by Ian Webster
Funny geology
Archives quotidiennes :
CNN Falsely Blames Climate Change For Siberian Craters
by A. Watts, September 6, 2020 in ClimateChangeDispatch
The phrase “never let a potential climate crisis story go to waste” must be in CNN’s news handbook because this headline has absolutely nothing to do with global warming aka climate change.
The story at CNN titled Massive mystery holes appear in Siberian tundra — and could be linked to climate change is a red herring of the smelliest kind because if the writer Katie Hunt had bothered to do even the simplest of web searches, she would have learned that this crater, peculiar to that part of Siberia, is called a Pingo.
It has been known to western academics since 1825, ruling out the paranoia of “climate change” in recent decades as the cause.
In fact, all Katie had to do was look at Wikipedia for the answer:
Pingos are intrapermafrost ice-cored hills, ranging in height from 3 to 70 m (10 to 230 ft) and 30 to 1,000 m (98 to 3,281 ft) in diameter. They are typically conical in shape and grow and persist only in permafrost environments, such as the Arctic and subarctic.
A pingo is a periglacial landform, which is defined as a non-glacial landform or process linked to colder climates. It is estimated that there are more than 11,000 pingos on Earth. The Tuktoyaktuk peninsula area has the greatest concentration of pingos in the world with a total of 1,350 pingos.
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Ocean carbon uptake widely underestimated
by University of Exeter, September5, 2020 in WUWT/Nature
The world’s oceans soak up more carbon than most scientific models suggest, according to new research.
Previous estimates of the movement of carbon (known as “flux”) between the atmosphere and oceans have not accounted for temperature differences at the water’s surface and a few metres below.
The new study, led by the University of Exeter, includes this – and finds significantly higher net flux of carbon into the oceans.
It calculates CO2 fluxes from 1992 to 2018, finding up to twice as much net flux in certain times and locations, compared to uncorrected models.
“Half of the carbon dioxide we emit doesn’t stay in the atmosphere but is taken up by the oceans and land vegetation ‘sinks’,” said Professor Andrew Watson, of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute.
“Researchers have assembled a large database of near-surface carbon dioxide measurements – the “Surface Ocean Carbon Atlas” (http://www.socat.info) – that can be used to calculate the flux of CO2 from the atmosphere into the ocean.
“Previous studies that have done this have, however, ignored small temperature differences between the surface of the ocean and the depth of a few metres where the measurements are made.
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PROF. NILS-AXEL MÖRNER: “THE APPROACHING GRAND SOLAR MINIMUM AND LITTLE ICE AGE CONDITIONS”
by Cap Allon, September 6, 2020 in Electroverse
Nils-Axel Mörner is the former head of the paleogeophysics and geodynamics department at Stockholm University. He retired in 2005 and since has dedicated his days to disproving the IPPC’s thermageddon nonsense while also warning of a coming Grand Solar Minimum.
Between 1997-2003, Mörner chaired an INTAS project on Geomagnetism & Climate; the project concluded that we, in the middle of the 21st century, had to be back in a new solar minimum with Little Ice Age climatic conditions.
These conclusions were quite straightforward, writes Mörner, and were included in a Special Issue of PRP: Obviously we are on our way into a new grand solar minimum. This sheds serious doubts on the issue of a continued, even accelerated, warming as proposed by the IPCC project. This quite innocent—and very true—conclusion made the publisher take the quite remarkable step to close down the entire scientific journal. This closing down gave rise to turbulence and objections within the scientific community. But it didn’t stop Mörner. He kept publishing scientific works regarding the impending GSM.
In 2015, Mörner’s “The Approaching New Grand Solar Minimum and Little Ice Age Climate Conditions” was published. It suggests that by 2030-2040 the Sun will experience a new grand solar minimum. This is evident from multiple studies of quite different characteristics, writes Mörner: the phasing of sunspot cycles, the cyclic observations of North Atlantic behavior over the past millennium, the cyclic pattern of cosmogenic radionuclides in natural terrestrial archives, the motions of the Sun with respect to the center of mass, the planetary spin-orbit coupling, the planetary conjunction history, and the general planetary-solar-terrestrial interaction.
During the previous grand solar minima—i.e. the Spörer Mini-mum (ca 1440-1460), the Maunder Minimum (ca 1687-1703) and the Dalton Minimum (ca 1809- 1821)—the climatic conditions deteriorated into Little Ice Age periods.
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see also SEPTEMBER SNOW IS “A BIG DEAL FOR EVERYONE WHO FARMS” — WELCOME TO THE GRAND SOLAR MINIMUM
Sceptical covid-19 research and sceptical polar bear science: is there a difference?
by Polar Bear Science, September 6, 2020
This essay about medical researchers having trouble getting their papers published because the results don’t support the official pandemic narrative has disturbing parallels with my experience trying to inject some balance into the official polar bear conservation narrative.1 Especially poignant is the mention of models built on assumptions sold as ‘facts’ that fail once data (i.e. evidence) become available – which of course is the entire point of my latest book, The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened.
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Read the commentary below, copied from Lockdownsceptics.org (6 September 2020). Bold in original, link added to the story to which this is a response, and brief notes and links added as footnotes for parallels with polar bear conservation science.
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NuScale SMR receives US design certification approval
by World Nuclear News, September 1, 2020
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has issued a final safety evaluation report (FSER) for NuScale’s small modular reactor. This is the first-ever FSER to be issued by the NRC for an SMR, and represents the completion of the technical review and approval of the design.
NuScale’s application for certification of its SMR design for use in the USA was submitted on 31 December, 2016 and was accepted by the NRC the following March. NRC said its completion of the technical review within its original 42-month schedule demonstrates its commitment to “timely” licensing of new, advanced reactor technology.
“This is a significant milestone not only for NuScale, but also for the entire US nuclear sector and the other advanced nuclear technologies that will follow. This clearly establishes the leadership of NuScale and the US in the race to bring SMRs to market,” said NuScale Chairman and CEO John Hopkins. He also credited strong bipartisan support from US Congress for the project, which received cost-shared federal funding as it advanced through the NRC Design Certification process.
NuScale said it had spent over USD500 million, with the backing of its majority investor Fluor, and over 2 million labour hours to develop the information needed to prepare its design certification application. The company also submitted 14 separate Topical Reports in addition to the application – itself over 12,000 pages long – and provided more than 2 million pages of supporting information for NRC audits.
The NuScale design uses passive processes such as convection and gravity in its operating systems and safety features to produce about 600 MW of electricity. Twelve modules, each producing 50 MW, are submerged in a safety-related pool built below ground level. The NRC has concluded the design’s passive features “will ensure the nuclear power plant would shut down safely and remain safe under emergency conditions, if necessary”, it said. NuScale has also indicated to NRC it will apply for standard design approval of a version using 60 MW modules, the regulator said. This would require additional NRC review.
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