In spring 2015, MBARI researchers discovered a large, previously unknown field of hydrothermal vents in the Gulf of California, about 150 kilometers (100 miles) east of La Paz, Mexico. Lying more than 3,800 meters (12,500 feet) below the surface, the Pescadero Basin vents are the deepest high-temperature hydrothermal vents ever observed in or around the Pacific Ocean.

They are also the only vents in the Pacific known to emit superheated fluids rich in both carbonate minerals and hydrocarbons. The vents have been colonized by dense communities of tubeworms and other animals unlike any other known vent communities in the in the eastern Pacific.

Like another vent field in the Gulf that MBARI discovered in 2012, the Pescadero Basin vents were initially identified in high-resolution sonar data collected by an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). MBARI’s yellow, torpedo-shaped seafloor-mapping AUV spent two days flying about 50 meters above the bottom of the Basin, using sound beams to map the depth and shape of the seafloor.

The AUV team, led by MBARI engineer David Caress, pored over the detailed bathymetric map they created from the AUV data and saw a number of mounds and spires rising up from the seafloor. Data from the AUV also showed slightly warmer water over some of the spires, which implied that they might be active hydrothermal-vent chimneys. A team of geologists led by David Clague then used a tethered underwater robot, the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Doc Ricketts, to dive down to the seafloor, fly around the vents, and collect video and samples of rocks and hot water spewing from the chimneys.

A couple of Arctic explorers, actually adventurers, have gone missing and are presumed to have drowned. Just a few weeks ago, Marc Cornelissen and his companion kept armchair explorers enthralled with tweets and soundtracks like “Skiing in shorts: Tropical day in the Arctic.”

Are people like Cornelissen real explorers or just out to garner attention for stunt-like actions and publicity for their Arctic adventures?

What’s the Arctic?

The Arctic is a vast expanse, covering land in Siberia, Greenland and Canada’s Arctic Archipelago as well as a large tract of ocean. In fact, most of the Arctic (defined here as the area north of the 67^th parallel of latitude) is not land but sea.

Some people think that any area with saltwater in northern hemisphere is part of the Arctic. For example, the National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSDIC) daily measurements of “Arctic sea-ice” include sea-ice in areas well south of the polar circle (67 N), in fact even south of mid-latitude (45 N). No wonder people get confused as to what constitutes “the Arctic.” That kind of misleading definition of “Arctic” is also the cause of some people looking for adventure and publicity by “exploring” the Arctic.

For a few weeks each summer, you may get daytime temperatures above freezing. Also, the 24-hour sunshine may give you a false sense of security and warmth but it does not last long and often ends in tragedy. Numerous private yachts and adventurers had to be rescued in recent years from becoming stranded in Arctic sea-ice when trying to traverse the North-West-Passage or “skiing to the North Pole.”

Of course, all these adventurers (they are not “explorers”) are relying on Canada to rescue them from the inclement conditions and unforeseen problems. Even with the best available technologies that is not always possible—when fog or blinding “whiteout” snowstorms obscure anything beyond a few feet away nobody can come to these souls’ rescue.

Trick-cyclists in America have come out with research which could explain why the debate on climate change continues to rumble on, even though there is a solid consensus on the facts of the matter. 

Essentially, according to the researchers, people tend to live in “echo chambers” as far as climate matters go, seeking out information and advisers who agree with what they already believe. Thus, they may persist in deluded views regardless of what others think.

“Individuals who get their information from the same sources with the same perspective may be under the impression that theirs is the dominant perspective, regardless of what the science says,” explains Professor Dana Fisher, the corresponding author who led the research.

The prof is of course correct: people will continue to believe marginal bloggers on climate matters, even when their “information” is debunked by proper climate scientists: here’s a case from last year in which various dubious lunatic-fringe blogs – “DeSmogBlog”*, “Climate Central” etc – were found to be peddling misinformation on hurricanes in defiance of qualified climatologists. And yet many people continue to believe what these bloggers say.

Recent scientific studies on the behaviour of methane released into the environment contradicts climate science predictions about the gas as a global warming risk. Analysis of the impact of the terrible 2010 BP Gulf of Mexico oil disaster (picture right) and a study of peat bogs, shows climate scientists may be wrong to claim such “greenhouse gases” can cause catastrophic long term impacts.

For years computer models used by climate scientists have predicted alarmist outcomes if humans permit levels of “greenhouse gases,” such as CO2 and methane in the atmosphere, to rise.

Melting permafrost due to CO2-driven global warming is said to be one of the major dangers to humanity due to its release of greenhouse gases, which they claim causes a worrying “positive feedback” loop of warming.

In particular, it was believed the release of methane (CH4), along with CO2, would boost the warming feedback leading to “runaway” warming. But findings by experts studying global peat bogs, a main emitter of methane, shows that this particular scare story is not supported by the science.

Due to recent advances in scientific understanding of permafrost and the effects CH4 has on the atmosphere, there is no evidence to warrant concern about dangerous climate change.

Making the position plain in the renowned book ‘Peatlands and Climate Change,’ Maria Strack, of the International Peat Society, disavows the unfounded fears trumpeted among climate scientists. In fact, the best evidence shows peatlands will actually become a sink for any increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, man-made global warming’s biggest “threat.” So rather than there being more CO2 escaping into the atmosphere, there will likely be less due to the increased uptake potential of further exposed peatland. 

A recent NASA report throws the space agency into conflict with its climatologists after new NASA measurements prove that carbon dioxide acts as a coolant in Earth’s atmosphere.

Another Tale of Two Versions: Sophistry finds its greatest expression and success in deceit when it can switch reference frames, goal posts, and contexts without switching the language.  We’ve seen this already in the two versions of “the greenhouse effect”, where we have two physically distinct mechanisms, one of which exists in reality and the other of which is a simulacrum of that reality upon which many other lies can and have been built, and where both use the same label.

It has now become apparent that the term “backradiation” is likewise being used by the pseudoscientific, pseudomeritocratic climate propaganda establishment in a sophistical manner to generate additional cognitive dissonance and sophistry.

 Form vs. Content

There are two ways to understand the term “backradiation”. The term is sophistical in and of itself, but the two versions have a difference which the sophists exploit to create cognitive dissonance.

The first most obvious way is in terms of its content, i.e. in the terms of what it is functionally required to do as part of the mechanism of the alarmist radiative greenhouse effect from which the term itself originates.  And that function is to cause heating, is to cause a surface source of thermal radiation to become even hotter still because its own radiant thermal energy is sent back to it (i.e., backradiation) after thermal absorption and re-emission at a cooler target.  More generally, the function is that the thermal radiation from a cool object will be absorbed by and thus cause heating (i.e. temperature increase) on a warmer object.

The human animal has an instinct to identify potential dangers and to warn others. It is a built-in survival mechanism of any animal that lives in a group.  And it is a strong and constant activity, re-enforced by environmental stressors.

This plays out on several time scales, from the immediate in the case of a potential physical assault, to the weekly in checking the weather forecast, to seasonal in preparing for winter, to life-long in planning for inevitable aging, to leaving good things for our grandchildren… 

It is in our fiber to look ahead and to plan ahead, especially in the face of foreseeable or detected dangers.

The whole process can spin out of control when the danger is difficult to perceive yet could be lethal. Think of baboons who are on the lookout for a stalking lion. The slightest shadow movement can make them scream and run for the trees. It’s a tense and highly volatile situation. 

At this stage in our evolution we are faced with a pathological extension of our collective survival reflex, which is entirely fabricated by our high priests (government funded scientists and talking heads).

If these high priests were not here to tell us that the atmospheric concentration of the minor constituent CO2 is increasing, and that “global mean surface temperature” has increased by some 0.5 C in the last 100 years, then we would never know about these imperceptible causes of our certain eventual collective death as a species.

The priests explain that our certain extinction will occur from a rising sea level and changing regional climates. That these changes will cause mass migrations, ecosystem collapses, agricultural failures, famines, and disease. They also inform us that those who will suffer most are the most vulnerable inhabitants of the planet, as though this were a new feature of the effects of natural disasters.

Converging on the Truth: Atmospheric and space physicist Fred Singer (pictured) published an article in October of 2014 where he concluded that his position is becoming so skeptical of climate sensitivity claims that he is no longer in agreement with the bulk of the skeptical majority. 

What Singer originally said in his summary in his article where he discussed the possibility of climate sensitivity to CO2 being close to zero was:

“I should note that I am somewhat out of step here with my fellow skeptics. Few of them would agree with me that the climate sensitivity (CS) is indeed close to zero. I will have to publish the analyses to prove my point and try to convince them. Of course, nothing, no set of facts, will ever convince the confirmed climate alarmists.”

A climate sensitivity (CS) close to zero flies in the face of not only the alarmist movement, but the generally accepted theory underlying CO2 climate alarm as well – the radiative greenhouse effect.  And so this is a difficult position to be in because some scientists, such as Singer, are discovering results which are inconsistent with the general expectations.

However, if the radiative greenhouse effect is itself flawed or based on a false underlying ontology, then a result of CS close to zero is exactly what one would expect as a possible consequence.  A CS close to zero falls right into the lap of what the “Slayers” and Principia Scientific International have been saying about the radiative greenhouse effect for years.

The radiative greenhouse effect is indeed based on a false, non-ontological model of the physical and energetic properties of the terrestrial system.  Climate sensitivity is close to zero because it is zero, within the context of the radiative greenhouse effect which originates this concept of climate sensitivity to CO2 in the first place.

My last post is a good starting point, and you can also read the “Fraud of the Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect” series (scroll down to the first post if you like), to learn more.

Researchers from the University of Bristol (UOB) announced Thursday that glaciers in the Antarctic peninsula are starting to thaw much faster than expected, dumping millions of gallons of freshwater into the oceans, which they blame on global warming. But according to an expert in the field of polar observations, those conclusions appear to be “greatly overestimated.”

Dr. Andrew Shepherd, an IPCC author who works at the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling, said the UOB study used calculations that appeared to have overlooked shifts insnowfall, noting that the “new estimates of ice loss computed (from the thinning of the ice) are far too high, because the glaciers in this sector just haven’t speeded up that much.”

By using “suite of satellites, the [UOB] researchers found that the Southern Antarctic Peninsula showed no signs of change up to 2009.” But in 2009, according to the study’s authors, glaciers in that area began shedding ice into the ocean at a rate of 55 trillion litres (14.5 trillion gallons) each year. The research team doesn’t believe the sudden change can be explained away by snowfall or air temperatures, but rather by rapid loss from “warming oceans” pushing up against the coast.

Dr. Bert Wouters, who led the study, said that stronger westerly winds encircling the continent are pushing warmer waters “from the Southern Ocean poleward.” They believe these westerly winds have become stronger due to global warming and ozone depletion, even though atmospheric temperatures across Antarctica haven’t moved up or down since satellite record keeping began. It also overlooks how snowfall contributes to the size and mass of any glacier, as well as geologic forces not seen from above.

The region showing the greatest ice loss in the UOB study is “home to continental arcs, oceanic arcs, and the anomalous Marie Byrd Seamount region. The only subduction-related volcanic activity related to the plate forms the South Sandwich Islands and the South Shetland Islands. The continent is divided by large rift structures, which have created one of the world’s largest alkalic volcanic provinces.” In other words, it’s one of the most active tectonic areas on Earth.

Antarctica as a whole is home to 25 known active volcanoes, the majority of which are in West Antarctica. With the continent entirely enshrouded in ice, except for brief peeks of coastline bedrock during summer, these volcanoes melt the glaciers from below, creating canals, lakes, and freshwater streams that eventually empty out into the ocean, warming the currents that slowly chip away at the massive ice shelves abutting the coastal regions.

Better hurry up and fetch your ice cubes! The Antarctic is claimed to be melting at an unprecedented rate. NASA wants you believe that “Massive Antarctic Ice Shelf Will Be Gone Within Years.”  More specifically, a team led by Ala Khazendar of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has found that the ice is melting so fast that the shelf will be gone before 2020. Presumably, that’s the good news.

The bad news is that it’s all Hullabaloo. Neither the Arctic nor the Antarctic sea-ice is melting at any rate out of the norm. In fact, the opposite is true. As of late, both Arctic and Antarctic sea-ice extents have been increasing at rates not seen for a long time.

More likely than not, the approaching Grand Minimum of sunspot numbers portends even more frigid climates than experienced in recent winters.

Arctic Sea-Ice

Other NASA sources, I mean those that actually measure (what a novel idea) the sea-ice extent, have found a large increase in recent winters. Of course, during the (local) spring and summer seasons, the ice cover always shrinks in each hemisphere. It’s as natural as snow in winter and heat in summer (at latitudes above 45 degrees or so).

The annual shrinkage and expansion has been going on for millennia and that’s not rocket science. If you want see actual, current ice coverage (updated daily) in the Arctic, just go to Arctic-roos.org . If you do, you’ll see that there is absolutely nothing abnormal about the sea-ice cover. In fact, it’s just about right on the last ten year’s average.

I write to concur with conclusions in Dr S Fred Singer’s recent essay: “The Climate Sensitivity Controversy”, by S. Fred Singer, American Thinker, October 15, 2014. And to solve the puzzles he posed. 

In particular he concludes “climate sensitivity, CS, is close to zero”. This means any effect of CO₂ on Earth’s temperature and climate is vanishingly small, hence unimportant. Singer leaves his warmist camp and joins the denier camp of skeptics.

I met Singer at his University of Houston lecture hosted by Prof Larry Bell on February 6, 2012 and his several talks at the latest Heartland Institute ICCC, Las Vegas, July 7-9, 2014. He has played an important role in disputing alarmist global warming claims for decades. He has received many awards.

Singer reveals he assumes CO₂ warms Earth because it is called a greenhouse gas, which does not make it so. It is also green plant food, which does chemically make it a coolant.  Great confusion arises when a radiating gas, which cools the atmosphere, is incorrectly labeled a greenhouse gas and then warming is arbitrarily assigned to it, by virtue of the nomenclature change.

I discovered in 2012 introducing radiating gases like H₂O and CO₂ to the atmosphere actually cools the Earth slightly and had useful direct email exchanges with Singer on the matter. Naturally I am pleased he has reached a similar conclusion, perhaps by another way.

The Knowledge of Photons: We often see the statement from climate lukewarmers and alarmists that the radiation from a cool object (such as the atmosphere) can not “know” that it is not supposed to travel to and heat up a warmer object (such as the surface), and thus, radiation from a colder object will heat up a warmer object.  That is, the colder atmosphere must heat the warmer surface. 

Of course, this defies all common sense and heat transfer mathematics and thermodynamics, but alas, it is what they say.  They use this “net flow” argument, where cold heats up hot and hot heats up cold, but the “net heating” is hot heating cold since the hotter heats the colder by a larger amount.  

But simply look at the logic: if cold heats hot, then as hot heats cold, the colder will heat up the hotter more, thus heating the colder more, thus heating the hotter more…ad infinitum.  So, it’s ridiculous.  And of course, heat does not flow from cold to hot in any case, and heat flow input is what is required for temperature increase.

Look at the 1st Law of Thermodynamics:

First law of thermodynamics: When energy passes, as work, as heat, or with matter, into or out from a system, its internal energy changes in accord with the law of conservation of energy. Equivalently, perpetual motion machines of the first kind are impossible.

So, internal energy in the thermal case would be thermal energy measurable as the system’s temperature.  To increase temperature when the action of work or exchange of matter are not occurring, then one requires heat.  Thus for the electromagnetic case, look at the radiative heat flow equation (for 2 parallel walls with unit emissivity say):

Q’ = A*σ*(Thot4 – Tcool4)

This defines Q’ as the heat.  There is a hot and cool term, and there is an exchange of energy between them since they are subtracting from one to the other; however, only that result after subtraction is heat.  Only Q’ is heat.  The radiation from the cool object to the hot object is not heat, and only the greater portion of the radiation from the hot object relative to the cool object is heat, and it transfers or flows only in the direction from the hot object to the cool object, from the greater power to the lesser power.

Since these are very basic laws of thermodynamics and heat transfer, then it has been totally established that a cool object doesn’t make a warmer object warmer still.  And hence the radiative greenhouse effect of climate alarm, and climate alarm which depends upon it, is false.  And we didn’t have to look at any pretty pictures to get here…simply math and logic.  If you want a different result than that, then you’re going to have to change the 1st Law of Thermodynamics.  Good luck with that.

Rob Wooding, the operations manager of the Australian Antarctic Division, told the media on Monday that growing sea ice around Antarctica is creating ‘serious problems’ for scientists studying the continent. Mawson Station, the longest continuously operated outpost in Antarctica, has relied on access to a nearby bay, which is increasingly becoming more complicated by sea ice blocking the way.

Wooding said “We are noticing that the sea ice situation is becoming more difficult.” This briefing was in preparation of “two days of meetings between top Antarctic science and logistics experts in Hobart, the capital of Tasmania.”

He said that it’s especially bad at Mawson, where the ice typically breaks up for maybe one or two months each summer, but “in the last four to six years this has not happened every year, and some years only partially.”

“In the 2013-14 season we couldn’t get anywhere near Mawson due to the sea ice,” he said. “We had to get fuel in there by helicopter which is inadequate for the long-term sustainability of the station.” He also noted that the French and Japanese are having the same problems. Though they haven’t come close to shutting down the base because of expanding sea ice, they did have to use “unusual measures” to keep it operational.

New peer-reviewed paper shows that the Australian government’s intention to build a ten billion dollar sea defense to ‘save’ Melbourne (pictured) is an expensive folly based on alarmist science that grossly exaggerates likely sea level trends by TEN TIMES. 

Independent scientist, Professor Albert Parker, explains that government estimates of a sea level rise of over 1 meter by 2100 is folly and building any such unecessary dam to cater for that would be a gross waste of public funds.

An extract of the paper, A. Parker, Is there any need for a dike to save Melbourne from the rising seas?, Journal of Geography, Environment and Earth Science International, 2015, Volume 2, Issue 3. DOI:10.9734/JGEESI/2015/17463 follows below. The full version is available to download.

EXTRACT

The Australian government is still basing policy on the concept that sea level will rise by 1.1 meters along the Australian coastline by 2100. The Department of the Environment has proposed a 10 billion dollar dike to save Melbourne from the hypothetical rising sea. In reality the tide gauges of Victoria are recording average relative rates of rise of less than 1 mm/year, in perfect agreement with the National average.

At this rate sea level will rise by only 8.5 cm by 2100 but even this estimate may be too high. The worldwide average sea level rise, based on only tide gauges of sufficient quality and length, is only about 0.25 mm/year, with zero acceleration over the last few decades.

Industrial wind energy is a net loser: economically, environmentally, technologically and civilly. A recent letter in my local paper by American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) representative Tom Vinson is typical of wind industry sales propaganda. It deserves correction. 

This is the reality:  Industrial wind energy is NET LOSER – economically, environmentally, technically and civilly. Let’s examine how.

Economically. New York State (NYS) has some of the highest electricity rates in the United States – a whopping 53{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} above the national average. This is due in large part to throwing hundreds of billions of our taxpayer and ratepayer dollars into the wind. High electricity costs drive people and businesses out of the state, and ultimately hurt poor families the most.

A NYS resident using 6,500 kWh of electricity annually will pay about $400 per year more for their electricity than if our electricity prices were at the national average. That’s over $3.2 BILLION dollars annually that will not be spent in the rest of the state economy.

Why destroy entire towns, when just one single 450-MW gas-fired combined-cycle generating unit located near New York City (NYC) – where the power is needed – operating at only 60{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of its capacity, would provide more electricity than all of NYS’s wind factories combined. 

Furthermore, that one 450 MW gas-fired unit would only require about one-fourth of the capital costs – and would not bring all the negative civil, economic, environmental, human health and property value impacts that are caused by the sprawling industrial wind factories. Nor would it require all the additional transmission lines to NYC.

The Institute for Energy Research tallied the numbers and found that each wind job costs $11.45 million and costs more than four jobs that are lost elsewhere in the economy, because of all the subsidies and the resulting “skyrocketing” cost of electricity. In fact, on a unit of production basis, wind is subsidized over 52 times more than conventional ‘fossil’ fuels.

In Australia, on or about March 15th this year 2015, a Technical Advisory Forum, appointed by the Environment Minister Greg Hunt (pictured), met behind closed doors with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology Scientists. The Forum will deliver its report around June 2015. 

Below is the public submission that Dr Marjorie Curtis and I submitted by public email. Also for the public record is Greg Hunt’s correspondence accepting the submission.  The world will be watching and waiting for the results of your Forums’ enquiry Minister Hunt.

Dear Minister Greg Hunt,

We are writing to thank you for organising an independent investigation  of the Bureau of Meteorology’s  data management practices.  We trust that you have received good advice and chosen independent and objective  scientists and statisticians to be members of the Technical   Advisory Forum.

We have been very concerned about the advice you are receiving ever since we heard you stating publicly that you rely mainly on the advice from the CSIRO and the BoM.

Unfortunately, as the evidence indicates, scientific integrity in  Australia’s once iconic institutions, such as the Bureau of Meteorology, (BoM) and our Universities has disintegrated.  The scientific ‘peer review’ has also collapsed.