Sorry -- Absolutely Nothing To Do With the Bakken

I had not planned to post any stories about global warming, but this was just too much. The first story sent to me today about global warming I linked deep in the bowels of this blog for archival purposes but did not post it where it would be read by anyone. I truly did not want to post any global warming stories, trying to stay on the Bakken.

But this was too much.

First, this: the Himalayas and nearby peaks have not lost any ice in ten (10) years.

The world's greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows.

Not only that, but the discovery has stunned scientists. 

The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that around 50bn tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall.

The study is the first to survey all the world's icecaps and glaciers and was made possible by the use of satellite data. Overall, the contribution of melting ice outside the two largest caps – Greenland and Antarctica – is much less then previously estimated, with the lack of ice loss in the Himalayas and the other high peaks of Asia responsible for most of the discrepancy.

Bristol University glaciologist Prof Jonathan Bamber, who was not part of the research team, said: "The very unexpected result was the negligible mass loss from high mountain Asia, which is not significantly different from zero."

By the way,  this is neither surprising nor unexpected. Some time ago (I will never be able to find the link on this site; it was too long ago, and probably not tagged), someone sent me a great article based on science that had a perfectly non-global-warming explanation for loss of glacier ice that has been reported the past twenty years.

In addition, this story references, in passing, another study that revealed that the polar ice caps have melted much less than expected. The bad news was the the oceans around the world are rising at the rate of ... drum roll, please .... 0.06 inches/year.

Ocean levels worldwide are rising about six hundredths of an inch per year, according to researcher John Wahr.

Six-hundredths of an inch per year! Neither statistically significant nor reproducible. I guess that explains why we haven't seen any photo spread in National Geographic showing the ocean depth increasing by 0.06 inch this past year. Memo to self: take my granddaughter out to the beach and place some popsicle sticks in the sand this summer so we can measure the 0.06 inch increase in the high tide next year to compare to this year. Wow, it's gonna be hard finding a ruler with 0.01 inch divisions.

I guess it also explains why we haven't seen any islands disappear in the past year (in fact, something like 200 new islands were identified in the past year or decade, whatever it was -- blogged about earlier).

But it gets worse. Now we have an interview in Der Spiegel who was among the founders of the anthropogenic global warming movement. He feels duped and has withdrawn.

SPIEGEL: You are an electric utility executive by profession. What prompted you to get involved in climatology?

Vahrenholt: In my experience as an energy expert, I learned that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is more of a political than a scientific body. As a rapporteur on renewable energy, I witnessed how thin the factual basis is for predictions that are made at the IPCC. In one case, a Greenpeace activist's absurd claim that 80 percent of the world's energy supply could soon be coming from renewable sources was assumed without scrutiny. This prompted me to examine the IPCC report more carefully.

SPIEGEL: And what was your conclusion?

Vahrenholt: The long version of the IPCC report does mention natural causes of climate change, like the sun and oscillating ocean currents. But they no longer appear in the summary for politicians. They were simply edited out. To this day, many decision-makers don't know that new studies have seriously questioned the dominance of CO2. CO2 alone will never cause a warming of more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. Only with the help of supposed amplification effects, especially water vapor, do the computers arrive at a drastic temperature increase. I say that global warming will remain below two degrees by the end of the century. This is an eminently political message, but it's also good news.

So, I truly apologize. I truly had no plans to post any global warming story at a stand-alone post today, but this is just too much, especially when posted in conjunction with the fact that there has been no global warming in the last 15 years.

It sort of explains why Canada withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol in 2011 (the house of cards is starting to fall), and why the Chinese aren't exactly concerned about anthropogenic global warming.

On top of this, I see that federal workers are being sent home early in anticipation of one inch of snow. One inch of snow. I hope the roughnecks in the Bakken don't see this story. It sort of explains why the EPA bureaucrats are so nervous about fracking. If an inch of snow scares 'em, imagine how they feel about 4 million pounds of proppant going down a Bakken well.