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Showing posts with label sea levels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sea levels. Show all posts

Saturday, April 10, 2021

Updated Computer Models Reveal Exaggeration of Sea-Level Rises in Old Models

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Existing climate model simulations overestimate future sea-level rise by up to 25%,
new study shows
10 Apr, 2021 12:54



Scientists from Utrecht University using the national supercomputer at SURFsara in Amsterdam have found that the projected sea-level rise over the next century is about 25% lower than current models predict.

Their new, higher-resolution climate model simulation reveals a slower ocean temperature increase than predicted by current models. The reason for this comes courtesy of ocean eddy processes, which were left out of many, lower-resolution models which inform public policy today.

The climate models involve vast amounts of data from numerous sources which are constantly being updated for accuracy with the help of higher-resolution data.

The new model factors in these ocean eddy processes which have a remarkable effect on the melting rate of the Antarctic ice sheet, one of the key drivers of ocean-level rise across the world. 

An eddy is a large (10-200 km) turbulent system in the ocean circulation which distributes both heat and salt. By factoring them in, the Utrecht team created what they say is a more accurate representation of ocean temperatures around Antarctica, and thus the rate of melt in the ice sheet.

While existing climate models predict increasing ocean temperatures around Antarctica, with the higher resolution simulation, in certain areas at least, the opposite was found to be true; some regions are, in fact, cooling. 



“These regions appear to be more resilient under climate change,” says Utrecht Ph.D. candidate René van Westen.

“One obtains a very different temperature response due to ocean-eddy effects,” adds professor Henk Dijkstra. 

Their model predicts dramatically smaller Antarctic mass loss as a result of ice-shelf melt; Just one-third compared with current predictions.

This shift in estimates theoretically reduces the projected global sea-level rise by 25% over the coming century.

“Although sea levels will continue to rise, this is good news for low-lying regions,” Van Westen says.

Of the thousands of islands in the Maldive archipelago, none of which are more than a few feet above sea level - not one has been lost in this century. Climate hysteria has nothing to do with reality.



Saturday, February 13, 2021

The 'Non-Crisis' Reality of Climate Change

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It is simply not the danger it's made out to be, especially relative to greater dangers

Illustration on climate change hysteria by Alexander Hunter/The Washington Times

The Washington Times
By Richard W. Rahn -
- Monday, February 8, 2021

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

In the next 50 years, what do you think is more likely to kill you: a pandemic; a major war, including the use of nuclear, biological or electronic weapons; the income-destroying effects of a global economic meltdown or the effects of global warming?

If you really think sea levels are rising at a non-manageable rate, would you buy a waterfront home? If you really viewed the rise in CO2 levels as an immediate danger, would you fly around in a private jet or invest in a private jet firm? President Biden has appointed John Kerry as the administration’s climate “czar.” Mr. Kerry, whose greatest accomplishment in life (an important talent) seems to have been to marry very wealthy women enabling him to live as a hypocritical dilettante utilizing a private jet, advocates such things as higher taxes on people who are trying to get wealthier by providing goods and services desired by their fellow humans.   

It was reported over the weekend that the great humanitarian and steward of the environment, Bill Gates, and some of his cronies paid $4.7 billion for a “private-jet firm.” Do those rich social-justice warriors who lecture the rest of us about the “crises” of climate change and tell us to ride bicycles, while they live in mansions at the water’s edge and have enormous carbon footprints, believe they are entitled because of inherent superiority or do they know much of what they spew out is just ”malarkey”?

Yes, sea levels are rising — and they have been since the end of the last Ice Age 12,000 or so years ago. Men and women are wonderful engineers — and they are endlessly able to claim land from the sea despite rising sea levels.  Some countries, notably the Netherlands and Singapore, have been able to appreciably increase the size of their land area. 

Miami Beach is an interesting case study.  Much of it did not exist a little over a century ago. A developer, Carl Fisher, pumped much of it up from the seafloor and sold lots on the new land. At the time, he and his colleagues only built the island just a few feet above sea level. 

With rising sea levels and the increased value of the real estate, flooding became a greater danger. The city leaders, rather than evacuating for higher ground, instead decided to increase the elevation of Miami Beach. A major but doable engineering feat is now well underway — far more cost-effective than trying to change the climate or abandoning one of the world’s great residential playgrounds.

Other parts of Florida, mainly on the west coast, are rising on their own, so the state is not getting smaller as the doomsayers predicted decades ago.  Low-lying islands around the world, contrary to earlier predictions, for the most part are not getting smaller or disappearing according to recent global studies. In fact, more are growing for a variety of natural reasons than sinking.

The other great danger, we are told, is the rise of CO2 in the atmosphere from burning hydrocarbons — which is alleged to cause atmospheric warming.  CO2 is a trace gas that animals exhale and plants use as fertilizer — which is why it is pumped into greenhouses. There is no consensus on the optimum level of CO2, but current levels are still below that which is beneficial for most plants. Plants tend to like warmth, water, and CO2 that global warming has provided with the good-side effect of increasing agricultural yields and lowering food prices.

Cold climates are more dangerous for people than warmer climates. It is not just good government and low taxes that cause many New Yorkers to move to Florida. In a new study, climate scholar and former U.S. delegate to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Indur M. Goklany, reports that: “Between 1990 and 2017, the cumulative age-standardized death rate from climate sensitive diseases and events dropped from 8.1% to 5.5%,” and malnutrition has dropped by nine percent. To date, global warming has been a net benefit for mankind.

The number of deadly wildfires, tornadoes and hurricanes has not increased, despite sensational news headlines. In 2020, Atlantic hurricanes were more numerous than average, but were more than offset by a very large drop in Pacific hurricanes. 

Climatologist Judith Curry in a report for the Climate Forecast Applications Network wrote: “Any recent signal of increased hurricane activity has not risen above the background level of natural climate variations. At this point, there is no convincing evidence that manmade global warming has caused a change in hurricane activity.” Lives lost in climate events have been declining for decades as a result of both better forecasting and protective measures.

CO2 emissions have been rapidly declining in the U.S. while greatly increasing in China and India (both of whom continue to build many large coal plants). Atmospheric CO2 is not an immediate crisis but, by the time it might be some decades from now, the safe bet is that cost-effective technologies that do not exist now will have developed to reduce it. 

There are a number of greater dangers to mankind at the moment than climate change — so enjoy the longer summers and less expensive food.

Food is not less expensive in Canada because of Trudeau's carbon tax which raises the cost of everything that moves. 

 Richard W. Rahn is chairman of the Institute for Global Economic Growth and MCon LLC.

Wednesday, December 9, 2020

Contrary to Climate Alarmism and Media Coverage, Reef Islands are GROWING Despite Rising Sea

9 Dec 2020 11:13

Jeh Island today, with its 1943 outline in red. © USDA

Against all odds, low-lying reef islands actually appear to be growing in some parts of the world, despite rising sea levels, increasing their footprint and defying doomsday predictions.

Geomorphologist Murray Ford from the University of Auckland in New Zealand led a team of researchers who examined Jeh Island, one of the 56 islands that make up the Ailinglaplap Atoll in the Marshall Islands, itself one of the most endangered nations on Earth. 

Ford and his team pored over aerial and satellite imagery of the island from above and made the startling discovery that not only has Jeh increased in total land area by 13 percent since 1943, it may actually have once been four separate islands which have now morphed together due to net land-mass gains.

World is literally a greener place than it was 20 years ago, according to NASA data

“Counter to predictions, popular media coverage and political proclamations, recent studies have shown the majority of reef islands studied have been stable or have increased in size since the mid-20th century,” the research team from the University of Auckland in New Zealand, led by Ford, explains.

According to the geomorphologist and his colleagues, the more dire sea-level rise predictions were based on the assumption that islands are static and unchanging and would therefore simply drown once the tides rose enough. 

The research team found that the islands grew courtesy of recently generated organic material formed by the reef and not sediment washed inland by the tides.

Jeh Island in 1943, with today's outline in red. © US National Archives

“The coral reefs which surround these islands [are] the engine room of island growth, producing sediment which is washed up on the island shoreline,” Ford explains. “Healthy coral reefs are essential for this process to continue into the future.”

No land-loss on coral reefs

Research dating back as far as 2018 found that among 30 coral atolls, accounting for over 700 islands in total, 88.6 percent remained stable or increased in size in recent decades, while none lost land overall.

The Maldives, the poster child of fear by climate hysterics, is the lowest country on earth. Consisting of 1192 islands with an average elevation of 1.5 meters and a maximum elevation of 5.1 meters is expected to disappear any day now. But the curious thing is, not one island has been lost. 

Islanders began leaving their native country in droves, convinced that it would not exist for their children (sound like a familiar theme?). But recently they have stopped leaving, planning to fight the demolition of their archipelago, or, perhaps, waiting to see some evidence that it is more than just hysteria. 

Jeh Island

Wednesday, February 13, 2019

UN IPCC Scientist Blows Whistle on Lies About Climate, Sea Level

Written by  Alex Newman, The New American

Note: Video at end of article.

UN IPCC Scientist Blows Whistle on Lies About Climate, Sea Level

STOCKHOLM, Sweden — The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC) is misleading humanity about climate change and sea levels, a leading expert on sea levels who served on the UN IPCC told The New American. In fact, it is more likely that sea levels will decline, not rise, explained Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner, the retired head of the paleogeophysics and geodynamics at Stockholm University. A new solar-driven cooling period is not far off, he said. But when Mörner tried to warn the UN IPCC that it was publishing false information that would inevitably be discredited, they simply ignored him. And so, dismayed, he resigned in disgust and decided to blow the whistle.   

Asked if coastal cities such as Miami would be flooding due to sea-level rise caused by alleged man-made global warming, Mörner was unequivocal: “Absolutely not.” “There is no rapid sea-level rise going on today, and there will not be,” he said, citing observable data. “On the contrary, if anything happens, the sea will go down a little.” The widely respected scientist, who has been tracking sea levels in various parts of the globe for some 50 years, blasted those who use incorrect “correction factors” in their data to make it appear that seas are rising worldwide. That is just wrong, he said.

Indeed, even speaking of something called “global sea level” is highly misleading, the expert explained. “It is different in different parts of the world,” Mörner said, noting that sea levels can rise in one part of the world and decline in another depending on a variety of factors. For instance, the interview took place right next to an 18th-century Baltic sea-level marker in Saltsjöbaden near Stockholm that showed the Baltic sea level at the time it was made. Because the ground is rising, the marking is now higher up from sea level than it was when it was made. Mörner has personally been measuring and tracking sea levels in equatorial regions of the world — Bangladesh, the Maldives, Southern India, New Caledonia, Fiji, and beyond.

Mörner's conclusion is that solar activity and its effects on the globe have been the “dominant factor” in what happens to both the climate and the seas. Meanwhile, the UN claims the current changes in climate and sea level are attributable to human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2). Man’s emissions of this essential gas, required by plants and exhaled by people, makes up a fraction of one percent of all so-called greenhouse gases present naturally in the atmosphere. “Absolutely not,” Mörner said about the CO2 argument, noting there was “something basically sick” in the blame-CO2 hypothesis. “CO2, if it has any effect, it is minute — it does not matter. What has a big effect is the sun.”

Obviously, while he was serving on the UN IPCC, Mörner tried to warn his colleagues on the UN body that the politically backed hypothesis about CO2 driving temperature changes, and the subsequent claims regarding dangerous sea-level rise, were totally incorrect. “They just ignored what I was saying,” he recounted. “If they were clever — if they had facts on their hands — they could show that, 'no, you're wrong.' But that is not the case. They just will not discuss it. I will try to discuss it. I will show with their own data that they are wrong. Because in science, we discuss. We don't forbid or neglect.”

Old Science; New Science

Of course, that's 'old science'. 'New science' decides on a premise and then goes out and builds computer models to prove it while shutting up any dissenting voices. Old Science was driven by curiosity, corroboration and truth; New Science is completely political.

When asked about the frequently repeated (and easily debunked) claims of an alleged 97-percent consensus supporting the man-made global-warming hypothesis, Mörner said it was simply not true — and even if it were, it would be irrelevant. “Why does anybody say something when it is not correct?” he asked. “They say it because they have applied excellent lobbyists. They are working with lobbyists in their hand; 'say this, do that.' We don't do that.” 

In the field of physics, Mörner estimated that 80 to 90 percent of physicists know the hypothesis is wrong. And among geologists and astronomers, he said probably 80 percent know it is wrong.

“They claim that there are 97 percent who are for it,” Mörner said. “I claim that it is 97 percent of scientific facts against them.”

Quoting Galileo, the 80-year-old Swedish scientist also slammed the shady tactics used by climate alarmists and the lobbyists they work with to suppress the real facts and demonize those who contradict their alarmist narrative. “If you write an excellent paper in a peer-reviewed journal, but they don't like it, they write to the journal and tell them they cannot write things like that, it's against the general consensus,” said Mörner, who has published hundreds of peer-reviewed papers on a wide range of scientific subjects. “They even put those journals on a black list. This is a shady thing going on. We don't work like that in real science.”

Globalism is a dangerous thing

Instead of science, Mörner suspects that the behind-the-scenes promoters of the man-made warming hypothesis have dark, ulterior motives. “I think the ultimate thing is that they want a government for the whole globe, and that is a weird idea,” Mörner said, criticizing the Rockefeller dynasty and global efforts to keep developing countries from developing under the guise of saving the climate. “This is the hope of controlling everything. It is autocracy. It is really bad. Nobody should rule like that. But everybody has had these strange dreams — small countries of being larger, and empires wanting to be super-empires, and then they collapse. We have a whole history full of that. This globalism is a dangerous thing.”


By putting so much emphasis on climate alarmism and the alleged dangers of CO2, meanwhile, Mörner said the UN has diverted resources and attention away from “all the real problems” of the world that really do exist. “This is a terrible thing, this is the terrible thing,” he said. It is especially sad because “the world is full of real problems” such as hunger, starvation, killings, natural disasters, diseases, and so much more, he said. Yet because of the incessant focus on demonizing CO2 and trying to control “climate,” those very real problems get ignored.  

And the biggest problem of all is child sex abuse. But children are nowhere near as important as... what?

Speaking of the UN's “climate” process, Mörner was pleased with Trump's actions so far, which include announcing that the U.S. government would be withdrawing from the highly controversial UN Paris Agreement. He urged the Trump administration to “forget about” the whole UN climate agenda “because that is nonsense, and you have very carefully and cleverly understood that.” However, he also urged Trump to be empathetic and willing to discuss the climate issue. “It is very simple for us to discuss it, because we really have the facts, they have their models,” Mörner said. “And facts are better than models.”

Dr. William Happer, a world-renowned physicist from Princeton University who has advised President Trump on climate issues, also denounced warming alarmism and the demonization of CO2. In an interview with The New American at a climate-skeptic summit put together by Freedom Force International, Professor Happer said there was nothing to worry about from alleged man-made global warming or human emissions of the gas of life. “CO2 will be good for the Earth,” Happer said, adding that CO2 levels were unusually and extremely low by historical standards. “More would be a very good thing.”

In fact, a report was released just yesterday showing the world has become significantly more green in recent decades.

Cooling cycle imminent

Mörner, meanwhile, cautioned promoters of the man-made warming hypothesis that they were going to ultimately be exposed, with catastrophic consequences for the scientific community. “This is so unscientific,” he said, condemning climatologists for ignoring facts that contradict their climate models. “And that is a terrible thing, this unscientific part of it. Because one day, it will all be revealed as nonsense. And then we lose our trustworthiness.” 

The data will not change, he said. And it is clear. If nothing else, when the next cooling phase begins — “everything points to that we are going into a new so-called grand solar minimum and that is in the middle of this century, maybe even as early as 2030” — then everybody will realize how wrong the warmists have been. That is when the “rats will leave the sinking ship,” he said.    

Fooling the world

But Mörner still expressed sympathy with those who have been duped into believing they are saving the planet by fighting CO2. “Of course, everybody wants to believe in something,” he said. “All those people who don't know what they are talking about, but they believe that they are saving the world. We don't save the world, the world will keep on going.”

It is even worse than that, though. “This is the most dangerous and frightening part of it: How such a lobbyist group has been able to fool the whole world,” he concluded, comparing it to how National Socialists in Germany and communists in both Russia and China were able to deceive the populations and seize power. Blasting the “autocratic process,” he said these organized and deceitful forces were “so dangerous.” He also expressed shock that the UN and governments would parade children around at UN climate summits. “What do they know? They are very nice, all of them, but they should be out playing, not talking at the United Nations,” he said, criticizing as “a little evil” that children would be used as propaganda props. “That is an insult to science.”

Despite the warnings of Mörner and numerous other highly respected scientists around the world, including others who have served on the UN IPCC, the UN IPCC and the broader UN continue to sound the alarm over allegedly looming temperature increases and sea-level rises that will flood coastal cities around the world. Now they say there are just 12 years left to save the planet. They typically refuse to debate, too. The New American reached out to the IPCC for comment repeatedly during the recent UN COP24 “climate” summit in Katowice, Poland. However, the organization did not respond to e-mails, phone calls, or visits to the IPCC booth at the climate summit seeking comment.  



Monday, November 2, 2015

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.