Questionable Science in Global Warming Theory - Doesn't Support Carbon Tax

To be right up front - none of this means there is no global warming. There is global warming but it doesn't deserve the hysteria that it is getting; there's another agenda at work here. And the science behind global warming is certainly questionable. For instance, most global warming theorists will not release their computer prediction models so they can be tested by other scientists. Why? Is it because they know they won't stand up to scrutiny? Isn't that what science is all about?

FYI: Carbon isn't pollution

Graham Lane
Winnipeg SUN Opinion Columnists

Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna poses for a photo in her office on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Tuesday Nov. 7, 2017.Sean Kilpatrick / Canadian Press

With these facts, it should be impossible to claim, as McKenna does, that human production of CO2 is tipping our climate towards disaster.

Federal Climate Change minister Catherine McKenna, a lawyer, repeatedly uses the term “fighting carbon pollution” to rationalize the Trudeau Government’s obsession with taxing energy consumption.

Tragically, her policy pronouncements reveal enormous ignorance of basic science and economics. Their policy (carbon taxes) will deliberately raise energy costs in a vast often-cold country competing with an burgeoning American economy where its political leadership is going the opposite way — pushing “energy dominance” policies that maximize oil, coal and natural gas production.

No surprise, cheaper American energy policies are creating jobs, manufacturing investment, and raising living standards. McKenna’s energy policies will do the opposite for the Canadian economy, as Ontario and other provinces that have implemented the green agenda know. It will enrich her government and fill the pockets of subsidy-seeking groups and corporate cronies who benefit from damaging Canada’s conventional energy sector.

It's almost impossible to find information on the disaster that Ontario Liberal's Green Energy Act is - locking payments for solar energy contributions to the power grid in for many years at prices far above market value, has made a few people in Ontario very rich, and a whole lot of people poorer. Meanwhile, Ontario hydro rates have more than doubled in the past 10 years, and for some, have more than quadrupled. Canada is far from ready to go completely green and the cost of even attempting to do so prematurely will fall on those least capable of paying.

A few facts underscore the false basis for the carbon tax scam starting with the misnomer: “Carbon pollution.” While carbon is a solid, they mean Carbon Dioxide (CO2), a gas. The word “carbon” is used because most people connect it to soot, as it becomes an Orwellian-named new revenue tool — the carbon tax.

According to Dr. Tim Ball, a retired University of Winnipeg climatologist, CO2 is not a pollutant but a harmless natural trace gas vital to plant existence.

Anthropogenic CO2 accounts for 3-4% of all CO2 generated

Plants take in CO2 and give off oxygen; without photosynthesis both plants and animals die. CO2 is a trace gas, representing but a fraction of the atmosphere. Ball notes that present CO2 levels are 400 parts per million, just 0.04% of the atmosphere (equivalent of 40 pennies in a jar of 100,000). Most CO2, 99% (actually, more like 96 or 97%) of it, comes from natural sources — animal respiration, soil decomposition, volcanoes, ocean evaporation. Man-made sources are minuscule — equivalent of 1.2 of the 40 pennies in a jar of 100,000 pennies.

Canada accounts for just 2% of all anthropogenic CO2.

Current global levels = 400 ppm. Average = 1200 ppm.

Higher CO2 levels pose no direct hazard to human health. CO2 in submarines can reach levels well above 10,000 ppm without harming the crew. The average atmospheric level for the last 270 million years is, at 1200 ppm, interestingly, the optimum level for plant growth.

High CO2 does not correlate with high temperatures

Professor Ball observes correlation with temperature is equally dispelled in the geologic record. What is known as the Ordovician Ice Age, 495 million years ago, had CO2 levels of 4500 ppm. Ball observes that Antarctic ice core data shows temperature increases long before CO2 increases, not as assumed in the human-caused warming theories used in climate models.

Professor Murry Salby has shown that temperature increases follow CO2 increases, historically by about 800 years.

With these facts, it should be impossible to claim, as McKenna does, that human production of CO2 is tipping our climate towards disaster. 

Paris Accord to reduce temp by 1/2 of 1/10th of 1 degree C. by 2100 - at extraordinary cost

Bjorn Lomborg, a statistics professor and author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” estimates that implementing the Paris Climate Agreement by 2030 would reduce temperatures only 0.048°C by 2100. Politicians use the false CO2 story because it enables massive new taxation and further government control under the guise of saving the planet.

Finally, Professor Ball confirms that this dishonest story misuses computer models, claiming human carbon dioxide will cause a global climate crisis, that have been consistently wrong.

The carbon tax party is gearing up, politicians selecting and using false facts, and it is about to rip the political landscape, in Ontario and Manitoba.

And, indeed, it did in Ontario last week as the provincial Liberal Party was reduced from a majority government to short of party status in the Ontario legislature, and a Conservative government was elected.

Nevertheless, the staggering costs of the Liberal Cap n Trade policy, the Green Energy Act and the privatization of Ontario Hydro will cost Ontarians an extraordinary amount of money for the next few decades. Then, just when you need it, Justin Trudeau adds Canada's Carbon Tax to the list of green-related expenses that will ensure many difficult years for the Canadian economy.

9.7mn-yo Ape Teeth Puzzle Scientists, Challenge Timeline of Human Species

Questionable Science

I love it when scientists discover that what they believe is completely wrong. Too much science, especially in the field of archaeology and paleontology, is not science at all but guess work and the consequence of highly over-active imaginations. And many scientists think Christians are stupid.

Dig site near Eppelsheim, Germany © Naturhistorisches Museum Mainz

Ancient ape teeth dating back more than 9 million years and discovered in Germany last year are raising questions about the timeline of human evolution.

The two teeth, discovered in sediment of the Proto-Rhine River, are of an ape species whose remains have never before been observed in Europe.

Understood to belong to one ape, the two teeth are similar in structure to 3 million year old fragments belonging to an ape skeleton previously uncovered in Africa.

However, the German river bed remains, an upper right molar and left canine, predate the African example by more than 6 million years, according to a study published by the National History Museum Mainz.

The age disparity is puzzling since it raises questions over whether apes really originated in Africa.

While study author Herbert Lutz refused to be drawn on what it means for evolutionary theory, he said the findings indicate that there are still blind spots in the study of fossils.

“We want to hold back on speculation,” Lutz told Research Gate. “What these findings definitely show us is that the holes in our knowledge and in the fossil record are much bigger than previously thought.”

Not bigger than I previously thought! 

How the ape came to be in the Germany region near Eppelsheim is a “mystery,” Lutz said.

Maybe he was looking for a good beer, or a great glass of white wine? Schnitzel?

He added that if the ape is found to be related to the species observed in Africa 3 million years ago, then “[it] would mean that a group of primates was in Europe before they were in Africa.”

The Latest News on the Science of Global Warming

Here is the latest news on climate change. It originates from Sky News in Australia - I don't think any western news sources are carrying this story. Why? Because it downplays global warming and that is not politically correct. Another term for 'politically correct' might be 'neo-liberal hysteria'.

I don't dispute that global warming is occurring or, at least, has occurred in the past century. I contend that it is not occurring at a rate that will destroy the planet in this century or even the next several. I also contend that it is being hyped at an hysterical rate for political reasons.

The video is only a few minutes long but is extremely important in introducing an element of truth and real science into the debate. Please watch:

video 4:04

All's Quiet on the Climate Change Front as Death Toll Mounts in Frigid Weather

Would you believe this is in Istanbul, Turkey?

A girl walks under snow-covered trees during a snowfall in Istanbul, Turkey, January 7, 2017. 

© Osman Orsal / Reuters

One winter does not a cooling trend make although that didn't stop the climate change propaganda from issuing alarmist statements once or twice a month for the past year and a half. In that time we endured the second strongest El Nino ever recorded and any climatologist with any dignity would have refrained from taking advantage of that to generate hysteria in the masses. 

So, because 'fair is fair', I shall lower my self dignity to the level of taking advantage of La Nina, El Nino's ugly little sister. Ugly sister took over from her brother in the summer of 2016. El Nino started, technically, in about March 2015, but for all intents and purposes, actually started the previous fall, in 2014. Much of the northern hemisphere enjoyed warmer than normal temperatures for those two winters, then the wheels fell off.

Ugly sister prefers sleigh runners to wheels and much of North America and Europe has ground to a crawl because we don't make runners for cars, trucks or big airplanes. In N.A. skateboards have given way to snowboards on the streets of some cities; people in Vancouver have been seen skating down the streets. 

And this is not a very strong La Nina! In fact she is officially a 'weak' La Nina and NOAAs myriad computer models suggest she is almost dead already. But while she is expected to expire in the next month or two, she may, in fact, be only 'mostly dead'. A look at the right-hand side of the graph, below, shows most models with another down-turn next summer-fall. The ugly, little witch may return next winter.

That would be in keeping with what happened following the strongest El Nino ever which occurred in 1997-98. In the summer of '98 ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation) switched over to La Nina which remained until late winter, early spring of 2001 - a run of 32 consecutive months.

Meanwhile, millions of people are cold and not wanting to hear the BS about global warming, and dozens of people have died in Europe from the cold. Snow and ice have been plugging up transportation corridors and downing power lines all the way to the Mediterranean. 

Europe is beginning to count the cost of the deadly cold snap sweeping across the continent, with the first deaths reported over the weekend

Social workers in Serbia have been trying to ease the living conditions of migrants living in makeshift shelters enduring the below-freezing temperatures. In the capital Belgrade, hundreds of people, mostly from Afghanistan and Pakistan, are staying in an abandoned customs warehouse, with local aid groups providing heaters, blankets, clothes and food. 

A man walks in the snow at around minus 26 degrees Celsius (minus 14.8 deg F)

in the village of Jezerc, Kosovo, January 8, 2017. © Hazir Reka

Many people there were sick, though, the aid groups said. “The next few days are critical, and for sure the health condition of these people is worsening,'' Stephane Moissaing, the MSF Head of Mission in Serbia, told AP.  

Snowfall in Blace, Central Serbia

The country's authorities has also banned river traffic due to ice blockages and strong winds, while emergency measures were announced in some municipalities in the south and southwest. Several villages were blocked by heavy snow, forcing the evacuation of about 100 people there.

A man walks in the centre of Warsaw January © Kacper Pempel / Reuters

Two men died of the severe cold in Poland, with the total death toll from sub-zero temperatures reaching 55 since November, according to figures by Polish authorities, as cited by AP. In the country's southern, mountainous regions, temperatures dropped to -30 degrees Celsius (-22 degrees Fahrenheit).

A man removes snow from a car in a suburb of Sofia after heavy snowfall

on January 7, 2017. © Nikolay Doychinov / AFP

In neighboring Bulgaria, police reported the deaths of two men from Iraq, as well as a Somali woman, who succumbed from the cold in the mountains bordering Turkey. Security forces said that the three were apparently trying to reach Europe. Many villages have also been  left without electricity and water.

Braila, Romania

In Romania, a dozen or so of the country’s major roads remain closed because of heavy snow, and ferry services between Romania and Bulgaria across the Danube have been canceled. Authorities also announced schools would be closed on Monday and Tuesday in many areas, including the capital, Bucharest.

Waiting in line for holy water. Romanian tradition

Moving westward, where Italian authorities blamed the extreme weather for eight deaths, one of them a man who was found in the basement of an unused building in Milan, while another was found on a street in Florence near the Arno river.

Trees are covered with ice and snow on top of the Feldberg mountain, in Germany January 8, 2017.

© Kai Pfaffenbach / Reuters

German Federal Police reported picking up 19 migrants – five of them children – at a highway stop in Bavaria, after their driver apparently ditched them, leaving the group stranded in the freezing cold. Elsewhere, across the country, firefighters reported 415 incidents of weather-related accidents over the weekend alone, AP reported.

Even in Turkey, snow has been falling for three days, with Turkish Airlines grounding hundreds of flights.

Vehicles wait for the greenlight of a traffic light during a snowfall in Istanbul, Turkey January 8, 2017.

© Murad Sezer / Reuters

However, it appears Muscovites didn't fear the cold, though, with hundreds joining an eight-kilometer bike parade in -27 degrees Celsius (minus 17 Fahrenheit).

Scientist Accused of ’Crying Wolf’ on Climate Change with Claim that Arctic Sea Ice Would Vanish

Arctic Sea Ice returning over the past month at record pace

Sarah Knapton, The Telegraph


A handout photo provided by the European Geosciences Union on September 13, 2016 shows an undated photo of a polar bear testing the strength of thin sea ice in the Arctic. Polar bears are among the animals most affected by changes in Arctic sea ice because they rely on this surface for essential activities such as hunting, traveling and breeding. AFP PHOTO / European Geosciences Union / Mario

A handout photo provided by the European Geosciences Union on September 13, 2016 shows an undated photo of a polar bear testing the strength of thin sea ice in the Arctic. Polar bears are among the animals most affected by changes in Arctic sea ice because they rely on this surface for essential activities such as hunting, traveling and breeding.

Dire predictions that the Arctic would be free of sea ice by September have proven unfounded after satellite images showed there is far more ice now than in 2012.

Scientists including Peter Wadhams, of Cambridge University, and Wieslaw Maslowski, of the Naval Postgraduate School in Moderey, California, have regularly forecast the loss of ice by 2016, a warning that has been widely reported by the BBC and other media outlets.

Prof Wadhams, who is considered a leading expert on Arctic sea ice loss, has recently published a book entitled A Farewell To Ice in which he repeated the assertion that the Arctic would be free of ice in the middle of this decade.

As late as this summer he was still predicting an ice-free September.

Yet when figures were released for the yearly minimum on Sept 10, they showed that there was still 4.14 million sq km of sea ice, which was 21 per cent more than the lowest point in 2012.

For the month of September overall there was 31 per cent more ice than in 2012, figures released this week by the National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) show, amounting to an extra 1.09 million sq km of sea ice.

Although NSIDC satellite data going back to 1981 show an undeniable downward trend in sea ice over the past 35 years, scientists have accused Prof Wadhams and others of “crying wolf” and harming the message of climate change through “dramatic”, “incorrect” and “confusing” predictions.

Dr Ed Hawkins, associate professor in the department of meteorology at the University of Reading, said: “There has been one prominent scientist who has regularly made more dramatic, and incorrect, in my view predictions suggesting that we would by now be in ice-free conditions.

“There are very serious risks from continued climatic changes and a melting Arctic but we do not serve the public and policy-makers well by exaggerating those risks.

“We will soon see an ice-free summer in the Arctic but there is a real danger of ’crying wolf’ and that does not help anyone.

“As global temperatures rise we will see a continuing decline in Arctic sea ice extent, although this will happen somewhat erratically, rather like a ball bouncing down a bumpy hill.

“Without substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the ball will reach the bottom of the hill, meaning the Arctic is ’ice-free,’ starting with a few days one summer, a few weeks another summer and gradually becoming more and more frequent.”

It is the latest example of experts making alarming predictions which do not come to pass. Earlier this week environmentalists were accused of misleading the public about the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” after aerial shots proved there was no “island of rubbish” in the middle of the ocean.

Likewise, warnings that the hole in the ozone layer would never close were debunked in June.

Note: I have not checked out either of these claims, but will do so soon. I hope.

Scientists said that such claims risked detracting from the real issue.

Losing Arctic sea ice is a major problem because ice reflects 85 per cent of sunlight while open water reflects just seven per cent, meaning the rest is absorbed by the planet, which speeds up global warming. A massive melt of freshwater could also disrupt global ocean currents, and change weather systems.

I suspect that in the high Arctic, the sun is at such a low angle that a lot more than 7% of sunlight is reflected from water, a lot more!

For more than a decade most scientists have accepted that the Arctic will be free of ice by 2050, while the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) calculates there is a 66 per cent chance of no ice by the middle of the century if emissions continue to increase annually.

Yet in 2007 Prof Wadhams predicted that sea ice would be lost by 2013 after levels fell 27 per cent in a single year.

By 2013 ice levels were actually 25 per cent higher than they had been six years before. In 2012, following another record low Prof Wadhams changed his prediction to 2016.


(AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Jonathan Hayward) This July 10, 2008 file photo made with a fisheye lens shows ice floes in Baffin Bay above the Arctic Circle, seen from the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Louis S. St-Laurent.

The view was supported by Prof Maslowski who in 2013 published a paper in the Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences also claiming that the Arctic would be ice-free by 2016, plus or minus three years.


La Nina at work, already

Instead of record lows, this year the Arctic has seen the quickest refreeze on record with the extent of sea ice growing 1.05 million sq km in just three weeks since the Sept 10 minimum. The Danish Meteorological Institute said that refreezing was happening at the fastest rate since its daily records began in 1987.

Thank you, La Nina! I'm sure the Arctic will recover a lot of ice cover this winter.

Andrew Shepherd, professor of earth observation at University College London, said that there was now “overwhelming consensus” that the Arctic would be free of ice within the next few decades, but warned that earlier predictions were based on poor extrapolation.

“A decade or so ago, climate models often failed to reproduce the decline in Arctic sea ice extent revealed by satellite observations,” he said.

“One upshot of this was that outlier predictions based on extrapolation alone were able to receive wide publicity. But climate models have improved considerably since then, and they now do a much better job of simulating historical events.

Is that really true? Or have the models been adjusted to predict a more desirable outcome? You can see I'm a bit cynical.


THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP/NOAA This 2014 photo provided by NOAA shows Arctic ice coverage.

“This means we have greater confidence in their predictive skill, and the overwhelming consensus within the scientific community is that the Arctic Ocean will be effectively free of sea ice in a couple of decades should the present rate of decline continue.”

Prof Myles Allen, of Oxford University, added: “The Arctic was only predicted to be close to ice-free in September by mid-century.”

Scientists said it was clear that sea ice was shrinking but there were large fluctuations between years. For example 2013 showed a 50 per cent increase from the previous year.

Prof Jonathan Bamber, of the University of Bristol, said: “This year’s low was the second lowest on record and not as low as 2012 but there is always variability in any part of the climate system so you would not expect a monotonic decline year on year, whatever was going on.

Nevertheless, this was 4 more years of global warming and the strongest El Nino ever. It certainly seems odd that this would not be the year of the greatest sea ice minimum. Or perhaps we are missing something here?


Sea ice decline may not be man-made

“The signal of Arctic sea ice decline is possibly the clearest we have of climate change. That does not mean, by definition, it is man-made but there is no question that sea ice volume has been declining, on average, over the past 40 years and that all the indications from climate data, satellite observations etc. are that the decline will continue.”

Bob Ward, of the Grantham Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, added: “Peter Wadhams has made predictions of the imminent disappearance of summer Arctic sea ice, which have not been fulfilled, but the evidence still shows a rapid decline.

“The trend in Arctic sea ice extent is definitely downwards for every single month of the year. The most recent IPCC forecast is that the Arctic has up to a 66 per cent chance of being ice-free in September by 2050 for the highest emissions scenario.”

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, Prof Wadhams accepted that sea ice decline had not happened as quickly as he had predicted. However, he still believes that an ice-free Arctic is still only a “very small number of years” away.

“My view is that the trend of summer sea ice volume is relentlessly downward, such that the volume (and thus area) will come to a low value very soon – in a very small number of years,”

He said. “This is to be contrasted with some of the bizarre predictions made by computer modellers, who have the summer sea ice remaining until late this century, which is quite impossible.”

I think I prefer the bizarre modellers. In "Global Warming - Getting Off the Fence (Updated)", I predict a global temperature rise of only 0.5 to 0.75 degrees by the end of this century. And that may be an overestimate.

I don't mind being lumped in with those who are called 'bizarre', especially since those doing the calling have been consistently wrong.

Antarctica Gaining More Ice Than Losing – NASA

Now this is curious

© Deborah Zabarenko
Reuters

Antarctica has been accumulating more ice than it’s been losing in recent decades, a new study by NASA has revealed, challenging existing theories on climate change and rises in sea levels.
The paper, entitled “Mass gains of the Antarctic ice sheet exceed losses,” was published in the Journal of Glaciology on Friday.

The authors of the study, who are from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the University of Maryland and Sigma Space Corporation, analyzed satellite data showing that Antarctica gained 112 billion tons of ice annually from 1992 to 2001.

There was a slowdown in accumulation from 2003 to 2008, but gains still stood at solid 82 billion tons of ice per year during that period, the paper said.

Lead author and NASA glaciologist Jay Zwally stressed that the results don’t mean that Antarctica will continue gain ice perpetually, as the trend could reverse in just a couple of decades.

Contradicting IPCC (gasp)

The findings of NASA’s survey contradict previous research, including that of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which warned that Antarctica’s ice sheets were melting and causing sea levels to rise.

“The good news is that Antarctica is not currently contributing to sea level rise, but is taking 0.23 millimeters per year away,” Jay Zwally, lead author of the paper and NASA glaciologist, said in a press-release.

“But this is also bad news,” he stressed. “If the 0.27 millimeters per year of sea level rise attributed to Antarctica in the IPCC report is not really coming from Antarctica, there must be some other contribution to sea level rise that is not accounted for.” (If, in fact, you can actually measure sea levels to within a quarter of a millimeter).

The scientists calculated the Antarctic ice gains by studying the height of its ice sheet, which was measured using radar instruments on two European Space Agency satellites from 1992 to 2001, and laser sensors on a NASA satellite from 2003 to 2008.

Zwally disagreed with earlier attempts to attribute rises in land elevation in Antarctica to snowfall.

The NASA team analyzed meteorological data from as far back as 1979, which revealed that snow accumulation on the continent has been declining.

This makes thicker ice the logical explanation for Antarctic land elevation, the survey said.

The paper also pointed out the difficulties in measuring the height of ice in Antarctica, saying that improved tools are needed to better perform the task.

The US space agency is currently developing a new satellite capable of a more accurately measuring long-term changes in ice in Antarctica.

ICESat-2, which will be able to “measure changes in the ice sheet within the thickness of a No. 2 pencil,” is planned for launch in 2018, according to NASA glaciologist Tom Neumann.