At https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/06/14/good-news-99-989-of-the-antarctic… … this is a bit of taking the Michael. Climate Change alarmists are telling us, via the media and a recently published paper, that the Antarctic ice sheet is melting (or is about to melt). It is losing ice in the billions of metric tons according to the media – using data from satellites. Apparently, it lost 2720 billion metric tones of ice between 1992 and 2017 (mainly from the West Antarctic peninsular). However, the total mass of the Antarctic ice sheet is 27,601,654 billion metric tons, or 27,602 trillion metric tons in short hand. This means it has lost 1.441 per cent (less that one and a half per cent) over the past 25 years – and we are all going to die (drowned in global sea level rise).
Over at https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/06/13/new-paper-shows-issues-with-tempe… … a new published in Earth-Science Review focusses specifically on Chinese temperature trends. It is technical and not for the science illiterate – but the conclusions are laid out in a simple way. It is well known there was a warm period in the 1920s to 1940s (one only has to read one of HH Lamb's books on climate). In this paper the warm period was actually warmer than the present one – in rural China. However, temperature stations in urban China show recent warming was higher – but this is due to the urban heat island effect (industrialisation of China in combination with growth of cities with lighting and heating etc). According to Western climate models (based on co2 levels in the atmosphere) there should not have been a warm period in the early half of the 20th century – as we are living in 'the warmest ever' times. In the West the the early 20th century warming has been airbrushed out of the records by manipulation of climate data. In China this has not happened. They simply record the temperature on a daily basis – as we did in the West prior to the CAGW scam. The authors, in an earlier paper, demonstrated that climate models do not perform well because they underestimate the role of natural climate change and overestimate the role of carbon dioxide. We live in interesting times.
At https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/06/15/nsf-study-current-carbon-dioxide-… … which comes from the National Science Foundation (in the US) which compares Pliocene temperatures with modern temperatures (and co2 levels). Geological drilling in the Antarctic has shown the ice sheet has been stable, or mostly so, for the last 8 million years. As the Pliocene is regarded as somewhat warmer than present temperatures it would seem to dispute the idea Antarctica was in any way under threat from collapse. That is the conclusion which would seem to contradict the earlier scare story about melting ice – so why do they think it was warmer in the Pliocene. One of the reasons is that sea levels were different – which vary between 5m and 40m higher than today. The assumption is that higher sea levels means more ice melted in order for them to spiral upwards. This might be a totally false assumption – and sea levels may reflect, instead, changes in the geoid of the earth.
Not to be out done, at https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/06/15/nasa-glaciologist-jay-zwally-puts… … another new paper, by Jay Zwally of NASA, challenges the consensus and says the Antarctic has gained ice rather than lost ice. Losses in the West Antarctic peninsular are off set by gains in the East Antarctic – and more so. This directly contradicts the Nature paper by a team of climate scientists. Ice on the peninsulare is being eaten away by warm water below – but in East Antarctica the ice sheet is wholly over land. Measurements of the latter however are open to a level of uncertainty -which is why the Nature article relied on satellite data (which when it comes to global temperature is ignored because it doesn't show any warming in recent times). Zwally contends that the land mass goes down as ice mass is added – and therefore calculations need to reflect this.
Finally, over that https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/06/16/what-an-engineer-finds-amazing-ab… … where the author says it is amazing that we as a society (meaning the West in general) have their noses led by group think ideas when direct scientific observation utterly refutes the very basis of alarmism. Sea level rise is widely reported every single day as an imminent man made climate disaster. Portion of Greenland melt and portions of Antarctica melt and this is posted as proof positive that human beings use of fossil fuels is causing the Earth to overly warm etc. It so happens, he declares, that these same portions of Greenland and Antarctica melt are known to be situated over highly active geothermal activity – and 100% of the observed melt is easily and readily attributable to current enhanced geothermal heat release. Certainly, as far as the West Antarctic peninsulare is concerned, it is known it underlain by volcanoes – and the peninsular is also in the path of the ocean circulation current (bring warm El Nino water from the Pacific into the Atlantic). Obviously, the answer here is there is a political dimension and certain climate scientists are signed up to it. Also, a lot of money is being made on the stock markets and out of renewables. Money and truth do not normally swing to the same rhythm.
