GWPF | 28 Oct 2015
Good news for wine drinkers – a leading international body says grape vines are a hardy little number and can survive climate change, at least over the medium term. Earlier harvesting, changes in grape varieties and new wine-making processes have already helped counter the impact of the harsher weather hitting vineyards across the globe, the head of the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) says. “You can adapt to climate change or you can react to it,” Treasury Wine Chief Supply Officer Stuart McNab said at a Reuters Global Climate Change Summit earlier this month. —Reuters, 28 October 2015
1) Winemakers Will Adapt To Climate Change, International Body Says – Reuters, 28 October 2015
2) Too Hot To Live In The Gulf? Don’t Be So Sure – The National, 27 October 2015
3) French Mathematical Calculation Society: Global Warming Crusade Is Absurd, Costly And Pointless – Jo Nova, 26 October 2015
4) New Study: Arctic Ice Thicker Than Previous Nine Years, Winter 0.5–1.5°C Colder – No Tricks Zone, 27 October 2015
5) Matt Ridley: The Evolution of Everything – Bishop Hill, 26 October 2015
Scientists say that there is significant disagreement about how climate change will affect the Gulf region, after one published study raised fears about high temperatures and humidity at the end of the century. The new research, by two scientists based in the United States, said that… unless greenhouse-gas emissions are cut, in the UAE’s major cities the wet-bulb temperature would, several times between 2071 and 2100, exceed the level at which humans could survive. The Global Warming Policy Foundation dismissed the latest study. The group’s director, the social anthropologist Benny Peiser, said: “These kind of scare stories crop up” whenever a UN climate-change conference is looming, a reference to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris that begins at the end of next month. “The fact of the matter is that warming over the last 50 years is much slower than most computer models predict. The models are wrong and the observations are more reliable than the models.” –Daniel Bardsley, The National, 27 October 2015
All public policies, in France, Europe and throughout the world, find their origin and inspiration in the battle against global warming. The impact on the entire field of scientific research is particularly clear and especially pernicious. There is not a single fact, figure or observation that leads us to conclude that the world‘s climate is in any way disturbed. Conclusions based on any kind of model should be disregarded. As the SCM specializes in building mathematical models, we should also be recognized as competent to criticize them. Models are useful when attempting to review our knowledge, but they should not be used as an aid to decision-making until they have been validated. —Calculation Mathematical Society, September 2015
Has anyone been wondering why we’ve been hearing so little about the Arctic lately? It turns out that the Arctic is far less ice free than many thought or expected just some years ago. So wrong can the models be. More Arctic ice and up to 1.5°C colder! The new study finds that in 2014 “more ice survived the summer as MYI than in the nine most recent years” and it was only “slightly less than during 1968–2015 on average” Also “between November 2014 and April 2015, winter air temperatures were between −0.5°C and −1.5°C colder than during 1980–2010.” –Pierre Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, 27 October 2015
For reading matter on my half-term trip away, I took Matt Ridley’s latest book The Evolution of Everything. At nearly 400 pages long it’s not a short book, but it turned out to be not nearly long enough to keep me occupied and by the middle of the week I had finished it. There’s only one word to describe it: subversive. It’s subversive of pretty much everything – religion, politics, technology, statism, central banking, education, culture. You name it and it’s subverted by the book’s central hypothesis. This is the idea that while we seek proximal, top-down explanations for change, in truth bottom-up forces are more powerful, more sustained, and more often than not are the true causes. So with this book, Ridley sets the philosophical cat well and truly among the pigeons, and those who make their living in the world of top-down plans are up in arms. –Andrew Montford, Bishop Hill, 26 October 2015
1) Winemakers Will Adapt To Climate Change, International Body Says
Reuters, 28 October 2015
Good news for wine drinkers – a leading international body says grape vines are a hardy little number and can survive climate change, at least over the medium term.
Earlier harvesting, changes in grape varieties and new wine-making processes have already helped counter the impact of the harsher weather hitting vineyards across the globe, the head of the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) says.
“Wine producers all over the world have adapted to the changes and the plant has a capacity of adjustment that you can find in no other plant,” OIV Director General Jean-Marie Aurand told Reuters in an interview.
He cited the example of the Canary island of Lanzarote where vines are grown in lava which absorbs overnight dew – virtually the sole water they receive in the summer – and releases it during the day.
In China, he said, more than 80 percent of production acreage is located in regions where temperatures can drop below minus 30 degrees Celsius (-22 degrees Fahrenheit) in winter. Growers cover vines to protect them and uncover them when spring comes.
Some winemakers, meanwhile, are shifting the way they produce wine.
Australia’s Treasury Wine Estates Ltd, for example, is testing technology to water vines underground and is expanding fermentation capacity to combat the impact of climate change on its vineyards around the world.
“You can adapt to climate change or you can react to it,” Treasury Wine Chief Supply Officer Stuart McNab said at a Reuters Global Climate Change Summit earlier this month. “You’ve got time to react, but you’ve got to know what’s happening.”
OUTLOOK
Despite the worries of many producers, notably in the Champagne region, Aurand was not very concerned for the future of wines sold under protected designation labels that tie them to the soil and viticulture practices of a specific region such as the Appellation d’Origine Controlee (AOC) system in France.
“We have today other strains and cultivation techniques, so I’m not worried in the short or mid-term on this question, which does not mean we should not consider the issue of climate change as a whole,” Aurand said.
It was too early to give an outlook for 2050, he said.
Full post
2) Too Hot To Live In The Gulf? Don’t Be So Sure
The National, 27 October 2015
Daniel Bardsley
ABU DHABI // Scientists say that there is significant disagreement about how climate change will affect the Gulf region, after one published study raised fears about high temperatures and humidity at the end of the century.
Effects on particular regions of the world are especially difficult to forecast, specialists say, because most work is focused on the potential effects of climate change globally.
The new research, by two scientists based in the United States, said that high temperatures and humidity in the Gulf at the end of this century could make it difficult for people to be outdoors during certain periods.
Published in Nature Climate Change, the work predicted that “wet-bulb temperatures”, which combine the actual temperature with the moisture level, could regularly exceed 35°C.
At this wet-bulb temperature, which combines heat of 46°C and humidity of 50 per cent, the body would not be able to cool itself by sweating and other natural methods.
Climate-change researcher and University of Sharjah assistant professor, Dr Tarek Merabtene, who was not involved in the work, said there remained “a high level of uncertainty” about what the Gulf’s climate would be like in future.
While cautioning that he had not read the latest piece of research, he said there was “a very clear discrepancy” between various studies that have been published and actual climate data for the region.
“The uncertainty of whatever’s being published today is over 50 per cent,” he said. “Some are saying it’s going to be more dry. There are others who are saying floods will occur often. In all of these there’s a clear uncertainty.”
The new study, written by Dr Jeremy Pal of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and Prof Elfatih Eltahir of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, included climate forecasts for Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Al Ain, Doha and Kuwait, as well as locations in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
“Our results expose a specific regional hot spot where climate change, in the absence of significant mitigation, is likely to severely impact human habitability in the future,” the authors wrote.
Unless greenhouse-gas emissions are cut, in the UAE’s major cities the wet-bulb temperature would, several times between 2071 and 2100, exceed the level at which humans could survive, they wrote. Days when temperatures exceeded 45°C would become “the norm” in most low-lying cities of the Gulf region and in Al Ain temperatures were forecast to exceed even 60°C at times. A normal summer day in most of the Gulf region would be as hot as the warmest 5 per cent of today’s summer days.
The study also predicted that, when it is held in summer, the Haj pilgrimage would become “hazardous to human health”, especially for elderly pilgrims, with “extreme conditions”, where the temperature rose above 55°C.
Poorer countries in the region, such as Yemen, would probably experience deaths among children and the elderly because of a combination of heat and reduced availability of technology such as air conditioners.
In making their predictions, the scientists used temperature increases as forecast by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They said climate change would “make the present harsh desert environment even harsher” and would constrain development in coastal areas.
However, the authors said that countries in the region could benefit from efforts to limit greenhouse-gas emissions and, in turn, temperature rises.
Other scientists highlighted the difficulty involved in making predictions.
There is “considerable uncertainty” about the world’s climate at the end of this century, said Prof Christoph Schar, chairman of the Institute of Atmospheric and Climate Science at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, who wrote a commentary in Nature Climate Change to accompany the new study.
“There is some discussion about how much global warming will be in 100 years’ time, but globally, which is easier to predict than the regional impact,” he said.
But, he said, the model used in the latest study was “quite reliable” and had been “well tested”. While the actual climatic effects could turn out to be less severe than those predicted, he said the outcome could end up being more extreme.
The Global Warming Policy Foundation, the London-based organisation set up by Lord Lawson, a former British finance minister who wrote a book sceptical of claims about man-made climate change, dismissed the latest study.
The group’s director, the social anthropologist Benny Peiser, said: “These kind of scare stories crop up” whenever a UN climate-change conference is looming, a reference to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris that begins at the end of next month.
“I very much doubt there’s much to it,” he said of the latest research.
“The fact of the matter is that warming over the last 50 years is much slower than most computer models predict. The models are wrong and the observations are more reliable than the models.”
3) French Mathematical Calculation Society: Global Warming Crusade Is Absurd, Costly And Pointless
Jo Nova, 26 October 2015
The hard sciences are less and less fooled by the charade of sciencey fear mongering (unlike some psychologists). It is great to see scientific groups speaking out, though we know this PDF, which was first published on the 24th of August 2015, will be ignored by the ABC, BBC, and CBC science propaganda teams. Not the right message.
The Société de Calcul Mathématique SA, in France has issued a long in depth white paper on climate change:
“The battle against global warming: an absurd, costly and pointless crusade” (195 page PDF)
The impact on the entire field of scientific research is particularly clear and especially pernicious.
There is not a single fact, figure or observation that leads us to conclude that the world‘s climate is in any way disturbed‘
“Conclusions based on any kind of model should be disregarded. As the SCM specializes in building mathematical models, we should also be recognized as competent to criticize them. Models are useful when attempting to review our knowledge, but they should not be used as an aid to decision-making until they have been validated.”
The English Translation of the Calculation Mathematical Society, SA web page. SCM was established in 1987, by University professor, Dr. Bernard Beauzamy. Their “first specialty” is mathematical modeling.
A few excerpts of this long paper below
Summary
All public policies, in France, Europe and throughout the world, find their origin and inspiration in the battle against global warming.
The impact on the entire field of scientific research is particularly clear and especially pernicious. No project can be launched, on any subject whatsoever, unless it makes direct reference to global warming. You want to look at the geology of the Garonne Basin? It is, after all, an entirely normal and socially useful subject in every respect. Well, your research will be funded, approved and published only if it mentions the potential for geological storage of CO2. It is appalling.
The crusade has invaded every area of activity and everyone‘s thinking: the battle against CO2 has become a national priority. How have we reached this point, in a country that claims to be rational?
At the root lie the declarations made by the IPPC, which have been repeated over the years and taken up by the European Commission and the Member States. France, which likes to see itself as the good boy of Europe‘, adds an extra layer of virtue to every crusade. When others introduce reductions, we will on principle introduce bigger reductions, without ever questioning their appropriateness: a crusade is virtuous by its very nature. And you can never be too virtuous.
But mathematicians do not believe in crusades; they look at facts, figures, observations and arguments.
Part 1: The facts
Chapter 1: The crusade is absurd
There is not a single fact, figure or observation that leads us to conclude that the world‘s climate is in any way disturbed‘. It is variable, as it has always been, but rather less so now than during certain periods or geological eras. Modern methods are far from being able to accurately measure the planet‘s global temperature even today, so measurements made 50 or 100 years ago are even less reliable.
Concentrations of CO2 vary, as they always have done; the figures that are being released are biased and dishonest. Rising sea levels are a normal phenomenon linked to upthrust buoyancy; they are nothing to do with so-called global warming. As for extreme weather events – they are no more frequent now than they have been in the past. We ourselves have processed the raw data on hurricanes.
4) New Study: Arctic Ice Thicker Than Previous Nine Years, Winter 0.5–1.5°C Colder
No Tricks Zone, 27 October 2015
P Gosselin
Has anyone been wondering why we’ve been hearing so little about the Arctic lately?
New study says Arctic to remain frozen for many more years. MODIS image of the Arctic, Jeff Schmaltz – NASA Earth Observatory
Reader Dennis A. sent me the following abstract of a new paper by Haas et al: Ice thickness in the Northwest Passage – Haas – 2015 – Geophysical Research Letters – Wiley Online Library. It turns out that the Arctic is far less ice free than many thought or expected just some years ago. So wrong can the models be!
More Arctic ice and up to 1.5°C colder!
Navigable NWP postponed 40 years!
The study finds that in 2014 “more ice survived the summer as MYI than in the nine most recent years” and it was only “slightly less than during 1968–2015 on average (Figure S5)“.
Also “between November 2014 and April 2015, winter air temperatures were between −0.5°C and −1.5°C colder than during 1980–2010.”
Moreover the study also has climate experts profoundly postponing yet another prediction: The Northwest passage will not be navigable for another 40 years…let alone the Arctic becoming ice free!
The entire GRL abstract (emphasis added):
We present results of the first ever airborne electromagnetic ice thickness surveys over the NWP carried out in April and May 2011 and 2015 over first-year and multiyear ice. These show modal thicknesses between 1.8 and 2.0 m in all regions. Mean thicknesses over 3 m and thick, deformed ice were observed over some multiyear ice regimes shown to originate from the Arctic Ocean. Thick ice features more than 100 m wide and thicker than 4 m occurred frequently. Results indicate that even in today’s climate, ice conditions must still be considered severe. These results have important implications for the prediction of ice breakup and summer ice conditions, and the assessment of sea ice hazards during the summer shipping season….
5) Matt Ridley: The Evolution of Everything
Bishop Hill, 26 October 2015
Andrew Montford
BOOK REVIEW: For reading matter on my half-term trip away, I took Matt Ridley’s latest book The Evolution of Everything. At nearly 400 pages long it’s not a short book, but it turned out to be not nearly long enough to keep me occupied and by the middle of the week I had finished it.
There’s only one word to describe it: subversive.
It’s subversive of pretty much everything – religion, politics, technology, statism, central banking, education, culture. You name it and it’s subverted by the book’s central hypothesis. This is the idea that while we seek proximal, top-down explanations for change, in truth bottom-up forces are more powerful, more sustained, and more often than not are the true causes.
So on the subject of societal change we read:
In society, people are the victims and even the immediate agents of change, but more often than not the causes are elsewhere – they are emergent, collective, inexorable forces.
One example is that of the general who leads his army to victory, with no credit given to the malaria that killed off the opposing army. Politicians and activists obsess over aid payments and plans for poor countries, while the people there quietly evolve their way to a better life.
The hard of understanding are struggling with this. There was a typically execrable review in the Guardian which asked “What about the exercise of power?”, an argument that almost completely missed the point made in the quote above (which appears on page 5 of the book, leaving one with the impression that the Guardian’s reviewer didn’t get further than the blurb).
Similarly, science-y people on Twitter have been vehemently arguing that Ridley is wrong to suggest that government can’t make technological breakthroughs, which is a futile point to make since Ridley argues no such thing. His case is, as throughout the book, that evolutionary progress is much more important than big breakthroughs and that top-down, planned approaches have less impact than unplanned tinkering.
So with this book, Ridley sets the philosophical cat well and truly among the pigeons, and those who make their living in the world of top-down plans are up in arms.
You can see why I call it subversive. Read on.
