On David Blackmon’s Substack the other day he brings out that the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai undersea volcano last year blew 146 trillion grams of water into the upper atmosphere. NASA JPL was estimating that it may cause warming of as much as 1.5 C for 2 to 3 years any many parts of the globe. And cooling in others. That is one volcano, albeit a large one.
Within the ring of fire it is estimated that there are millions of hydrothermal vents in subduction zones around the planet. James E. Kamis has developed a theory called Plate climatology. Heat flux from the mantle has been completely ignored in climate science but it can explain many climate phenomenon. He just published a book last year. “Geological Impacts on Climate”. As a practicing geologist for the past 45 years it really rang a bell for me. It is a fascinating read. The theory is that heat flux from the mantle through subduction trenches and mid sea rises contributes greatly to warming the oceans from below.
Subduction trenches such as the Marianas Trench are the thinnest crust on the planet. With trillions of gallons of water subducted into hot rock. El Niño, if you will notice starts at a single source point every time. It is cyclical but not consistent, much like other volcanic features such as geysers and subsea hydrothermal vents. Temperature profiles of El Niño show warmer waters below. Climatologists struggle with how heat is stored in deep ocean water. It is not from the atmosphere, heat comes from below.
El Niño in his theory is the direct result of volcanic and hydrothermal activity above the Marianas subduction zone east of Papua Nw Guinea.
Techtonic features below Western Antarctic shelf with dozens of active under ice volcanoes has a heat flux 10 times the heat flux in Eastern Antarctica, explaining why all the ice loss in Antarctica is from the Western Shelf while Eastern Antarctica remains stable.
Water in the Bering sea are warmed by volcanic activity in the Alaskan peninsula, another subduction zone and under sea volcanoes off the coast of northwestern Canada. Currents from the Bering sea move to the Arctic through the Bering straight contributing to melting sea ice distribution in the Arctic.
Same in Greenland. Heat flux from crust at one time overlaying a mantle plume, now under Iceland still has a heat flux 5 times higher than southern Greenland. There, as in the Antarctic, the ice is melting from below. Nowhere does any of this show up in climate models.
There is little to no research being done on this theory. The theory seems sound but more research needs to be done. He derived the theory from basic geological and geophysical studies. Just as it took Plate Tectonics 70 years to become mainstream, hope it doesn’t take that long for this theory to be tested.
I would be interested in an analysis from you of this year's heat waves. If the temperatures are hotter, it seems likely that heat related deaths and other affects would show an increase -- since higher atmosphere and oceanic temperatures are the best examples of detected climate changes.
Could the differences in trends be due to perhaps we’re having the same number of events, but they are increasingly consequential due to home density or other factors?
Great reporting Roger. We could use a lot more honest brokers, and not only in the climate debate. The usual practice currently seems to be make up the “science “ that agrees with you viewpoint and ignore any inconvenient facts. This coincides with the often repeated misconceptions so often put forth regarding major hurricane incidence. As you aware aware, the incidence over a long period of time has shown no major trend, but the better reporting ability due to the improved technology which provides significantly more data has led to more exact classifications, and the combined impact of inflation and more coastal construction has led to the rise in insured and uninsured loss estimates.
I very much enjoy your work. A question though -- can you help me understand how events like the current Canadian wildfires fit into the equation? They are obviously a serious challenge, and equally obviously helped along by the weather trends this year. We should be looking at mitigation strategies, of course, but there is no direct economic impact reported that I am aware of, other than on some smaller communities that experience loss, and the health impacts that follow on from the smoke generated which will be hard to isolate and quantify. In Canada, these are Crown lands, and I doubt that there is any insurance claim for the loss of a valuable asset. Is this a type of under-reporting that we should be aware of?
A disaster requires a combination of an extreme event and an exposed and vulnerable society. That combination is one reason why looking for trends in extremes can be confounded by looking at disasters -- there are many moving parts.
An extreme event with minimal or no human impact is by definition not a disaster, but it may still be an extreme event with impacts. In these cases it is essential to look specifically ath the variable of interest -- maybe in your example it is Canadian or boreal fire trends, it could be wildfire emissions, or even air pollution in locations remote from the fires.
Precision is key here. Efforts to lump disasters/extremes into a single bucket of stuff is apt to mislead. My Spidey senses always go up when I hear people talking about "climate extremes" in general or conflate disasters/extremes.
This makes complete sense, and reminds us that the financial measures that we have most ready access to really aren't ever the whole story. Perhaps we should thinking about ways to measure categories of impacts that don't immediately find their way into the financial measures so that we aren't accused of considering narrow financial interests only, although this is a bit of a slippery slope when things like "loss of wildlife habitat" come into the picture. Wildfires are a bit of a different animal since there are hard impacts; they are a source of emissions (in Canada, a major source this year).
"...whether global disasters have increased. Their answer is that they are not." should be "...whether global disasters have increased. Their answer is that they HAVE not." :)
Nothing irritates me more then the reporting on climate. This business with Biden setting aside another million acres as a national monument which preclude uranium mining is a great example of the utter stupidity of this administration. Their policies are doing significant damage and citizens are paying the price. The recent rise in oil is an example. Credit card debt just exceeded one trillion dollars last month. Gas is now at $4.00 bucks here in Florida again. We have no reserves to tap this time. It’s not a joke to quote Uncle Joe. Thanks for being a voice crying in the wilderness.
I assume US Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Biden drained it to lower gasoline prices to help the Ds in the elections last year, but despite promising to refill it, this hasn’t been done, and prices are rising again.
Please keep the comments relevant to the post. If you’d like to discuss science of climate change there are other relevant posts at THB. I and all the participants thank everyone for making THB a very high quality forum for these discussions. Let’s keep it that way🙏
Do you have a link to the AR6 expert reviewer comments and the reaction of IPCC....would be interesting to see the IPCC comments on your comments.
On David Blackmon’s Substack the other day he brings out that the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai undersea volcano last year blew 146 trillion grams of water into the upper atmosphere. NASA JPL was estimating that it may cause warming of as much as 1.5 C for 2 to 3 years any many parts of the globe. And cooling in others. That is one volcano, albeit a large one.
Within the ring of fire it is estimated that there are millions of hydrothermal vents in subduction zones around the planet. James E. Kamis has developed a theory called Plate climatology. Heat flux from the mantle has been completely ignored in climate science but it can explain many climate phenomenon. He just published a book last year. “Geological Impacts on Climate”. As a practicing geologist for the past 45 years it really rang a bell for me. It is a fascinating read. The theory is that heat flux from the mantle through subduction trenches and mid sea rises contributes greatly to warming the oceans from below.
Subduction trenches such as the Marianas Trench are the thinnest crust on the planet. With trillions of gallons of water subducted into hot rock. El Niño, if you will notice starts at a single source point every time. It is cyclical but not consistent, much like other volcanic features such as geysers and subsea hydrothermal vents. Temperature profiles of El Niño show warmer waters below. Climatologists struggle with how heat is stored in deep ocean water. It is not from the atmosphere, heat comes from below.
El Niño in his theory is the direct result of volcanic and hydrothermal activity above the Marianas subduction zone east of Papua Nw Guinea.
Techtonic features below Western Antarctic shelf with dozens of active under ice volcanoes has a heat flux 10 times the heat flux in Eastern Antarctica, explaining why all the ice loss in Antarctica is from the Western Shelf while Eastern Antarctica remains stable.
Water in the Bering sea are warmed by volcanic activity in the Alaskan peninsula, another subduction zone and under sea volcanoes off the coast of northwestern Canada. Currents from the Bering sea move to the Arctic through the Bering straight contributing to melting sea ice distribution in the Arctic.
Same in Greenland. Heat flux from crust at one time overlaying a mantle plume, now under Iceland still has a heat flux 5 times higher than southern Greenland. There, as in the Antarctic, the ice is melting from below. Nowhere does any of this show up in climate models.
There is little to no research being done on this theory. The theory seems sound but more research needs to be done. He derived the theory from basic geological and geophysical studies. Just as it took Plate Tectonics 70 years to become mainstream, hope it doesn’t take that long for this theory to be tested.
I would be interested in an analysis from you of this year's heat waves. If the temperatures are hotter, it seems likely that heat related deaths and other affects would show an increase -- since higher atmosphere and oceanic temperatures are the best examples of detected climate changes.
I wonder if the new chairman of the IPCC, Jim Skea, has anything to say about his bosses fear mongering and misrepresentation of the data.
If there were quality processes in place, there would be an opportunity for Skea to review such releases before they are made.
With the increasing concern about mis-information and dis-information, when is Guterrez going to be charged with a crime?
This is interesting: the EM-DAT showing a relatively flat trend is different from NOAA’s Billion Dollar Weather events, which are increasing: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/time-series
Could the differences in trends be due to perhaps we’re having the same number of events, but they are increasingly consequential due to home density or other factors?
This has been shown to be the well understood "expanding bullseye" effect by Lomborg and many others.
Last year, Hurricane Ian hit Florida, nothing special about it, but ludicrous levels of damages from one hurricane.
All those marinas full of fancy boats purchased with mountains of debt.
Well, I have my thoughts ;-)
See:
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/billion-dollar-disasters-are-a-national
Great reporting Roger. We could use a lot more honest brokers, and not only in the climate debate. The usual practice currently seems to be make up the “science “ that agrees with you viewpoint and ignore any inconvenient facts. This coincides with the often repeated misconceptions so often put forth regarding major hurricane incidence. As you aware aware, the incidence over a long period of time has shown no major trend, but the better reporting ability due to the improved technology which provides significantly more data has led to more exact classifications, and the combined impact of inflation and more coastal construction has led to the rise in insured and uninsured loss estimates.
United Nations has become the most powerful oxymoron on the “planet.”
I very much enjoy your work. A question though -- can you help me understand how events like the current Canadian wildfires fit into the equation? They are obviously a serious challenge, and equally obviously helped along by the weather trends this year. We should be looking at mitigation strategies, of course, but there is no direct economic impact reported that I am aware of, other than on some smaller communities that experience loss, and the health impacts that follow on from the smoke generated which will be hard to isolate and quantify. In Canada, these are Crown lands, and I doubt that there is any insurance claim for the loss of a valuable asset. Is this a type of under-reporting that we should be aware of?
This is a great question, which I hear a lot.
A disaster requires a combination of an extreme event and an exposed and vulnerable society. That combination is one reason why looking for trends in extremes can be confounded by looking at disasters -- there are many moving parts.
An extreme event with minimal or no human impact is by definition not a disaster, but it may still be an extreme event with impacts. In these cases it is essential to look specifically ath the variable of interest -- maybe in your example it is Canadian or boreal fire trends, it could be wildfire emissions, or even air pollution in locations remote from the fires.
Precision is key here. Efforts to lump disasters/extremes into a single bucket of stuff is apt to mislead. My Spidey senses always go up when I hear people talking about "climate extremes" in general or conflate disasters/extremes.
Let me know if this makes sense, Thx
This makes complete sense, and reminds us that the financial measures that we have most ready access to really aren't ever the whole story. Perhaps we should thinking about ways to measure categories of impacts that don't immediately find their way into the financial measures so that we aren't accused of considering narrow financial interests only, although this is a bit of a slippery slope when things like "loss of wildlife habitat" come into the picture. Wildfires are a bit of a different animal since there are hard impacts; they are a source of emissions (in Canada, a major source this year).
"...whether global disasters have increased. Their answer is that they are not." should be "...whether global disasters have increased. Their answer is that they HAVE not." :)
Thanks for the eagle eyes!
Nothing irritates me more then the reporting on climate. This business with Biden setting aside another million acres as a national monument which preclude uranium mining is a great example of the utter stupidity of this administration. Their policies are doing significant damage and citizens are paying the price. The recent rise in oil is an example. Credit card debt just exceeded one trillion dollars last month. Gas is now at $4.00 bucks here in Florida again. We have no reserves to tap this time. It’s not a joke to quote Uncle Joe. Thanks for being a voice crying in the wilderness.
"No reserves" sounds like a serious problem. To which reserves do you refer? Thanks in advance.
I assume US Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Biden drained it to lower gasoline prices to help the Ds in the elections last year, but despite promising to refill it, this hasn’t been done, and prices are rising again.
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCSSTUS1&f=M
Oil reserves depleted by Biden
Please keep the comments relevant to the post. If you’d like to discuss science of climate change there are other relevant posts at THB. I and all the participants thank everyone for making THB a very high quality forum for these discussions. Let’s keep it that way🙏
Sorry