Paper: Scientists on ice are media's nightmare

EDITORIAL: Scientists on ice are media's nightmare

The Gazette editorial • Updated: January 4, 2014 at 8:28 am • Published: January 4, 2014 | 12:00 am 

 

Global warming scientists went looking for disappearing ice. They found quite the contrary, getting so badly stuck two icebreakers couldn't get to them. Media portrayed it as a pleasure cruise, ignoring the obvious global warming irony. (AP Photo/Australasian Antarctic Expedition, Chris Turney)

As a bunch of global warming scientists were stuck in ice through the holidays, we barely heard a peep about global warming and climate change. The ice, after all, is supposed to be melting and scarce because of SUVs, "Big Oil" and indulgent American lifestyles.

The mainstream national media so love the human-caused global warming hypothesis that Americans seldom get straight reports of weather events without reporters grabbing "global warming" connections from thin air. We are assured each catastrophic tornado, hurricane—even each blizzard—results from humans burning fossil fuels.

Radical environmentalists even tried to blame global warming for the devastating 2011 tsunami—a tragedy caused by a 9.0 offshore earthquake. To suggest that auto emissions cause tectonic plates to shift sounds like quite a stretch, but global warming zeal apparently has no limits.

"Past research suggests there may indeed be a link between climate change and earthquakes in some parts of the world," stated the environmental blog Mongabay.com, as the tsunami's body count rose.

The environmental website "grist.org" responded to the earthquake-caused tsunami with the headline: "Today's Tsunami: this is what climate change looks like."

The headline was later retracted.

Staffan Nilsson, president of the European Economic and Social Committee, tied the earthquake-tsunami to global warming like this:

"Some islands affected by climate change have been hit. Has not the time come to demonstrate on solidarity—not least solidarity in combating and adapting to climate change and global warming?"

Though nearly anything passes as rationale for "global warming" alerts, these leaps in logic don't go both ways. When a news event provides non-scientific, anecdotal evidence to the contrary—when details seem to counter a melting-earth philosophy—we hear nothing of global warming and climate change.

Scientists stranded on the Russian ship Akademik Shokalskiy were on a mission that issued the following statment: "Sea ice is disappearing due to climate change."

Yet, they ran into so much ice—on their mission to examine disappearing ice—that two ice giant breakers could not reach them. They were stranded for 10 days before a successful helicopter rescue concluded Thursday.

The mission's leader, Chris Turney, is a professor of climate change at the University of South Wales. His personal website explained the purpose of the trip was to "discover and communicate the environmental changes taking place in the south."

Yet, typical reports created visions of another vacation cruise gone bad. Stranded scientists were widely described by media as "tourists" and "passengers." Mainstream media mostly ignored the most interesting element of the story: an ice-melt excursion was trapped in ice. It's an irony worth noting, even if it says nothing scientific about global warming.

"Nearly 98 percent of network news reports about the stranded researchers failed to mention their mission at all," reports NewsBuster.org, a service of Brent Bozell's Media Research Center. "Forty out of 41 stories (97.5 percent) on the network morning and evening news shows since Dec. 25 failed to mention climate change had anything to do with the expedition."

That's because the story doesn't fit the global warming narrative. Scientists aren't supposed to get mired in sea ice on a mission to prove the poles are melting and facing a dearth of ice. The true dilemma did not bolster the cause, so the media looked away.

Read more at http://gazette.com/editorial-scientists-on-ice-are-medias-nightmare/article/1512010#T75CvTS5dwg5eZDO.99

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Bravo! Global carbon markets' value dropped 38% in 2013

Global carbon markets' value dropped 38% in 2013

Low carbon targets set by governments blamed by analysts for falling carbon price in EU and UN schemes

Reuters theguardian.com, Friday 3 January 2014 07.36 EST

The value of global carbon markets dropped 38% to 38.4 billion euros ($52.9 billion) in 2013, as prices slid in the main EU and UN schemes and trade limited in new programmes, analysts at Thomson Reuters Point Carbon said this week.

The value of carbon permits and credits traded was down from 62 billion euros in 2012 and 96 billion euros in 2011, a two-year period in which benchmark EU carbon permit prices fell to 5 euros per tonne from 18 euros, the analysts said in a a report.

Last year also saw a decrease in volume, with 9.2 billion emission units changing hands compared to 10.7 billion in 2012, the first drop in turnover since 2010.

"The main explanation for the falling prices in carbon markets around the world is the very modest emission reduction targets adopted for the period up to 2020," Point Carbon's Anders Nordeng said.

"Without ambitious climate targets there is no need for deep emission reductions and carbon prices will remain at low levels."

In an effort to curb emissions of heat-trapping gases blamed for global warming, many governments have set up markets that cap emissions and allow emitting companies to trade excess permits.

The EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) has operated since 2005 and represented 94% of the value and 88% of the traded volume of global carbon markets in 2013, the analysts said.

Prices in the EU scheme have fallen as rigid supply rules flooded the market with permits as demand ebbed amid the bloc's economic downturn.

Last month, EU lawmakers agreed to cut supply temporarily in an attempt to push prices back towards levels that stimulate companies to invest in carbon-cutting technology. The move followed more than a year of wrangling amid concerns that higher prices could hamper the bloc's economic recovery.

The so-called backloading proposal, which delays the sale of permits from scheduled auctions, is not expected to take effect until March at the earliest. Analysts say that without further reform, it will not push prices much higher than 5 euros.

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Joint Implementation (JI), the carbon offset schemes created under the United Nations, suffered an even greater decline in 2013.

Trade in UN credits dropped 96% in value and 75% in volume to 299 million euros and 742 million units respectively, the analysts said.

The CDM and JI allow developers of carbon-cutting projects to earn credits that can sold to governments or companies seeking to meet emission targets, with some 2.2 billion units generated since their inception in 2005.

But fresh investment has dried up as credit prices have crashed 98% in five years to less than 50 cents, lower than the cost of developing the projects.

Additional demand for the UN credits has failed to emerge via fresh government targets and the EU this year banned credits from new schemes from all but the world's poorest nations in an effort to get emerging nations such as China, Brazil and Russia to pay for more of their own emission reductions.

North American carbon markets were the only ones to have grown in volume and value over 2013.

The fledging market spanning California and Quebec now has the highest permit prices in the world, at $10.71 per tonne, said Point Carbon's Olga Chistyakova.

The analysts added that the launch of five of seven planned carbon markets in China in the second half of 2013 had great potential to reverse the overall decline in global carbon markets due to the sheer size of the schemes, which are in Guangdong, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Tianjin.

Nordeng said talks on a global deal to tackle climate change due to be struck in late 2015 would be a key test on whether big-emitting countries would set or deepen emission reduction targets to tackle climate change effectively.

"If the goal to limit global warming to 2C shall be met, more dramatic cuts are needed over the next decades," said Nordeng, referring to a 2010 agreement by almost 200 nations under the UN to limit the rise in global temperature.

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Global warming believers are today's climate deniers

ICE AND COLD: GLOBAL WARMING BELIEVERS ARE TODAY'S CLIMATE DENIERS

by JOHN NOLTE 4 Jan 2014 Breitbart.com

Just this week we had dozens of Global Warming-believing scientists, who specialize in researching ice melt in Antarctica, run into a helluva lot more Antarctic ice than their research told them would be there. So much more ice that their ship and three ice-breaking rescue vessels were stuck in ten feet of it for days (two of the vessels are still stuck). As I write this, the big news of the weekend is a cold snap across much of the country with temperatures reaching 20 and 30-year lows. And yet, despite all of what should be good news, the Global Cooling Global Warming Climate Change community is not celebrating.

Not only are Climate Change Truthers not celebrating, they are hysterical with worry that unexpected Antarctic ice discoveries and American winters returning to the normalcy those of us of a certain age remember, might hurt their religion crusade. The media is so worried they have coordinated a cover-up of the news from Antarctica and those of us pointing to what one might call the "science" of colder temperatures and increased Arctic ice are being mocked for doing so.

Granted, more ice in one area of a vast South Pole is not empirical proof that all is well in the Antarctic, but it is a great way to call attention to the fact that according to NASA, "In late September 2013, the ice surrounding Antarctica reached its annual winter maximum and set a new record."

Who is anti-science now?

The chief of today's Climate Deniers is President Obama, whose second term will end up being "all about Climate Change." Despite all this good climate news, Obama still intends to circumvent Congress and use the Tyranny of the Bureaucracy to strangle the kind of industries that create solid middle class jobs. But don't worry, while Obama is killing good-paying energy jobs he will be rescuing us from income inequality that good paying energy jobs would help to solve.

There are all kinds of reasons not to believe in Global Warming -- the cover-ups, the media bias, the outright lies; the science just being plain old wrong; the absurdity of using a hundred-or-so years of data on a planet billions of years old; the oh-so bizarre coincidence that the only solution to the "crisis" is to check off every item on the Marxist wish-list; the fact that Global Warming Believers live their lives like the rest of us instead of preparing for imminent catastrophe…

And let's not forget the oily shift in branding from Global Cooling to Global Warming to Climate Change…

Well, now we can add to this list the fact that the very good news of unexpected Antarctic ice, and a return to the kind of winter weather we experienced before this Climate Change hysteria began, hasn't so much as made a single Truther pause for just a moment to wonder aloud if this might be good news.

Instead, they are ignoring the science to double down on their denial and partisan bitterness.

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Fossil Fuels to the Rescue in Antarctica

Fossil-Fueled Ingenuity to the Rescue in Antarctica
Thanks to modern technology, those stranded researchers didn't meet a fate that has befallen others.

By ANNE JOLIS
Jan. 3, 2014 6:53 p.m. ET

WSJ.COM 1/3/13: A century ago, Australian geologist Douglas Mawson led a perilous expedition through Antarctica. His team's observations yielded unprecedented knowledge of the frozen continent's wildlife, climate and natural formations, though at a steep price: On the way, expedition member Lt. Belgrave Ninnis disappeared through a crevasse, along with a sledgeful of supplies and several huskies. Mawson and his remaining companion, Swiss ski champion Xavier Mertz, wound up having to eat their surviving dogs. Mertz fell ill and died three weeks later.

Mawson made it back to his base camp, only to find that he'd missed his boat and would have to wait another year to be rescued. "Several of my toes commenced to blacken and fester near the tips and the nails worked loose," he wrote later in his memoir, "Home of the Blizzard." "There appeared to be little hope."


Sir Douglas Mawson

Prospects were considerably brighter from the start for the researchers more recently stranded in Antarctica, who were rescued by helicopter on Thursday. The episode—it would be hard to call the 10-day marooning an ordeal—began on Christmas Eve, when powerful winds shifted dense ice sheets, barricading the Russian-flagged research vessel Akademik Shokalskiy.

The Australasian Antarctic Expedition had set out in November to retrace Mawson's journey. But where Mawson barely escaped with his life, the icebound researchers, questing after evidence of global warming, seemed most threatened by a storm of global ridicule.

Beyond the obvious jokes stirred by the story's basic outline, it's worth noting how much better off today's adventurers were than Mawson's team, thanks to the wonders of modern technology—much of it decidedly fossil-fueled.
The diesel-powered Akademik Shokalskiy was equipped with depth sounders, automatic radar plotting, various satellite positioning systems and a full array of communication links. Instead of relying on sledges and huskies, today's expeditioners had amphibious all-terrain vehicles to explore their surroundings. The ship also had enough fresh and dehydrated food to last its 52 passengers (including the researchers and tourists) until February, if needed. As for entertainment, the Shokalskiy had an auditorium loaded with movies and a stocked bar—though one passenger cautioned earlier this week that booze supplies were running low and might not last much beyond aNew Year's Eve celebration.

As the days passed and repeated rescue attempts were foiled by harsher weather and thicker ice than expected, the strandees seemed to stay in good spirits. The scientific expedition's leader, climatologist Chris Turney, blogged that "we are all keeping busy," for instance with classes in "knot tying, languages, yoga, photography." The passengers posted a steady stream of photos and videos to social media, with a heavy focus on selfies with the penguins that waddled up to inspect the humans.

"It's fantastic—I love it when the ice wins and we don't," marine ecologist Tracy Rogers told the BBC journalist onboard, adding: "It reminds you that as humans, we don't control everything and that the natural world—it's the winner here."

When nature really wins, the moment usually isn't Instagram-ready. Those long-ago victims, Ninnis and Mertz, knew too well what it looks like.

On Thursday, when rescuers from a Chinese icebreaker sent a helicopter to ferry the passengers to an Australian ship, many of those around the world who had followed the story might have found it appropriate to raise a toast to human ingenuity and the marvels of the helicopter—however big its carbon footprint. Maybe the climate-change researchers even raised a glass, if they had any liquor left. They certainly had enough ice. Just ask those Chinese rescuers: At last report their ship appeared to have become stuck too.

Miss Jolis is an editorial page writer for The Wall Street Journal Europe.

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Antarctic ice shelf melt 'lowest ever recorded, global warming is not eroding it'

Antarctic ice shelf melt 'lowest EVER recorded, global warming is NOT eroding it'

Human CO2 just not a big deal at Pine Island Glacier

By Lewis Page, 3rd January 2014, The Register

Scientists at the British Antarctic Survey say that the melting of the Pine Island Glacier ice shelf in Antarctica has suddenly slowed right down in the last few years, confirming earlier research which suggested that the shelf's melt does not result from human-driven global warming.

The Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica and its associated sea ice shelf is closely watched: this is because unlike most of the sea ice around the austral continent, its melt rate has seemed to be accelerating quickly since scientists first began seriously studying it in the 1990s.

Many researchers had suggested that this was due to human-driven global warming, which appeared to be taking place rapidly at that time (though it has since gone on hold for 15 years or so, a circumstance which science is still assimilating).

However back in 2009 the British Antarctic Survey sent its Autosub robot probe under the shelf (famously powered by some 5,000 ordinary alkaline D-cell batteries on each trip beneath the ice, getting through no less than four tonnes of them during the research). The Autosub survey revealed that a previously unknown marine ridge lay below the shelf, over which the icepack had for millennia been forced to grind its way en route to the ocean. However in relatively recent times the ice had finally so ground down the ridge that the sea could flow in between shelf and ridge, freeing the ice to move much faster and warming it too.

As we reported at the time, this caused BAS boffins to suggest that the observed accelerating ice flow and melt seen since the '90s was actually a result of the ridge's erosion and sea ingress, rather than global warming.

Now, the latest BAS research has revealed that rather than accelerating, "oceanic melting of the ice shelf into which the glacier flows decreased by 50 per cent between 2010 and 2012".

The BAS goes on to explain:

Observations made in January 2012, and reported now in Science, show that ocean melting of the glacier was the lowest ever recorded. The top of the thermocline (the layer separating cold surface water and warm deep waters) was found to be about 250 metres deeper compared with any other year for which measurements exist.

This lowered thermocline reduces the amount of heat flowing over the ridge. High resolution simulations of the ocean circulation in the ice shelf cavity demonstrate that the ridge blocks the deepest ocean waters from reaching the thickest ice ... 

In January 2012 the dramatic cooling of the ocean around the glacier is believed to be due to an increase in easterly winds caused by a strong La Ninã event in the tropical Pacific Ocean.

Dr Pierre Dutrieux of the BAS adds, bluntly:

"We found ocean melting of the glacier was the lowest ever recorded, and less than half of that observed in 2010. This enormous, and unexpected, variability contradicts the widespread view that a simple and steady ocean warming in the region is eroding the West Antarctic Ice Sheet."

The Science paper can be read by subscribers to the journal here. The BAS announcement of the results can be read here. Readers unfamiliar with the rules of the climate game should note that the term "climate variability" as used in those documents means for this purpose "climate effects not caused by humans".

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The Alps defy global warming - but no one wants to hear it!

Meteorologist Dominik Young writing at the German Huffington Post site:

• "The data shows winter in the Alps has become clearly colder in the last decades. We have examined an extra-long time series of 20 to 30 years, just as is always demanded by the climatologists." 


• "This begs the question: If we know these results, will they just not listen because they do not fit into the current world view of climate change or global warming? The climate experts 20 years ago preached that there would be no more future winters with ice and snow in Central Europe. In addition, they said winter sports would be possible only in the highest regions of the Alps, as the temperatures would continue to rise. But none of this has been the case"


• "To me it seems as if the issue of climate change or global warming has now become a kind of religion. Those who belong tolerate no other findings when they are based on even the facts such as these measured temperature values. It borders almost on a scandal that competent professionals just seem to ignore these findings."


• "Conclusion: For mild winters, we are obviously far away in the Alps. The trend is moving in exactly the opposite direction!"

Google translation + light editing from the German Huffington Post site:




Dominik Young Meteorologist at wetter.net

The Alps defy global warming - but no one wants to hear it!

Published: 21/11/2013 

Subjectively, there were the inhabitants of the Austrian ski resort of Kitzbühel in recent years so ago, when the winter would be colder. In order to gain an objective picture of the situation, we went out and ordered at the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics (ZAMG), the state weather service in Austria, the appropriate weather data for the last 20 years. In assessing the data and results I was of MMag. Günther Aigner, Marketer at Kitzbühel Tourismus, provided technical support.

The evaluation has amazing result:

According to a peer review for my part I am very surprised. The winters there in the last 20 years have proven colder, and sometimes quite massively. The last two winters in Kitzbühel were even the coldest of the past 20 years.

In order to make further investigations were requested and evaluated by a further four alpine mountain weather:

· Germany Zugspitze (2,962 m)

· Schmittenhoehe Austria (1,972 m)

· Sonnblick Austria (3,105 m)

· Santis Switzerland (2,502 m)

They all came to the same amazing result:

The data shows winter in the Alps has become clearly colder in the last decades. We have examined an extra-long time series of 20 to 30 years, just as is always demanded by the climatologists.
They even questioned the meteorological professionals on site according to their opinions on the results. However, this had little success. In some cases it was even surprised by these results, in part, attempts the results were put into perspective.

This begs the question: If we know these results, will they just not listen because they do not fit into the current world view of climate change or global warming? The climate experts 20 years ago preached that there would be no more future winters with ice and snow in Central Europe. In addition, winter sports would be possible in the coming decades only in the highest regions of the Alps, as the temperatures would continue to rise. But none of this has been the case, as this observational data from official monitoring networks of the German Weather Service (Zugspitze), the ZAMG (Kitzbühel, Sundays views and Schmitt height) and the MeteoSwiss prove (Santis) impressive.

To me it seems as if the issue of climate change or global warming has now become a kind of religion. Those who belong tolerate no other findings when they are based on even the facts such as those measured temperature values. It borders almost on a scandal that competent professionals just seem to ignore these findings. 

Conclusion:

For mild winters, we are obviously far away in the Alps. The trend is moving in exactly the opposite direction! Climatologists had advised a few years ago the winter sports resorts of the Alps to their investment in terms of winter sports back down-that would not be worth it due to the rising average temperatures soon.

It makes you wonder: what rising temperatures meant the men and women merely?

Dominik Jung on Twitter: www.twitter.com / weather expert

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WSJ: 'We long for the days when the weather wasn't politicized'

It Isn't Climate Change
We long for the days when the weather wasn't politicized.

WSJ.COM 2/2/13: In case our California and Miami readers haven't heard, it's cold across most of North America. Very cold. Thursday's high in Minneapolis soared to 3 degrees Fahrenheit, which was toasty compared to minus-4 degrees in Winnipeg. The cold snap is spread across the Continent and includes a major snowstorm in the Northeast, which as usual is freaking out in ways that would make residents of the Twin Cities shake their heads.

Our favorite headline of the week was the CBC report that "Winnipeg deep freeze as cold as uninhabited planet." The Manitoba Museum, a connoisseur of such things, is reporting that on Tuesday Mars had reached a maximum temperature of minus-29 Celsius (minus-20 Fahrenheit), which Winnipeg didn't reach until 3 p.m. that day. The Mars temperature comes courtesy of the Curiosity Rover.

This being 2014, when everything devolves to politics, any spell of cold or heat inevitably leads to explanations of climate change. The conservative websites are having a good time pointing to the cold temps as a repudiation of global-warming models, while the global-warming crowd says even the cold is proof of . . . climate change. You see, it's all about climate extremes. That's why the liberals no longer refer to "global warming."

Normal human beings who prefer not to politicize the weather report understand that climate change has nothing to do with what is . . . winter. The average temperature in Winnipeg in December was close to minus-6 degrees Fahrenheit, which makes it only the fifth or sixth coldest on record. CBC says as recently as the year 2000, the Manitoba capital averaged minus-7.6 degrees in December.

For our part we're looking forward to the weekend NFL playoff games, especially the one in frigid Green Bay (Sunday forecast: minus-3). We long even more for the day when we can gripe about the weather without having to think about Al Gore.

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