Highly Touted Alarmist Hurricane ‘Study’ Sets New Low for Misleading Deception

The media are breathlessly touting a cheap new “study” falsely asserting climate change is causing an increase in strong hurricanes. In reality, the study relies on deception, unethical data manipulation, and aggressive misrepresentation of quite normal short-term trends to support its false claim.

The study, published by government-employed and government-funded researchers whose jobs and income depend on perpetuation of the alarmist Climate Delusion, has been reported – without any critical examination – by the New York Times, Washington Post, The Weather Channel, and others. The Environmental Defense Fund is even using the new study to raise money for itself.

The headline for the Washington Post article tells us what the alarmists are peddling in this new study: “The strongest, most dangerous hurricanes are now far more likely because of climate change, study shows.” The truth, as shown by objective scientific facts, is quite different.

The study’s authors report that an examination of tropical storms that formed between 1979 and 2017 indicates that after the first half of the 39-year time period, the chance of a given tropical storm growing to become a major hurricane (category 3 or higher) rose by 8 percent in each of the latter two decades.

As an initial matter, the authors are dubiously claiming that merely 20 years of a minor variation in hurricane numbers is sufficient to prove a substantial long-term trend and a definitive link to climate change as the causal factor. This is a preposterous claim to make over such a short period. For example, objective data – as shown in the graph below (see climatlas.com/tropical/global_running_ace.png) – show that over a 25-year period from 1992 through 2014, the frequency of hurricanes declined significantly and the frequency of major hurricanes did not increase at all. This was also during a period of global warming. Why is that 25-year period irrelevant when it is so similar in time and length to the authors’ cherry-picked 29-year period? The fact is, there will always be natural and largely random variation in the frequency of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, etc., within periods of just a few decades.

Second, the data show essentially no change in the frequency of major hurricanes since the early 1990s. Any claim of more frequent recent hurricanes requires cherry-picking the abnormally quiet 1980s as the baseline for comparison rather than the past 30 years, during which there has been no trend. The fact that the 1980s were quieter than the 1990s is largely r relevant to the assertion that global warming is currently causing an increase in strong hurricanes. To the contrary, the lack of any increase during the past 30 years is much more relevant.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, the authors and their media sock-puppets bury the fact that the authors are reporting on the percentage of tropical storms that become major hurricanes rather than the raw number of major hurricanes. Objective data – as shown in the chart below (see climatlas.com/tropical/frequency_12months.png), show that the number of tropical storms has been declining throughout the time period of the authors’ study. So, the authors and the media can technically claim that the percentage of tropical storms that become major hurricanes is growing, even while there is no increase in the overall number major hurricanes. The percentage of tropical storms that become major hurricanes is largely irrelevant if the overall number of major hurricanes stays the same. If anything, the new study simply illustrates that fewer tropical storms are forming, which would largely be seen as a beneficial climate development.

Fourth and finally, media outlets like the Washington Post even misrepresent the misleading and cherry-picked conclusions of the authors’ study. As noted, the authors note a very minor increase in the percentage of tropical storms that become hurricanes, even while the overall frequency of major hurricanes has not increased during the past 30 years. In fact landfalling major hurricanes has decreased for over 70 years.

Compare that to the Washington Post’s headline assertion that “The strongest, most dangerous hurricanes are now far more likely.” Strong hurricanes are not more likely at all, let alone “far” more likely.

The new study, and its accompanying media coverage, represent a perfect example of the horse-dung sensationalism that climate alarmists tell us is “settled science.” The only settled science is that alarmists will go to incredible lengths to manipulate and misrepresent objective scientific facts for the cause of promoting their alarmist Climate Delusion.

James Taylor

James Taylor is Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute. Taylor is the former managing editor (2001-2014) of Environment & Climate News, a national monthly publication devoted to sound science and free-market environmentalism.

See this Hurricane fact-check that shows variability but NO UPWARD TREND.

Naomi Seibt, the anti-Greta, needs your financial support now

By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

Naomi Seibt, the 19-year-old anti-Greta from Germany whose climate-skeptical Youtube videos have gone viral, needs your urgent financial help. Without a hearing, German officials have fined her and demanded costs on the ground that in her devastatingly effective videos she has dared to question the Party Line about what officialdom profiteers by presenting as “dangerous” manmade global warming.

Greta (Far Left) vs. Anti-Greta (Center-Right)

As a result of this arbitrary and capricious prosecution and conviction without trial, Naomi has had her earnings cut off. Please donate securely and directly to her Patreon account at https://www.patreon.com/naomiseibtmy. May I suggest at least $10 per month? That would be a real life-saver, and would enable Naomi to continue her valuable work.

Naomi was the star of the show at last year’s climate conference held in Munich by EIKE, the European Institute for Climate and Energy. She is an internet influencer with her own popular YouTube channel – so popular, in fact, that the totalitarian censors at YouTube have shadow-banned her channel, cutting her potential income from it by nine-tenths.

James Taylor of the Heartland Institute met Naomi in Munich and invited her to speak at the Heartland Conference in in December 2019 during the U.N. Gaia-worship haj in Madrid. Her five-minute speech attracted ten times as many YouTube hits as mine. Naomi has since been showing the Heartland Institute how to increase its internet presence.

Naomi Seibt speaking at the 2019 Heartland conference in Madrid

Naomi recently received a letter from a functionary at the State Media Authority for North Rhine Westphalia, the region where she lives. The letter informed her peremptorily that, without a hearing, she has been found guilty of the alleged offence of exercising her right of free speech about the climate on YouTube in a manner that the letter described as not being “climate-friendly”.

What was such a value-laden term doing in an official letter from a public authority to its teenage victim?

In a subsequent letter, the Authority demanded a fine of about $400 and costs on top, and instructed Naomi that she must not mention the Heartland Institute in her videos. The insubstantial ground for this attempt at silencing Naomi was that such mentions constituted unlawful product placement under a recently-enacted law of the North-Rhine Westphalia region.

However the letter makes it clear that a video is held to contravene the new law if it does two things at the same time: it advocates any policy position unacceptable to the Gau (such as opposition to Germany’s crippling Energiewende) and, in the same video, to mention a named product or entity associated with that position (such as the Heartland Institute).

The Authority listed three videos by Naomi that it considered unlawful. In fact, the list demonstrates that the charges against her are false. The Authority trumped them up, inferentially at the behest of “climate-friendly” activists.

In the first of the three specific videos of which the Authority complains, Naomi made plain her opposition the Party Line, but did not break the law because she did not mention the Heartland Institute. At the time she made that video she had not even heard of it.

In the second video Naomi announced to her followers that she was collaborating with Heartland, but did not break the law because in that video she did not advocate any policy position, whether on climate or anything else.

In the third video, Naomi again expressed opposition to the official position on climate, but did not break the law because she did not mention Heartland.

On the facts, not one of these three videos offended against the law as the correspondence from the Authority chartacterises it. The prosecution had no rational basis in fact or in law.

This is yet another instance of a traditional totalitarian tactic: to enmesh all who have publicly and effectively challenged the Party Line on climate in complex and costly legal wrangles, however ill founded, in the hope of muzzling them and cowing everyone else into silence.

Just ask Professor Peter Ridd or Dr Susan Crockford or Dr Tim Ball or Mark Steyn or countless others thus harried and bullied by the lavishly-funded watermelons.

The process is the punishment

Naomi has engaged a lawyer pro bono. She has splendidly demanded that the Authority produce its entire file on this matter, including the identities of those who complained to the Authority about her. She has also demanded copies of all correspondence or conversations between the Authority and such questionable third parties as these.

The Authority has responded by sending a file that has been obviously, in-your-face redacted. It is manifestly reluctant to admit its unsavory links with whatever totalitarian groups had asked its fellow true-believers there to silence Naomi.

The Authority’s notice of prosecution culpably fails either to spell out or in any material respect to comply with Naomi’s right to a fair trial as laid down in the European Human Rights Convention, to which Germany is a signatory.

Naomi would be well within her rights to counterclaim against the Authority for damages for abuse of its power, for contravention of the Convention (which grants her the right to a remedy) and for causing her distress, alarm and offense without the slightest legitimate or reasonable justification.

The Authority’s motto is “Committed to freedom of expression”. Try to keep a straight face.

Bizarrely, the Authority’s motto is “Der Meinungsfreiheit verpflichtet”, i.e., “Committed to Freedom of Expression”. Yeah, right. I have seldom come across so striking an example of Orwellian Newspeak. To Orwell’s “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength” we can now add “Silence is Free Speech”.

Naturally, this ghastly Authority belongs to the European Regulators’ Group for Media Services” (AARGH). It is not only Germany that is regulating freedom of speech once more. The European tyranny-by-clerk is at it as well – which is no small part of the reason why Britain has left.

GWPF has called on responsible educators and journalists to stop terrifying children with exaggerated claims about the impact of global warming.

As part of Mental Health Awareness Week, the GWPF has released a short video today to raise awareness of the growing mental health crisis among young children as a result of irresponsible climate scare-mongering.

According to a recent UK survey, 20% of British children are suffering from nightmares about global warming. One of the main reasons for this deplorable development are scare tactics adopted by green campaigners, educators, commentators and broadcasters to exaggerate the impact of global warming by emphasising worst-case catastrophising.

Relentless attempts to link every extreme weather event to climate change, and dire warnings about looming mass extinctions and the end of civilisation are highly contentious but are presented to even very young children as facts.

In their enthusiasm to advance their political agenda, green campaigners have deliberately and cynically used children’s fears as a political weapon that has been turned against them and their well-being.

“Anyone who cares about the mental health of children should demand that they are protected from apocalyptic doom-mongers and their political agenda,” GWPF Director Benny Peiser said.

Video: The Real Climate Health Crisis

2019-2020 South Pacific Blob and Antarctica Warming in February 2020

By Alvin Wong and Wyss Yim
Volcanoes Study Group, Hong Kong

Hot blobs beneath the sea surface formed by the release of geothermal heat through submarine volcanic eruptions and/or sub-aerially erupted hot volcanic materials including lava flows into the sea are an underestimated natural cause of ocean heat waves ¹. Recent examples include the 2013-2016 North Pacific Blob ^2,3and the 2018-2019 Southwest Indian Ocean Blob ⁴. The present study on the development of a blob in the South Pacific Ocean referred to as the 2019-2020 South Pacific Blob ⁵ has provided evidence to account for the observed recent warming in Antarctica including a new hottest temperature record on February 6, 2020 ⁶ and heat wave conditions dramatically changing Antarctica in just 9 days ⁷.

At least three volcanic eruptions (Figure 1) have been identified to contribute geothermal heat during August to December 2019 (spring and early summer in the southern hemisphere) to create the South Pacific Blob with an ocean surface temperature maximum attained on December 30, 2019 (Figure 2). Out of these, two were initially submarine volcanoes located in the territorial waters of Tonga and one was an island volcano with a crater just above sea level off the North Island coast in New Zealand waters.

Figure 1 Volcanoes contributing geothermal heat to the 2019-2020 South Pacific Blob.

In August 6-8, 2019 submarine volcano F in the Tofua Arc, Tonga located about 40 kilometers south of Fonualie Island had a major eruption ⁸. The detection of this large explosive eruption was assisted by a pumice raft greater than 136.7 km² in area on the ocean surface captured by imagery from ESA’s Sentinel-2 satellite. In October 13-22, 2019 another submarine volcano erupted destroying Lateiki Island in the Tongan archipelago followed by the birth of a new island 100 m wide and 400 m long in October 30, 2019 which subsequently disappeared beneath the waves in mid-January 2020 ⁹. Meanwhile in December 9, 2019 the White Island volcano in the Bay of Plenty erupted with a 3.7 km ash plume and hot materials was discharged into the ocean through the eruption cloud.

An examination of NOAA satellite sea surface anomalies map archives has revealed that the South Pacific Blob located about 800 kilometres east of New Zealand attained maximum temperature and largest areal extent in December 30, 2019 (Figure 2). The sea surface temperature was more than 5^oC above normal while the total surface area of the Blob was approximately 1 million square kilometres ¹⁰.

Figure 2 Sea surface temperature anomalies showing the development of the South Pacific Blob east of New Zealand on December 30, 2019. Source: NOAA.

Figure 3 shows a comparison of Argo ocean temperature profiles recorded on data buoys in the vicinity of White Island during the months of December in 2017, 2018, 2019 and the 2005-2016 monthly mean. The anomalous temperature changes with depth observed during December 2019 is best explained by the release of geothermal heat caused by submarine volcanism. A maximum temperature of 20.25 degrees Celsius is observed at the surface and the elevated temperatures down to 50 m confirms the thickness of the warm layer. At greater depths below, elevated temperatures observed between 75 m to 500 m is explained by the release of geothermal heat caused by submarine volcanism on the sea floor.

Figure 3 Comparison of Argo ocean temperature profiles in the vicinity of White Island during December in 2017, 2018, 2019 and the 2005-2016 monthly mean. Source: IPRC Argo.

An important climatic impact of the 2019-2020 South Pacific Blob at a latitude of 40-50^oS is the weakening of the Roaring Forties changing the ‘normal’ ocean circulation. Under the sun’s influence near the peak of the southern hemisphere summer, stable anticyclonic conditions favorable for heat wave development were generated. A ridge of high pressure centered over Cape Horn appeared at the beginning of February, and this allowed warm temperatures to build ⁷. A new record in hottest temperature of 18.3^oC was established on February 6, 2020 at the Esperanza Base on the northern tip of the Antarctica Peninsula and a hot spell lasting nine days was responsible for accelerated ice melting of glaciers, ice sheets and sea ice.

The heat is apparent on the map shown in Figure 4 which shows temperature across Antarctica on February 9, 2020. The darkest red areas are where temperatures at 2 m above the ground exceeded 10^oC.

Figure 4 Map derived from the Goddard Earth Observing System model representing air temperatures at 2 m above the ground on February 9, 2020. Source: NASA.

Figure 5 shows a comparison of Argo ocean profiles in the channel between Cape Horn and Eagle Island, Antarctica during January in 2017, 2019, 2020 and the 2005-2016 monthly mean. Because of the easterly drift of the warm seawater from the South Pacific Blob caused by the earth’s rotation, the sea surface temperature at Eagle Island was impacted the greatest. January 2020 sea surface temperature was 4.7^oC at the sea surface (about 2.6^oC above the 2005-2016 monthly mean) decreasing to 1.8^oC at a depth of 100 m (about 3.6^oC above the 2005-2016 monthly mean). At a depth below 250 m the seawater temperature differences between January 2020 and all other years are relatively small. This is consistent with heat dispersion from the White Island region where the heat source originated from the sea floor from greater depths through submarine volcanism. The warmer seawater being less dense would in time accumulate as a surface layer.

Figure 5 Comparison of Argo ocean temperature profiles in the channel between Cape Horn and Eagle Island during January in 2017, 2019, 2020 and the 2005-2016 monthly mean. Source: IPRC Argo.

Under the influence of warm spell for 9 days from February 4-13, 2020, there was widespread accelerated melting of nearby glaciers, ice sheets and sea ice in the Antarctica Peninsula region. Dramatic changes can be observed in Landsat 8 images taken 9 days apart during the period February 4-13, 2020 in the Eagle Island region (Figure 6).

Figure 6 (a) Landsat images showing the conditions in the Eagle Island region of Antarctica on February 4, 2020

Figure 6 (b) In comparison, the Landsat image on February 13, 2020 showing the dramatic melting over the 9-day period. Source: NASA.

In conclusion, ocean heat waves caused by blobs formed by the natural release of geothermal heat through submarine volcanic eruptions acted, in combination with the sun, to warm the surface waters of regional oceans. The 2019-2020 South Pacific Blob not only impacted the proximal seawater in the Pacific Ocean east of New Zealand but also impact the channel region between Cape Horn and Antarctica Peninsula. Such warming may account for a significant proportion of missing heat in oceans claimed by proponents of anthropogenic global warming.

References

1. Yim, W. 2018. Geothermal heat and climate variability. Imperial Engineer, Autumn 2018, 21-23.
2. Yim, W. 2016. Explanation for the northern Pacific Blob. Imperial Engineer, Autumn 2016, 15.
3. Yim, W. 2017. Geothermal heat: an episodic heat source in oceans. Imperial Engineer, Spring 2017, 14-15.
4. Yim, W. 2019. Climatic impacts of the SW Indian Ocean Blob. Imperial Engineer, Autumn 2019, 24-25.
5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxBEIsvlKGo
6. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/146322/antarctica-melts-under-its-hottest-days-on-record
7. https://www.skeptical-science.com/science/heatwave-changed-antarctica-in-just-9-days/
8. https://eos.org/science-updates/satellite-sleuthing-detects-underwater-eruptions
9. https://volcano.si.edu/volcano.cfm?vn=243070
10. https://www.sciencealert.com/a-giant-blob-of-ocean-near-new-zealand-is-more-than-five-degrees-warmer-than-usual

Alvin Chung graduated with an MSc Earth Systems Science degree in 2018 at the Institute of Space and Earth Information Science, Chinese University of Hong Kong. He was awarded the Dean’s Honours list.

Professor Wyss Yim spent 35 years until retirement at the University of Hong Kong where he founded the Department of Earth Sciences. He has served as the Deputy Chairman of the Climate Change Science Implementation Team of UNESCO’s International Year of Planet Earth 2007-2009.