tirsdag 23. januar 2018

MYTH #21 AL GORE SAID......



”As an online climate change debate grows longer, the probability that denier arguments will descend into attacks on Al Gore approaches 1."





“Well isn’t this convenient. If Gore doesn’t invest in green energy companies, you call him a hypocrite who isn’t willing to put his money were his mouth is. If he does, you accuse him of having a conflict of interest. Either way, you get to avoid actually considering what he’s saying.”

I don’t give a crap what politicians and the media think or say. Both of them are repeatedly wrong about the science (on both “sides” of the topic). So I don’t care what Al Gore said or thinks, I don’t care what erroneous claims CNN has made, etc. I care about the science, and the scientific evidence overwhelmingly shows that climate change is happening and it is our fault. Can people spin that for personal gain? Sure, but that doesn’t make the science any less true.

Using politicians and the media to attack science is a guilt by association fallacy, because what they think, say, and do is completely, 100% irrelevant to whether or not the science is correct. I care about what peer-reviewed studies have found, not what politicians and news anchors say.

AL GORE HAR SAGT AT....
La meg bare stoppe deg hardt og brutalt. For å være helt ærlig, så driter jeg i hva politikere og media tenker eller sier om klima. Disse har ofte feil om vitenskapen (på begge sider av emnet). Så jeg bryr meg ikke om hva Al Gore sier eller mener, jeg bryr meg ikke om hvilke feilaktige påstander CNN har kommet med, eller VG, eller en annen avis. Jeg går direkte til vitenskapen, og den er veldig tydelig på at klimaendringer skjer, og det er vår feil. Kan enkelte folk spinne dette for personlig gevinst? Javisst, men det gjør ikke vitenskapen noe mindre sant. At noen tjener penger på å selge globuser betyr ikke at Jorden er flat.

Bruk av politikere og media til å angripe vitenskap er en - guilt by association - fordi det de tror sier og gjør er 100% irrelevant for om vitenskapen er riktig eller ikke.

Jeg bryr meg om hva fagfellevurderte studier har funnet ut, ikke hva politikere, journalister og nyhetsankere sier.

RATIONAL WIKI HITS THE NAIL ON ITS HEAD:

Gore's Law states, as coined by Terence of blog "Long Ago And Not True Anyway" in March 2008:
”As an online climate change debate grows longer, the probability that denier arguments will descend into attacks on Al Gore approaches 1."
Immediately after making the post, commenters proceeded to nitpick at Gore — thus proving his point. Why Gore's Law is relevant
The problem with attacking Al Gore is that he has absolutely fuck all to do with the science of climate change, no matter his carbon footprint, PMRC involvement, Manbearpig, etc. You really can't find a better instance of poisoning the well. He could live in a mud hut and walk everywhere and they'd call him a hypocrite because the aglets on his shoelaces were made of plastic, a petroleum product.  
Michael Jordan Fallacy
This one can be used to impugn the motives of anyone in the world, in an effort to prove they are driven by greed and don't care about anyone else's problems:
Bombo: "Just think if Michael Jordan had used all his talents and wealth to feed third world children, rather than to play a sport."
Of course, you can say this about anyone, famous or not:
Bombo: "If your doctor really cared about people's health, he'd sell everything he owned and become a charitable frontier doctor in Africa."
Common examples and the reasons they are fallacious include: 
Al Gore is a Democrat.
Even if this was a problem, association fallacy. It's the equivalent of a leftie rejecting calls for alternative energy because T. Boone Pickens wants it too. 
Al Gore stands to profit from climate change mitigation. Conflict of interest! This old saw. If money drove the science, then the Koch brothers would make it rain all over the science world, and this debate would have ended a long time ago. Also, if you see Al Gore making money as a bad thing, this is an appeal to motive and an argument from adverse consequences.  
There are X number of errors made in Al Gore's film.
Fallacy fallacy. Just because a sub-set of his arguments could be proven wrong doesn't mean that anthropogenic global warming isn't happening. Gore is a politician with zero academic expertise in climatology; all he did was put the scientific consensus into Hollywood format.

Al Gore had nothing to do with it:
It all started with Nixon:
Reagan signed the Montreal Protocol (to ban ozone-depleting pollutants), George H W Bush introduced cap-and-trade (to deal with the acid rain problem).
And what about George W Bush?
Well Dubbya of course ran against the single politician--Al Gore--who is most closely associated with the cause of climate action in modern U.S. history.
So I suppose it isn't too surprising that we heard lines like this spoken on the campaign trail:
“As we promote electricity and renewable energy, we will work to make our air cleaner. With the help of Congress, environmental groups and industry, we will require all power plants to meet clean air standards in order to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and carbon dioxide within a reasonable period of time. And we will provide market-based incentives, such as emissions trading, to help industry achieve the required reductions.”
What might be surprising for you to learn, however, is that it wasn't Al Gore--but George W Bush--who made that statement in the run-up to the election. It was Bush who had committed to combat climate change through the regulation of carbon emissions.
50 YEARS OF US SCIENCE AND GOVERNMENTS AND PRESIDENTS COMES TO THE SAME CONCLUSION ON AGW:
PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON’S 1965 “Restoring the Quality of our Environment report”.
Fifty years ago: The White House knew all about climate change
On November 5, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s White House released “Restoring the Quality of our Environment”, a report that described the impacts of climate change, and foretold dramatic Antarctic ice sheet loss, sea level rise, and ocean acidification.
That 1965 White House report stated:
“Carbon dioxide is being added to the earth’s atmosphere by the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas at the rate of 6 billion tons a year. By the year 2000 there will be about 25 percent more CO2 in our atmosphere than present. This will modify the heat balance of the atmosphere to such an extent that marked changes in climate, not controllable through local or even national efforts, could occur.”
On the 50th anniversary of the White House report, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are indeed at 399 ppm: 25 percent over 1965 levels, exactly as predicted 50 years ago.
Ronald Reagan’s 1989 EPA REPORT ON CLIMATE CHANGE
Trump's 2018 National Climate Assessment. ️
Based on extensive evidence … it is extremely likely that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century,”
For the warming over the last century,
“there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence.”


For tusende gang. Det startet ikke med Al Gore.

Det var ikke Al Gore som started Environmental Protection Agency i 1970. Det var Nixon. Det var ikke Al Gore som signerte Montreal-protokollen om redusering av ozonlag-skadende gasser på 80-tallet. Det var Reagan. Det var ikke Al Gore som introduserte cap and trade avtalen om sur-nedbør problemet.Det var George Bush senior.

Sitatet:

“As we promote electricity and renewable energy, we will work to make our air cleaner. With the help of Congress, environmental groups and industry, we will require all power plants to meet clean air standards in order to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and carbon dioxide within a reasonable period of time. And we will provide market-based incentives, such as emissions trading, to help industry achieve the required reductions.”
Kom ikke fra Al Gore. Det kom fra George Bush junior.
Sitatet:

"Based on extensive evidence … it is extremely likely that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century,”

Kom ikke fra Al Gore. Det kom fra Trumps 2018 National Climate Assessment. ️

Her er Ronald Reagans 1989 EPA REPORT ON CLIMATE CHANGE

http://bit.ly/2w8YMuV?fbclid=IwAR096oy1HVhV2VFld7IHZgaXZk05-6pluj5lZYnEKmLoyYh2G_lUgmeCRDA

Så vær så snill nå. Prøv å les litt klimavitenskap, ikke bare namedrop Al Gore, som dere er politisk uenig med, og tro at det "det hele startet" med ham.


WHY DO WE NEVER SEE AMATEUR DENIERS LINKING TO GORES "QUOTE" ABOUT THE POLAR ICE? HINT; HE NEVER SAID IT.
HVORFOR AMATØRFORNEKTERE ALDRI KLARER Å REFERERE TIL UTSAGNET OM AT POLISEN SKULLE VÆRE BORTE I 2014:

 
Gore snakket om SOMMER-isen. Ordet SOMMER er alltid utelatt når amatør-fornektere resirkulerer denne irrelavante løgnhistorien. Amatørfornektere har bare hjemmelagde barnslige memes med falske sitater på.
Gores predictions about artic ice was about SUMMER ice. In the artic. The word SUMMER is always left out when denier bloggs recycle this lie story. And it was only about "some of the summer months". The NASA report was about Antartica ice. (Misrepresented by deniers). Thus the meme in question is also comparing a quote on north pole ice to Antartica. Another lie.
Here is the 100% accurate quote:
"..Some of the models suggests to Dr Maslowski's that there is a 75% chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during some of the summer months, could be completely ice free within the next 5 to 7 years".
Thats just very very different from the denier meme.
The Navy researcher that leads this "new study" team that the former vice president alludes to is Wieslaw Maslowski at the Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey, California. The team's research was funded by the Department of Energy (DOE), the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Maslowski also did not say "by 2013" in his original research in 2007 or when it was republished in 2009. This grandstanding about sea ice and Gore, for whatever reason, is a huge and egregious deception. The actual prediction from Maslowski's 2009 publication is, "Autumn could become near ice free between 2011 and 2016."
One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years." 

So in reality, Gore tried to echo one of Maslowski's prediction predictions. Maslowski's prediction, originally made in 2006, was that Arctic sea ice would decline to <1,000,000 square kilometers extent (with no ice at the North Pole) by the end of the September melt by 2016, +/- 3 years. So 2013-2019...and still valid today.

GORE IS NOT A SCIENTIST.
When scientists do make their predictions, its based upon reports from many researchers all around the world. Not one group of researchers or individuals. Using politicians and the media to attack science is a guilt by association fallacy, because what they think, say, and do is completely, 100% irrelevant to whether or not the science is correct.
Go directly to the scientists and to the peer reviewed science.
Using Gores "failed" predictions about polar ice is a major red herring used by deniers to look away from the fact that artic ice is at a record low:
From NOAA's December 12, 2017 Arctic Report Card:
Sea ice loss "is beyond the range of natural variability, implying a human component to the drastic decrease observed in the records."
"This time series shows the Arctic sea ice extent in millions of square kilometers over the past roughly 1,500 years. Scientists use climate proxies like sediment/ice cores, tree rings, and fossilized shells of ocean creatures to extend the sea ice extent records back in time. These records show that while there have been several periods over the past 1,450 years when sea ice extents expanded and contracted, the decrease during the modern era is unrivaled. And just as importantly, it is beyond the range of natural variability, implying a human component to the drastic decrease observed in the records.
"The minimum sea ice extent, which occurs each summer, is influenced by the atmospheric circulation, air temperature, and variations in the amount of warm water that flows into the Arctic. Since 1900, waters that enter the Arctic Ocean through the Fram Strait have increased by 2 degrees Celsius (4 degrees Fahrenheit). Meanwhile, proxy records show that the current warming trend in surface air temperatures has not been observed in the Arctic over at least the last 2,000 years."
Gore picked the worst scenario and didnt even refer to it accurate. 
PS.
Oil giant Shell made a similar film on AGW in 1991, 15 years BEFORE Gore. He was only recycling AGW science that even oil companies today agrees on.

Just like Exxon, Shell oil knew about the danger of c02 emissions.





Co2 has a special feature naturally. It absorbs heat radiation very efficiently. It has to do with the actual vibration and rotational properties of the molecule. We can easily measure their properties in laboratories, and derive them from quantum physics. Nature gave C02 that ability, not Al Gore.
BONUS:

HOW ACCURATE WAS HIS MOVIE?

Pretty accurate. “A+” student material given knowledge at the time. “A” in retrospect.
Hurricanes: 90%
Prediction: could fuel worse and more Atlantic hurricanes - no specific timeframe
Result: Worse yes, not more so far. Asia has seen both increased severity and frequency of typhoons.
Ocean circulation: 80%
Prediction: Could shut down Gulf Stream conveyor belt bringing warm water to northern Europe - no specific timeframe
Result: slowing, but not stopped. Circulation model has been refined and is understand to be more complex. Less likelihood of a significant icing for Europe.
Conflict: 100%
Prediction: Climate change would exacerbate drought contributing to regional conflict - no specific timeframe
Result: Syrian conflict caused in part by climate change exacerbated drought
Arctic ice: 100%
Prediction: The Arctic could see its first sea ice–free summers in the next 50 to 70 years
Result: Massive ice loss in summer in Arctic. High probability of 100% summer ice loss by 2052
Antarctic ice: 80%
Prediction: Warming waters will be melting the Antarctic ice sheet (ice on both land and floating on ocean) - no specific timeframe
Result: Mixed in short term. Major ice sheets have broken off Antarctica. Majority of studies show reduced Antarctic ice. One major study shows increased ice with predictions of loss by team. Serious cause for concern due to ocean-side ice dams holding back land glaciers.
Sea level rise: 100%
Prediction: Melting ice and expanding seawater are raising global sea levels
Result: Melting ice and expanding seawater are raising global sea levels and it’s accelerating
Extreme temperatures: 100%
Prediction: Warming temperatures will cause more frequent and more deadly heat waves
Result: Warming temperatures will cause more frequent and more deadly heat waves in multiple parts of the world
Looks like an A student to me in retrospect, and while An Inconvenient Truth did lay out significantly bad scenarios, Gore didn’t attach timeframes to them.
Proviso: Gore made some more specific statements about possible timeframes for Arctic ice free summers years after the movie, but not in the movie itself.
Most of the stuff that ‘skeptics’ attribute to Gore is not an accurate attribution. Always check the sources.
References:


DEBUNKING "THE MOVIE WAS BANNED IN ENGLAND AND HAD 9 ERRORS MYTH":

UK High Court judge rejected a call to restrict the showing of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth (AIT) in British schools.

The judge, Justice Burton found that “Al Gore’s presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate”(which accords with our original assessment). There has been a lot of comment and controversy over this decision because of the judges commentary on 9 alleged “errors” (note the quotation marks!) in the movie’s description of the science. The judge referred to these as ‘errors’ in quotations precisely to emphasize that, while these were points that could be contested, it was not clear that they were actually errors.

There are a number of points to be brought out here. First of all, “An Inconvenient Truth” was a movie and people expecting the same depth from a movie as from a scientific paper are setting an impossible standard. Secondly, the judge’s characterisation of the 9 points is substantially flawed. He appears to have put words in Gore’s mouth that would indeed have been wrong had they been said (but they weren’t). Finally, the judge was really ruling on how “Guidance Notes” for teachers should be provided to allow for more in depth discussion of these points in the classroom.

  • Ice-sheet driven sea level rise Gore correctly asserted that melting of Greenland or the West Antarctic ice sheet would raise sea levels 20ft (6 meters). In the movie, no timescale for that was specified, but lest you think that the 20 ft number is simply plucked out of thin air, you should note that this is about how much higher sea level was around 125,000 years ago during the last inter-glacial period. Then, global temperatures were only a degree or two warmer than today – and given that this is close to the minimum temperature rise we can expect in the future, that 20 ft is particularly relevant. The rate at which this is likely to happen is however highly uncertain as we have discussed previously.
  • Pacific island nations needing to evacuate Much of Tuvalu is only a few feet above sea level, and any sea level rise is going to impact them strongly. The impacts are felt in seemingly disconnected ways – increasing brine in groundwater, increasing damage and coastal erosion from tides and storm surges, but they are no less real for that. The government of Tuvalu has asked New Zealand to be ready to evacuate islanders if needed, and while currently only 75 people per year can potentially be resettled, this could change if the situation worsened.
    In the movie there is only one line that referred to this: “That’s why the citizens of these pacific nations have all had to evacuate to New Zealand”, which is out of context in the passage it’s in, but could be said to only be a little ahead of it’s time.
  • Climate impacts on the ocean conveyor The movie references the Younger Dryas event that occurred 11,000 years ago when, it is thought, a large discharge of fresh water into the North Atlantic disrupted the currents, causing significant regional cooling. That exact scenario can’t happen again, but similar processes are likely to occur. The primary unresolved scientific issue regards how quickly the circulation is likely to change as we move forward. The model simulations in the latest IPCC report show a slowdown in the circulation – by about 30% by 2100 – but there is much we don’t understand about modeling that circulation and future inputs of freshwater from the ice sheets, so few are willing to completely rule out the possibility of a more substantial change in the future. Further discussion on what this really means and doesn’t mean is available here and here.
  • CO2 and Temperature connections in the ice core record Gore stated that the greenhouse gas levels and temperature changes over ice age signals had a complex relationship but that they ‘fit’. Again, both of these statements are true. The complexity though is actually quite fascinating and warrants being further discussed by those interested in how the carbon cycle will react in the future. We’ve discussed the lead/lag issue previously. A full understanding of why CO2 changes in precisely the pattern that it does during ice ages is elusive, but among the most plausible explanations is that increased received solar radiation in the southern hemisphere due to changes in Earth’s orbital geometry warms the southern ocean, releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, which then leads to further warming through an enhanced greenhouse effect. Gore’s terse explanation of course does not mention such complexities, but the crux of his point–that the observed long-term relationship between CO2 and temperature in Antarctica supports our understanding of the warming impact of increased CO2 concentrations–is correct. Moreover, our knowledge of why CO2 is changing now (fossil fuel burning) is solid. We also know that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and that the carbon cycle feedback is positive (increasing temperatures lead to increasing CO2 and CH4), implying that future changes in CO2 will be larger than we might anticipate.
  • Kilimanjaro Gore is on even more solid ground with Kilimanjaro. In the movie, the retreat of Kilimanjaro is not claimed to be purely due to global warming , but it is a legitimate example of the sort of thing one expects in a warmer world, and is consistent with what almost all other tropical mountain glaciers are doing. There is indeed some ongoing discussion in the literature as to whether or not the retreat of ice on Kilimanjaro is related to the direct effects (warming atmospheric temperatures) or indirect effects (altered patterns of humidity, cloud cover, and precipitation influencing Kilimanjaro’s ice mass) of climate change, and that argument isn’t yet over. But these arguments would be of more relevance if (a) we were not witnessing the imminent demise of an ice field that we know has existed for at least the past 12,000 years and (b) most of the other glaciers weren’t disappearing as well.
  • Drying up of Lake Chad It is undisputed that Lake Chad has indeed shrunk rapidly in recent decades. While irrigation and upstream water use are probably contributing factors, the dominant cause is the reduction of rainfall across the entire Sahel from the 1950s to the 1980s and with rainfall today still substantially below the high point 50 years ago. There is substantial evidence that at least a portion of this drying out is human-caused. A few recent papers (Held et al, PNAS; Chung and Ramanathan and Biasutti and Giannini) have addressed causes ranging from Indian Ocean changes in sea surface temperature to the increase in atmospheric aerosols in the Northern hemisphere. Gore uses this example to illustrate that there are droughts in some regions even while other areas are flooding. Unfortunately this is exactly what the models suggest will happen.
  • Hurricane Katrina and global warming Katrina is used in the film as a legitimate illustration of the destructive power of hurricanes, our inability to cope with natural disaster, and the kind of thing that could well get worse in a warmer world. Nowhere does Gore state that Katrina was caused by global warming. We discussed this attribution issue back in 2005, and what we said then still holds. Individual hurricanes cannot be attributed to global warming, but the statistics of hurricanes, in particular the maximum intensities attained by storms, may indeed be.
  • Impact of sea ice retreat on Polar bears As we presaged in August, summer Arctic sea ice shattered all records this year for the minimum extent. This was partially related to wind patterns favorable to ice export in the spring, but the long term trends are almost certainly related to the ongoing and dramatic warming in the Arctic. Polar bears do indeed depend on the sea ice to hunt for seals in the spring and summer, and so a disappearance of this ice is likely to impact them severely. The specific anecdote referred to in the movie came from observations of anomalous drownings of bears in 2004 and so was accurate. However, studying the regional populations of polar bears is not easy and assessing their prospects is tough. In the best observed populations such as in western Hudson Bay (Stirling and Parkinson, 2006), female polar bear weight is going down as the sea ice retreats over the last 25 years, and the FWS is considering an endangered species listing. However, it should be stated that in most of the discussions about polar bears, they are used as a representative species. Arctic ecosystems are changing on many different levels, but it is unsurprising that charismatic mega-fauna get more press than bivalves. In the end, it may be the smaller and less photogenic elements that have the biggest impact.
  • Impact of ocean warming on coral reefs Corals are under stress from a multitude of factors; overfishing, deliberate destruction, water pollution, sea level rise, ocean acidification and, finally, warming oceans. The comment in the movie that rising temperatures and other factors cause coral bleaching is undoubtedly true. Bleaching episodes happen when the coral is under stress, and many examples have been linked to anomalously warm ocean temperatures (Australia in 1998 and 2002, all over the Indian Ocean in recent years). Corals are a sobering example of how climate change exacerbates existing vulnerabilities in eco-systems, potentially playing the role of the straw that breaks the camel’s back in many instances.

Overall, our verdict is that the 9 points are not “errors” at all (with possibly one unwise choice of tense on the island evacuation point). But behind each of these issues lies some fascinating, and in some cases worrying, scientific findings and we can only applaud the prospect that more classroom discussions of these subjects may occur because of this court case.
While there are minor errors in An Inconvenient Truth, the main truths presented - evidence to show mankind is causing global warming and its various impacts is consistent with peer reviewed science.






Lambert goes on to look closely at the nine contended points. His conclusion:
Overall, there are a couple of points where I wish Gore would have talked about timescales and probabilities (sea level rise and thermohaline circulation), and a couple of examples that could have been better chosen (Kilimanjaro and Lake Chad). Burton was mistaken on the other points where he felt that Gore went past the consensus. I don’t think that there is any harm in the Guidance Notes on Burton’s nine points, but the usual suspects will, of course, ignore the fact that the judge found that Gore was “broadly accurate” and try to make it look as if there are serious problems with AIT and climate science.
Out of this — a judge rejects the suit, but finds nine points in the film he thinks differ slightly from the consensus, and it turns out he’s wrong about several and the others were at best matters of interpretation, omission, or insufficient context — the mainstream media pulled, in the words of an AP headline I saw earlier this evening, “Judge Says Gore Movie Not Scientific” (it has since been changed).

















torsdag 18. januar 2018

IT'S FREEZING COLD, WHERE IS GLOBAL WARMING?

IT'S FREEZING COLD, WHERE IS GLOBAL WARMING?

MYTE #2 
BLIR GLOBAL OPPVARMING MOTBEVIST AV KALDT VÆR? 
Jeg har da ikke feber, jeg fryser jo sånn!

Even as climate warms, we will always have winter (cold weather, snowstorms, blizzards). Winter is related to how the Earth is tilted on its axis as it moves around the Sun.

Climate change is the long term trends, measured over decades or more, and those long term trends show that the globe is still warming. 
"The difference between weather and climate is a measure of time. Weather is what conditions of the atmosphere are over a short period of time, and climate is how the atmosphere "behaves" over relatively long periods of time. When we talk about climate change, we talk about changes in long-term averages of daily weather"

Det er lett å blande sammen nylige værhendelser med langsiktige klimatrender, og det er vanskelig å forstå forskjellen mellom vær og klima.[...] For å finne klimatrender, så må man se på hvordan været endrer seg over et lengre tidsrom. Daniel Bailey sitt bilde.
Gjennom å se på høye og lave temperaturer fra de siste tiår, så ser vi at nye varmerekorder inntreffer nesten dobbelt så ofte som nye kulderekorder. LES MER OM KALDE VINTRE OG GLOBAL OPPVARMING HER.

Climate sceptics often claim that recent icy winters show that global warming is not happening. New research suggests the opposite is true: As the ice melts it exposes open water which, being very much darker, absorbs more heat. The warmer water then warms the air above it which in turn, weakens the jet stream, the high level river of air which does much to determine the weather. As the jet stream slows down it meanders more, causing weather systems to get stuck in place with a “blocking pattern” that pulls cold, Arctic air down over Europe and northern Asia for long periods at a time. And, sure enough they say, recent cold winters have occurred in years when the amount of Arctic sea ice was especially low.
‘It’s too cold to snow’ — if it’s very cold, there is too little water vapor in the air to support a very heavy snowfall, and if it’s too warm, most of the precipitation will fall as rain.”[...] “Warmer air can contain more water vapor than cooler air. Global analyses show that the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere has in fact increased due to human-caused warming…. This extra moisture is available to storm systems, resulting in heavier rainfalls. Climate change also alters characteristics of the atmosphere that affect weather patterns and storms.”
Wet and dry extremes across the world will become more marked as the planet heats up, evidence from past climates shows.
The answer to the oft-asked question of whether an event is caused by climate change is that it is the wrong question. All weather events are affected by climate change because the environment in which they occur is warmer and moister than it used to be. Framing the way to relate climate extremes to climate change.
Colder Winters Don't Mean Global Warming Isn't Happening
In recent decades, the Arctic has experienced more than its fair share of warming thanks to a phenomenon called Arctic amplification. A loss of sea ice, hotter ocean currents, and increased atmospheric water vapour mean temperatures have risen twice as fast around northern latitudes. These changes have also been associated with harsher winters much further south, a knock-on effect that often confuses people who assume global warming means we can all ditch our mittens. This new research has shown how above average temperatures in the Arctic lead to lower plant growth and decreased uptake of carbon dioxide in North American ecosystems.
How Does Changing Climate Bring More Extreme Events? 
The editors of a new book describe how and why weather and climate phenomena are intensifying with climate change.
Weather Patterns Are Getting Stuck as Climate Changes Affect the Jet Stream
Due to the nature of their work, climate scientists know more than the rest of us — but even they don't always agree about the ways in which climate change will affect weather in specific places. In 2012, a controversial study challenged previously accepted ideas about the mechanisms through which climate change will affect our weather: Warmer temperatures will result in more heat waves, hotter summers will bring worse droughts, the warmer atmosphere will hold more water, resulting in heavier precipitation and flooding. All of this might be true, but this study suggested that something else might be happening as well — that the relatively predictable flow of Earth's weather is changing. Due to alterations in the behavior of the jet stream, especially in the middle latitudes, weather patterns are getting "stuck" in place for longer periods, intensifying the on-the-ground effects, resulting in severe droughts, flooding and intense heat waves. 
Polar Vortex: How the Jet Stream and Climate Change Bring on Cold Snaps
Global warming plays a role in blasts of bitter cold weather. The reason: It influences the jet stream.
Eller som wikipedia forklarer : Den nordlige polare jetstrømmen ligger over de tett befolkede områdene i Europa, Nord-Amerika og Øst-Asia, og de viktige havene mellom disse verdensdelene. Lavtrykk med tilhørende nedbør og vind dannes ved polarfronten. Posisjonen til jetstrømmen er derfor avgjørende for været i disse områdene, og kunnskap om jetstrømmen er nødvendig for nøyaktig værvarsling. Avvik fra normal jetstrøm fører til uvanlige værsituasjoner. Sommeren 2007 lå jetstrømmen lenger sør enn vanlig. Dette førte til mye nedbør og store oversvømmelser i blant annet Storbritannia og Sør-Norge. Nord-Norge hadde derimot uvanlig varmt og tørt vær. Temperaturforskjellen driver jetstrømmen, og når forskjellen blir mindre kan jetstrømmen svekkes og buktningene bli større.

Rachel Molloy sitt bilde.
Scientists stunned by massive snowfall increases among Alaska’s highest peaks

Climate change increases the volume of precipitation, because a warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor. But it isn’t supposed to increase it this much. The researchers attribute part of the snowfall increase to the atmosphere’s retaining more water vapor, but also say that the warming up of the tropical Pacific Ocean changed atmospheric patterns, leading more storms to track across Alaska — thus accounting for the one-two punch.
Konklusjon:
En lokal kaldværsdag har ingenting å gjøre med den langsiktige trenden bestående av en økende global temperatur.
Global warming is not the end of freezing cold winters, its a shift towards more record lows than record highs.

Most popular climate change stories of 2017 reviewed by scientists



https://climatefeedback.org/most-popular-climate-change-stories-2017-reviewed-scientists/

Here are the articles ranked by popularity (Click for details on the evaluations for each article):

torsdag 4. januar 2018

MYTH #27 WE'RE COMING OUT OF THE LITTLE ICE AGE AND WE'RE HEADING INTO A MINI ICE AGE (LOL)



Seven New Papers Forecast Global Cooling, Another Mini Ice Age Soon

Temperatures To Decrease 0.5°C-0.7°C Due To Low Sunspots, Solar Minimum
Image Source: Abdussamatov, 2012
Funny how AGW is a "leftist communist hoax" all the time, but as soon as some russian no one has ever heard of says something which suit their narrative, the communist thing is forgotten..strange....anyway..here is the Zharkova nonsense debunked:

A Russian scientist named Zharkova who doesn't understand the science she's studying is simply making stuff up for sensationalist headlines. Some of the fault lies with Zharkova, who made comments ‘skeptical’ of human-caused global warming that were not supported by her research. 
www.skepticalscience.com/mini-ice-age-myth-still-wrong.html
www.skepticalscience.com/no-sun-isnt-going-to-save-us-from-global-warming.html
www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/06/what-if-the-sun-went-into-a-new-grand-minimum/comment-page-1/#comment-208812

The paper presents a model for the sun's magnetic field and sunspots, which predicts a 60% fall in sunspot numbers when extrapolated to the 2030s. Crucially, the paper makes no mention of climate.
The first failure of science communication is present in the Royal Astronomical Society press release from July 9. It says that "solar activity will fall by 60 per cent during the 2030s" without clarifying that this "solar activity" refers to a fall in the number of sunspots, not a dramatic fall in the life-sustaining light emitted by the sun.
The press release also omits crucial details. It does say that the drop in  may resemble the Maunder minimum, a 17th century lull in solar activity, and includes a link to the Wikipedia article on the subject. The press release also notes that the Maunder minimum coincided with a mini ice age.
But that mini ice age began before the Maunder minimum and may have had multiple causes, including volcanism.
Crucially, the press release doesn't say what the implications of a future Maunder minimum are for climate.
To be blunt: no mini ice age for us. The real story of the impending mini ice age isn't about climate at all. It is a cautionary tale, of how science should and shouldn't be communicated.
https://phys.org/news/2015-07-mini-ice-age-hoopla-giant.html
https://www.carbonbrief.org/why-the-sun-is-not-responsible-for-recent-climate-change?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=EndHits18

Scientists have researched this very subject. What they've found is that the next ice age has been postponed indefinitely.

Per Tzedakis et al 2012,
"glacial inception would require CO2 concentrations below preindustrial levels of 280 ppmv"

For reference, we are at about 400 right now and climbing, so we can be relatively sure the next glacial epoch won't be happening in our lifetimes.

But what about further down the road? What happens then? Per Dr Toby Tyrrell (Tyrrell 2007) of the University of Southampton's School of Ocean and Earth Science at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton:

"Our research shows why atmospheric CO2 will not return to pre-industrial levels after we stop burning fossil fuels. It shows that it if we use up all known fossil fuels it doesn't matter at what rate we burn them.
The result would be the same if we burned them at present rates or at more moderate rates; we would still get the same eventual ice-age-prevention result."

and

"Burning all recoverable fossil fuels could lead to avoidance of the next five ice ages."

Per Ganopolski et al 2016,
"even in the absence of human perturbations no substantial build-up of ice sheets would occur within the next several thousand years and that the current interglacial would probably last for another 50,000 years. However, moderate anthropogenic cumulative CO2 emissions of 1,000 to 1,500 gigatonnes of carbon will postpone the next glacial inception by at least 100,000 years....under natural conditions alone the Earth system would be expected to remain in the present delicately balanced interglacial climate state, steering clear of both large-scale glaciation of the Northern Hemisphere and its complete deglaciation, for an unusually long time"
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/11/e1501923

Feulner and Rahmstorf (2010) examined the impact on global warming if the sun fell into a Grand Solar Minimum. The global mean temperature difference is shown for the time period 1900 to 2100 for the IPCC A2 emissions scenario (relative to zero for the average temperature during the years 1961 to 1990). The red line shows predicted temperature change for the current level of solar activity, the blue line shows predicted temperature change for solar activity at the much lower level of the Maunder Minimum, and the black line shows observed temperatures from the NASA GISS dataset through 2010. The authors found that the average global surface temperature would be diminished by no more than 0.3°C due to the lower solar activity, which would offset only a small fraction of human-caused global warming.

Mange amatørfornektere vil jo og ha oss til å tro at dagens oppvarming kommer av at vi er på vei ut av, ikke le, Den Lille Istid. Study on the Little Ice Age: Low solar activity just marginally cools the climate.

The weakening sun was not the determinant factor for the Little Ice Age. Strong volcanic eruptions in particular, but also a smaller amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere were important factors during this period of cooler climate in the 16th and 17th century, a new study shows.

Impact of Volcanic Eruptions on Decadal to Centennial Fluctuations of Arctic Sea Ice Extent during the Last Millennium and on Initiation of the Little Ice Age
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0498.1

Global Signatures and Dynamical Origins of the Little Ice Age and Medieval Climate Anomaly
Abstract
Global temperatures are known to have varied over the past 1500 years, but the spatial patterns have remained poorly defined. We used a global climate proxy network to reconstruct surface temperature patterns over this interval. The Medieval period is found to display warmth that matches or exceeds that of the past decade in some regions, but which falls well below recent levels globally. This period is marked by a tendency for La Niña–like conditions in the tropical Pacific. The coldest temperatures of the Little Ice Age are observed over the interval 1400 to 1700 C.E., with greatest cooling over the extratropical Northern Hemisphere continents. The patterns of temperature change imply dynamical responses of climate to natural radiative forcing changes involving El Niño and the North Atlantic Oscillation–Arctic Oscillation.

Abrupt onset of the Little Ice Age triggered by volcanism and sustained by sea‐ice/ocean feedbacks
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2011GL050168

This implies that low solar activity, which is expected by some researchers for the coming decades, cannot considerably slow down global warming caused by humankind’s greenhouse gas emissions.

“The impact of variations in solar activity on the climate is often overestimated,” says Georg Feulner of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). He is the author of the article just published in Geophysical Research Letters. “This is what our new analysis shows for the past – and we can learn from this to understand future climate change.” 

The main drivers of the Little Ice Age cooling were decreased solar activity and increased volcanic activity. These factors cannot account for the global warming observed over the past 50-100 years. Furthermore, it is physically incorrect to state that the planet is simply "recovering" from the Little Ice Age.

Research has suggested that the solar minimum around the year 1650 played a relatively small role in the cool temperatures during the Little Ice Age. Instead, heightened volcanic activity (pumping ash into the atmosphere that blocks sunlight) and a drop in atmospheric carbon levels were the main contributors to the cooling during that time. Third, the Little Ice Age wasn’t even that cold, globally. The following chart shows the most comprehensive global surface temperature reconstruction to date, from the PAGES 2k Consortium. In just the past few decades the planet has warmed more than it cooled during the entire Little Ice Age.




Dette med mini-istid er det ganske lett å debunke:

To sum up, a number of scientific studies have asked the question, ‘if the sun were to enter another extended quiet phase (a grand solar minimum), how would that impact global surface temperatures?’. Every study agrees, it would cause no more than 0.3°C cooling, which would only be enough to temporarily offset about a decade’s worth of human-caused global warming.

The global mean temperature difference is shown for the time period 1900 to 2100 for the IPCC A2 emissions scenario. The red line shows predicted temperature change for the current level of solar activity, the blue line shows predicted temperature change for solar activity at the much lower level of the Maunder Minimum, and the black line shows observed temperatures through 2010. Adapted from Feulner & Rahmstorf (2010) by SkepticalScience.com

http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/Publications/Journals/feulner_rahmstorf_2010.pdf

This ‘impending mini ice age’ myth is incredibly easy to debunk. In fact it just takes asking one simple question – if the sun is such a key driver of the Earth’s climate, then why has the entire planet (air, oceans, land, and ice) warmed rapidly over the past 60 years while solar activity has declined?
Annual global temperature change (thin light red) with 11 year moving average of temperature (thick dark red). Temperature from NASA GISS. Annual Total Solar Irradiance (thin light blue) with 11 year moving average of TSI (thick dark blue).
Annual global temperature change (thin light red) with 11 year moving average of temperature (thick dark red). Temperature from NASA GISS. Annual Total Solar Irradiance (thin light blue) with 11 year moving average of TSI (thick dark blue). TSI from 1880 to 1978 from Krivova et al 2007 (data). TSI from 1979 to 2009 from PMOD.

The reduced energy from the Sun sets into motion a sequence of events on Earth beginning with a thinning of the stratospheric ozone layer. That thinning in turn changes the temperature structure of the stratosphere, which then changes the dynamics of the lower atmosphere, especially wind and weather patterns. The cooling is not uniform. While areas of Europe chilled during the Maunder Minimum, other areas such as Alaska and southern Greenland warmed correspondingly.



Despite how much the Maunder Minimum might have affected Earth the last time, Lubin said that an upcoming event would not stop the current trend of planetary warming but might slow it somewhat. The cooling effect of a grand minimum is only a fraction of the warming effect caused by the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. After hundreds of thousands of years of CO2 levels never exceeding 300 parts per million in air, the concentration of the greenhouse gas is now over 400 parts per million, continuing a rise that began with the Industrial Revolution. Other researchers have used computer models to estimate what an event similar to a Maunder Minimum, if it were to occur in coming decades, might mean for our current climate, which is now rapidly warming.
One such study looked at the climate consequences of a future Maunder Minimum-type grand solar minimum, assuming a total solar irradiance reduced by 0.25 percent over a 50-year period from 2020 to 2070. The study found that after the initial decrease of solar radiation in 2020, globally averaged surface air temperature cooled by up to several tenths of a degree Celsius. By the end of the simulated grand solar minimum, however, the warming in the model with the simulated Maunder Minimum had nearly caught up to the reference simulation. Thus, a main conclusion of the study is that "a future grand solar minimum could slow down but not stop global warming."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180206105858.htm 

Peer-reviewed research, physics, and math all tell us that a grand solar minimum would have no more than a 0.3°C cooling effect, barely enough to put a dent in human-caused global warming.

minima sunspots

The idea of a Grand Solar Minimum (GSM) causing weather extremes, specifically cooling on parts of our planet today is deeply flawed (just wrong) and has no basis in reality. I clearly explain here how variability in sunspots cause tiny changes in solar output (0.5/1361 or 1 part in 2722), and changes in climate impact of about 0.05 in 2.7 which is eeny-weeny-teeny compared to greenhouse gas impacts. Also, solar cycles, reflected in sunspot counts, are on an 11 year timescale, which clearly cannot explain the abrupt climate change occurring.



Impact of a potential 21st century “grand solar minimum” on surface temperatures and stratospheric ozone

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/grl.50806

So no ice ages and no Arctic sea ice recovery the next million years...

Tyrrell 2007 - Calcium carbonate cycling in future oceans and its influence on future climates
https://academic.oup.com/plankt/article/30/2/141/1435509
doi: 10.1093/plankt/fbm105
Tzedakis et al 2012 - Determining the natural length of the current interglacial
https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo1358
doi:10.1038/ngeo1358
Ganopolski et al 2016 - Critical insolation–CO2 relation for diagnosing past and future glacial inception
doi:10.1038/nature16494

Bonus:
Regional climate impacts of a possible future grand solar minimum
Any reduction in global mean near-surface temperature due to a future decline in solar activity is likely to be a small fraction of projected anthropogenic warming. However, variability in ultraviolet solar irradiance is linked to modulation of the Arctic and North Atlantic Oscillations, suggesting the potential for larger regional surface climate effects. Here, we explore possible impacts through two experiments designed to bracket uncertainty in ultraviolet irradiance in a scenario in which future solar activity decreases to Maunder Minimum-like conditions by 2050. Both experiments show regional structure in the wintertime response, resembling the North Atlantic Oscillation, with enhanced relative cooling over northern Eurasia and the eastern United States. For a high-end decline in solar ultraviolet irradiance, the impact on winter northern European surface temperatures over the late twenty-first century could be a significant fraction of the difference in climate change between plausible AR5 scenarios of greenhouse gas concentrations. https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8535

Are the most recent estimates for Maunder Minimum solar irradiance in agreement with temperature reconstructions? 
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2011GL048529/full

_______________________________________________

Further:
"Those hoping that the sun could save us from climate change look set for disappointment. The recent lapse in solar activity is not the beginning of a decades-long absence of sunspots – a dip that might have cooled the climate. Instead, it represents a shorter, less pronounced downturn that happens every century or so."

"According to the Gleissberg cycle, the next solar maximum – in about 2024 – will probably be a dud too, but then cycles will become more energetic once again, and any cooling effect the brief downturn has had on Earth's climate will also vanish."
www.newscientist.com/article/dn23865-suns-quiet-spell-not-the-start-of-a-mini-ice-age.html#.UeF_4mS9Kc1

Even if the sun got stuck in a permanent Maunder Minimum, the warming from our CO2 emissions will still warm our planet and continue to change our climate:

"Thus if the sun remains “out”, i.e., stuck for a long period in the current solar minimum, it can offset only about 7 years of CO2 increase. The human-made greenhouse gas climate forcing is now relentlessly, monotonically, increasing at a rate that overwhelms variability of natural climate forcings. Unforced variability of global temperature is great, as shown in Figure 4, but the global temperature trend on decadal and longer time scales is now determined by the larger human-made climate forcing. Speculation that we may have entered a solar-driven long-term cooling trend must be dismissed as a pipe-dream."
bravenewclimate.com/2008/09/14/what-if-the-sun-got-stuck/

"this "solar activity" refers to a fall in the number of sunspots, not a dramatic fall in the life-sustaining light emitted by the sun."

And
"As discussed previously, the impact of a new Maunder minimum on climate has been studied many times. There's 40% more CO2 in the air now than during the 17th century, and global temperature records are being smashed. A new Maunder minimum would slow climate change, but it is not enough to stop it."

And to complete the debunking:

"In plain English, the small change in sunlight reaching the Earth during a new Maunder minimum wouldn't be enough to reverse climate change. For the technically minded, even a 3 W per m2 change in irradiance corresponds to a radiative forcing of just 0.5 W per m2 (because the Earth is a sphere and not a flat circle), which is less than the radiative forcing produced by anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
The analysis techniques used to underpin the prediction of very low sunspot numbers (principal component analysis) is well known and ‘valid’ as to what it does. Using it to project into the future is somewhat less valid, as other factors which have not shown up in the past data may be waiting in the wings. I guess I would rate the chances of very low sunspot numbers in the 2030s as less than 50-50, but certainly not at, or close to, zero.
So that brings us to the more important issue of the impacts. The Little Ice Age (so-called) is certainly ‘real’, although many questions remain. When did it begin? I’ve seen dates of anywhere from 1300 to 1450 – both well before the start of the Maunder Minimum in 1645.

When did it end? Again I’ve seen dates as late as 1850 (well after the end of the MM in 1715), which might well imply that the only reason it did end is the onset of global warming!
Was it global, or regional? There is plenty of evidence from Europe and some from North America. I’ve seen a suggestion of some evidence from New Zealand. However there do seem to be many questions around the uniformity of the cooling.

So that brings us to the really key question of the causes/drivers. Solar activity is certainly one possibility, although as I’ve indicated the MM certainly couldn’t have started it. It may have made things just a little bit cooler – say 0.2 C – but it wasn’t the cause! Other suggestions have been a slowing of the Gulf Stream (it has slowed significantly in the past. ~11,000 years ago); volcanic activity (a couple of major eruptions followed by some feedbacks); and ‘orbital forcing’. We know that changes in the Earth’s orbit are the drivers of the glacial-interglacial cycle (something one of the authors of the paper in question is clearly ignorant of!), and these drivers don’t stop and start, but are on-going. We probably are heading ever so slowly for the next glacial.

Like most scientists who have made ‘meaningful’ comments, my view is that, if it does happen, it will reduce global warming by ~0.1 C – or delay it by ~10 years. And that delay would only be temporary, and temperature would zoom ahead in the years that followed.

https://krohde.wordpress.com/2016/02/27/misleading-information-on-climate-change-and-corrections/

















"Hot mess’ paper questioning CO2 and climate change gets retracted

A paper that called into question many central data linking carbon dioxide to the rapidly warming climate has been retracted for “significan...