Global Warming Dismissed: Scientists Found a “Totally Unexpected” Source of Climate Cooling

Politics, Science

May 9, 2017

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Arctic waters absorbed vast amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, creating a cooling effect that’s 230 times greater than the warming from methane emitted from underwater seeps, according to a new study.
The findings are a complete reversal of what scientists previously believed — that methane seeps in the Arctic Ocean were contributing to global warming.

“If what we observed near Svalbard occurs more broadly at similar locations around the world, it could mean that methane seeps have a net cooling effect on climate, not a warming effect as we previously thought,” John Pohlman, a U.S. Geological Survey biochemist and lead author of the study, said in a statement Monday.

If the results hold, Pohlman’s study could have big implications for how scientists calculate the global carbon “budget” and for future projections of global warming.

“This is … totally unexpected,” Brett Thornton, a Swedish geochemist who was not involved in the study, told Science Magazine.

A group of U.S., German and Norwegian scientists measured methane and carbon dioxide concentrations off Svalbard’s coast. They found 2,000 times more carbon dioxide was taken out of the atmosphere than methane escaping from underwater vents.
Methane escaping margin seeps at depths of 260 to 295 feet appeared to stimulate marine phytoplankton, which may have increased their intake of carbon dioxide. The study “suggests physical mechanisms that transport methane to the surface may also transport nutrient-enriched water that supports enhanced primary production and CO2 drawdown.”

Photosynthetic algae (marine phytoplankton) appeared to be more active in the near-surface waters overlying the seafloor methane seeps, a phenomenon that would explain why so much carbon dioxide was being absorbed.  Previous research has shown that when cold, nutrient-rich waters come up from the depths, algae near the surface can use the nutrients to enhance their photosynthetic processes, resulting in more carbon dioxide being absorbed from the atmosphere. However, this study is the first to make this observation where methane-rich waters rise to the surface.

Jurgen Mienert, the director of the Centre for Arctic Gas Hydrate, Environment and Climate (CAGE) at the University of Tromso, Norway, said,

“At CAGE, we are fortunate to have access to expertise, equipment, and a ship platform that allow us to launch sustained research focused on the Arctic Ocean.  Collaborating with the USGS Gas Hydrates Project and GEOMAR on the important issue of sea-air flux of greenhouse gases above seafloor methane seeps has been rewarding for all of the researchers involved.”

The research was conducted during a research expedition sponsored by CAGE, and supplementary data was collected by researchers from CAGE and the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany. USGS involvement in the Svalbard margin expeditions was partially supported by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Ocean waters overlying shallow-water (260-295 feet; 80-90 meters) methane seeps (white dots) offshore the western margin of the Svalbard Islands absorb substantially more atmospheric carbon dioxide than the methane that they emit to the atmosphere. Colors indicate the strength of the negative greenhouse warming potential associated with carbon dioxide influx to these surface waters relative to the positive greenhouse warming potential associated with the methane emissions. Gray shiptracks have background values for the relative greenhouse warming potential.

“These findings challenge the widely held perception that areas characterized by shallow-water methane seeps and/or strongly elevated sea−air methane flux always increase the global atmospheric greenhouse gas burden,” reads the study’s executive summary.

Pohlman cautioned the “cooling effect” of the seeps may be limited to certain times of the year, but he and his team were astounded to find such low amounts of methane above the seeps.

“These areas of methane seepage may be net greenhouse gas sinks,” reads a summary of the work.

Methane is a more potent gas than carbon dioxide, and scientists have become increasingly worried about “methane bomb” from thawing permafrost and warming oceans. Methane hydrates from the ocean floor “a key cause of the global warming that led to one of the largest extinctions in the earth’s history,” Ryo Matsumoto, a University of Tokyo professor, said in 2008.
Scientists worry a huge release of methane from the sea floor could cause massive amounts of warming. One 2016 study warned “the release of methane from hydrate may be apocalyptic.”
But Pohlman’s research suggests there’s a lot more to learn about methane seeps and their role in global greenhouse gas inventories.
Pohlman’s study was the first to observe this in methane-rich waters, but the implications for climate science could be big if results can be replicated at other methane seeps.

“We are looking forward to testing the hypothesis that shallow-water methane seeps are net greenhouse gas sinks in other locations,” Pohlman said.

 http://dailywesterner.com/news/2017-05-09/global-warming-dismissed-scientists-found-a-totally-unexpected-source-of-climate-cooling/

Global warming...right...sustainability...right...now tell me about Agenda 21...why so silent?

record snowfall across eastern USA 2016

22 Inconveniate truths about the Global Warming Scam

1. The Mean Global Temperature has been stable since 1997, despite a continuous increase of the CO₂ content of the air: how could one say that the increase of the CO₂ content of the air is the cause of the increase of the temperature? (discussion: p. 4)
2. 57% of the cumulative anthropic emissions since the beginning of the Industrial revolution have been emitted since 1997, but the temperature has been stable. How to uphold that anthropic CO₂ emissions (or anthropic cumulative emissions) cause an increase of the Mean Global Temperature?
[Note 1: since 1880 the only one period where Global Mean Temperature and CO₂ content of the air increased simultaneously has been 1978-1997. From 1910 to 1940, the Global Mean Temperature increased at about the same rate as over 1978-1997, while CO₂ anthropic emissions were almost negligible. Over 1950-1978 while CO₂ anthropic emissions increased rapidly the Global Mean Temperature dropped. From Vostok and other ice cores we know that it’s the increase of the temperature that drives the subsequent increase of the CO₂ content of the air, thanks to ocean out-gassing, and not the opposite. The same process is still at work nowadays] (discussion: p. 7)
3. The amount of CO₂ of the air from anthropic emissions is today no more than 6% of the total CO₂ in the air (as shown by the isotopic ratios 13C/12C) instead of the 25% to 30% said by IPCC. (discussion: p. 9)
4. The lifetime of CO₂ molecules in the atmosphere is about 5 years instead of the 100 years said by IPCC. (discussion: p. 10)
5. The changes of the Mean Global Temperature are more or less sinusoidal with a well defined 60 year period. We are at a maximum of the sinusoid(s) and hence the next years should be cooler as has been observed after 1950. (discussion: p. 12)
6. The absorption of the radiation from the surface by the CO₂ of the air is nearly saturated. Measuring with a spectrometer what is left from the radiation of a broadband infrared source (say a black body heated at 1000°C) after crossing the equivalent of some tens or hundreds of meters of the air, shows that the main CO₂ bands (4.3 µm and 15 µm) have been replaced by the emission spectrum of the CO₂ which is radiated at the temperature of the trace-gas. (discussion: p. 14)
7. In some geological periods the CO₂ content of the air has been up to 20 times today’s content, and there has been no runaway temperature increase! Why would our CO₂ emissions have a cataclysmic impact? The laws of Nature are the same whatever the place and the time. (discussion: p. 17)
8. The sea level is increasing by about 1.3 mm/year according to the data of the tide-gauges (after correction of the emergence or subsidence of the rock to which the tide gauge is attached, nowadays precisely known thanks to high precision GPS instrumentation); no acceleration has been observed during the last decades; the raw measurements at Brest since 1846 and at Marseille since the 1880s are slightly less than 1.3 mm/year. (discussion: p. 18)
9. The “hot spot” in the inter-tropical high troposphere is, according to all “models” and to the IPCC reports, the indubitable proof of the water vapour feedback amplification of the warming: it has not been observed and does not exist. (discussion: p. 20)
10. The water vapour content of the air has been roughly constant since more than 50 years but the humidity of the upper layers of the troposphere has been decreasing: the IPCC foretold the opposite to assert its “positive water vapour feedback” with increasing CO₂. The observed “feedback” is negative. (discussion: p.22)
11. The maximum surface of the Antarctic ice-pack has been increasing every year since we have satellite observations. (discussion: p. 24)
12. The sum of the surfaces of the Arctic and Antarctic icepacks is about constant, their trends are phase-opposite; hence their total albedo is about constant. (discussion: p. 25)
13. The measurements from the 3000 oceanic ARGO buoys since 2003 may suggest a slight decrease of the oceanic heat content between the surface and a depth 700 m with very significant regional differences. (discussion: p. 27)
14. The observed outgoing longwave emission (or thermal infrared) of the globe is increasing, contrary to what models say on a would-be “radiative imbalance”; the “blanket” effect of CO₂ or CH₄ “greenhouse gases” is not seen. (discussion:p. 29)
15. The Stefan Boltzmann formula does not apply to gases, as they are neither black bodies, nor grey bodies: why does the IPCC community use it for gases ? (discussion: p. 30)
16. The trace gases absorb the radiation of the surface and radiate at the temperature of the air which is, at some height, most of the time slightly lower that of the surface. The trace-gases cannot “heat the surface“, according to the second principle of thermodynamics which prohibits heat transfer from a cooler body to a warmer body. (discussion: p. 32)
17. The temperatures have always driven the CO₂ content of the air, never the reverse. Nowadays the net increment of the CO₂ content of the air follows very closely the inter-tropical temperature anomaly. (discussion: p. 33)
18. The CLOUD project at the European Center for Nuclear Research is probing the Svensmark-Shaviv hypothesis on the role of cosmic rays modulated by the solar magnetic field on the low cloud coverage; the first and encouraging results have been published in Nature. (discussion: p. 36)
19. Numerical “Climate models” are not consistent regarding cloud coverage which is the main driver of the surface temperatures. Project Earthshine (Earthshine is the ghostly glow of the dark side of the Moon) has been measuring changes of the terrestrial albedo in relation to cloud coverage data; according to cloud coverage data available since 1983, the albedo of the Earth has decreased from 1984 to 1998, then increased up to 2004 in sync with the Mean Global Temperature. (discussion: p. 37)
20. The forecasts of the “climate models” are diverging more and more from the observations. A model is not a scientific proof of a fact and if proven false by observations (or falsified) it must be discarded, or audited and corrected. We are still waiting for the IPCC models to be discarded or revised; but alas IPCC uses the models financed by the taxpayers both to “prove” attributions to greenhouse gas and to support forecasts of doom. (discussion: p. 40)
21. As said by IPCC in its TAR (2001) “we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.” Has this state of affairs changed since 2001? Surely not for scientific reasons. (discussion: p. 43)
22. Last but not least the IPCC is neither a scientific organization nor an independent organization: the summary for policy makers, the only part of the report read by international organizations, politicians and media is written under the very close supervision of the representative of the countries and of the non-governmental pressure groups.

The global warming shite: US Midwest temperatures are the coldest on record this year so far

US Midwest temperatures are the coldest on record this year so far, with the highest ratio of record lows to record highs. The hottest year in the Midwest was 1921, when CO2 was 310 PPM.
Gavin says that 2014 is the hottest year ever.

GreenPeace (long-standing CIA front) founder on global warming SCAM