Browse: Home / DNA Evidence Reveals Domestic Cats, Dogs, African Wildcats, Frogs Lived In The Arctic 9000 Years Ago

DNA Evidence Reveals Domestic Cats, Dogs, African Wildcats, Frogs Lived In The Arctic 9000 Years Ago

DNA Evidence Reveals Domestic Cats, Dogs, African Wildcats, Frogs Lived In The Arctic 9000 Years Ago

By on 9. May 2024

A new study finds warmth-demanding species could survive in the Holocene Arctic (northern Norway) hundreds to thousands of km north of where they reside today. This affirms temperatures were “higher than today” with much less snow and ice back then.

DNA evidence from a site north of the Arctic Circle indicates African wildcat (Felis lybica) used to reside in Arctic climates when CO2 levels were under 260 ppm, or at supposedly “safe” levels. The authors suggest this is a “remarkable” finding, as it is the “highest latitude location for this species ever.”

The presence of domestic cats (Felis catus) and European wildcats (Felis silverstris) in this region is also validated by 100% matching DNA evidence. Wildcat species became extinct in northern Europe after the Holocene Thermal Maximum (HTM) ended and “snow cover increased above the wildcat threshold of 20 cm over a 100-day period.”

Amberjacks (Seriola) – a fish species only found in temperate to tropical Pacific and Atlantic waters (Gulf of Mexico, Brazil) today – also lived north of the Arctic Circle during the Early Holocene.

Dogs (wolves), ducks, geese, prairie chickens, gulls, brown bear, and several species of frogs (no longer present in the Arctic today) also found the Arctic climate temperate enough to reside in northern Norway in the millennia centering around 9000 years before present.

The presence of mussel shells at much higher elevations indicate sea levels were ~90 m higher than today 13,000 to 12,000 years ago in this region (due mostly to uplift), falling to ~57 m higher than present between 9500 and 9000 years ago and then gradually declining to the present.

The authors suggest the DNA-confirmed presence of these species north of the Arctic Circle – much further north of where they can survive today – is evidence that warming periods and borealization were “a naturally recurring phenomenon in the past.”

Image Source: Boilard et al., 2024

DNA analysis of species remains has become an insightful way to analyze past variations in climate. Another recent DNA database study (Kjaer et al., 2022) published in Nature indicated the High Arctic at 82°N (north of Greenland) was 11-19°C warmer than today 2 million years ago. This warmth allowed coral reefs, green algae, and horseshoe crab to reside in the Arctic Ocean at 82°N. Today horseshoe crab cannot occupy waters north of 45°N due to the much cooler ocean temperatures.

Image Source: Kjaer et al., 2022

Posted in , | 1 Response

-80°C: Antarctic Vostok Station Records “Extreme Winter Cold”…Not Even Winter Yet!

By on 8. May 2024

German weather site wetteronline.de reported “extreme winter cold” in Antarctica as the mercury plummeted to “almost minus 80 degrees Celsius” on April 29, 2024.

Image: NASA

And it’s not even winter yet.

Hat-tip: Heinz

“On April 29, almost minus 80 degrees were measured at the Russian Vostok research station. Such extreme cold is rarely reached this early in the year,” reported wetteronline.de.

The record, -89.3°C, was recorded in the middle of winter, on July 21, 1983, thus making the last week’s late April reading very unusual.

“Values below minus 80 degrees in April are also extremely rare at the Earth’s cold pole and have only been recorded three times in the last 60 years,” wetteronline.de adds.





Posted in | 5 Responses

The German E-Vehicle Nightmare, 2024 Q1 Sales Plummet 14%… “Graveyard” For Unsold Cars

By on 7. May 2024

Der Spiegel reports: Germany e-car industry is a crisis headed for a catastrophe. New Tesla unsold cars now being parked in an old airfield.

Germany’s 2030 e-car target now a lunatic fantasy

Sales of e-cars in Germany are plummeting, signaling more trouble for the country’s move to a green society. Overall, for Q1 2024, EV sales declined by around 14.1% compared to Q1 of 2023. For Tesla, the picture is much uglier.

AI generated image of an e-car.

Just days ago, leftist online news magazine Der Spiegel published a video report looking at Tesla sales in Germany: “Friedhof der E-Autos – Die Mobilität der Zukunft steckt in der Krise” (Graveyard of e-cars – the mobility of the future is stuck in crisis).

Though the country would like to blame something else other than its terrible policies, this misery is not due to the Ukraine War.

As Spiegel reports, The cars are just too expensive and impractical, and the government has stopped subsidizing sales.

35% drop in Tesla new registrations

Der Spiegel focusses on Tesla’s Gigafactory located in Grünheide, roughly 30 kilometers southeast of central Berlin. The once electrifying future for the e-car maker has since turned into a huge nightmare. Though the Grünheide plant continues to churn out e-cars, Der Spiegel looks at where the 100s of truckloads of e-cars are in fact being being shipped. Unfortunately for Tesla, many are not going to buying customers.  In Q1 of 2023, 20,000 new Teslas were registered in Germany, according to Der Spiegel. But this year in Q1, only 13,000 were registered – a whopping 35% drop!

Storage at an old airfield

Der Spiegel reporters followed the Tesla transport trucks and discovered that many are being shipped to an old airfield for storage. In the report, a Tesla security officer, however, arrives (in an internal combustion engine car) and refuses Spiegel to make photos of the embarrassing situation (4:24 mark). Tesla management refuse to comment on the mass electric car storage.

Overall in Germany, e-cars of just about every type have lost their attractiveness, and buyers are shunning them.

Green fantasy

As the popularity of electric cars in Germany tanks, the governments 2030 target of getting 15 million e-vehicles on the road now looks like a lunatic fantasy.





Posted in , | 5 Responses

Newly Discovered 90,000-Year-Old Human Footprints Reveal How Much Higher Sea Levels Used To Be

By on 6. May 2024

Human footprints embedded into rock that used to be a sand beach at the limit of the seashore’s “swash flow” and high tide lie 20 to 30 meters above the present sea level. The footprints are dated to ~90,000 years ago.

It is estimated that sea levels were globally about 6 to 9 meters higher than today during the last interglacial (~130,000 to 115,000 years ago), when CO2 supposedly peaked at 275 ppm (Sommers et al., 2022).

Image Source: Sommers et al., 2022

Evidence along the coasts of North Africa (Morocco) suggests sea levels were “20 m above the present level” about 95,000 years ago (MIS 5c).

This is consistent with a new study that reports human footprints embedded and preserved in a rocky beach “20 to 30 m above sea level” can be dated to 90.3 ±7.6 thousand years ago.

The water limit, or shoreline, very likely reached this elevation at that time, as the requisite conditions for “salt-crusting,” the preservation of footprints, involve a location at “the landward limits of the spring high tidal zone” and at the “limits of swash flow”.

 

Image Source: Sedrati et al., 2024

Interestingly, this same Moroccan region’s shoreline has, in recent decades, been stable to advancing seaward at a rate of +0.89 m per year (Amara Zenati et al., 2024). This is inconsistent with the viewpoint that sea level rise is poised to flood the Earth’s coasts and shrink her shorelines.

Image Source: Amara Zenati et al., 2024

And coastal expansion isn’t just a local phenomenon. Globally, shorelines have been advancing seaward at a rate of +0.26 m per year since the 1980s, as, despite sea level rise, the “global coastline is prograding” (Mao et al., 2021).

Image Source: Mao et al., 2021

Posted in , | 7 Responses

Germany’s Economic Bloodbath Worsens As Green Revolution Causes Economy To Bleed To Death

By on 3. May 2024

The “greener” Germany gets, the bloodier its economy becomes. How much can an economy bleed before it dies?

Since Germany has become hostile to industry and its Green Revolution has made energy prices among the world’s highest, it’s no wonder that the country’s economy is hemorrhaging economically. Companies are shutting down and moving out.

Foreign direct investment from Germany into the United States from 2000 to 2022 (in billion U.S. dollars, on a historical-cost basis). Source: statista

For example, German online Blackout News here reports on how automotive supplier IHI has announced the closure of its plant at Erfurter Kreuz, Thuringia, and that around 300 employees will be affected in a region that is already struggling.

The company is an manufacturer of turbochargers for cars and intends to close the plant in 12 to 15 months, reports Blackout News.

The announcement is just the latest in a long, seemingly unending series of closures.

“In recent months, several automotive suppliers have had to close their doors or file for insolvency. This development shows the volatile challenges facing the industry,” comments Blackout News.

Analysts expect the demand for turbochargers, outfitted on internal combustion engines, will be less in the long term due to e-mobility.

Alarming economic pessimism trend

In more economic bad news for Germany, pessimism among small to medium size enterprises (SMEs), once the backbone of the German economy, has risen as the business climate index has fallen steeply to minus 1.4.

“The business climate index, an important barometer for the mood in small and medium-sized enterprises, fell to an alarming low of minus 1.4 points in February,” Blackout News reports here. “This is the lowest level since the financial crisis 15 years ago. A survey of around 1250 companies conducted by Creditreform Wirtschaftsforschung shows that the majority of respondents forecast a gloomy future for the SME sector.”

The latest figures show that there are no signs of hope for a recovery, “after the third year of crisis.”

Analysts blame a number of factors, such as the current weak construction and industrial production, geopolitical conflicts and “unclear economic policies”. The current Socialist-Green coalition government blames everyone else except for themselves.

The German government has shut down its remaining nuclear power plants after lying to the country in claiming that they weren’t needed – just after experts had concluded the opposite was in fact true. The government plans to phase out coal power plants as well, which will only further exacerbate Germany’s energy woes and its hostile business environment.





Posted in , , | 12 Responses

Water Vapor Absorbs 84 Times More Radiation Than CO2 … Clouds Drove 89% Of 1982-2018 Warming

By on 2. May 2024

“CO2 is only present in the atmosphere in trace amounts (0.04%) and lacks sufficient enthalpy to have any measurable effect on the atmosphere’s temperature.” – Nelson and Nelson, 2024

New research (Nelson and Nelson, 2024) further documents the inconsequential role that CO2 plays in climate.

Less than 4% of longwave infrared radiation is absorbed by greenhouse gases in the lower atmosphere. Greenhouse gases can have no effect outside of their narrow infrared atmospheric window.

Of all the greenhouse gases, water vapor (30,000 ppm) has easily the most dominant effect, absorbing 84 times more radiation than CO2 does, and 407,000 times more radiation than CH4 (methane).

If water vapor’s absorption capacity were to change by a factor of 1 (i.e., from 84 times greater than CO2 to 83 times greater), this tiny change would “wipe out all of what CO2 could have contributed” within the greenhouse effect.

Image Source: Nelson and Nelson, 2024

Over the last 50 million years CO2 and temperature were negatively correlated (CO2 rose, temperatures fell or temperatures rose, CO2 fell) 42% of the time, and there was a glaring lack of recurring ratios, and “many ratios were zero or near zero.”

Over the last 1 million years “87% of the ratios were negative or zero or near zero.” This “directly contradicts the Climate Change-CO2 hypothesis.”

Furthermore, high CO2 levels and/or warming were not the cause of mass extinctions, as plants and animals “thrive” in much hotter temperatures than exist today.

These conclusions are very similar to Davis (2017 and 2023), who determined that over the last 210 million years (a) CO2 falls as temperatures rise (negative correlation, r = -0.76), (b) mass extinctions occur 4.08 million years after CO2 peaks, and (c) global warming/CO2 radiative forcing “did not cause extinction of biodiversity.”

Image Source: Nelson and Nelson, 2024

Finally, approximately 89% of the warming over the period 1982-2018 could be attributed to the decline in cloud cover, which has allowed more solar radiation to be absorbed by the Earth’s surface. The rest “may be attributed to other factors including the greenhouse effect applicable to water vapor.”

In other words, due to the decoupling of CO2 from global warming (or cooling), there is effectively no consequential role for CO2 in climate change.

Image Source: Nelson and Nelson, 2024

Posted in , , | 3 Responses

The 97% Consensus Claim Is In Fact 97% Bogus

By on 30. April 2024

Though the following video was posted 4 years ago, and has since amassed 1 million views, it clearly explains why John Cook’s paper is 97% bogus.

It’s good to remind people of this video every now and then.





Posted in | 7 Responses

Post-1980s Increases In Shortwave Radiation Explains Europe’s Warming Trends Far Better Than CO2

By on 29. April 2024

Across Europe there has been a downward trend in cloud and aerosol albedo over the last 40 years, allowing more solar radiation to reach the surface. This “brightening” effect thus explains recent warming.

A new study (Wacker et al., 2024) from a “testbed site” in Germany reports total and direct shortwave (SW) radiation forcing rose by 3.5 and 9.3 W/m² per decade, respectively, from 1996-2021 over Germany.

Compare these much larger per-decade forcing trends to the much tinier (0.2 W/m² per decade) climate impact that CO2 allegedly has in clear-sky.

Image Source: Wacker et al., 2024

Another new study, Natsis et al., 2024, finds Greece has also sustained a significant increasing trend in “downward shortwave solar irradiance” since 1993.

“Monitoring the trends of the downward shortwave solar irradiance or Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI), is an important tool, for evaluating long term changes of the local climate and in revealing some local atmospheric characteristics. Here, we analyse data from a pyranometer installed at the Laboratory of Atmospheric Physics in Thessaloniki. The location of the monitoring site is within the urban area and near the commercial centre of the city, thus we expect that the atmospheric attenuation of radiation is strongly affected by the human activities in the area. Observed GHI trends in different locations worldwide revealed either negative or positive tendencies if GHI, mainly due to combined effects of local factors. On global scale, studies have reported a decrease in GHI for the period 1960–1980, known as ‘global dimming’, followed by a decrease since the late 1980s, known as ‘global brightening’ (Wild, 2009, 2012).”
“In this study, we are reporting increasing trends in downward shortwave solar irradiance from measurements at Thessaloniki, Greece for the period 1993-2021. The main drive of this study was to investigate whether the longterm increases in GHI that have been reported in an earlier study (Bais et al., 2013) continue also in the 10-year longer dataset. We confirmed the continuation and a slight enhancement of the linear trend (0.43% per year for allskies and 0.24% per year for clear skies). The two main factors that may have caused the observed solar radiation brightening over Thessaloniki are the reduction of the aerosol optical depth, and changes in cloud cover and optical depth. Another factor, could be a possible increase in the enhancement cases of the GHI by the clouds (Vamvakas et al., 2020), which will be investigated in a subsequent study together with the role of clouds. Our findings are in accordance with other studies (Wild 2012, 2009; Philipona et al., 2009; Kazadzis et al. 2007), that have also reported increases in GHI in other locations.”

Europe as a whole has “experienced an increase in surface solar radiation, termed ‘brightening’, since the 1980s” (Schilliger et al., 2024) due to trends in cloud and aerosol shortwave forcing.

“Surface solar radiation is fundamental for terrestrial life. It provides warmth to make our planet habitable, drives atmospheric circulation, the hydrological cycle and photosynthesis. Europe has experienced an increase in surface solar radiation, termed ‘brightening’, since the 1980s. This study investigates the causative factors behind this brightening. A novel algorithm from the EUMETSAT satellite application facility on climate monitoring (CM SAF) provides the unique opportunity to simulate surface solar radiation under various atmospheric conditions for clouds (clear-sky or all-sky), aerosol optical depth (time-varying or climatological averages) and water vapor content (with or without its direct influence on surface solar radiation). Through a multiple linear regression approach, the study attributes brightening trends to changes in these atmospheric parameters. Analyzing 61 locations distributed across Europe from 1983 to 2020, aerosols emerge as key driver during 1983-2002, with Southern Europe and high elevations showing subdued effects (0-1%/decade) versus more pronounced impacts in Northern and Eastern Europe (2-6%/decade). Cloud effects exhibit spatial variability, inducing a negative effect on surface solar radiation (-3 to -2%/decade) at most investigated locations in the same period. In the subsequent period 2001-2020, aerosol effects are negligible, while cloud effects dominate the observed brightening (2-5%/decade). This study therefore finds a substantial decrease in the cloud radiative forcing over Europe in the first two decades of the 21st century. Water vapor exerts negligible influence in both sub-periods.”

A year ago Marsz et al. (2023) presented compelling evidence that decadal-scale sunshine duration variations across Europe and the North Atlantic are driven by the internal (non-anthropogenic) processes affecting cloud cover, namely the natural thermohaline circulation in the North Atlantic (THC NA). This relationship spans the entire period from 1900 to 2018.

“The mechanisms of the THC NA functioning are known and indicate that they are the result of the internal variability in the ocean-atmosphere system.”
“SST changes occur not only because of changes in the amount of radiation reaching the ocean’s surface but also due to the meridonal oceanic heat transport.”
“[I]t is the long-term changes in the thermal condition of the North Atlantic, and not changes in the concentration of aerosols, that would be the primary cause of the long-term change in the SD over Europe.”
“[T]he occurrence of long-term variability in the SD over Europe, manifested in the occurrence of successive phases of dimming and brightening, can be explained without resorting to changes in the concentration of volcanic and anthropogenic aerosols in the atmosphere.”

Image Source: Marsz et al., 2023

Posted in , | 2 Responses

“A Thing Where Every Part Of Your Life Just Confirms What It Is That You Want To Believe”

By on 28. April 2024

Psychology of zealots, dogmatists and radicals in a nutshell

Videos on near-death experiences (NDEs) are posted everywhere. Just how many are for real and how many are click-baiting, made-up stories is impossible to tell.

But I feel the following one is genuine, and offers wisdom for everyone on opposite sides of hot-button issues:

What the man says, especially at about the 4.00 mark, ought to be heeded by everyone.

At 4:38, he nails it when it comes to how zealots and fanatics think:

The outliers don’t matter at all. It’s just the narrative – everything that supports the narrative is the only thing I could see. So, it becomes a thing where every part of your life just confirms what it is that you want to believe. You don’t feel there’s anyway you could be wrong about it.”

We see this everywhere nowadays: emotionally charged fanatics let themselves get consumed by hatred and allowed their minds to get poisoned. It’s impossible to reason with them. All you can do is discreetly drop bits of enlightenment here and there, and then hope someday they will moderate. Anything else is just a waste of time.

And, in the heated debate over controversial issues, it’s up to you to decide whether or not you let others get under your skin, take control of you, and hijack your emotions. It’s your choice. We shouldn’t need a near-death experience to understand this.

In the context of the huge picture of eternity. some dickheads in this short little life of ours are not worth getting all wound up about. Serenity begins from within.





Posted in , , | 4 Responses

Nature Publication: Researchers Find Arctic Region 10,000 Years Ago Warmer Than Today

By on 27. April 2024

Early Holocene was warmer 10,000 years ago…Arctic ice melted. 

The European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE presents its latest climate video at its Youtube channel.

Examined today is a paper appearing in the journal Nature Communications titled: “Seasonal sea-ice in the Arctic’s last ice area during the Early Holocene”

The authors looked at sea ice in the region of the Lincoln Sea, bordering northern Greenland and Canada, will be the final stronghold of perennial Arctic sea-ice in a warming climate.

 

According to the paper, “Modelling studies suggest a transition from perennial to seasonal sea-ice during the Early Holocene, a period of elevated global temperatures around 10,000 years ago.”

The researchers have found “marine proxy evidence for the disappearance of perennial sea-ice in the southern Lincoln Sea during the Early Holocene, which suggests a widespread transition to seasonal sea-ice in the Arctic Ocean.”

“Seasonal sea-ice conditions were tightly coupled to regional atmospheric temperatures,” the authors stated.





Posted in | 4 Responses

New Study: A Warmer London Has Reduced The Winter Death Toll By 447 Per Year Since 1976

By on 25. April 2024

A warmer world lengthens human life, whereas a cooling world may result in “orders of magnitude” higher excess death rates.

A 2022 Lancet study reported 791 heat-related excess deaths and 60,753 cold-related excess deaths in England and Wales each year during the years spanning 2000-2019. That’s an excess death ratio of about 85 to 1 for cold vs. hot temperatures.

Adjusted as deaths per 100,000 person-years, the annual ratio is 1.57 heat-related deaths vs. 122.34 cold-related excess deaths throughout the 21st century.

“Our analysis indicates that the excess in mortality attributable to cold was almost two orders of magnitude higher than the excess in mortality attributable to heat.”

Image Source: Gasparrini et al., 2022

And now a new study reports that, due to warmer urban temperatures, the number of premature cold-related excess deaths avoided averaged 447 per year from 1976-2019 in the city of London alone.

The annual lives saved by warmer winter temperatures rose to 639 during the winter of 2018-2019, which is the equivalent of 70.1 lives saved by “climate change” per million Londoners.

“Since 1976, we estimate 447 (95% confidence interval 5 330, 559) annual cold-related all-cause deaths have been avoided because of milder temperatures associated with climate change.”

“In the most recent winter in our dataset (winter 2018–2019), we estimate 639 fewer cold-related deaths in London associated with counterfactual temperature, amounting to 70.1 wintertime deaths per million people in the population avoided because of climate change.”

Image Source: Hajat et al., 2024

Across the world the cold-death vs. heat-death ratio is less stark than it is in the UK. Still, since the 1980s, cold weather has killed 20 times as many people as hot weather has (Gasparrini et al., 2015).

The stated goal of “net zero” emissions is to reduce warming. And yet warming can be shown to save far more lives than it harms.

Image Source: Gasparrini et al., 2015 and Science Daily

Posted in , | 2 Responses

“New Ice Age Has Begun,” Astrophysicist Warns…Due To Reduced Solar Activity

By on 23. April 2024

Due to changing solar activity, the Earth is heading into a new Little Ice Age, according to Northumbria University astrophysicist Prof. Valentina Zharkova, Newcastle, Great Britain.

“There’s nothing we can do about it.”

This was reported by German online Report 24 here last week.

NASA image of a blizzard. Image soutce: NASA, public domain. 

“This is due to the changing solar activity, she explains. Only uneducated people could call for a reduction in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” according to Report 24 here.

As the media is full of reports about record temperatures, the elevated readings likely have a lot to do with thermometers being placed increasingly in urban heat absorbing areas. The recent warming has very little to do with carbon dioxide.

“CO2 is not our enemy,” says Professor Zharkova, who was born and educated in Ukraine.

“We in fact have a CO2 deficiency in the world, and it is three to four times lower than the plants would like,” says Zharkova. On geological terms, over the last 140 million years, CO2 in the atmosphere is at really near record low levels.

“140 million years ago, it was estimated at 2,500 ppm, or about six times higher. And this also meant a greener and more biodiverse world, according to the professor,” writes Report 24.

“We don’t need to remove CO2 because we would actually need more of it. It’s food for plants to produce oxygen for us. The people who say CO2 is bad are obviously not very good at universities or wherever they studied. Only uneducated people can come up with such absurd talk that CO2 should be removed from the air,” Professor Zharkova tells Report 24.

Scharkova estimates the Earth’s average temperature will fall by one degree Celsius over the next 30 years and not rise. She says that the sun’s lower solar activity will lead to cooling.

Report 24 quotes Zharkova: “I only feel sympathy for the people who have invested in solar systems,” says the professor. “During the Maunder Minimum, there were years when there was no summer at all – there was a brief spring, then fall, then winter again. And if there’s snow on your solar panels or the sky is cloudy, they’re useless.”

“Whatever we do on Earth, we can’t change the orbit of the sun and the big planets like Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus,” she explains. “There’s nothing we can do about it.”

Read entire article (German) at Report 24.





Posted in , | 20 Responses

Next »

By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. more information

The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this. More information at our Data Privacy Policy

Close