GWPF | 11 Sept 2015
Many Global Warming Studies May Be Wrong Due To Flawed Carbon Dating
The Southern Ocean has recovered its ability to suck vast amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, overturning fears the natural “sink” had stalled with dire consequences for future climate change. Climate scientists had feared the uptake of carbon dioxide by the Southern Ocean had slowed in what was feared to be a “feedback” response to human activity. New research published today in the journal Science reveals that rather than stalling, the amount of CO2 being absorbed by the Southern Ocean was on the rise again. –Graham Lloyd, The Australian, 11 September 2015
GWPF science spokesman David Whitehouse said the recovery of the Southern Ocean carbon sink “could be yet another explanation for the surface temperature hiatus”. He said the research was “another alarmist claim removed by science, showing that the ‘settled science’ isn’t settled at all. The fact is that the current models do not fit the observations, so there we have a vital part of future climate prediction shown to be not predictable,” Dr Whitehouse said. “The closer you look at widely held certainties, the more complex and less understood they become — that’s the science of a complicated earth.” –Graham Lloyd, The Australian, 11 September 2015
It [is] not the first time that lengthier observations have led to the demise of a short-term climate scare. The fact that researchers now acknowledge they cannot predict future trends indicates that they don’t fully understand the underlying physics and mechanisms. –Benny Peiser, The Australian, 11 September 2015
1) Southern Ocean ‘Sink’ Turns The Tide On Climate Alarm – The Australian, 11 September 2015
2) Many Global Warming Studies May Be Wrong Due To Flawed Carbon Dating – South China Morning Post, 10 September4 2015
3) UK Energy & Climate Secretary Rejects 194-Turbine Offshore Wind Farm – Planning Resource, 11 September 2015
4) Second Californian Climate Plan Falters Amid Reluctance – KCRA News, 10 September 2015
5) Support Swells for British Fracking – The American Interest, 10 September 2015
6) And Finally: Greenpeace Warns Of Ice Age Dangers – Bishop Hill, 8 September 2015
Radiocarbon dating, which is used to calculate the age of certain organic materials, has been found to be unreliable, and sometimes wildly so – a discovery that could upset previous studies on climate change, scientists from China and Germany said in a new paper. Their recent analysis of sediment from the largest freshwater lake in northeast China showed that its carbon clock stopped ticking as early as 30,000 years ago, or nearly half as long as was hitherto thought. The discovery that it is unreliable could put some in a quandary. For instance, remnants of organic matter formerly held up as solid evidence of the most recent, large-scale global warming event some 40,000 years ago may actually date back far earlier to a previous ice age. –Stephen Chen, South China Morning Post, 10 September4 2015
The secretary of state for energy and climate change has refused permission for a 194-turbine wind farm off the Dorset coast, citing negative landscape and heritage impacts as key reasons for her refusal. A decision letter issued today said that Amber Rudd had refused development consent for the Navitus Bay Wind Park, which would have comprised up to 194 wind turbines with an installed capacity of up to 970MW. The refusal was in line with a recommendation from the Planning Inspectorate. –Michael Donnelly, Planning Resource, 11 September 2015
A state senator announced Thursday that she’s abandoning a second Democratic climate change proposal amid reluctance from California lawmakers and Gov. Jerry Brown. Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills, said she would withdraw a vote on her bill, SB32, which calls for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050. Instead, she will try to rally support for passage next year. In the final week of the legislative session, Democrats were already forced to drop a mandate to cut oil use from their climate change proposal amid fierce opposition from business groups and oil companies. A scaled-down version of the proposal to increase renewable energy use to 50 percent has yet to be voted on. —KCRA News, 10 September 2015
When David Cameron’s Conservative party rolled its way through elections this spring, we surmised that the new government, unencumbered by the demands of coalition politics, might be capable of kick-starting British shale production. But the Conservative party isn’t the only one touting the potential benefits of exploiting Britain’s estimated 1.3 quadrillion cubic feet of shale gas. In what can only be read as a boon to fracking’s political clout, Labour’s shadow energy minister has cautioned greens against their opposition. The UK has the shale reserves, it has the environmental, economic, and strategic incentives to tap it, and now, it seems, it has the political will necessary to overcome the local intransigence that has so far forestalled any UK shale boom. Will it be able to follow America’s lead? —The American Interest, 10 September 2015
1) Southern Ocean ‘Sink’ Turns The Tide On Climate Alarm
The Australian, 11 September 2015
Graham Lloyd
The Southern Ocean has recovered its ability to suck vast amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, overturning fears the natural “sink” had stalled with dire consequences for future climate change.
Acting like a giant lung, the Southern Ocean carbon sink accounts for about 40 per cent of the ocean uptake of anthropogenic carbon dioxide.
Climate scientists had feared the uptake of carbon dioxide by the Southern Ocean had slowed in what was feared to be a “feedback” response to human activity.
New research published today in the journal Science reveals that rather than stalling, the amount of CO2 being absorbed by the Southern Ocean was on the rise again.
It is thought that changes in weather — particularly wind patterns and temperature in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans — were responsible.
The findings have invigorated debate about how well scientists understand the natural variations in the earth’s climate.
Lead author Nicolas Gruber, from ETH Zurich, said the research did not address directly whether fluctuations in the sink strength were because of natural or human-induced variability.
“The starting hypothesis is that they are a result of natural variations,” Dr Gruber told The Australian.
Benny Peiser from the London-based Global Warming Policy Foundation said it was “not the first time that lengthier observations have led to the demise of a short-term climate scare”.
“The fact that researchers now acknowledge they cannot predict future trends indicates that they don’t fully understand the underlying physics and mechanisms,” Dr Peiser said.
Contributing author Dorothea Bakker, from the University of East Anglia, said the variation in the Southern Ocean carbon sink was larger than expected on the basis of the growth of atmospheric CO2 alone.
“The Southern Ocean behaves like a giant lung — breathing in and absorbing vast amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere, and releasing it later in the year,” Dr Bakker said.
“The seas around Antarctica absorb significantly more CO2 than they release. They basically help to slow down the growth of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere and lessen the rate of climate change.”
CSIRO Southern Ocean expert Steve Rintoul, who was not part of the research team, said the new analysis showed the strength of the Southern Ocean carbon sink varied with time more strongly than expected. “The weakening and strengthening of the Southern Ocean carbon sink reflects changes in ocean temperature and carbon dioxide driven by variations in the winds blowing on the ocean surface,” Dr Rintoul said.
He said the wind changes were caused by human activities such as greenhouse gases emissions and by natural variability. “The results show that overall, the Southern Ocean sink is keeping pace with the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. “This is in contrast to some earlier studies based on model experiments and atmospheric data that concluded the Southern Ocean carbon sink was weakening.”
GWPF science spokesman David Whitehouse said the recovery of the Southern Ocean carbon sink “could be yet another explanation for the surface temperature hiatus”.
He said the research was “another alarmist claim removed by science, showing that the ‘settled science’ isn’t settled at all.
“The fact is that the current models do not fit the observations, so there we have a vital part of future climate prediction shown to be not predictable,” Dr Whitehouse said.
“No one knows why the Southern Oceans are doing this, and no one can say what will happen next. It seems the Southern Ocean, along with a little bit of help from the sun, means that future climate projections, especially decadal ones, have become far more uncertain.
“The closer you look at widely held certainties, the more complex and less understood they become — that’s the science of a complicated earth.”
In a press release, University of East Anglia said while the research results may look to be good news for climate change, the effect could be temporary, and trends can’t be predicted reliably.
2) Many Global Warming Studies May Be Wrong Due To Flawed Carbon Dating
South China Morning Post, 10 September4 2015
Stephen Chen
Radiocarbon dating, which is used to calculate the age of certain organic materials, has been found to be unreliable, and sometimes wildly so – a discovery that could upset previous studies on climate change, scientists from China and Germany said in a new paper.
Their recent analysis of sediment from the largest freshwater lake in northeast China showed that its carbon clock stopped ticking as early as 30,000 years ago, or nearly half as long as was hitherto thought.
As scientists who study earth’s (relatively) modern history rely on this measurement tool to place their findings in the correct time period, the discovery that it is unreliable could put some in a quandary.
For instance, remnants of organic matter formerly held up as solid evidence of the most recent, large-scale global warming event some 40,000 years ago may actually date back far earlier to a previous ice age.
“The radiocarbon dating technique may significantly underestimate the age of sediment for samples older than 30,000 years,” said the authors of the report from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Germany’s Leibniz Institute for Applied Geophysics.
“Thus it is necessary to pay [special] attention when using such old carbon data for palaeoclimatic or archaeological interpretations,” they added.
Their work was detailed in a paper in the latest issue of the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.
For over 50 years, scientists and researchers have relied on carbon dating to find the exact age of organic matter.
Prior to that, they had to depend on more rudimentary and imprecise methods, such as counting the number of rings on a cross-section of tree trunk.
This all changed in the 1940s when US chemist Willard Libby discovered that carbon-14, a radioactive isotope, could be used to date organic compounds.
His theory was that all living creatures have a constant proportion of radioactive and non-radioactive carbons in their body because they keep absorbing these elements from the environment.
But as soon as the creature dies it stops absorbing these and sheds any trace of carbon-14 at a decay rate of 50 per cent every 5,700 years.
By measuring the remaining amount of carbon-14 in a sample, scientists could estimate the time of death up to 60,000 years ago.
Before that, all traces of radiocarbon would be too small to detect.
But the method had one major flaw: it didn’t account for changes in the proportion of radioactive and non-radioactive carbon in the environment; and if these had changed, the estimate would most likely be wrong.
Many events can affect the levels of carbon-14 in the atmosphere, such as the burning of fossil fuel or the detonation of an atom bomb.
In the new study using samples taken from Xingkai Lake near the Sino-Russian border in Heilongjiang province, the scientists used both radiocarbon dating and another method known as optically stimulated luminescence.
Using light to measure the amount of free electrons trapped in quartz, the team was able to tell how long the samples had been kept away from sunlight, and therefore estimate when it was that they first fell in the lake.
By comparing results from the two methods, they found that carbon dating became unreliable beyond a range of 30,000 years.
3) UK Energy & Climate Secretary Rejects 194-Turbine Offshore Wind Farm
Planning Resource, 11 September 2015
Michael Donnelly
The secretary of state for energy and climate change has refused permission for a 194-turbine wind farm off the Dorset coast, citing negative landscape and heritage impacts as key reasons for her refusal.
A decision letter issued today said that Amber Rudd had refused development consent for the Navitus Bay Wind Park, which would have comprised up to 194 wind turbines with an installed capacity of up to 970MW. The refusal was in line with a recommendation from the Planning Inspectorate.
The letter said that the developer behind the scheme, Navitus Bay Development Limited, had submitted a Turbine Area Mitigation Option (TAMO) alongside the main application which proposed a reduced number of turbines.
But the letter said Rudd had rejected this option as well.
It said that Rudd noted the Planning Inspectorate’s conclusion that the scale and location of the project “would affect important special qualities of the areas of outstanding natural beauty over a widespread area of coastline and that this carried significant weight against the grant of consent for the project in both application development and TAMO formats”.
4) Second Californian Climate Plan Falters Amid Reluctance
KCRA News, 10 September 2015
SACRAMENTO, Calif. —A state senator announced Thursday that she’s abandoning a second Democratic climate change proposal amid reluctance from California lawmakers and Gov. Jerry Brown.
Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills, said she would withdraw a vote on her bill, SB32, which calls for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050. Instead, she will try to rally support for passage next year.
“Unfortunately, the state Assembly and the administration were not supportive, for now, and we could not pass this important proposal,” Pavley said in a statement.
The bill was a follow-up to Pavley’s AB32, a landmark law requiring California to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. That bill was signed by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, in 2006.
Brown spokesman Gareth Lacy said the administration is supportive of the initial bill but not amendments Pavley accepted, which would have weakened the California Air Resources Board’s power to set vehicle emissions and fuel standards.
“We can’t trade what is already being done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to get a new bill,” Lacy said.
In the final week of the legislative session, Democrats were already forced to drop a mandate to cut oil use from their climate change proposal amid fierce opposition from business groups and oil companies. A scaled-down version of the proposal to increase renewable energy use to 50 percent has yet to be voted on.
5) Support Swells for British Fracking
The American Interest, 10 September 2015
When David Cameron’s Conservative party rolled its way through elections this spring, we surmised that the new government, unencumbered by the demands of coalition politics, might be capable of kick-starting British shale production. Cameron has long been a fracking booster, and his appointment of shale-friendly Amber Rudd as his new energy minister signaled a renewed commitment to the controversial drilling technique. Rudd wasted little time getting to work, last month unveiling a plan to expedite the local approval process, one of the biggest hurdles to British shale development thus far.
But the Conservative party isn’t the only one touting the potential benefits of exploiting Britain’s estimated 1.3 quadrillion cubic feet of shale gas. In what can only be read as a boon to fracking’s political clout, Labour’s shadow energy minister has cautioned greens against their opposition. The BBC reports:
Bryony Worthington – now Labour shadow energy minister – says fracking will create less CO2 than compressing gas in Qatar and shipping it to Britain. […]
“We have to be realistic,” she told BBC News. “We are going to be using gas for a long time because of the huge role it plays for heating homes and for industry. “The important thing is to minimize the carbon emissions from gas. That means if we can get our own fracked gas, it’s better to use that than importing gas that’s been compressed at great energy cost somewhere else.”
Her point is a valid one—domestically sourcing natural gas from shale formations could potentially cut British emissions by displacing LNG imports, which necessarily involve energy-intensive liquefaction processes and international shipping. Moreover, boosting domestic production could help shore up the UK’s energy security, which is currently being threatened by rapidly declining North Sea oil production. As the Telegraph explains, plunging oil prices are tightening the screws on an already struggling region:
Falling oil prices could lead to the closure of 140 fields in the North Sea over the next five years as operators accelerate plans for decommissioning amid drastic cost cutting, [leading energy consultancy Wood MacKenzie] has warned…Even a partial recovery to around $70 a barrel would leave 50 oil fields facing early closure, the Edinburgh-based firm said.
The UK has the shale reserves, it has the environmental, economic, and strategic incentives to tap it, and now, it seems, it has the political will necessary to overcome the local intransigence that has so far forestalled any UK shale boom. Will it be able to follow America’s lead? We’ll be watching.
6) And Finally: Greenpeace Warns Of Ice Age Dangers
Bishop Hill, 8 September 2015
Andrew Montford
Greenpeace are fond of telling us that the planet is going to fry because of our evil addiction to fossil fuels. How then to explain their submission to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, which maintains a register of issues and potential problems with the nation’s nuclear waste repositories?
The long-term effects of glaciation on repository safety could be very serious, potentially involving a large release of radionuclides due to glacial flushing from a damaged repository zone. Future glaciations could cause faulting of the rock, rupture of containers and penetration of surface and/or saline waters to the repository depth.
Surely some mistake?
