Right Wing Granny

News behind the news. This picture is me (white spot) standing on the bridge connecting European and North American tectonic plates. It is located in the Reykjanes area of Iceland. By-the-way, this is a color picture.

Right Wing Granny

Tag Archives: Arctic

Is Increased Artic Ice A Sign Of Global Warming?

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On Monday, PJ Media posted an article about global warming.

The article reports:

One of climate alarmists’ favorite predictions is that the Arctic is losing its ice due to global warming, something elites have claimed for decades. New data shows, however, that Arctic ice is actually increasing! 

Climate has always changed and will continue to do so until the real apocalypse (not the fake one climate alarmists have been predicting as imminent for decades). With more than 50 years of failed climate change predictions behind them and a track record of consistent and total untrustworthiness, you’d think that the doom prophets would have given up. Then again, climate change is a convenient way for the greedy to enrich themselves (like former Vice President Al Gore) and for power-hungry politicians to take away rights and liberties while claiming a moral and physical necessity.

The article concludes:

It is interesting that last year’s data showed eight years of a global cooling trend rather than warming. Right about this part of winter, I wouldn’t mind a little warming, but many of us in America are instead facing a harsh cold snap. Of course, it’s not encouraging that some entities (including our federal government) aim to engage in geoengineering to manipulate weather and supposedly save the planet from warming. These entities who want to reduce global temperatures ignore the fact that the world isn’t about to go up in flames and that the Arctic is not becoming ice-free.

The real threat isn’t climate apocalypse; it’s leftist ideologues who have the power to weaponize pseudo-scientific propaganda against us and our liberties.

Obviously, I am not in favor of pollution. However, I am in favor of balance and of a free market. India and China are largely exempt from the energy restrictions that recent climate ‘treaties’ have placed on America.

A December 2023 article at NBC News reported:

This year, the burning of fossil fuel and manufacturing of cement have added the equivalent of putting 2.57 million pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every second.

If China and India were excluded from the count, world carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and cement manufacturing would have dropped, Friedlingstein said.

In 2023 the world increased its annual emissions by 398 million metric tons, but it was in three places: China, India and the skies. China’s fossil fuel emissions went up 458 million metric tons from last year, India’s went up 233 million metric tons and aviation emissions increased 145 million metric tons.

There is also the fact that many scientists believe that a higher level of CO2 is good for the planet–good for agriculture and good for providing food for more people.

When Global Warming Just Doesn’t Work

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The Gateway Pundit posted an article today about what seems to be a recurring event.

The article reports:

Arctic tours ship MS MALMO with 16 passengers on board got stuck in ice on Sep 3 off Longyearbyen, Svalbard Archipelago, halfway between Norway and North Pole. The ship is on Arctic tour with Climate Change documentary film team, and tourists, concerned with Climate Change and melting Arctic ice. All 16 Climate Change warriors were evacuated by helicopter in challenging conditions, all are safe. 7 crew remains on board, waiting for Coast Guard ship assistance.

The article reminds us of previous incidents:

In May 2009 two global warming activists were hoping to reach Greenland’s polar ice cap in a solar and wind powered yacht.

Unfortunately, they ran into cold and stormy weather and had to be rescued by an oil tanker.

In December 2013 a Russian expedition ship carrying global warming scientists got stuck in ice. And a Chinese ice breaker sent to rescue the scientists got stuck in the ice just miles away.

I love the irony.

The climate is always changing. There are plant fossils under the ice in Greenland, an indication that the climate there was much warmer in a previous period of the earth’s history. There are sea fossils under the American southwest deserts, indicating that the area was under water at some point. There is an area in eastern North Carolina that is a great place to collect fossilized shark teeth, indicating that at some point it was under water. The planet is always changing. It is pure ego for man to believe that he is important enough to be in charge of weather. We have an obligation to keep the planet as clean as possible, but we also have an obligation to balance that obligation with the well being of the people who live on the planet.

It Really Is All About The Money

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None of the predictions made about global warming have come through–the polar bear population has increased, New York City is not under water, and there have not been more catastrophic hurricanes (remember Andrew, Camille, and Hazel?).

WattsUpWithThat reports:

Guest essay by Dr. Susan J. Crockford of polarbearscience.com * see update below on the % number

Survey Results: Svalbard polar bear numbers increased 30 42% over last 11 years

Results of this fall’s Barents Sea population survey have been released by the Norwegian Polar Institute and they are phenomenal: despite several years with poor ice conditions, there are more bears now (~975) than there were in 2004 (~685) around Svalbard (a 30 42% increase) and the bears were in good condition.

So what is all the fuss regarding global warming about? Yesterday Investor’s Business Daily posted a commentary about global warming.

The commentary reports:

Just when you think the climate change lunacy couldn’t get any worse, the U.N.’s climate-crats up the ante. Meeting in Bonn, Germany, for yet another unneeded climate conference, attendees are now demanding $300 billion a year more to help less-developed nations cope with anticipated climatic warming. Are they kidding?

By the way, that $300 billion is in addition to the $100 billion that the world’s governments have already promised to deliver under the Paris Climate Agreement. So now they’re asking for a total of $400 billion a year in climate welfare for the developing world. No sane government would sign on to such a scam. Which of course means that most of them probably will.

There’s really no end to this insanity. To make it worse, the proposal before the Bonn climate talks calls for the added taxpayer-funded cash to be doled out not by the governments themselves, or even the U.N. No, the money will be channeled through existing nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs.

In other words, left-wing green groups around the world will become the conduits for billions of dollars in money handed out to ethically challenged, nondemocratic governments. Think there might be a tiny temptation for corruption there?

It gets worse when you realize that most of the countries that would wind up with this money are run by tyrants and that none of that money would actually be used to raise the standard of living for the average citizen of that country.

The article concludes:

We have suggested before, and we will repeat now, what the only rational response to such financial and scientific lunacy should be: to cease all cooperation with the U.N. on its global warming schemes — which amount to little more than a massive effort to redistribute wealth from rich nations to poor nations, and to put all free people directly under the controlling thumbs of global bureaucrats.

That means we should pull out of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, which President Trump promised to do as a candidate, but has yet to do as president. It’s a costly fraud perpetrated on the America people by morally preening global socialists. It’s time to make the world great again.

Science vs. Hype

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WattsUpWithThat posted an article this week about a recent study, published in the European Geosciences Union journal The Cryosphere..

The article reports:

The study, published in the European Geosciences Union journal The Cryosphere, suggests Antarctic sea ice is much less sensitive to the effects of climate change than that of the Arctic, which in stark contrast has experienced a dramatic decline during the 20th century.

The research, by climate scientists at the University of Reading, estimates the extent of Antarctic summer sea ice is at most 14% smaller now than during the early 1900s.

Jonathan Day, who led the study, said: “The missions of Scott and Shackleton are remembered in history as heroic failures, yet the data collected by these and other explorers could profoundly change the way we view the ebb and flow of Antarctic sea ice.

“We know that sea ice in the Antarctic has increased slightly over the past 30 years, since satellite observations began. Scientists have been grappling to understand this trend in the context of global warming, but these new findings suggest it may not be anything new.

“If ice levels were as low a century ago as estimated in this research, then a similar increase may have occurred between then and the middle of the century, when previous studies suggest ice levels were far higher.”

The new study published in The Cryosphere is the first to shed light on sea ice extent in the period prior to the 1930s, and suggests the levels in the early 1900s were in fact similar to today, at between 5.3 and 7.4 million square kilometres. Although one region, the Weddell Sea, did have a significantly larger ice cover.

There are a few things to learn from this. First of all, we are not as smart as we think we are and really have no idea what man’s impact on climate is or if man has any impact on climate. Second of all, the global warming industry is about money and control–it really has little to do with global warming. Do you really believe that if the people claiming that global warming was going to kill us all tomorrow believed that global warming was catastrophic,  they would be traveling to their global warming meetings in private jets and living in houses with carbon footprints bigger than that of a small nation?

If you need proof that global warming is hype related to money and control, please read this story. It illustrates one way that Congressmen come to Washington as middle-class citizens and leave as millionaires. The story is a beautiful example of one time the plan to gain instant wealth through legislation didn’t work!

I Love Irony

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Yesterday Breitbart reported that an expedition to the North Pole has ground to a halt this month because the scientists’ ship was blocked by the ice packs near Murmansk, Russia. The ship was planning to measure the effects of global warming.

The article reports:

The website Real Climate Science notes that the Polar melt season is half over, but temperatures have not climbed high enough to sponsor a large melt off of ice. According to the site, there has not been a big melt, and ice gains seem to be very close to the amount of ice lost because temperatures near the pole have been persistently below normal this year. And at the very least, large ice floes have blocked the ocean passages around the area.

The global warming expedition expected to be able to sail all around the Arctic Ocean through the Northeast and Northwest Passages because they assumed the ice would be gone, but they have been stymied because ice blocks most of the route they planned to take.

As previously stated, the best site on the Internet for scientific information on climate change is wattsupwiththat. I strongly recommend it.

Priorities Please

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Today’s Wall Street Journal posted an article by Senator John McCain about President Obama’s recent visit to Alaska. During that visit, the President focused his attention on the cataclysmic threat of climate change. (For accurate information on climate change, see wattsupwiththat. It is the world’s most viewed website on climate change)

Senator McCain reports:

Some of my Senate colleagues and I recently returned from the Arctic, and while we saw the challenges of melting polar ice, we also saw a greater and more immediate threat. It is a menace that many assumed was relegated to the past: an aggressive, militarily capable Russian state that is ruled by an anti-American autocrat, hostile to our interests, dismissive of our values, and seeking to challenge the international order that U.S. leaders of both parties have maintained for seven decades.

Vladimir Putin’s neo-imperial ambitions are clear enough in his attempt to dominate Russia’s neighbors, Ukraine most of all. But his ambitions increasingly extend to the Arctic and Europe’s northern flank. That is where I and my colleagues met with leaders and security officials from Norway, Sweden, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

Is President Obama ignoring this threat or is this part of his promise to ‘be more flexible’ in dealing with Russia in his second term?

On Tuesday, CBN News reported:

The president says the science about climate change gets clearer every day and proves it’s no longer a distant threat.

And he’s right that Alaska’s climate is changing. Summer snow is forecast for this Friday amidst a cooling period. Alaska’s climate has been changing for a long time.

The poster child for climate change in Alaska, the Mendenall glacier, which is melting, was already melting in the 1700s and, according to scientists, had retreated one mile by the 1900s.

Some scientists say Alaska has been warming because of a reversal in the Pacific decadal oscillation, a 60-year cycle that sends warmer air to Alaska.

I am the least scientific person I know, but even I know that there are such things are natural climate cycles. Those cycles are what has enabled The Farmer’s Almanac to be one of the most accurate forecasters of weather on the planet. They have been using the same formula to predict weather that was used before computer forecasting came into vogue. Oddly enough, The Farmer’s Almanac predictions have proved to be more accurate than the computer models scientists have created. The climate is changing. The climate is always changing. The question is how much man is responsible for the changes. There was a long period of global warming during the Middle Ages, but somehow I cannot picture it being caused by the Lord of the Manor running around in his SUV.

Global warming is not the greatest threat America faces as a country. The greatest threat we face as a country is the increasing boldness of people who wish to do us harm that are spurred on by the fact that we have a weak President. That is our greatest threat.

Sometimes The Earth Just Doesn’t Cooperate With The Scientists

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The Daily Caller posted an article today about some recent occurrences involving Arctic ice.

The article reports:

For years, scientists have been warning the Arctic was in a “death spiral” and could soon be ice-free during the summertime and shrink to unprecedented levels due to man-made global warming. Such ice loss could be “irreversible,” some scientists claimed.

But new research from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography says that predictions of an ice-free Arctic are based on “oversimplified” theories. Scripps researchers, who were co-funded by the Navy, found that the Arctic sea ice may be “substantially more stable than has been suggested in previous idealized modeling studies.”

I should probably point out at this point that I am not in favor of dirty water, dirty air, or any other sort of pollution. I just have serious doubts as to whether the earth is warming or whether man actually has anything to do with any climate change that is occurring.

There were many predictions saying that Arctic Ice would be gone by 2030–the levels of ice had decreased in 2007, 2008, and 2009, and some scientists were saying that the ice would not come back. However, that is not what has happened.

The article concludes:

NSIDC (National Snow and Ice Data Center) and European satellite data show that multi-year sea ice made a big comeback in 2013 and 2014 — increasing from 2.25 to 3.17 million square kilometers during that time and making up 43 percent of the north pole’s ice pack.

In fact, Arctic sea ice extent as a whole seems to be stabilizing despite this year’s record low maximum in February. NSIDC data shows Arctic sea ice extent is currently within the normal range based on the 1981 to 2010 average extent.

“Global sea ice is at a record high, another key indicator that something is working in the opposite direction of what was predicted,” Dr. Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Forum, told the U.K. Express in January.

“Most people think the poles are melting… they’re not,” he said. “This is a huge inconvenience that reality is now catching up with climate alarmists, who were predicting that the poles would be melting fairly soon.”

Global warming is not a proven fact. Until it is, it would be foolish for industrialized nations to cripple their economies to accommodate faulty science. Again, we need to cut down on pollution simply because it is a bad thing, but we do not have to go overboard to create a result that is questionable at best.

 

The Biggest Science Scandal Ever

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The U.K. Telegraph posted an article yesterday calling the adjusting of global temperature records to support the theory of global warming ‘the biggest science scandal ever.’

The article reports:

Two weeks ago, under the headline “How we are being tricked by flawed data on global warming”, I (Christopher Booker) wrote about Paul Homewood, who, on his Notalotofpeopleknowthat blog, had checked the published temperature graphs for three weather stations in Paraguay against the temperatures that had originally been recorded. In each instance, the actual trend of 60 years of data had been dramatically reversed, so that a cooling trend was changed to one that showed a marked warming.

This was only the latest of many examples of a practice long recognised by expert observers around the world – one that raises an ever larger question mark over the entire official surface-temperature record.

Following my last article, Homewood checked a swathe of other South American weather stations around the original three. In each case he found the same suspicious one-way “adjustments”. First these were made by the US government’s Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN). They were then amplified by two of the main official surface records, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss) and the National Climate Data Center (NCDC), which use the warming trends to estimate temperatures across the vast regions of the Earth where no measurements are taken. Yet these are the very records on which scientists and politicians rely for their belief in “global warming”.

What ever happened to the Scientific Method?

We need to look at the reasons behind supporting the science of global warming. The poorer nations of the world (generally the ones run by tyrants who do not have equal rights for all people under their laws or property rights) have charged that the richer nations of the world have caused global warming and therefore should pay the poorer nations for the damage they have done. There is no reason to believe that any of the money paid would be used to alleviate poverty in the poorer nations, but their dictators could build more palaces. Global warming is a shakedown. It is an attempt to take money away from nations that have prospered and worked hard and give it to poor nations. I don’t object to helping poor nations, but we need to make sure any help we give goes to the people who need it–not to build more palaces for the leaders of those nations.

There is nothing wrong with moving toward ‘green’ energy. That will happen naturally when the science develops to make that move practical. Right now carbon-based energy is needed as a back-up for almost all forms of green energy because sun and wind are not constant or consistent. Until we find a way to store energy from green sources in order the keep the energy flowing at a constant rate, we will still need carbon-based fuel.

If you are interested in reading more about the science (or lack of) in global warming, I suggest two articles–one on surface stations, and one showing the actual facts about global warming in America. When you look at where some of the surface stations used to monitor temperatures were placed, you begin to wonder at the intentions of the scientists involved.

 

 

Funding The Green Agenda At The Executive Level

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It would be nice if we were all very honest people who were not swayed by money or the promise of influence. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the way the world works. Today’s Daily Caller posted a story about White House Counselor John Podesta, who will be leaving the White House to take a position in Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

The article reports:

But his work came into fuller view earlier this week when he emerged as one of the architects of the new White House policy that seeks to end any future drilling for oil on Alaska’s coastal plain.

In fact, Podesta personally announced the policy in a White House blog post Sunday, waxing poetic that the move would ensure “this wild, free, beautiful, and bountiful place remains in trust for Alaska Natives and for all Americans.”

Shielding public lands from oil and gas drilling also is one of the main occupations of Hansjorg Wyss, a mysterious Swiss billionaire who personally hired Podesta as a “consultant” in 2013 just before he entered the White House, according to his White House disclosure form.

The problem is that because of the timing involved, there is a violation of federal ethics rules.

The article explains:

But it may be Wyss’s decision to personally hire the White House Counselor in 2013 as a “consultant,” and paying him $87,000 that could cause Podesta the most trouble.

A number of federal ethics rules, including President Obama’s “ethics pledge,” signed into law by the president on his first day in office, preclude political appointees from engaging in issues of interest to a former employer.

The period of disqualification applies to all work done within two years before entering the federal government. Podesta worked at Wyss’s HJW Foundation in 2013 and joined the White House in January 2014.

Wyss has a history of working to put federal lands off limits for energy exploration and for use as grazing property.

The article details more of Wyss’ activities:

He famously ponied up $35 million in 2010 to set aside 310,000 acres of land from development in Montana.

In January 2013, Wyss contributed $4.25 million to purchase oil and gas leases on 58,000 acres of land in Wyoming’s Hoback Basin.

Wyss sits on the governing council of the Wilderness Society, and on the boards of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and the Grand Canyon Trust.

In addition to Podesta, Wyss also hired Molly Mcusic to be his foundation president.

Mcusic served in the Clinton administration as a top assistant to Interior Secretary Bruce Babbit. She is best remembered for using the Antiquities Act to designate lands as “National Monuments.”

I wish we had someone in Washington uncorrupt enough to take on this sort of corruption. Americans are being denied the use of land that would add to the prosperity of the average citizen, and someone from another country is pulling the strings within an American administration. Would anyone be willing to wager how much of this story will make the major news outlets?

Don’t Let Scientific Information Get In The Way Of Your Political Agenda

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The roots of the outcry about the dangers of global warming are political. If global warming is a crisis, government can exert more power over citizens. Government can choose winners and losers in the business world (e.g. subsidies to Solyndra or avoiding the Keystone Pipeline to increase the business on Warren Buffett‘s railroad, etc.), and generally those in power can consolidate their power by employing quid pro quo policies without being obvious about it. So what about some of the claims used to sell the theory that we are melting?

Yesterday WattsUpWithThat posted an article about some recent claims that the North Pole is melting. Good grief, what will happen to Santa Claus?

The picture below was posted on Facebook by the Climate Reality Project. The picture was described as a picture of the North Pole showing that the North Pole was melting. There’s only one problem with that–the picture was taken 300 miles from the North Pole. So how much difference does 300 miles make? Three hundred miles is the approximate distance between Boston, Massachusetts, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Anyone who has been in these cities in February knows that 300 miles matters.

Drifting_webcam_Capture

In case you are still fearful that we are melting, the article at WattsUpWithThat included a few pictures from the 1960’s.

Seadragon (SSN-584), foreground, and her sister Skate (SSN-578) during a rendezvous at the North Pole in August 1962

Seadragon (SSN-584), foreground, and her sister Skate (SSN-578) during a rendezvous at the North Pole in August 1962 (US Navy Photo).

The article also includes a picture of the North Pole from the 1980’s when Time Magazine was proclaiming the dangers of global cooling.

The following video posted on YouTube with the explanation below to clarify what is actually happening:

Published on Jul 27, 2013

There was quite a bit of hype bouncing around the Instanet on a “lake” at the North Pole. This video tries to clarify what’s up. Ponds of meltwater form routinely on Arctic Ocean sea ice in the summer. The sea ice is floating on the Arctic Ocean and in constant motion. The webcam that took these images was placed on the ice a few dozen miles from the North Pole in early spring, but has since drifted hundreds of miles.
The North Pole Environmental Observatory Web site:
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpo…

I went on the 2003 expedition to set up the same batch of instruments in 2003 and wrote an award-winning book about the project and the once and future North Pole:
http://us.macmillan.com/newyorktimest…

Andrew Freedman’s Climate Central post is helpful as well:
The Lake at the North Pole, How Bad Is It?
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/me…

More on my blog on Arctic climate change and sea ice: http://j.mp/dotPole

Before you purchase waterfront property in West Virginia in anticipation of global warming, you might want to look at the facts.

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Things Are Not Going Well For The Global Warming Crowd

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Last Saturday the Miami Herald posted a story about some delays Shell Oil is experiencing as it is poised to begin drilling for oil in the Arctic.

The article reports:

The summer ice melt in the Arctic has often reached record levels in recent years in what many scientists believe is a sign of climate change. But this year a high pressure zone over the coast of Alaska, low winter temperatures and certain ocean currents have combined to bring unusually large amounts of ice not only to Alaska’s northern coast, but farther south in the Bering Sea as well, National Weather Service officials said.
“I do think it’s going to be a slow breakup this year,” Kathleen Cole, sea ice program leader for the weather service, told the Los Angeles Times.
The result is that while Canadian waters in the far northern Atlantic have relatively low ice levels, Alaska is an iceberg – at least for now.

I guess Alaska didn’t get the message about global warming. The bottom line here is that man does not control the weather and has a very limited impact on it. There are natural climate cycles that the earth goes through (there was a period of global warming in the Middle Ages–long before the industrial revolution). Somehow it all evens out.

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Whoops! I Guess They Were Wrong Again

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Three Polar bears approach the USS Honolulu, 2...

Image via Wikipedia

The Register, a British website, reported today that scientists have now discovered that the increasing amount of fresh water being added to the Arctic Sea is not due to glaciers melting but to an eastward shift in the path of the Russian runoff through the Arctic Ocean.

The article reports:

The team attributes the redistribution to an eastward shift in the path of Russian runoff through the Arctic Ocean, which is tied to an increase in the strength of the Northern Hemisphere’s west-to-east atmospheric circulation, known as the Arctic Oscillation. The resulting counterclockwise winds changed the direction of ocean circulation, diverting upper-ocean freshwater from Russian rivers away from the Arctic’s Eurasian Basin, between Russia and Greenland, to the Beaufort Sea in the Canada Basin bordered by the United States and Canada. The stronger Arctic Oscillation is associated with two decades of reduced atmospheric pressure over the Russian side of the Arctic.

This is another example of the fact that we really don’t as much as we need to know about climate science and man’s impact on climate. That is another reason to be very careful about what we do to solve a problem that we do not fully understand. All the suggested solutions to ‘global warming’ involve a major redistribution of wealth in the world–oddly enough from free countries with private property rights to dictatorships with no private property rights. To take money from countries where people are free and give it to tyrants who rule countries where people are not free does not help global warming or anything else. It does nothing to address the needs of the poorest people in the world–it simply improves the lifestyles of the crooks that lead them.

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