nile virus.

Some politicians, including an unfortunate number of attention-seekers here in our state, seem to think campaigning against the CPP and clean energy in general will curry favor for them with voters. But this new poll shows that creating a state plan to cut carbon emissions from existing power plants, even in this coal-heavy state, can burnish an elected official's image and would reflect well on our new governor, Tom Wolf. Indeed, almost half of poll respondents remarked that creating a state plan would make them view Governor Wolf more favorably. (Only seven percent would view him less favorably if he created a CPP compliance plan.)

The poll also shows how much we want clean power here in Pennsylvania: very much, indeed. Ninety-three percent support expanding utility programs to help consumers improve their homes' energy efficiency and save money on their electric bills, and 88 percent endorsed increasing the use of wind and solar power here in our state.

So what's the take-away here? It's simple: Pennsylvanians strongly support the CPP and think well of elected officials who will use clean energy to cut power plant pollution and realize the CPP's potential. Our state and national leadership would do well to take note.

 

[agentaqua]

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/02/05/3619802/ceos-are-important-people/

14 High-Profile CEOs Want To Rid The Global Economy Of Carbon Emissions By 2050
BY EMILY ATKIN POSTED ON FEBRUARY 5, 2015 AT 12:45 PM

Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington is part of the B Team, which is calling on international leaders to agree to a global goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions worldwide by 2050.
CREDIT: AMY SUSSMAN/AP IMAGES

Fourteen high-profile business leaders and CEOs are calling on international leaders to agree to a goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions worldwide by 2050, arguing the ambitious goal would lead to “new jobs, cleaner air, better health, lower poverty and greater energy security.”

Led by high-profile billionaire and Virgin founder Richard Branson, the B Team — which includes Huffington Post Media Group President Arianna Huffington, U.N. Foundation CEO Kathy Calvin, and Unilever CEO Paul Polman — directed their message at the 196 nations that are expected to meet at the Paris climate talks at the end of the year. The meeting is widely considered the last chance for a global agreement that could feasibly keep the rise in global average temperatures under 2°C.

The group also urged business leaders to commit to emitting the equivalent of no carbon emissions in their long-term plans. A net-zero goal would mean dramatically reducing emissions while offsetting any remaining emissions with actions that reduce or absorb greenhouse gas pollution, like planting trees, using technologies that capture carbon, or funding clean energy ventures.

They acknowledged that the goal would be difficult to meet, but said reducing carbon emissions drastically would be key to unleashing innovation, driving investment in clean energy, and creating jobs. Not to mention, they added, the benefits of avoiding the potentially disastrous side effects of unmitigated climate change.

“A target of net-zero emissions by 2050 is not only desirable but necessary,” Polman said in an accompanying statement. “This is not going to be easy, but the earlier we act, the greater the economic opportunities will be.”

Beyond the general risk of more frequent weather extremes, climate change presents a unique challenge to businesses. Right now, companies factor a large number of risks into their business plans, and good businesses set aside capital to be able to operate if those risks materialize.

As Jeff Spross has noted before for ClimateProgress, America’s current economy is built upon assumptions of a certain range of “normal” weather outcomes. But those assumptions will change with unmitigated global warming, which is expected to bring what we currently view as “extreme” weather closer to normal. That means more monetary risks for businesses, not just in terms of weather disasters, but in increased extreme heat cutting down on outdoor work; more demand on the electrical grid to keep buildings cool; lost agriculture; higher mortality; more crime.

The choice for businesses, then, is either to prepare financially for those risks or to change the outcome. Even beyond the specific goal of zero net carbon emissions, the B Team is calling on international leaders and businesses to do the latter, arguing that there is more opportunity for economic growth in climate mitigation than there is in adaptation (if adaptation is possible).

“Setting a net-zero GHG emissions target by 2050 will drive innovation, grow jobs, build prosperity and secure a better world for what will soon be 9 billion people,” Branson said. “Why would we wait any longer to do that?”

 

[agentaqua]

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31020811

28 January 2015 Last updated at 08:15 ET

'World can cut carbon emissions and live well'

These are just two predictions for 2050 of an online tool developed by the government to consider options for cutting carbon emissions.

The Global Calculator uses data reviewed by international experts to look at scenarios for meeting the 2C target, which scientists say is needed to avoid dangerous climate change.

Led by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc), the model of the world's energy, land and food systems suggests living standards can be maintained, but only by making sweeping changes to agriculture, transport, food and fuel.

There would need be hundreds of million electric cars on the road by 2050, and the amount of CO2 emitted per unit of electricity would need to fall by at least 90%.

Ambitious targets
Consumers would also need to think about switching to diets high in vegetables or eat meat from animals raised through intensive farming.

Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey said: "For the first time this Global Calculator shows that everyone in the world can prosper while limiting global temperature rises to 2C, preventing the most serious impacts of climate change.

"Yet the calculator is also very clear that we must act now to change how we use and generate energy and how we use our land if we are going to achieve this green growth."

Dr Mike Cherrett of Climate-KIC, the EU climate initiative that co-led the project, added: "The calculator clearly highlights that we can meet our 2C target while maintaining good lifestyles - but we need to set ambitious targets on all fronts and use innovation to address climate change."

The global calculator builds on Decc's UK calculator, published in 2010. It is being offered to other governments for use in the run-up to crucial climate negotiations in Paris at the end of the year

 

[GLG]

LOL, knew you would not get it.

Q

Answer the question .... can I use your quote or not?

 

[GLG]

Look at what your SUV did in 1934.

In January 1934, your SUV made much of the US 10-20 degrees above normal. I hope you feel properly guilty.

So can I use your quote? You afraid of something?
Your proud of this one are you not?
You can read a graph right?
Got second thoughts?
That's the problem with you lot of deniers, you don't think.

 

[OldBlackDog]

Inconvenient study: Seafloor volcano pulses may alter climate – models may be wrong

New data show strikingly regular patterns, from weeks to eons

seafloor-volcanoes
This topographic map of Earth’s ocean floor in the Atlantic ocean reveals thousands of sub-oceanic volcanoes along the mid-Atlantic ridge. Source: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/346/6205/32.summary

From The Earth Institute at Columbia University:

Vast ranges of volcanoes hidden under the oceans are presumed by scientists to be the gentle giants of the planet, oozing lava at slow, steady rates along mid-ocean ridges. But a new study shows that they flare up on strikingly regular cycles, ranging from two weeks to 100,000 years–and, that they erupt almost exclusively during the first six months of each year. The pulses–apparently tied to short- and long-term changes in earth’s orbit, and to sea levels–may help trigger natural climate swings. Scientists have already speculated that volcanic cycles on land emitting large amounts of carbon dioxide might influence climate; but up to now there was no evidence from submarine volcanoes. The findings suggest that models of earth’s natural climate dynamics, and by extension human-influenced climate change, may have to be adjusted. The study appears this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

“People have ignored seafloor volcanoes on the idea that their influence is small–but that’s because they are assumed to be in a steady state, which they’re not,” said the study’s author, marine geophysicist Maya Tolstoy of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “They respond to both very large forces, and to very small ones, and that tells us that we need to look at them much more closely.” A related study by a separate team this week in the journal Science bolsters Tolstoy’s case by showing similar long-term patterns of submarine volcanism in an Antarctic region Tolstoy did not study.

Volcanically active mid-ocean ridges crisscross earth’s seafloors like stitching on a baseball, stretching some 37,000 miles. They are the growing edges of giant tectonic plates; as lavas push out, they form new areas of seafloor, which comprise some 80 percent of the planet’s crust. Conventional wisdom holds that they erupt at a fairly constant rate–but Tolstoy finds that the ridges are actually now in a languid phase. Even at that, they produce maybe eight times more lava annually than land volcanoes. Due to the chemistry of their magmas, the carbon dioxide they are thought to emit is currently about the same as, or perhaps a little less than, from land volcanoes–about 88 million metric tons a year. But were the undersea chains to stir even a little bit more, their CO2 output would shoot up, says Tolstoy.

Some scientists think volcanoes may act in concert with Milankovitch cycles–repeating changes in the shape of earth’s solar orbit, and the tilt and direction of its axis–to produce suddenly seesawing hot and cold periods. The major one is a 100,000-year cycle in which the planet’s orbit around the sun changes from more or less an annual circle into an ellipse that annually brings it closer or farther from the sun. Recent ice ages seem to build up through most of the cycle; but then things suddenly warm back up near the orbit’s peak eccentricity. The causes are not clear.

Enter volcanoes. Researchers have suggested that as icecaps build on land, pressure on underlying volcanoes also builds, and eruptions are suppressed. But when warming somehow starts and the ice begins melting, pressure lets up, and eruptions surge. They belch CO2 that produces more warming, which melts more ice, which creates a self-feeding effect that tips the planet suddenly into a warm period. A 2009 paper from Harvard University says that land volcanoes worldwide indeed surged six to eight times over background levels during the most recent deglaciation, 12,000 to 7,000 years ago. The corollary would be that undersea volcanoes do the opposite: as earth cools, sea levels may drop 100 meters, because so much water gets locked into ice. This relieves pressure on submarine volcanoes, and they erupt more. At some point, could the increased CO2 from undersea eruptions start the warming that melts the ice covering volcanoes on land?

That has been a mystery, partly because undersea eruptions are almost impossible to observe. However, Tolstoy and other researchers recently have been able to closely monitor 10 submarine eruption sites using sensitive new seismic instruments. They have also produced new high-resolution maps showing outlines of past lava flows. Tolstoy analyzed some 25 years of seismic data from ridges in the Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic oceans, plus maps showing past activity in the south Pacific.

The long-term eruption data, spread over more than 700,000 years, showed that during the coldest times, when sea levels are low, undersea volcanism surges, producing visible bands of hills. When things warm up and sea levels rise to levels similar to the present, lava erupts more slowly, creating bands of lower topography. Tolstoy attributes this not only to the varying sea level, but to closely related changes in earth’s orbit. When the orbit is more elliptical, Earth gets squeezed and unsqueezed by the sun’s gravitational pull at a rapidly varying rate as it spins daily–a process that she thinks tends to massage undersea magma upward, and help open the tectonic cracks that let it out. When the orbit is fairly (though not completely) circular, as it is now, the squeezing/unsqueezing effect is minimized, and there are fewer eruptions.

The idea that remote gravitational forces influence volcanism is mirrored by the short-term data, says Tolstoy. She says the seismic data suggest that today, undersea volcanoes pulse to life mainly during periods that come every two weeks. That is the schedule upon which combined gravity from the moon and sun cause ocean tides to reach their lowest points, thus subtly relieving pressure on volcanoes below. Seismic signals interpreted as eruptions followed fortnightly low tides at eight out of nine study sites. Furthermore, Tolstoy found that all known modern eruptions occur from January through June. January is the month when Earth is closest to the sun, July when it is farthest–a period similar to the squeezing/unsqueezing effect Tolstoy sees in longer-term cycles. “If you look at the present-day eruptions, volcanoes respond even to much smaller forces than the ones that might drive climate,” she said.

Daniel Fornari, a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution not involved in the research, called the study “a very important contribution.” He said it was unclear whether the contemporary seismic measurements signal actual lava flows or just seafloor rumbles and cracking. But, he said, the study “clearly could have important implications for better quantifying and characterizing our assessment of climate variations over decadal to tens to hundreds of thousands of years cycles.”

Edward Baker, a senior ocean scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said, “The most interesting takeaway from this paper is that it provides further evidence that the solid Earth, and the air and water all operate as a single system.”

###

The research for this paper was funded in large part by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Copies of the paper, “Mid-ocean ridge eruptions as a climate valve” are available from the author, or the Earth Institute press office. (I have a request in for a copy and will post excerpts when it is supplied -Anthony Update: The author kindly provided a pre-print copy, linked belowm plus a selected figure, note the uptick in the present)

Mid-ocean ridge eruptions as a climate valve

Maya Tolstoy

Abstract:

Seafloor eruption rates, and mantle melting fueling eruptions, may be influenced by sea-level and crustal loading cycles at scales from fortnightly to 100 kyr. Recent mid-ocean ridge eruptions occur primarily during neap tides and the first 6 months of the year, suggesting sensitivity to minor changes in tidal forcing and orbital eccentricity. An ~100kyr periodicity in fast-spreading seafloor bathymetry, and relatively low present-day eruption rates, at a time of high sea-level and decreasing orbital eccentricity suggest a longer term sensitivity to sea-level and orbital variations associated with Milankovitch cycles. Seafloor spreading is considered a small but steady contributor of CO2 to climate cycles on the 100 kyr time scale, however this assumes a consistent short-term eruption rate. Pulsing of seafloor volcanic activity may feed back into climate cycles, possibly contributing to glacial/inter-glacial cycles, the abrupt end of ice ages, and dominance of the 100 kyr cycle.

The paper: Tolstoy_inpress_GRL_2015 (PDF)

Tolstoy figure 3A:

tolstoy_figure3a

 

[GLG]

The Scientists That Acknowledge The Global Warming Pause May Surprise You
Written by CCD Editor on 05 February 2015.
Twilight Zone.

So are the people who claim that global warming has paused truly living in "an alternate reality that is detached from real word observations?" It seems only reasonable that we see what the global warming scientists have to say on the matter. After all, they are the experts in climate research and climate modeling, and they would never fabricate a story and "continue to demonstrate their willful ignorance by repeating the same false story."

Those in climate academia have championed and awarded these folks, and the media have willingly spread the gospel: climate change is real, the science is settled, catastrophe awaits, and global warming hasn’t stopped, except it has, regardless of what the satellite data is showing (which is likely the most accurate way to measure land-based and tropospheric temperatures).

Are the skeptics really living in an alternate reality? (YES) A reality “not only of sight and sound, but of mind (Yes)? A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination.” (Yes) That’s not the intro to the new and improved Cosmos, but rather The Twilight Zone, whereby the former borrowed heavily from the latter, especially in the episode on climate change. But that’s a whole other article.

We’ll stay firmly planted in this reality (********) and see what the leading climate experts have to say about the 18-year-long-and-counting global warming pause. (h/t to Gator and Jimbo for amassing the following citations)

Dr. Kevin E. Trenberth, a climate scientist and lead author of the 2001 and 2007 IPCC Scientific Assessment of Climate Change, said a little over a year ago in Nature News Feature:

“The 1997 to ’98 El Niño event was a trigger for the changes in the Pacific, and I think that’s very probably the beginning of the hiatus,” says Kevin Trenberth.

What nonsense....... Just what I would expect from you OBD.
Why don't you search Trenberth on youtube and watch the videos.
We all know you can comprehend a science paper so youtube is our only hope for you.
OBD what you are doing here is what you will be judged by..... A measure of a man, so to speak.
So far the way I look at it...... not much.... Man up son.
[AcJ33Zf985Q]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcJ33Zf985Q

 

[OldBlackDog]

So are the people who claim that global warming has paused truly living in "an alternate reality that is detached from real word observations?" It seems only reasonable that we see what the global warming scientists have to say on the matter. After all, they are the experts in climate research and climate modeling, and they would never fabricate a story and "continue to demonstrate their willful ignorance by repeating the same false story."

The Scientists That Acknowledge The Global Warming Pause May Surprise You
Written by CCD Editor on 05 February 2015.
Twilight Zone.

So are the people who claim that global warming has paused truly living in "an alternate reality that is detached from real word observations?" It seems only reasonable that we see what the global warming scientists have to say on the matter. After all, they are the experts in climate research and climate modeling, and they would never fabricate a story and "continue to demonstrate their willful ignorance by repeating the same false story."

Those in climate academia have championed and awarded these folks, and the media have willingly spread the gospel: climate change is real, the science is settled, catastrophe awaits, and global warming hasn’t stopped, except it has, regardless of what the satellite data is showing (which is likely the most accurate way to measure land-based and tropospheric temperatures).

Are the skeptics really living in an alternate reality? A reality “not only of sight and sound, but of mind? A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination.” That’s not the intro to the new and improved Cosmos, but rather The Twilight Zone, whereby the former borrowed heavily from the latter, especially in the episode on climate change. But that’s a whole other article.

We’ll stay firmly planted in this reality and see what the leading climate experts have to say about the 18-year-long-and-counting global warming pause. (h/t to Gator and Jimbo for amassing the following citations)

Dr. Kevin E. Trenberth, a climate scientist and lead author of the 2001 and 2007 IPCC Scientific Assessment of Climate Change, said a little over a year ago in Nature News Feature:

“The 1997 to ’98 El Niño event was a trigger for the changes in the Pacific, and I think that’s very probably the beginning of the hiatus,” says Kevin Trenberth.

Now, I’m not saying that Dr. Kevin Trenberth, climate modeler extraordinaire, would ever say something that wasn’t true, so let’s check in on someone else and also more recent:

Dr. Hans Gleisner – Geophysical Research Letters – 2015
Recent global warming hiatus dominated by low latitude temperature trends in surface and troposphere data
Over the last 15 years, global mean surface temperatures exhibit only weak trends… Omission of successively larger polar regions from the global-mean temperature calculations, in both tropospheric and surface data sets, shows that data gaps at high latitudes can not explain the observed differences between the hiatus and the pre-hiatus period….
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GL062596/abstract

Seems that global warming skeptics aren’t the only ones who’ve noticed that the manmade global warming theory doesn’t pass the sniff test.

While there are indeed people living in an alternate universe (who deserve the best medications possible), the following citations are from people who are firmly planted on Earth, all trying to describe or explain away the global warming pause that doesn't exist. Citations sorted by date:

Dr. Phil Jones – CRU emails – 5th July, 2005
“The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK it has but it is only 7 years of data and it isn’t statistically significant….”

Dr. Phil Jones – CRU emails – 7th May, 2009
‘Bottom line: the ‘no upward trend’ has to continue for a total of 15 years before we get worried.’

Dr. Judith L. Lean – Geophysical Research Letters – 15 Aug 2009
“…This lack of overall warming is analogous to the period from 2002 to 2008 when decreasing solar irradiance also countered much of the anthropogenic warming…

Dr. Kevin Trenberth – CRU emails – 12 Oct. 2009
“Well, I have my own article on where the heck is global warming…..The fact is that we can’t

 

[agentaqua]

Well OBD - on the surface - you have posted something that appears may have some validity in one aspect of the sciences - the Earth Sciences.

However,instead of cut and pasting from a blogger's take on it - even though he ia a "certified (Seal 676 retired) television meteorologist" - why don't we instead go strait to the source ourselves instead - instead of taking some random dudes word for it - shall we?

The 1st study he references http://www.sciencemag.org/content/346/6205/32.summary says:
Science 3 October 2014: Vol. 346 no. 6205 pp. 32-33 DOI: 10.1126/science.1260459
PERSPECTIVE GEOPHYSICS
Seafloor secrets revealed
Cheinway Hwang1, Emmy T. Y. Chang2
+ Author Affiliations

1Department of Civil Engineering, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan.
2Institute of Oceanography, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.
E-mail: cheinway@mail.nctu.edu.tw; etychang@ntu.edu.tw

The trenches and ridges on Earth's seafloor are shaped by tectonic processes such as seafloor spreading and plate subduction. Detailed knowledge of seafloor tectonics is lacking in many areas. The most comprehensive data come from satellite altimeters, which use the strength and waveform of the radar signal returned from the sea surface to determine the tectonic properties of the underlying seafloor. On page 65 of this issue, Sandwell et al. (1) present the latest global marine gravity and depth data from altimeter missions CryoSat-2 and Jason-1. The data reveal buried tectonic structures, for example, in the Gulf of Mexico and the South Atlantic Ocean, that help to elucidate past tectonic processes.

Hmmm - strange that they make no references to applications in invalidating climate change models in their abstract. That's kinda an important point - don't you think?

BUT - he goes on in his blog. Actually it is a submitted and not yet approved letter that he has gotten ahold of at: https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/tolstoy_inpress_grl_2015.pdf

So - let's read it - shall we?

On line 102-103: "...simple calculations based on upwelling rates and isostatic responses suggest that system lag time might be on the order of 100's to 1000's of years..."

so the time lag for this effect would be "... 100's to 1000's of years..."

Now go back and look at the graph I posted on 02-04-2015, 09:45 PM post#2107> I will repost it below. In the last 100 years or so - it has been a strait up rise on that graph. If it takes potentially thousands of years for this effect to take place - very little if any of that rise in the last 100 years or so can be attributed to this effect as described by this low-wattage Watts.

on lines 173-176: "... an increase of only 50% in the eruption rate over the ~5 kyr typical for abrupt ends to ice-ages would thus theoretically result in an ~100 ppmv rise in CO2. However, the transport of CO2 from the seafloor to the atmosphere is physically and geochemically complex and likely only a fraction reaches the atmosphere.."

So firstly - the author recognizes that only a small fraction of this effect would reach the atmosphere. Watts kinda "forgot" to accurately represent what the author said here.

Secondly - the author is giving estimates of ppm - or - 100 parts per million over several thousands of years - if all - and not but a fraction of this effect reached the surface. Over the past 100 years or so human activities have increased the CO2 levels some 100 PPM over the MAXIMUM we have ever recorded. See the difference?

See what happens when you use your critical thinking skills that I know you MUST possess, OBD?

Thank GOD for TV personalities OBD, eh? The more retired ones have more ability to supplement their pensions from that $10,000 offered I posted at on 02-04-2015, 09:14 PM post#2104

 

[GLG]

So are the people who claim that global warming has paused truly living in "an alternate reality that is detached from real word observations?" It seems only reasonable that we see what the global warming scientists have to say on the matter. After all, they are the experts in climate research and climate modeling, and they would never fabricate a story and "continue to demonstrate their willful ignorance by repeating the same false story."

OBD you are the one that is in "an alternate reality that is detached from real word observations?"
OBD you are the one that "continue to demonstrate their willful ignorance by repeating the same false story."

Wake up and man up.
You are sleep walking down an up escalator of increasing global warming... get it?

 

[OldBlackDog]

http://www.cbc.ca/22minutes/m/videos/clips-season-22/fort-mac-hard-times

 

[OldBlackDog]

O look more scientists that say no warming.

Dr. Mojib Latif – Spiegel – 19th November 2009
“At present, however, the warming is taking a break,”…….”There can be no argument about that,”

Dr. Jochem Marotzke – Spiegel – 19th November 2009
“It cannot be denied that this is one of the hottest issues in the scientific community,”….”We don’t really know why this stagnation is taking place at this point.”

Dr. Phil Jones – BBC – 13th February 2010
“I’m a scientist trying to measure temperature. If I registered that the climate has been cooling I’d say so. But it hasn’t until recently – and then barely at all. The trend is a warming trend.”

Dr. Phil Jones – BBC – 13th February 2010
[Q] B – “Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming”
[A] “Yes, but only just”.

Prof. Shaowu Wang et al – Advances in Climate Change Research – 2010
“…The decade of 1999-2008 is still the warmest of the last 30 years, though the global temperature increment is near zero;…”

Dr. B. G. Hunt – Climate Dynamics – February 2011
“Controversy continues to prevail concerning the reality of anthropogenically-induced climatic warming. One of the principal issues is the cause of the hiatus in the current global warming trend.”

Dr. Robert K. Kaufmann – PNAS – 2nd June 2011
“…..it has been unclear why global surface temperatures did not rise between 1998 and 2008…..”

Dr. Gerald A. Meehl – Nature Climate Change – 18th September 2011
“There have been decades, such as 2000–2009, when the observed globally averaged surface-temperature time series shows little increase or even a slightly negative trend1 (a hiatus period)….”

Met Office Blog – Dave Britton (10:48:21) – 14 October 2012
“We agree with Mr Rose that there has been only a very small amount of warming in the 21st Century. As stated in our response, this is 0.05 degrees Celsius since 1997 equivalent to 0.03 degrees Celsius per decade.”
Source: metofficenews.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/met-office-in-the-media-14-october-2012

Dr. James Hansen – NASA GISS – 15 January 2013
“The 5-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade, which we interpret as a combination of natural variability and a slowdown in the growth rate of the net climate forcing.”

Dr Doug Smith – Met Office – 18 January 2013
“The exact causes of the temperature standstill are not yet understood,” says climate researcher Doug Smith from the Met Office.
[Translated by Philipp Mueller from Spiegel Online]

Dr. Virginie Guemas – Nature Climate Change – 7 April 2013
“…Despite a sustained production of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, the Earth’s mean near-surface temperature paused its rise during the 2000–2010 period…”

Dr. Judith Curry – House of Representatives Subcommittee on Environment – 25 April 2013
” If the climate shifts hypothesis is correct, then the current flat trend in global surface temperatures may continue for another decade or two,…”

Dr. Hans von Storch – Spiegel – 20 June 2013
“…the increase over the last 15 years was just 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.11 degrees Fahrenheit) — a value very close to zero….If things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models….”

Professor Masahiro Watanabe – Geophysical Research Letters – 28 June 2013
“The weakening of k commonly found in GCMs seems to be an inevitable response of the climate system to global warming, suggesting the recovery from hiatus in coming decades.”

Met Office – July 2013
“The recent pause in global warming, part 3: What are the implications for projections of future warming?
………..
Executive summary
The recent pause in global surface temperature rise does not materially alter the risks of substantial warming of the Earth by the end of this century.”
Source: metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/3/r/Paper3_Implications_for_projections.pdf

Professor Rowan Sutton – Independent – 22 July 2013
“Some people call it a slow-down, some call it a hiatus, some people call it a pause. The global average surface temperature has not increased substantially over the last 10 to 15 years,”

Dr. Kevin Trenberth – NPR – 23 August 2013
“They probably can’t go on much for much longer than maybe 20 years, and what happens at the end of these hiatus periods, is suddenly there’s a big jump [in temperature] up to a whole new level and you never go back to that previous level again,”

Dr. Yu Kosaka et. al. – Nature – 28 August 2013
“Recent global-warming hiatus tied to equatorial Pacific surface cooling
Despite the continued increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, the annual-mean global temperature has not risen in the twenty-first century…”

Professor Anastasios Tsonis – Daily Telegraph – 8 September 2013
“We are already in a cooling trend, which I think will continue for the next 15 years at least. There is no doubt the warming of the 1980s and 1990s has stopped.”

Dr. Gabriel Vecchi – Nature News Feature – 15 January 2014
“A few years ago you saw the hiatus, but it could be dismissed because it was well within the noise,” says Gabriel Vecchi, a climate scientist…“Now it’s something to explain.”…..

Professor Matthew England – ABC Science – 10 February 2014
“Even though there is this hiatus in this surface average temperature, we’re still getting record heat waves, we’re still getting harsh bush fires…..it shows we shouldn’t take any comfort from this plateau in global average temperatures.”

Dr. Jana Sillmann et al – IopScience – 18 June 2014
Observed and simulated temperature extremes during the recent warming hiatus
“This regional inconsistency between models and observations might be a key to understanding the recent hiatus in global mean temperature warming.”

Dr. Young-Heon Jo et al – American Meteorological Society – October 2014
“…..Furthermore, the low-frequency variability in the SPG relates to the propagation of Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) variations from the deep-water formation region to mid-latitudes in the North Atlantic, which might have the implications for recent global surface warming hiatus.”

Shuai-Lei Yao et al – Theoretical and Applied Climatology – 9 January 2015
The global warming hiatus—a natural product of interactions of a secular warming trend and a multi-decadal oscillation
….We provide compelling evidence that the global warming hiatus is a natural product of the interplays between a secular warming tendency…..
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00704-014-1358-x

H. Douville et al – 2015
The recent global-warming hiatus: What is the role of Pacific variability?
The observed global mean surface air temperature (GMST) has not risen over the last 15 years, spurring outbreaks of skepticism regarding the nature of global warming and challenging the upper-range transient response of the current-generation global climate models….
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GL062775/abstract

Dr. Kevin E. Trenberth 11 July 2014
Seasonal aspects of the recent pause in surface warming
Factors involved in the recent pause in the rise of global mean temperatures are examined seasonally. For 1999 to 2012, the hiatus in surface warming is mainly evident in the central and eastern Pacific…….atmospheric circulation anomalies observed globally during the hiatus.
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n10/full/nclimate2341.html
You are now leaving the twilight zone.

 

[GLG]

Well OBD - on the surface - you have posted something that appears may have some validity in one aspect of the sciences - the Earth Sciences.

However,instead of cut and pasting from a blogger's take on it - even though he ia a "certified (Seal 676 retired) television meteorologist" - why don't we instead go strait to the source ourselves instead - instead of taking some random dudes word for it - shall we?

LOL "Tonys house of Pizza and climate change" can't even understand what is written in the PDF. Or is he counting on his fan boys not reading or understanding the PDF. Maybe there are too many big words in it.... They should have made a video and had Mr. Dressup explain it.....

From the PDF:

Line 180 This pulsing would provide a mechanism for seafloor volcanism to act as a negative climate feedback with respect to glaciation, but potentially a direct contributor to climate change through geophysical responses to changes in orbital eccentricity. Release of greenhouse gases would increase during periods of extreme glaciation and/or high orbital eccentricity, and decrease following periods of glacial melting and/or low orbital eccentricity.

So we are safe for another 50 thousand years until the next ice age.......
Yup those boys are not the sharps tack in the box....
There is no evidence of intelligent life over there and they wonder why they don't get any respect.

 

[OldBlackDog]

Passion for climate change cools

Climate change is becoming a hard sell. When the computer models get the next day’s forecast wrong, it’s hard to persuade anyone to pay attention to their predictions of what the Earth’s climate will be a half-century from now. Saving the world from imaginative calamity and catastrophe is never easy, and President Obama came away from a global-warming sales pitch in India with an echo of what salesmen dread to hear, a slammed door.

The holy grail of environmental fanatics — and their friends in high places, like the White House — is a legally binding agreement among nations to limit greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, they blame for global warming (and never mind that carbon dioxide is essential for life and that the globe isn’t actually warming). Since handshakes are more likely to mean something when palms are greased, enthusiasts for the pact are trying to shake down wealthy nations for $100 billion to distribute to developing nations for “green” projects. They hope to make a deal final at the United Nations annual climate summit late this year in Paris.

Mr. Obama flew halfway around the world for the cause last week to persuade India’s 1.2 billion consumers to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. He warned an audience in New Delhi of the consequences of not climbing aboard the climate change bandwagon. “Here’s the truth,” he said, “even if countries like the United States curb our emissions, if growing countries like India — with soaring energy needs — don’t also embrace cleaner fuels, we don’t stand a chance against climate change.” If a pitch to voluntary compliance wasn’t enough, he offered $1 billion in assistance for renewable energy products.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi didn’t bite, either the carrot or the stick, and balked at signing on the dotted line. “India was also not willing to make any bilateral commitment until [it] submitted its intended domestically determined contribution,” concluded the Hindustan Times. India isn’t about to accede to a grand U.S. energy strategy before mapping out something of its own.

It’s not the first time Mr. Obama has offered a carrot and got only the essence of onion and garlic in return. In November, the president tried to sell a similar pact to China. He committed the United States to cut U.S. carbon-dioxide emissions by at least 26 percent by 2030, and in return the Chinese said they would try to do something, maybe, and besides, its emissions would probably level off by 2030. Since then, China has rebuffed attempts to make anything binding about that pledge. Promises easily made are easily broken, especially to the easily gulled.

India and China have no doubt noticed the fate of other nations lured into the green embrace and found themselves trapped. In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel was tilting toward windmills and other renewable energy projects when she announced a phase-out of its nuclear power plants by 2022 in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdown. Desperate to make up for the loss of 22 percent of its electricity provided by nuclear plants, Germany instead watched its greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals go up in the smoke of new coal-burning power plants. Germans have seen their electricity bills rise 60 percent during the past five years.

Spain offered attractive incentives for customers to install expensive solar panels and in addition sold electricity to consumers below cost, but an exploding deficit forced the government to reduce the subsidies a year ago. In Britain, subsidies for solar and wind energy projects have doubled fuel bills over eight years. The Europeans are beginning to look at the fare before climbing aboard the climate-change bandwagon.

 

[agentaqua]

http://www.cbc.ca/22minutes/m/videos/clips-season-22/fort-mac-hard-times

as humourous as this video is - and thanks for posting - I am hoping that you realize that:

1/ The current ppb slide is NOT the work of some mass hoax perpetrated by guys in white labs coats - rather by the system pro-business people defend, and
2/ is not any scientific rebuttal - but rather a deflection from admitting climate change is real, exasperated by human activities, has serious consequences for the future, and is something we can do something about - especially is we do it early enough.

It's really too bad you have decided NOT to use your critical thinking skills.

 

[GLG]

O look more scientists that say no warming.

That from a guy name jimbo at "tony house of pizza and climate change" what an imbecile.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/...g-at-strawmen-in-hidey-holes/#comment-1370200

OBD do you know the difference between the atmosphere and the oceans?
Are you starting to see a trend yet?
I see one on your side and it's not good for you.

So how is the Arctic working out with all this added heat?
Are we back to normal? Near the 80's average? How about the 90's average? perhaps the 2000's average?
Nope...... but don't let a dose of reality get you down OBD we will find a place for you.
You see nature does not visit the denial blogs she just whacks you up against the side of your head when you fool yourself.

 

[GLG]

Interesting news coming out of China and it's old king coal problem......
Who said that it was impossible to cut coal out of the energy mix there.
Wait I remember it was team denial and it's cheerleaders......
Makes OBD's post #2136 seem like nonsense..... par for the course.....


http://reneweconomy.com.au/2015/chinas-declining-coal-dependence-evident-data-25237

The latest energy-market numbers from the Chinese government show an acceleration of a remarkable phenomenon that began to emerge in 2012-2014. The bottom line today is that the traditional nexus between real GDP growth, electricity expansion and coal demand is now broken.

Demand for coal in China grew by 10 percent annually over the decade to 2011, but that halved to between 4 percent and 6 percent annually in 2012 and 2013. In 2014, according to the most recent government figures, demand actually declined by 2.1 percent.
This is no small thing for global coal markets, and the implications are enormous.
The latest data is consistent, however, with IEEFA’s prediction last fall that China’s demand for coal will permanently peak by 2016 —if not earlier—and will gradually decline thereafter.
Digging a littler further into the most recent trove of economic data from Beijing helps explain what’s happening.
China’s overall GDP growth in 2014 is expected to come in about the same 7.3 percent growth reported for the first nine months of the year. But China’s electricity demand, as seen in the newest numbers, grew by only 3.9 percent year-over-year through November. What these two figures demonstrate in tandem is that the combined impact of energy-efficiency initiatives and structural economic changes toward less electricity-intensive industry sectors has reduced the ratio of electricity-demand growth to GDP from above 1.0x over the past 13 years to 0.53x in 2014.
This is an emerging shift that has not gone entirely unnoticed by Wall Street analysts. This past August, for instance, Morgan Stanley halved its outlook for China’s electricity-demand-to-GDP ratio from 2014 to 2016, forecasting that it will register at somewhere between 0.3 and 0.5x over the medium term, signaling a fundamental shift in the Chinese energy economy. IEEFA has forecast a ratio of 0.6x 2014-2020, by the way, an estimate that may—if anything—prove conservative.

Of equal importance is that China’s domestic coal production declined by 2.1 percent in the year to November compared to 2013, while coal imports were down by 9 percent, meaning that coal consumption dropped roughly 2.3 percent. This contrasts with an electricity-production growth rate of 3.9 percent year over year, reflecting a rapid loss of market share for coal in 2014 against all other sources of electricity generation across China – wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, biomass and natural gas.
The rise of renewables in China is significant. IEEFA forecasts that in 2014 alone China will install 22 gigawatts of hydropower electricity capacity, 18 gigawatts of wind-powered capacity, 13 gigawatts of solar, 5 to 7 gigawatts of nuclear, and 4 to 6 gigawatts of gas-fired capacity. Combined with 22 gigawatts of net new coal-fired capacity, IEEFA sees China’s total electricity capacity installs totaling 90 gigawatts in 2014 (a more than 6 percent year-over-year increase in total capacity growth).
The result is that coal-fired average utilization rates have declined from an estimated 60 percent in 2011 to about 56 percent in 2014. Given this excess capacity, new installations of coal power are expected to slow rapidly, and China could well see net annual coal-fired power capacity reductions from 2016 onwards.
IEEFA has coal’s share of electricity production in China dropping from the 78 to 79 percent average recorded in 2008-2011 to 72.5 percent in 2014. Further, IEEFA sees that number falling to 60 percent by 2020 as China’s rapid diversification into lower-carbon alternatives gains steam.
We see it as no coincidence that China has recently announced two major policy moves that together suggest dramatic change/deterioration in the outlook for the global seaborne thermal coal market. China has moved explicitly to reduce coal export tariffs from 10 percent to 3 percent starting in January 2015. This follows the announcement in October 2014 that Beijing will impose a 6 percent import tariff on thermal coal (unless sourced from Indonesia, under the Asian bilateral free trade agreement). China was a net coal exporter before 2009, and IEEFA expects could reclaim that status later this decade.
Add to all these numbers Chinese press reports in December suggesting that Beijing is considering an end to approvals for new coal-to-gas (CTG) and coal-to-oil (CTO) projects as part of its next five-year plan for the industry. Given that the government had previously proposed a massive CTG and CTO program that would have required an additional 300 million tons of coal production annually, such a move would further erode the last main area of potential new growth for China’s domestic coal industry.
All of this is occurring, of course, at a time in which solar-efficiency records are being set every month, all around the world.
IEEFA stands by its forecast that global coal markets will mirror Chinese coal markets and that peak demand for coal will occur by 2016 globally, with a structural decline thereafter. These trends, combined with recent changes in currency markets and continued oversupply as new mines are pushed online, indicate that stranded assets associated with proposed greenfield coal-export mines and related infrastructure development remain an especially acute financial risk.
Tim Buckley is IEEFA’s director of energy finance studies, Australasia.

Source: IEEFA. Reproduced with permission.

 

[OldBlackDog]

NASA’s Arctic Fraud

By Paul Homewood



http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ArcticIce/arctic_ice3.php

I showed this graph from a 2003 NASA report earlier today. It came with this commentary:

Comiso’s new study presents some striking trends. When compared to longer- term, ground-based surface temperature data, the rate of warming in the Arctic from 1981 to 2001 is eight times larger than the rate of Arctic warming over the last 100 years.



Hands up who can spot the fraud.