Day: 5 October 2020

Climate activists have been presenting Venice, Italy, as a poster child for alarm recently, claiming exceptionally high tides that sometimes flood the city illustrate an urgent need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Instead, a successful test of newly build floodgates illustrates that even the most “vulnerable” locations to sea-level rise can fare quite well in the present and in the future.

Media outlets such as Forbes, the BBC, Time, NPR, Bloomberg, etc, have published articles during the past year highlighting occasional Venice floods and blaming climate change. Most of these media sources fail to mention that the land on which Venice sits is subsiding (sinking), which raises local sea level regardless of climate change.

As documented in Climate at a Glance: Sea Level Rise, global sea level has been modestly rising since at least the mid-1800s. Regardless of the cause of recent Venice floods, human ingenuity has been successfully addressing sea-level rise in coastal communities globally for nearly 200 years. Now, with more advanced technologies at human disposal, the threat from sea-level rise appears to be more remote than ever.

On Saturday, the city of Venice scored another victory against sea-level alarmism with the successful operation of its new floodgates. Facing an unusually high tide that would have flooded the city in years past, the city raised 78 floodgates that barricade the Venetian lagoon.

Here is how the New York Times reported the Saturday results:

[E]ven when the tide reached as high as four feet, water levels inside the lagoon remained steady, officials said.

“There wasn’t even a puddle in St. Mark’s Square,” said Alvise Papa, the director of the Venice department that monitors high tides.

Had the flood barriers not been raised, about half the city’s streets would have been under water, and visitors to St. Mark’s Square — which floods when the tide nears three feet — would have been wading in a foot and a half of water, he said.

Cancel the sea-level climate crisis for Venice. Moreover, the example set by Venice shows we can cancel the sea-level crisis for pretty much any place climate activists say is threatened by sea-level rise.

With 19^th– and 20^th-century technologies, humans have successfully adapted to rising seas. More advanced, 21^st-century technologies are proving just as capable.

By James Taylor -October 5, 2020

The post Sea Level Crisis Canceled: New Floodgates Keep Water from Flooding Venice appeared first on Climate Realism.

Among the top Google News search results today under “climate change” is a story in the VT Digger (motto: “News in pursuit of truth”) claiming recent warm, dry weather in Vermont is a sign of climate change. However, objective data show Vermont has been getting wetter as the Earth modestly warms. Yes, some droughts still occur despite global warming, but climate change is clearly not making Vermont droughts more frequent or severe.

The VT Digger article, titled “Drought, high temperatures symptoms of climate change in Vermont,” acknowledges that “no single weather event can be attributed specifically to climate change.” However, the author then goes on to claim, “drought is only part of the story … the climate had created a ‘perfect storm’ of extreme conditions this year. Not only was rainfall sparse, but temperatures hit record highs. Burlington had its all-time hottest July.”

July 2020’s peak temperature in Burlington was 95℉. By comparison, the record high July temperature for Burlington, 100℉, was set in 1911, more than 100 years of global warming ago. Data from the National Weather Service show the high temperature for July 2020 in Burlington was also surpassed in in 1897 (96℉), 1908 (96℉), 1921 (98℉), and in 1931 (96℉). In fact the highest temperature for ever recorded for Vermont was 107℉ in 1912. The highest temperatures recorded in the neighboring states of Maine 105℉ (recorded twice) and New Hampshire 106℉ came in July 1911.

The fact that the high temperatures for most states in New England were recorded in the early part of the 20^th century should surprise no one, since 40 states’ record-high temperatures were set before 1960. Twenty-five states’ record highs were set or tied in the 1930s alone. Indeed, three times as many state record temperatures were recorded in the 1930s—two decades before humans began adding significant amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere—than have been recorded since alarming stories about global warming became a nearly daily feature of the mainstream media’s news cycle.

New high-temperature records have been set in only two states since 2000. In fact, more states’ record highs were recorded in the 1890s than in the first two decades of the current century.

Concerning drought, rainfall is scarce in most states in the summer. Vermont is no different in this regard. Contrary to what the VT Digger claims, there is no evidence Vermont is in a period of extended drought. Data from the United States Drought Monitor show Vermont didn’t record even a single area of the state experiencing below average rainfall from the week of November 12, 2019 until the week of June 2, 2020. Not a single county in Vermont has been recorded as suffering from extreme or exceptional drought since the beginning of 2020. September was dry in Vermont, but it set no records for lack of rainfall. The Burlington area, for example, received approximately 1.35 inches less rainfall than is normal for the month in 2020, but in August Burlington received 2.7 inches more rainfall than normal for the month.

Long-term data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), recently reported on Climate Realism, clearly demonstrate that New England as a whole, and Vermont in particular, has become wetter during the past 30 years and 120 years, not drier.

NOAA’s annual precipitation records provide compelling evidence against VT Digger’s claim that climate change is causing drought in Vermont. As seen in the NOAA chart below, annual precipitation in New England and the U.S. Northeast has increased during the past 30 years.

Also, as shown in a second NOAA chart below, annual precipitation has dramatically increased over the past 120 years, with few places in the entire country experiencing a greater increase in precipitation than Vermont and neighboring New Hampshire since 1895.

Every location on earth experiences drought from time to time. Vermont is no exception to this fact. However, objective scientific evidence clearly shows Vermont has enjoyed more precipitation and less frequent and severe droughts as the Earth has modestly warmed over the past century.

Sorry VT Digger, those are the facts.

By H. Sterling Burnett -October 5, 2020

The post Media Botches Reporting on Heat and Drought in Vermont appeared first on Climate Realism.

Prominent scientist and climate activist Michael Mann appealed to an asserted scientific consensus to chastise President Donald Trump on CBS’s 60 Minutes program last night. Ironically, Mann himself ignored clear scientific consensus in order to promote his own, out-of-the-mainstream climate change theories.

While interviewing Mann, CBS’s Scott Pelley said, “There have always been fires in the West. There have always been hurricanes in the East. How do we know that climate change is involved in this?” Pelley followed up with, “The president says about climate change, ‘Science doesn’t know.’”

Replied Mann, “The president doesn’t know, and he should know better. He should know that the world’s leading scientific organizations, our own U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and national academies of every major industrial nation, every scientific society in the United States that’s weighed in on the matter. This is a scientific consensus. There’s about as much scientific consensus about human-caused climate change as there is about gravity.”

Mann’s description of the conclusions of the “scientific consensus” however, is exactly the opposite of what scientific bodies report.

As documented in Climate at a Glance: Hurricanes, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) expresses “low confidence” in any connection between climate change and changes in hurricane activity.

Similarly, as documented in Climate at a Glance: U.S. Wildfires, U.S. wildfires are much less frequent and severe than they were in the first half of the 20th century – 100 years of global warming ago. Moreover, the IPCC reports a decrease in drought conditions – which is the primary climate factor regarding wildfires – in the global region including the U.S. West. Moreover, the IPCC finds no evidence of an increase in drought globally, either.

Ultimately, data, evidence, and scientific facts are far more indicative of scientific truth than a real or imagined consensus of scientists. Yet, to the extent Michael Mann wishes to invoke consensus as a scientific argument, the clear consensus of scientists is that Mann is promoting extreme climate theories that have no basis in reality.

By James Taylor -October 5, 2020

The post Michael Mann Appeals to, Then Ignores Scientific Consensus on 60 Minutes appeared first on Climate Realism.

By James Taylor from Climaterealism.com

Prominent scientist and climate activist Michael Mann appealed to an asserted scientific consensus to chastise President Donald Trump on CBS’s 60 Minutes program last night. Ironically, Mann himself ignored clear scientific consensus in order to promote his own, out-of-the-mainstream climate change theories.

While interviewing Mann, CBS’s Scott Pelley said, “There have always been fires in the West. There have always been hurricanes in the East. How do we know that climate change is involved in this?” Pelley followed up with, “The president says about climate change, ‘Science doesn’t know.’”

Replied Mann, “The president doesn’t know, and he should know better. He should know that the world’s leading scientific organizations, our own U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and national academies of every major industrial nation, every scientific society in the United States that’s weighed in on the matter. This is a scientific consensus. There’s about as much scientific consensus about human-caused climate change as there is about gravity.”

Mann’s description of the conclusions of the “scientific consensus” however, is exactly the opposite of what scientific bodies report.

As documented in Climate at a Glance: Hurricanes, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) expresses “low confidence” in any connection between climate change and changes in hurricane activity.

Similarly, as documented in Climate at a Glance: U.S. Wildfires, U.S. wildfires are much less frequent and severe than they were in the first half of the 20th century – 100 years of global warming ago. Moreover, the IPCC reports a decrease in drought conditions – which is the primary climate factor regarding wildfires – in the global region including the U.S. West. Moreover, the IPCC finds no evidence of an increase in drought globally, either.

Ultimately, data, evidence, and scientific facts are far more indicative of scientific truth than a real or imagined consensus of scientists. Yet, to the extent Michael Mann wishes to invoke consensus as a scientific argument, the clear consensus of scientists is that Mann is promoting extreme climate theories that have no basis in reality.

via Watts Up With That?

https://ift.tt/3ngszt3

October 5, 2020 at 02:18PM

Uncovered after 30 years.

23 Sep 2020 – Thanks to the keen eyes of a weather records researcher, we now know – quite belatedly – that a weather station near the summit of the Greenland Ice Sheet measured a temperature of -69.6°C (-93.3°F) on December 22, 1991.

This easily bests the previous record of -67.8°C (-90.0°F), set in Russia at Verkhoyansk in February 1892 and again in Oymyakon in January 1933.

This new record, set at an automated weather station named Klinck, was confirmed by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on Wednesday.

“The coldest recorded temperature in the world still stands at -89.2°C (-128.6°F), set on July 21, 1983, at the Vostok weather station in Antarctica,” according to this article by Scott Sutherland.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/greenland-set-record-extreme-cold-191500906.html

Thanks to Jack Hydrazine for this link

The post Finally divulged – Central Greenland now holds the record for extreme cold in entire Northern Hemisphere appeared first on Ice Age Now.

via Ice Age Now

https://ift.tt/2Gtlzbp

October 5, 2020 at 03:30PM