Science « JoNova

Most of Asia’s bankers ignore climate risks. Hmm. Rich and dumb, or rich and skeptical?

A survey in Asia found that 69% of financial institutions there don’t bother with assessing climate change risks when considering financing projects. Either these bankers have missed the last 20 years of IPCC messaging (careless inattentive bankers), or they’ve seen it and they know it’s baloney (skeptical bankers). Hmmm. What’s more likely?

Looks like two thirds of Asian banks don’t believe the IPCC:

[The new survey] …undertaken by Asia Research and Engagement with support of Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited, … found that 31 per cent of the institutions factored climate change risks into their financing operations, with 61 per cent of banks referring to green products and 56 per cent providing some quantification of their exposure.

It said financial institution were factoring climate change risks into their policies and offered green finance products. But only over a quarter of banks referred to climate change factors as a reason to limit financing .…

The bottom line is always where the money goes.

So over two thirds of financial institutions couldn’t care less about those forecasts of beachside apartments sinking under the waves, or cities becoming unlivable, nor of coal mines supposedly going broke. Nor […]

Record hottest year means record bumper wheat crop, opposite of crop models

Last year there were warnings from crop modelers in Nature that heat kills wheat and yields were going to fall in the “near future”, if temperatures rose. In fact global warming was “already slowing wheat gains”. What followed was a record El Nino, and 2015 was the hottest ever year, with 2016 vying to beat it. But instead of wheat doom, this month the USDA forecasts a record yield of wheat with bumper crops globally. Wheat output has grown in Australia, the US, Russia, Ukraine, everywhere pretty much, except the EU where it has been too rainy. Where are the mea culpas? h/t to the GWPF

Jan 2015, published in Nature. “Global Wheat Yield May Drop as Temperatures Rise”

“… researchers are now letting farmers know that the world’s wheat yields are excepted decline in the near future, with the world standing to lose six percent of its wheat crop for every degree Celsius that the annual global temperature increases.

“The simulations with the multi-crop models showed that warming is already slowing yield gains, despite observed yield increases in the past, at a majority of wheat-growing locations across the globe,” researcher Senthold Asseng, at the University […]

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7.8 out of 10 based on 24 ratings

Obama, Chinese Pres to hold hands, sign carbon chastity vows — hollow PR Victory, but has a sting

Today the Paris Agreement jumped from including 1.1% of global emissions to 39%. It’s part of the performance art, the Grand Act. Including those emissions means nothing as far as emissions go (China will keep putting out more), but it carries political leverage unless we expose the game.

Make no mistake: there is nothing at all legally binding about the Paris Agreement, but it can be politically binding — like a Chastity Vow. Right now, it’s about shame and social standing, not about megatons, but inasmuch as bluff and bluster can pull it off, the UN will eventually want the shapeshifting chastity vow to be treated as a legal force.

This soft vow has the advantage that is completely two faced — it can be all things to all people. To the green-passionate crowd it will be a historic, landmark agreement of the world working together. That’s “momentum”. To the free world, it may look like a failure, but that’s an advantage — it disarms the protests. Watch the Pea — (it’s really a bee). The sting is hidden. That’s ACT III.

After the Copenhagen disaster, the Global Worriers realized that they would have to sneak in a mechanism to […]

CO2 causes cold-hot East-West split climate change in the USA!

Somewhere in the world, a whole town is missing their tea-leaf readers.

The Physics tells us (practical beats us over the head) that more CO2 will mean warmer nights. It is a 97% certified mantra that warm nights are a fingerprint of man-made global warming.*

Well don’t look now, but CO2 causes cold nights too (and get this… on the East Coast).

Extreme-weather winters are becoming more common in US

Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in the simultaneous occurrence of extremely cold winter days in the Eastern United States and extremely warm winter days in the West, according to a Stanford-led study published in Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres. Human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases are likely driving this trend, the researchers report.

Used to be that single seasons were “weather” and thirty year trends were “science”– now all they need is a single repeated season and half a country:

“Looking back at temperature data from the past 35 years, we’ve found that in fact 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 did have the biggest difference in winter temperature between the East and West.”

This is pretty freaky — can you imagine how smart these guys must […]

1200 years of climate change in the Bear River Basin, Utah

A bunch of scientists used tree rings to figure out the streamflow in Bear River, Utah, since the dark ages. This is what a perfect stable climate looks like.

Obviously we need immediate carbon trading to stop whatever is going to happen next:

Figure 1. Reconstructed Bear River decadal-scale drought (brown) and wet (green) periods from cubic smoothing spline with frequency response of 25% at wavelength 10 years. Dashed lines indicate 1 SD from reconstruction mean. Adapted from DeRose et al. (2016).

Thanks to the excellent CO2Science site for analyzing it in their collection.

In 1200 Years of Historic Streamflow we see that there was a dreadful drought in 1210 that lasted 70 years. The worst wet period lasted nearly 50 years and started in 1378. Spot the effect of CO2. Anyone?

Naturally there has already been a Bear River Climate Change Adaptation Workshop, with “thirty-nine representatives of 20 state and federal agencies, local governments, academic institutions, and non-governmental organizations.”

The old 2010 Workshop report tells us we have to let go of the idea that the climate is stable — “stationarity is dead”. *

“ We are no longer working in a world where we can assume […]

Profs tell students “no debate” on climate. Unbelievers should “Drop out”

Welcome to Higher Education 2016: Whatever you do, don’t ask questions, don’t ask for evidence, and don’t discuss your doubts on class forums. “We will not, at any time, debate the science of climate change’” All outside sources for research must be peer reviewed by the IPCC.

Students in the University of Colorado expressed concern about the first online lecture in “Medical Humanities in the Digital Age”. All three Professors together replied via email that students should Drop class if they dispute man-made climate change

“The point of departure for this course is based on the scientific premise that human induced climate change is valid and occurring. We will not, at any time, debate the science of climate change, nor will the ‘other side’ of the climate change debate be taught or discussed in this course,” states the email, a copy of which was provided to The College Fix by a student in the course.

“Opening up a debate that 98% of climate scientists unequivocally agree to be a non-debate would detract from the central concerns of environment and health addressed in this course,” the professors’ email continued.

“… If you believe this premise […]

China produces the same emissions in 18 days as Australia does in one year

Oh the futility. Australia’s entire annual production of carbon from all that mining, construction, industry and everything is replicated in China every 18 days.

If we cut our emissions by an obscene, bleeding 25%, we will spend billions and yet China will undo all our hair-shirt “savings” in just 5 normal days. (And that’s at current rates, it gets worse by 2030).

Australia is a giant coal and iron quarry built at the far end of the Earth, with a tiny, but rapidly growing population spread across a vast land. Transport distances are eye-watering. We run 94% of everything off fossil fuels and there are no more easy cuts to be made. Gaia gave us more uranium than any other country but we are religiously opposed to nuclear power. (What would it take to change that — a bomb from China?). We’ve got more Sun, hot rocks and empty space than anywhere, so if solar, wind or geothermal were going to work on Planet Earth, it would be here. We are God’s Gift to the renewable industry — yet they all fail. (Today, Flannery’s Geothermal project crashed, last week Windorah’s solar farm shut, and last month, the whole state of […]

Arctic Sea Ice — it all melted before and it didn’t matter

Matt Ridley in The Australian explains how every man and his dog is forecasting the doom of the Arctic sea ice, and not only have they been wrong year after year, but they all assume that if the ice all melts it’ll be a global disaster. But Earth’s already been-there done-that, and for years, and it was no-biggie. Polar bears obviously got through it, as did seals. Humans without protective solar panels somehow spread far and wide, and generally flourished.

I suspect the main climate refugees from the Arctic would have names like Donner and Blitzen. This is the one thing Matt doesn’t explain — in 8,000BC when the ice melted, what the heck happened with Santa?

Ice scares aren’t all they’re cracked up to be

This was a period known as the “early Holocene insolation maximum” (EHIM). Because the Earth’s axis was tilted away from the vertical more than today (known as obliquity), and because we were then closer to the Sun in July than in January (known as precession), the amount of the Sun’s energy hitting the far north in summer was much greater than today. This “great summer” effect was the chief reason the Earth […]

Pounding waves from weather bomb storm felt across continents

File it under: Amazing

A “Weather Bomb” storm in the Atlantic generates pounding seismic waves that can be detected through the Earth as far away as Japan. They used 200+ stations and could detect the distance and direction of these microseismic waves. This could be pretty useful to figure out more about what’s under the crust in the same way that an “X-ray” works on us.

Credit: Kiwamu Nishida and Ryota Takagi

Press Release: An Atlantic “weather bomb,” or a severe, fast-developing storm, causes ocean swells that incite faint and deep tremors into the oceanic crust. These subtle waves run through the earth and can be detected in places as far away as Japan, where facilities using a method called “Hi-net” measure the amplitude of the storm’s P and S waves for the first time.

9.2 out of 10 based on 45 ratings […]

Emergency Theater for Paris Agreement: China, US rush to sham ratification

Tell the world it is all an act.

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It’s a do or die moment for The Cause. Brexit has hit them hard, and the Trump factor threatens to wreck everything. The Paris agreement has stalled pathetically at 1.1% of all human emissions (they need 55% to come into force). They need a gamechanger or the illusion of one.

Next week expect a grand performance from US and China — or rather from two men who look solemn and can sign important looking carbon chastity vows on behalf of 1.8 billion people. Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping will say they have ratified the Paris agreement. Expect triumphant parades, and smiles, handshakes and talk of a historic moment. It’s all for show. China will agree to do nothing different until 2030 when its population growth peaks, and Obama can’t get the support of Congress.

But the gala performance may work if enough other countries fall for it — especially the stupidly obedient Anglosphere, and the trapped EU. India, Russia and Brazil will only buy into it they are fed enough pork. But the pork has to come from somewhere, and that’s us — The West. That’s who this show […]

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9.3 out of 10 based on 15 ratings

Humans worst footprint on planet apart from algae, plants, asteroids, volcanoes

Feel the guilt in the Gaia religion: New map shows alarming growth of the human footprint

“Humans are the most voracious consumers planet Earth has ever seen. With our land-use, hunting and other exploitative activities, we are now directly impacting three-quarters of the Earth’s land surface,” said Professor Laurance.

And three-quarters of 30% of the world is a fifth of the world. But algae will be feeling pretty cheezed right now. They wrecked up the whole atmosphere — but get no credit. Algae define the term “voracious consumer”. The pristine state of the atmosphere was transformed forever, plus the schmucks made oil.

But nothing changes the planet quite like a 10-20km wide rock dropping in and wiping out 90% of all species on Earth. That’s a “footprint”.

Note the magical 97% appears again — a sacred number of “certainty”:

A James Cook University scientist says a new map of the ecological footprint of humankind shows 97 per cent of the most species-rich places on Earth have been seriously altered.

9.3 out of 10 based on 52 ratings […]

Experts “surprised” to discover what skeptics have known for years: world has been warming for 200 years

For years, skeptical scientists have been pointing at data that showed the the world started warming somewhere from 1700 – 1820. This has been known from glaciers, sea level studies, ice cores, boreholes, ocean heat content estimates, and more proxies than any climate-nerd cares to name.

Finally, expert climate modelers are “surprised” to discover this:

“…their study had detected warming in the Arctic and tropical oceans from around the 1830s, just 80 years after the Industrial Revolution started in England. “It was an extraordinary finding,” she said. “It was one of those moments where science really surprised us. But the results were clear. The climate warming we are witnessing today started about 180 years ago.”

How many grant dollars did it take to figure out what skeptical scientists have been saying for years?

The correlation with global temperatures and actual numerical human emissions is abysmal, so now Abrams et al ignore the numbers and appear to suggest that “The Industrial Revolution” itself started the warming — as if the mere invention of the steam engine heated the world.

[Dr Abram] said the study attributed the gradual warming to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions linked […]

Great Barrier Reef: 5% bleached, not 93% says new report “discrepancy phenomenal”

In a nutshell: a government funded group finds some bleached coral on the Great Barrier Reef, and repackages the stats to come up with the apocalyptic statistic that only 7% of the reef is not bleached! The SMH reported that “93% of the corals” are damaged. The reef is 2,000 kilometers long. Did anyone really think about these headlines?

Then in a development that “no one” could see coming, local tourism is damaged, potentially costing a lot of jobs.

“And the loss of these tourists could cost our tourism industry a whopping $1 billion a year, a report out today by The Australia Institute warned.”

This inspires local dive operators (who possibly know what the reef looks like) to pay for a two week expedition to survey 28 sites. They find about 5% damage and describe the difference as phenomenal. Indeed, they say the reef is pretty much just like it was 20 years ago when they last did a survey.

We know that both sides have an interest finding a healthy or unhealthy reef. The problem starts with self-serving taxpayer funded scientists who are paid to find a crisis. But they would not get away with it […]

Psychoanalysis shows Nuclear Power stops countries meeting climate targets

Only higher education could produce something this silly.

The University of Sussex gets the credit for a paper that argues that countries that are committed to nuclear energy are progressing slower towards the holy grail of meeting “climate targets”. This discovery coincidentally comes exactly as the UK Hinkley Point “hangs in the balance”. What were the odds?

The Newspeak starts in the headline — what’s a “climate target”. My personal climate target is to move into the tropics each winter, but the EU climate target is not about reducing temperatures over Spain, but about “more windmills”. The climate target of the EU has apparently got nothing much to do with the climate:

…the EU’s 2020 Strategy — to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 20%, increase the share of renewable energy to at least 20% of consumption, and achieve energy savings of 20% or more by 2020…

They cluster countries in to 3 groups and discover that the countries that plan to maintain or expand nuclear energy (eg Bulgaria, Hungary and the UK) are not cutting emissions as fast as countries that have no nukes (Denmark, Ireland, and Norway).

Could it be, I wonder, because […]

The million year prehistory of Cricket — the fast bowlers got fed

The researchers don’t say it, but this is obviously the beginnings of cricket. (David says “baseball”).

Archaeologists found lots of round rocks like this that are around 70,000 – 1.8 million years old in a cave in South Africa. They thought they might be tools, but now reckon that they were used as a weapon for hunting. With models (yeah, yeah) these are apparently the ideal size and weight to score maximum high speed damage at 20-30m distance given the mechanics of a human arm. So before spears, people probably throw rocks overhand to hunt. We are the only animals that can do this — which might explain why a million years later people are still so enthused about cricket (and baseball).

Maybe the South Africans have an unfair advantage playing the game so much longer than everyone else. (David doesn’t think much of my theory, but cricket suddenly makes a lot more sense to me now).

Snippets from the press release:

9.5 out of 10 based on 40 ratings […]

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8.9 out of 10 based on 20 ratings

We should protect our kids from climate change by not having them

National Public Radio (USA): ‘Should We Be Having Kids In The Age Of Climate Change?’

h/t to Climate Depot

Daily Caller Andrew Follett reports on a set of stories about population control “for the climate”:

‘We should protect our kids from climate change by not having them’ says Travis Rieder of NPR.

I reckon it seems fairer to have the kids first, then ask them.

Humans have put out 50% of all our emissions of CO2 since 1988, so everyone under 30 may have wished they hadn’t been born during the Anthropocene apocalypse. (All those hot summers, those boring lectures at school). Lets do that survey. How many 28 year olds think their parents made the wrong call in 1987?

Raising offspring is hard work. “Saving the world” might just be the excuse you’re looking for if you are not inclined to do nappies.

NPR Travis Rieder, a philosopher at Johns Hopkins University, told NPR. “The situation is bleak, it’s just dark … Population engineering, maybe it’s an extreme move. But it gives us a chance.”

Rieder said America produces a lot of carbon dioxide (CO2) per person, and the world’s poorest nations will […]

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Recent Posts

Most of Asia’s bankers ignore climate risks. Hmm. Rich and dumb, or rich and skeptical?

Record hottest year means record bumper wheat crop, opposite of crop models

Weekend Unthreaded

Obama, Chinese Pres to hold hands, sign carbon chastity vows — hollow PR Victory, but has a sting

CO2 causes cold-hot East-West split climate change in the USA!

1200 years of climate change in the Bear River Basin, Utah

Profs tell students “no debate” on climate. Unbelievers should “Drop out”

China produces the same emissions in 18 days as Australia does in one year

Arctic Sea Ice — it all melted before and it didn’t matter

Pounding waves from weather bomb storm felt across continents

Emergency Theater for Paris Agreement: China, US rush to sham ratification

Weekend Unthreaded

Humans worst footprint on planet apart from algae, plants, asteroids, volcanoes

Experts “surprised” to discover what skeptics have known for years: world has been warming for 200 years

Great Barrier Reef: 5% bleached, not 93% says new report “discrepancy phenomenal”

Psychoanalysis shows Nuclear Power stops countries meeting climate targets

The million year prehistory of Cricket — the fast bowlers got fed

Weekend Unthreaded

We should protect our kids from climate change by not having them

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