by Eric Worrall, May 12, 2018 in WUWT
Puna Geothermal Venture has removed 60,000 gallons of flammable Pentane from a geothermal plant in the path of the Hawaii volcanic eruption. But concerns remain that if the geothermal wells break, they could flood the neighbourhood with toxic volcanic gasses.
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Kilauea eastern rift zone fissure eruption May 2018. By United States Geological Survey [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
by Matt McGraph, May 10, 2018 in BBC-Sci&Env
UN negotiations in Bonn are set to end in stalemate today as delegates have become bogged down in technical arguments about the Paris climate pact.
Poorer nations say they are fed up with foot dragging by richer countries on finance and carbon cutting commitments.
Some countries, led by China are now seeking to renegotiate key aspects of the Paris agreement.
See also : China Wants To Renegotiate The Paris Climate Accord
See also : Bonn bombs, climate pact in disarray
by Eurostat-newrelease, May 4, 2018
Eurostat estimates that in 2017 carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuel combustion increased by 1.8% in the European Union (EU), compared with the previous year. CO2 emissions are a major contributor to global warming and account for around 80% of all EU greenhouse gas emissions. They are influenced by factors such as climate conditions, economic growth, size of the population, transport and industrial activities.
It should also be noted that imports and exports of energy products have an impact on CO2 emissions in the country where fossil fuels are burned: for example if coal is imported this leads to an increase in emissions, while if electricity is imported, it has no direct effect on emissions in the importing country, as these would be reported in the exporting country where it is produced.
This information on early estimates of CO2 emissions from energy use for 2017 is published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.
Largest falls in CO2 emissions in Finland and Denmark, highest increases in Malta and Estonia
According to Eurostat estimates, CO2 emissions rose in 2017 in a majority of EU Member States, with the highest increase being recorded in Malta (+12.8%), followed by Estonia (+11.3%), Bulgaria (+8.3%) Spain (+7.4%) andPortugal (+7.3%). Decreases were registered in seven Member States: Finland (-5.9%), Denmark (-5.8%), theUnited Kingdom (-3.2%), Ireland (-2.9%), Belgium (-2.4%), Latvia (-0.7%) and Germany (-0.2%)..
by Mikko Paunio, May 5, 2015 in GWPF
The report (.pdf, 11 pages), by eminent epidemiologist Mikko Paunio, says that international bodies and NGOs are trying to prevent poor countries from expanding their use of conventional fuels, have abandoned the so-called “energy ladder” — the gradual shift to cleaner types of fuel that underpinned the clean up of air quality in industrialised nations.
As Dr Paunio explains, this will have devastating consequences:
“Indoor air pollution from domestic fires kills millions every year. But instead of helping poor people to climb the energy ladder and clean the air in their communities, the poorest people are being given gimmicks like cookstoves, which make little difference to air quality, and solar panels, which are little more than a joke.”
by James Holloway, April 19, 2018 in NewAtlas,
Scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have put together the first global carbon dioxide maps based on data from the Chinese satellite TanSat. The satellite also measures what lead researcher Yang Dongxu calls “carbon dioxide flux,” changes in its behavior on Earth and in the Earth’s atmosphere.
by M. Velasquez-Manoff, April 2018 in TheNewYorkTimesMagazine
Agriculture could pull carbon out of the air and into the soil — but it would mean a whole new way of thinking about how to tend the land.
by Anthony Watts, April 22, 2018 in WUWT
You think we had a bad winter here in the USA? Look at Japan where they have walls of snow 56 feet tall (almost the height of a 6-story building).
There’s an avalanche of tourists coming to the Tateyama to see the walls of snow.
It has been a rough winter full of snow all over the northern hemisphere, as this newest NOAA-20 satellite image shows
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by Anthony Watts, April 22, 2018 in WUWT
In the May 2000 issue of Reason Magazine, award-winning science correspondent Ronald Bailey wrote an excellent article titled “Earth Day, Then and Now” to provide some historical perspective on the 30th anniversary of Earth Day. In that article, Bailey noted that around the time of the first Earth Day in 1970, and in the years following, there was a “torrent of apocalyptic predictions” and many of those predictions were featured in his Reason article. Well, it’s now the 48th anniversary of Earth Day, and a good time to ask the question again that Bailey asked 18 years ago: How accurate were the predictions made around the time of the first Earth Day in 1970? The answer: “The prophets of doom were not simply wrong, but spectacularly wrong,” according to Bailey.
Here are 18 examples of the spectacularly wrong predictions made around 1970 when the “green holy day” (aka Earth Day) started
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by University of Warwick, April 21, 2018 in ScienceDaily
The famous Oxford Dodo died after being shot in the back of the head, according to new research. Using revolutionary forensic scanning technology and world-class expertise, researchers have discovered surprising evidence that the Oxford Dodo was shot in the neck and back of the head with a shotgun.
The significant and unexpected findings, made by Professor Paul Smith, director of the Museum of Natural History, and Professor Mark Williams from WMG at the University of Warwick, only became apparent when mysterious particles were found in the specimen during scans carried out to help analyse its anatomy.
by Antero Ollila, April 16 in WUWT
COP21 does not define the scientific basis of the agreement for the warming effects of the anthropogenic emissions, but it refers to a scenario. This scenario has not been defined in the COP21, but it can be found. The scientific resource of United Nations as well as of the COP21 is IPCC. The exact specification of IPCC is (Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2014. Mitigation of Climate Change”): “Baseline scenarios, those without additional mitigation, result in global mean surface temperature increases in 2100 from 3.7 °C to 4.8 °C compared to pre-industrial levels (range based on median climate response; the range is 2.5 °C to 7.8 °C when including climate uncertainty)”. Even though IPCC refers to multiple scenarios in the text above, the surface temperature increase to the average value of 4.25 ⁰C means one scenario only.
by Sidney Stevens, July 5, 2016 in mother.nature.network
Yes, islands are disappearing — most recently the five Solomon Islands lost to rising sea levels. But don’t despair just yet. For every island that goes the way of the dodo bird, the Earth is busy creating new islands.
Some erupt into being through volcanic activity. Others grow from ocean sandbars. Still others reveal themselves after glaciers retreat. A few are only temporary, while some materialize and erode on a regular basis. However they’re birthed and however long they last, island-building is part of the amazing mystery of our living, breathing planet.
Here are 10 of Mother Nature’s newest islands formed in the past two decades (and one still in the embryonic stage).
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by S. Writers, April 16, 2018 in TerraDaily
A recent study published in an esteemed academic journal indicates that volcanic eruptions in the mid 500s resulted in an unusually gloomy and cold period. A joint research project of the Chronology Laboratory of the Finnish Museum of Natural History and Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) suggests that the years 536 and 541-544 CE were very difficult for many people.
Also here in Nature, University of Helsinki
by Dennis Avery, April 7, 2018 in WUWT
In a recent New York Times column, Nicholas Kristof misleads us about the awful history of Easter Island (2,300 miles west of Chile), whose vegetation disappeared in the cold drought of the Little Ice Age. In doing so, he blinds modern society to the abrupt, icy climate challenge that lies in our own future.
Kristof repeats the archaeological myth that Easter Island’s natives committed “ecological suicide,” by cutting down all their palm trees. They supposedly used the logs as rollers to move their famous huge statues. Afterward, they could no longer build canoes to catch the fish that were their key protein source. Worse, he says, clearing the trees resulted in so much soil erosion that most of the population starved and/or killed each other in famine-driven desperation (…)
by P. Gosselin, April 14, 2018 in NoTricksZone
The New York Times recently published an article penned by Erica Goode on the controversial Harvey et al paper, where 14 scientists (sophomorically) attacked polar bear researcher Susan Crockford and climate science skeptics.
Sloppy biased journalism
So it is no surprise that Erica Goode at the New York Times sided up with the 14 scientists of the Harvey publication to attack the so-called climate “denialists” in her most recent article. Unfortunately Goode made the fatal journalistic error of failing to keep a healthy distance from the alarmist side and as a result was blinded from seeing the glaring mountain of scientific research showing polar bears are in fact doing fine.
by Eric Worrall, April 13, 2018 in WUWT
h/t Geoff Sherrington – Coal is being rehabilitated as an essential component of the clean energy future.
Read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-12/coal-to-hydrogen-trial-for-latrobe-valley/9643570
Coal to hydrogen is not a new idea, the Water-gas shift reaction was discovered in 1780 by Italian Chemist Felice Fontana.
There are still some kinks to be worked out. The process to generate hydrogen from coal produces a monstrous amount of CO2 – far more CO2 per unit of useful energy than simply burning the coal would produce. But with hydrogen production, unlike hydrocarbon combustion, all the CO2 is produced in one place. This creates an opportunity for carbon sequestration, when technologies to sequester carbon on such an impressive scale are developed.
by David Archibald, July 1, 2017 in WUWT
Back in late April, European wine growers were hit by the most damaging frost since 1991. That frost affected vines as far south as Tuscany. More recently it is the western Corn Belt that has been affected by late Spring frost (…)
by University of Alberta, April 11, 2018 in ScienceDaily
An analysis of radar data led scientists to an unexpected discovery of two lakes located beneath 550 to 750 meters of ice underneath the Devon Ice Cap, one of the largest ice caps in the Canadian Arctic. They are thought to be the first isolated hypersaline subglacial lakes in the world.
by National Association of Scholars, January 03, 2011
PRINCETON, NJ (January 3, 2011)—S. Fred Singer said in an interview with the National Association of Scholars (NAS) that “the number of skeptical qualified scientists has been growing steadily; I would guess it is about 40% now.”
Singer, a leading scientific skeptic of anthropocentric global warming (AGW), is an atmospheric physicist, and founder of the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), an organization that began challenging the published findings of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the 1990s. SEPP established the Leipzig Declaration, a statement of dissent from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that has been signed by over one hundred scientists and meteorologists.
by P. Homewood, April 7, 2018 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat
Nick Dekker raised the question of CO2 emissions per capita.
The latest official figures come from the now defunct CDIAC, and are for 2014
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by Anthony Watts, April 6, 2018 in WUWT
Huge hole over 400,000 miles long (700,000 kilometers) is 55 times wider than the Earth A wide hole in the sun’s atmosphere is facing Earth and spewing a stream of solar wind toward our planet. Estimated time of arrival: April 9th. In this extreme ultraviolet image from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, we see not only the […]
by Catherine Philp, April 5, 2018 in TheTimes
Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalifa al-Khalifa said it was not yet known how much of the oil could be extracted. The scale of the find, however, is about to make it a big player in the global market, significantly boosting its economy and raising its profile in the region, where it plays a smaller fiddle to its giant neighbour, Saudi Arabia.
See also here
by Donna Laframboise, April 4, 2018 in ClimateChangeDispatch
SPOTLIGHT: As the influence of religion has waned, we’ve placed science on a pedestal – mistaking it for an oracle of truth.
BIG PICTURE: Richard Harris has written a startling book about the state of medical research. The preface to Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope, and Wastes Billions
includes a warning about scientific naivety:
Most of science is built on inference rather than direct observation…Science progresses by testing ideas indirectly, throwing out the ones that seem wrong…Gradually, scientists build stories that do a better job of approximating the truth.
by Anthony Watts, April 3, 2018 in WUWT
Theories about the early days of our planet’s history vary wildly. Some studies have painted the picture of a snowball Earth, when much of its surface was frozen. Other theories have included periods that would be inhospitably hot for most current lifeforms to survive.
New research from the University of Washington suggests a milder youth for our planet. An analysis of temperature through early Earth’s history, published the week of April 2 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, supports more moderate average temperatures throughout the billions of years when life slowly emerged on Earth. (…)
by Bjorn Lomborg, April 2, 2018 in ClimateChangeDispatsch
CCD Editor’s Note: In 1920, CO2 levels were 303 PPM or 0.03%. Last year they were 406 PPM or 0.04%. Despite our global population quadrupling, climate deaths have actually gone down as CO2 levels have gone up. Lomborg explains why with the now-standard, often-by-rote “this does not mean that there is no global warming” caveat.
by P. Homewood, April 1, 2018 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat
Lake Chad – a source of water to millions of people in West Africa – has shrunk by nine-tenths due to climate change, population growth and irrigation. But can a scheme dating back to the 1980s save it?
“It’s a ridiculous plan and it will never happen.” That’s the reaction many people have to the idea of trying to fill up Lake Chad and restore it to its former ocean-like glory by diverting water from the Congo river system 2,400km (1,500 miles) away.
