The Institution for Chemical Engineers (IChemE) is a prestigious international group of scientists and professionals with over 35,000 members in about 100 countries. IChemE has been conducting what it calls a consultation on its draft Position Statement on Climate Change. This basically means that the members are invited to submit comments. Given that many engineers are skeptical of the climate scare, it will be interesting to see if all of these comments are made public.
The draft statement itself is pure alarmism. They say the science is settled, per the IPCC, and catastrophe looms. Here is the opening paragraph:
“Climate science is established – global climate change is upon us, exacerbated by human activities. IChemE accepts the veracity of the science and its conclusions published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). To avoid irreparable social, economic and environmental damage, it is essential that we accelerate our efforts to decarbonize our economic systems and stabilize the levels of greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere, if we are to have any chance of limiting the global average temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C, beyond which catastrophic consequences are more likely. Action needs to be global and fair, recognizing the relative differences between regions, both in terms of historic contributions to emissions and vulnerability to the consequences of a warming planet.
Chemical engineers are uniquely placed to take action in the industries that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions to arrest and reverse the damage we humans are doing to the life support systems of our single, shared planet .” (Emphasis added).
Not only do they simply sing the IPCC song, they even get it wrong. Nowhere does the IPCC suggest that 1.5 degrees of warming (with one degree already on their books) is a threshold to catastrophe. In fact the Paris Accord target is still 2.0 degrees. The last sentence may explain IChemE’s fervent catastrophism. Its members are positioned to make huge sums of money doing the engineering to decarbonize the world. After all, CO2 emissions are typically the product of chemical reactions (including combustion).
by P. Homewood, September 3, 2020 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat
Despite a few warm days in early August, the month as a whole was not unusually hot, a full 1.6C cooler than August 1995, according to the Central England Temperature series. Other hotter Augusts include 1911, 1947 and 1975.
It was even colder than 1736 and 1899.
Summer as whole was even less remarkable, ranking 51st, tied with years such as 1701, 1731 and 1780.
The summers of 1976 and 1826 remain the two hottest on record, well above anything seen since.
by A. Préat, 4 septembre 2020 in ScienceClimatEnergie
SCE a plusieurs fois rapporté que la période actuelle de réchauffement n’est pas exceptionnelle, qu’elle fait partie de cycles décennaux à pluriséculaires de refroidissement et réchauffement qui ont lieu dans des fourchettes de température fort modestes, de l’ordre de 0,15°C par 10 ans. SCE a aussi montré que le CO2 tant incriminé dans ces changements, et surtout l’actuel, n’avait pas de raison d’être, ce gaz venant après l’augmentation de température. Le ‘bouton CO2 ‘ à même d’expliquer ou de ‘justifier’ le battage médiatique quasi-quotidien est donc à ‘la remorque’ de la température et, l’hypothèse de l’effet de serre reste avant tout une hypothèse (exemple ici).
Enfin SCE a souvent rappelé (ici et ici) que la concentration atmosphérique de CO2 n’a jamais été aussi basse dans l’histoire géologique de notre planète, qui a connu la plupart du temps des concentrations jusqu’à 25 fois supérieures au cours du Phanérozoïque (à partir du Cambrien, il y a 541 millions d’années), et même encore bien plus élevées au cours du Précambrien. Nous partirons de ce dernier point, puisque les médias et scientifiques sont toujours à nous rappeler, de manière assez dramatique, que la teneur actuelle est plus élevée que celle des ‘derniers’ millions d’années (articles médiatiques presque quotidiens, exemple ici parmi une pléthore d’articles). Est-ce bien le cas? et si oui –et toujours pour ces ‘derniers’ millions d’années– quid de la température ?
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.
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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.
Poll sponsors say climate attitudes have been ‘remarkably consistent’ over two decades.
A few days ago, Scientific American reprinted an article straight from Climatewire. Titled Republican Convention Ignored Climate Threat, But Americans’ Attitudes Are Shifting, it says “Polling shows that voter concern about climate change has been growing for years and that it has not diminished as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.” We’re then told about a recent public opinion survey affiliated with Stanford University.
by N. Thorner, October 25, 2019 in ClimateChangeDispatch
If you believe the debate over global warming has ever been about science—or for that matter climate—you have been conditioned, through formal education or through reports warning of doom and gloom, to believe what others rightly describe as a world-wide hoax concocted to unite the world under a single socialistic government where there is no capitalism, no democracy, and no freedom.
Why is exposing the truth so important? Because it has everything to do with the redistribution of wealth and the establishment of political agendas aimed at destroying the foundation of eastern democracies and free markets.
Accordingly, it is therefore critical for everyone to become informed so free and open debate can exist, rather than the suppression and falsification of actual scientific climate data.
This article will expose some of the popular climate myths about CO2, so the reader will be equipped with ammunition to spread the truth to those who are willing to listen and have not yet become environmental extremists.
Links are included after each myth to substantiate information and to provide reference material for further interest and clarification.
The article was written using individual articles, with permission from my friend Jay Lehr, Ph.D., in which he exposed popular climate myths related to CO2. Jay Lehr is a Senior Policy Analyst for The International Climate Science Coalition.
Myth #1: Carbon dioxide emissions cause catastrophic global warming.
Ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica whose melting rates are rapidly increasing have raised the global sea level by 1.8cm since the 1990s, and are matching the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s worst-case climate warming scenarios.
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So far, global sea levels have increased in the most part through a mechanism called thermal expansion, which means that volume of seawater expands as it gets warmer. But in the last five years, ice melt from the ice sheets and mountain glaciers has overtaken global warming as the main cause of rising sea levels.
Dr Ruth Mottram, study co-author and climate researcher at the Danish Meteorological Institute, said: “It is not only Antarctica and Greenland that are causing the water to rise. In recent years, thousands of smaller glaciers have begun to melt or disappear altogether, as we saw with the glacier Ok in Iceland, which was declared “dead” in 2014. This means that melting of ice has now taken over as the main contributor of sea level rise. “
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Further information
The study, “Ice-sheet losses track high-end sea-level rise projections,” is published today (31 August) in Nature Climate Change.
View towards Icefjord in Ilulissat. Easy hiking route to the famous Kangia glacier in Greenland. The Ilulissat Icefjord seen from the viewpoint. Declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004. Photo taken in Greenland.
Europe’s punishing late-summer cold front has been busy taking names across the western half of the continent.
The UK has just suffered-through one of it coldest August Bank Holiday weekends ever recorded, the Alps and Pyrenees have recently received heavy summer snow, and now the French are reporting all-time record August lows:
As reported by meteo.bzh, a monthly cold record has just been broken at the Brest-Guipavas airport –located in NW France– where a minimum temperature of 5.8C (42.4F)was registered.
A plunging Arctic air mass was responsible — a phenomenon on the increase due to the historically low solar activity we’re receiving (see meridional jet stream flow). A lack of wind and the absence of cloud cover at night also contributed to the plummeting temps, according to meteo.bzh.
For decades, spelunkers have flocked to the flooded caverns of the Czech Republic’s Hranice Abyss, which stretches farther below ground than any other freshwater cave system. Now, a scientific campaign to the cave has revealed it is 1 kilometer deep, more than twice as deep as previously thought. The researchers also say the abyss formed as groundwater seeped down from the surface, not as water percolated up, as previously believed—a finding that could call into question the origin of other deep caves.
The abyss sits in karst, a Swiss cheese–like terrain formed when soluble rock such as limestone is slowly dissolved by water. Most caves form from the surface downward, when water from rain or melted snow—slightly acidic from dissolved carbon dioxide—makes its way underground, eating into rock and creating cracks that widen over time. However, deep caves can also form from the bottom up, when acidic groundwater heated by Earth’s mantle burbles up. Researchers believed the Hranice Abyss was in this second category because its waters contain carbon and helium isotopes that come from deep inside Earth.
The Hranice Abyss is the world’s deepest freshwater cave. But it is not the deepest overall. That honor belongs to Georgia’s Veryovkina Cave, a 2.2-kilometer-deep incursion formed when sea levels in the neighboring Black Sea dropped dramatically millions of years ago. In 2016, researchers using a remotely operated vehicle estimated the Hranice Abyss to be 473.5 meters deep. However, the vehicle’s fiber optic communication cable kept it from going deeper, and the true extent of the cave system remained a mystery.
In this photo taken Sept. 27, 2016 in the flooded Hranicka Propast, or Hranice Abyss, in the Czech Republic Polish explorer Krzysztof Starnawski, left, and Bartlomiej Grynda, right, are reading images from a remotely-operated underwater robot, or ROV, that went to the record depth of 404 meters ,1,325 feet, revealing the limestone abyss to be the world’s deepest flooded cave, during the ‘Hranicka Propast – step beyond 400m’ expedition led by Starnawski and partly funded by the National Geographic. (AP Photo/ Marcin Jamkowski)
La géologie, une science plus que passionnante … et diverse
