Archives par mot-clé : Europe

unclassified

Europe’s Consensus On Climate Is Crumbling

by W. Münchau, Feb 29, 202 in ClimateChangeDispatch

At stake in the European elections in June this year will be everything that defines the modern EU: a large volume of net zero legislation, a values-based foreign policy, and ever-more intrusive business regulation.

Polls suggest the centrist majority that has supported these policies is growing slimmer. [emphasis, links added]

Ursula von der Leyen [pictured above] has been the quintessential representative of that majority. Born in Brussels, German by nationality, proposed by France, she was the perfect candidate for European Commission president in late 2019.

Now she is seeking a second term. Whether she will succeed will depend to a large extent on whether the centrist four-party coalition that supported her in 2019 will hold.

All over Europe, we are now seeing a backlash against the kind of policies the Von der Leyen Commission represents.

The far right is part of that response, but the main political shift has been inside Von der Leyen’s own political group, the European People’s Party (EPP), of which the German CDU/CSU is the largest member.

This backlash follows one of the most hectic political phases in recent EU history. When Covid struck in early 2020, Von der Leyen was instrumental in setting up the EU’s recovery fund to help countries deal with the economic consequences of the pandemic.

Then came the Green Deal, a hefty tranche of legislation on renewable energy, land use, forestry, energy efficiency, emission standards for cars and trucks, and a directive on energy taxes.

There was also a tightening of standards on pesticides, air quality, water pollution, and wastewater.

Farmers are resisting this program because it affects their livelihoods. Industrialists, too, are unhappy. A big part of the Green Deal was its industrial policy; the flagship legislation was the Net Zero Industry Act.

The industry used to be the EU’s strongest supporter.

But with the new laws came new bureaucracy: now, all EU-funded investment must include a green component of at least 30 percent, while a carbon border adjustment mechanism, to take effect in 2026, will penalize imports that do not meet EU carbon-emission standards. Together, EU legislation in the last few years amounts to a near-total corporate regime change.

Compliance with some regulations is virtually impossible for companies without dedicated legal teams. It is going to get worse.

Under discussion right now is a supply-chain law that would make European companies responsible for human rights abuses in their supply chain – including the suppliers of their suppliers.

I expect that the hyperactive phase of this green agenda will end with the elections in June. Some of it might even go into reverse. I am even starting to doubt whether the EU will ever enforce the 2035 target for phasing out fossil-fuel-driven cars.

This is an industrial-policy disaster in the making because Europe’s carmakers are having trouble selling their electric cars.

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climate and geology

Early Cretaceous shift in the global carbon cycle affected both land and sea

by University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Feb 22, 2023 in ScienceDaily

Geologists doing fieldwork in southeastern Utah’s Cedar Mountain Formation found carbon isotope evidence that the site, though on land, experienced the same early Cretaceous carbon-cycle change recorded in marine sedimentary rocks in Europe. This ancient carbon-cycle phenomenon, known as the ‘Weissert Event’ was driven by large, sustained volcanic eruptions in the Southern Hemisphere that greatly increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and produced significant greenhouse climate effects over a prolonged time.

Scientific research in recent decades has confirmed that major changes in the global carbon cycle caused significant changes in the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans 135 million years ago, during the early Cretaceous Period. A range of questions remain about the details of climate change dynamics in that era. This new research, involving wide-ranging chemical and radioactivity-based analyses of rock strata in Utah’s Cedar Mountain Formation, helps fill in that knowledge gap by confirming that such carbon-cycle shifts were recorded on land in ancient North America.

The carbon cycle is one of Earth’s fundamental environmental phenomena, involving the ongoing transfer of carbon among the atmosphere, oceans and living organisms, as well as soils, sediments and rocks in the solid Earth. The cycle is crucial to biological processes for living things on land and sea. When large-scale changes in the cycle occur, they can produce major shifts in climate and the oceans’ biological conditions.

“We’re studying how the global carbon cycle has functioned in the past, how changes are recorded in the sedimentary rocks around the world,” said Joeckel, a professor in the School of Natural Resources at Nebraska. The environmental phenomena he and his colleagues analyzed “are exactly the kind of things we’re talking about today, as people increase the input of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at a much-accelerated rate by burning fossil fuels.”

Joeckel, the Nebraska state geologist, headed the Utah fieldwork and organized the study, published as a peer-reviewed paper in a special February issue of the journal Geosciences.

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unclassified

Do European tree ring analyses indicate unusual recent hydroclimate?

by F. Bosse  & N. Lewis, Feb 23, 2023 in WUWT

Not really.

A recent paper (M. B. Freund et al 2023, MBF23 thereafter) in “Nature communication earth and environment” investigates the variability of the summer drought events since 1600. It uses the method of “stable isotope analyses C13/O18” to extend the “Standardised Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) from 1950 to now back to 1600.

The paper describes and uses a multi proxy network over large parts of Europe (see Fig. 1 of MBF23) to reconstruct the history of summer droughts for a longer historic period. It finds interesting results about the dependency of those events on volcanos and solar forcing. It’s a worthwhile read and we were interested in whether the headline title is justified and likewise this claim in the Abstract:

“We show that the recent European summer drought (2015–2018) is highly unusual in a multi-century context…”

Thanks to the authors the used SPEI reconstruction annual data are available, so we were able to perform calculations to check these assertions.

An apparent first “confirmation” of the headline title of the paper appears in Figure 3a in MBH23:

Fig.1: A reproduction of Fig. 3a of MBH23. Annual European mean SPEI-data in blue/red, the low pass filter output is shown in black.

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unclassified

Europe’s climate warming at twice rate of global average, claims WMO

by P. Homewood, Nov 4, 2022 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

Temperatures in Europe have increased at more than twice the global average in the last 30 years, according to a report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

The effects of this warming are already being seen, with droughts, wildfires and ice melts taking place across the continent. The European State of the Climate report, produced with the EU’s Copernicus service, warns that as the warming trend continues, exceptional heat, wildfires, floods and other climate breakdown outcomes will affect society, economies and ecosystems.

From 1991 to 2021, temperatures in Europe have warmed at an average rate of about 0.5C a decade. This has had physical results: Alpine glaciers lost 30 metres in ice thickness between 1997 and 2021, while the Greenland ice sheet has also been melting, contributing to sea level rise. In summer 2021, Greenland had its first ever recorded rainfall at its highest point, Summit station.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/02/europes-climate-warming-at-twice-rate-of-global-average-says-report

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The WMO is of course another UN organisation, so obviously cannot be trusted. Neither can any of its sources of data, such as NOAA, GISS and Berkeley Earth, which are based around homogenised data.

But what do we know about recent climate trends in Europe?

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climate-debate

Northern Europe Mid Summer Hasn’t Warmed In 25 Years….Late Summer Arctic Ice Near 15-Year High!

by P. Gosselin, Aug 26, 2022 in NoTricksZone

This summer it’s been warm and awfully dry across mush of Europe. But in terms of global warming and the so-called Arctic tipping point, i.e. a point where the Arctic sea ice melts and theoretically sets off an unstoppable chain of catastrophic events – we look at the midsummer trends of Scandinavia and Finland, and then the Arctic.

As you’ll see, there’s been signs of an Arctic tipping point over the past 15 years.

The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) has the latest mean temperature data for July and today we plot the July data from Sweden and Finland for the stations for which the JMA has sufficient data.

We begin with Finland:

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unclassified

Climate Expert: What The Media Won’t Tell You About Droughts

by R. Pileke Jr, Aug 16, 2022 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Europe is in the midst of what has been called the worst drought in 500 years. According to a drought expert with the European Commission in comments last week [bold, links added]:

“We haven’t analysed fully the event (this year’s drought), because it is still ongoing, but based on my experience I think that this is perhaps even more extreme than 2018. Just to give you an idea the 2018 drought was so extreme that, looking back at least the last 500 years, there were no other events similar to the drought of 2018, but this year I think it is really worse than 2018.”

While a full analysis of the ongoing 2022 European drought remains to be completed, so too the drought itself, which is clearly exceptional if not unprecedented. In this post, I take a close look at the state of understanding of the possible role of climate change in this year’s drought.

Specifically, I report on what the most recent assessment report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and underlying literature and data say about the detection of trends in Western and Central European drought and the attribution of those trends to greenhouse gas emissions.

The figure below shows the specific region that is the focus of this post, which includes all of Germany, most of France, Hungary, Poland, Ukraine, and western Russia among other nations. …

better to know...?, climate-debate

Europe wildfires: Are they linked to climate change?–NO!!!

by P. Homewood, Aug 15, 2022 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

The BBC would like you to think so, with statements like these:

So far this year, the amount of land burnt by fires across the European Union is more than three times greater than what you would expect by the middle of July.

Almost 346,000 hectares (1,370 sq miles) of land have been recorded as burnt (as of 16 July), according to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS).

Much of Western Europe has been hit by a record-breaking heatwave, which substantially increases the risk of fires….

“Heatwaves and droughts are exacerbated by climate change and are absolutely the defining factor in years with massive wildfire outbreaks, like the present one,” Dr Jones says….

“But we definitely see trends in fire weather risk because of climate change.

“The risk is higher in the Mediterranean region than the rest of Europe.”

Studies show increasing fire risk for central and southern regions of Europe over the past couple of decades.

Yet tucked away in the same article is this graph which proves all of these have no basis in fact:

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climate-debate

The European Heat Wave and Global Warming

by Guest Blogger, July 21, 2022 in WUWT

From the Cliff Mass Weather Blog

There is a lot of talk about the short-term European heatwave with some suggesting that the record-breaking warmth is the result of climate change/global warming.

Some of the media and climate advocates have been over the top in their claims (see below), stating that this event was the result of human-caused global warming.

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unclassified

Europe at risk of civil unrest unless it returns to fossil fuels, EU warns

by Climate Depot, July 11, 2022

1) Europe at risk of civil unrest unless it returns to fossil fuels, EU warns
The Guardian 8 July 20222) Rising social unrest over energy costs & food shortages threatens global stability
David Blackmon, Forbes, 11 July 2022

3) Farmers ‘freedom convoy’ takes aim at strict Dutch Net Zero regulations

The Daily Telegraph, 9 July 20224) Dutch farmer protests against emissions cuts spread across EU
Farmers Weekly, 9 July 2022

5) Green Tories fear next party leader could ditch Net Zero strategy

The Observer, 10 July 20226) Andrew Orlowski: Boris Johnson, the Net Zero zealot

7) Lifeline for millions in Red Wall as fracking return could provide ‘cheap or free gas’
Daily Express, 8 July 20228) Europe’s rush to buy Africa’s natural gas draws cries of hypocrisy
Bloomberg, 10 July 2022

9) ‘Complete Collapse’: How ESG and green extremism destroyed Sri Lanka’s economy
The Daily Caller, 6 July 2022

10) If you want to know how Sri Lanka’s president destroyed his country read his COP26 speech
High Commission of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka in the United Kingdom, 1 November 2021

Europe is in danger of highly damaging “very, very strong conflict and strife” this winter over high energy prices, and should make a short-term return to fossil fuels to head off the threat of civil unrest, the vice-president of the European Commission has warned.

Frans Timmermans, the second most senior official in the EU, said the threat of unrest this winter, a deliberate outcome of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, must take precedence over the climate crisis.

He said: “If our society descends into very, very strong conflict and strife because there is no energy, we’re certainly not going to make our [climate] goals. We’re certainly not going to get where we need to get if the lack of energy leads to strong disruption in our societies, and we need to make sure people are not in the cold in the coming winter.

“We need to make sure we keep our industry, as much as possible, functioning because the one thing that could help Putin is divisions in our society.”

People suffering from the cold this winter because they cannot afford heating would also be disastrous for solving the climate crisis, Timmermans argued in an interview with the Guardian in Brussels.

“I’ve been in politics long enough, over 30 years, to understand that people worry most about the immediate crisis and not about the long-term crisis And if we don’t address the immediate crisis, we will certainly be off-track with the long-term crisis,” he said.

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better to know...?, energy and fields

European Parliament backs listing nuclear energy, gas as ‘green’

by Reuters, AP, AFP, July 2022 in DW

European Parliament backs listing nuclear energy, gas as ‘green’

The push to label natural gas and nuclear energy as “green” in order to lure in more private investors was met with heavy resistance. But EU lawmakers ultimately gave it the green light.

The European Parliament on Wednesday voted in favor of a proposal regarding labeling natural gas and nuclear power plants as climate-friendly investments.

The European Commission released the proposal, formally called the EU taxonomy, in December as a list of economic activities that investors can label and market as green in the EU.

A motion to block the proposal received 278 votes in favor and 328 against, while 33 lawmakers abstained.

Unless 20 of the EU’s 27 member states oppose the proposal, it will be passed into law.

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energy and fields

Central Europe’s Huge Gas Depot Risks Being Empty Next Winter

by J. Tirone, May 27, 2022 in BNN.Bloomberg

BC-Central-Europe’s-Huge-Gas-Depot-Risks-Being-Empty-Next-Winter , RAG AG

 

(Bloomberg) — Conflict between Russia and Germany risks leaving one of central Europe’s biggest natural gas depots empty next winter, just as the continent urgently needs to ensure supplies due to the war in Ukraine.

The Haidach underground depot — located in Austria but connected only to the German grid — is unlikely to get filled after Moscow cut supplies to a Gazprom PJSC unit seized by Berlin’s government, according to energy officials in Vienna, who asked not to be identified in exchange for discussing sensitive topics. The depot is equivalent to about a quarter of Austrian storage capacity.

Europeans need to build fuel inventories to keep warm and run their industries next winter. But Russian sanctions on Gazprom Germania GmbH — in retaliation for Berlin seizing the unit earlier this year — are depriving Haidach of crucial supplies needed for energy security should the war in Ukraine disrupt gas transit to the continent.

To make matters worse, Austrian efforts to break the German bottleneck and stash gas at the site is plagued by pipeline constraints. The Alpine country would need to find a way to connect Haidach to the Austrian network and the nation’s grid operator said it’s still studying how it could meet the government’s demand.

“From a technical perspective, a connection between the storage facility and the Penta West pipeline would have to be built,” operator Gas Connect said in emailed response to Bloomberg questions.

Austria’s Penta West is the closest pipeline that could be extended to connect Haidach with the rest of Austria’s 900-kilometer (559-mile) network. Receiving the necessary regulatory and environmental permissions for that could take years, one official said. Even if all approvals were granted, the Penta West pipeline’s capacity is already fully booked by traders fueling west European markets.

A second gas tender being prepared in Vienna, which could be awarded to help fill Haidach with supplies other than Russian, is also facing challenges because there’s no way of verifying where the fuel comes from once it’s been injected into pipelines, a second official said.

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better to know...?, energy and fields, Fracking

How Nuclear Power And Fracking Can Make Europe Energy Independent

by Bjorn Lomborg, Mar 7, 2022 in ClimateChangeDispatch

The devastating Russian invasion of Ukraine has captured global attention. While the world’s focus is rightly on the human toll and suffering, the crisis has highlighted the need to end reliance on Russian oil and gas. [bold, links added]

To achieve that ambition, we must be pragmatic and invest in sensible alternatives, not engage in wishful thinking about renewable energy.

Every single day, the world spends more than a billion dollarson fossil fuels from Russia, according to Bloomberg reporting.

As Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted, that money is now paying for the “murder of Ukrainian men, women, and children.” We must end this reliance.

However, this has proved to be easier said than done: Over dozens of years, the world has exchanged trillions of dollars for fossil fuels from the Soviet Union and now from Russia. Our continued use of Kremlin-backed oil and gas reveals two inconvenient truths.

First, reliable energy maintains the foundation of modern society and few are willing to give up its benefits. Access to cheap, abundant, and dependable energy has been the cornerstone of the industrial revolution and humanity’s achievements.

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climate-debate, energy and fields

EU’s Timmermans: Brussels ‘will support’ member states that choose nuclear

by N. Moussu, Dec 10, 2021 in Euractiv

During an exchange with French parliamentarians this week, the EU Commission vice-president in charge of the Green Deal, Frans Timmermans, said Brussels “will support, sustain and assist those member states that make this choice” of using nuclear power. EURACTIV France reports.

Timmermans, who was speaking on Wednesday (8 December) to the National Assembly’s committees on European Affairs and Sustainable Development, promised an inclusive and ambitious ecological transition that leaves no one behind.

They discussed the work of the European Commission on various issues related to the ecological transition, ranging from the carbon market to hydrogen, the evolution of the automotive sector, nuclear power in the green taxonomy and the timetable for the Fit for 55 package.

“We know that there will be a lot of negotiating to do [by the European Commission],” said Laurence Maillard Méhaignerie, chair of the French parliament’s Committee on Sustainable Development and Regional Planning.

“It is also a work of conviction, because, in the end, it is the economic models and value chains that need to be reviewed, the lifestyles and jobs that are also profoundly transformed” by the ecological transition.

This ecological transition and the measures that come with it would not only make individuals and companies feel excluded or suffer from the transition, but, as Renew Europe MEP Pascal Canfin warned a few months ago, could also create a new movement like the Gilets jaunes.

But according to Timmermans, “no one will be left behind, abandoned in this transition”.

“We must show through concrete steps (…) that we are concerned about social issues. The transition will be social or it will not be!” he added.

energy and fields

Leaked diplomatic cables show ‘limited progress’ in Energy Charter Treaty reform talks

by K. Taylor, July 6, 2021 in Euractiv

Little progress has been made to modernise a controversial agreement on energy investments that activists warn could derail decarbonisation efforts in Europe and across the globe, according to leaked documents.

The fifth round of negotiations on reforming the Energy Charter Treaty – an international agreement that allows energy companies to sue governments for decisions impacting their investments – took place in early June.

But attempts by the European Commission to bring the treaty in line with international climate goals have so far fallen flat, according to two leaked diplomatic cables.

“The atmosphere was constructive, but progress was limited, especially on energy issues,” reads one of the leaked diplomatic cables, which was written after a meeting the EU Council’s Working Party on Energy, where the European Commission recently gave EU countries an overview of progress made in the negotiations.

“No substantial progress was made on the definition of economic activity in the energy sector,” the cable says, referring to a section listing which types of energy infrastructure are protected under the treaty.

At the moment, that definition includes almost all energy sources, from coal to renewables. The European Commission, which negotiates on behalf of the 27 EU member states, has proposed gradually reducing protection for fossil fuel investments but has seen little support from other treaty signatories.

Unanimity is required to modify the treaty, whose 54 members include countries like Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, which are heavily reliant on fossil fuel export revenues and have little incentive to reform.

A sixth round of negotiations to reform the Energy Charter Treaty is opening on Tuesday (6 July) by which point the European Commission hopes to have rallied more support from non-EU states, like the UK and Balkan countries.

However, support for the EU’s reform plan was close to non-existent in the last negotiation round, where only six signatories even expressed views on the Commission’s proposal.

Kazakhstan was the only country to express an official position on the EU proposal and it “openly rejected” it, the documents show.

“After two hours of negotiations, it was clear that the EU proposal did not have enough support. None of the larger contracting parties was prepared to support the EU proposal in its current form. It would be necessary to examine where the EU’s flexibility could lie,” one of the leaked cables says.

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climate-debate

“Likelihood Of A Sub-Cooled Summer For Europe In 2021”, Hale Solar Cycle Suggests

by Dr Ludger Laurenz, May 30, 2021, in NoTricksZone

So far, much of Europe has seen a cold and wet 2021. It may be related to solar cycles. 

An essay at Die kalte Sonne by Dr. Ludger Laurenz looks at the relationship between solar activity and weather trends, and believes this summer’s temperature will be 1.5°C lower.

There are many scientific opinions about solar activity’s impact on weather and climate, which differ and contradict each other. For example, a new publication by Leamon et al. provides an important building block for uncovering solar influence. Background here.

Solar influence in historical climate data substantiated

In the Leamon et al publication, the authors looked at the 22-year Hale solar cycles and saw it is possible to detect and substantiate solar influence in historical climate data (from tropical ocean surface temperature to temperature, sunshine, and precipitation data) and to make quantitative statements about the influence of solar activity on weather data.

Norway winter temperature and sun: “high statistical significance”

“Using the alternating years between Hale cycles, a correlation between the 22-year Hale cycle of the Sun and the trend of winter temperature in the polar night of Norway can be demonstrated with high statistical significance,” Dr Laurenz adds.

“Parallel to the temperature trend, the solar influence of the Hale cycles is also evident in the index values of the North Atlantic and Arctic Oscillations,” says Laurenz  in addition. “Evidence of the influence of solar activity in the polar night of Scandinavia demonstrates that differences in solar activity are transmitted to the near-surface temperature via amplification mechanisms such as change in circulation patterns in the North Atlantic and Arctic Oscillations.”

The sun’s role in weather patterns is a great significance, and so CO2 is not the main driver at all.

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unclassified

UNPRECEDENTED COLD INVADES EUROPE: “EYELID FREEZING NIGHT BREAKS RECORDS”

by Cap Allon, Apr 29, 2021 in Electroverse

This year’s punishing winter has shown few signs of abating, even as May fast-approaches.

Across the European continent, the majority of nations are suffering their coldest April’s in decades–in around 100 years in Germany and the UK. This climatic reality (aka cooling) is in response to the historically low solar activity we’re been experiencing, as a decrease in output from the Sun weakens Earth’s jet streams and increases their tendency to flow in more of a weak and wavy manor — this “meridional” flow, as it’s known, increases the prevalence of Arctic outbreaks and “blocking” phenomenons.

The year 2021 is also further ‘uncorrelating’ the link between global temperatures and rising CO2 emissions. For decades, the agenda-driving doomsayers have decreed that our planet’s average temp will rise on an endless march upward unless crippling economic and social reforms were immediately implemented (recently renamed “the Great Reset”) — well, does this (chart linked below) look like catastrophic global warming to you?

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climate-debate

ENGLAND’S COLDEST APRIL SINCE 1922, GERMANY’S CHILLIEST SINCE 1917

by Cap Allon, Apr 20, 2021 in Elecroverse

It may be late-April, but spring 2021 is a no show across much of Europe.

The continent is suffering a climatic reality similar to that of the previous prolonged spell of reduced solar output: not since the Centennial Minimum (1880-1920) have Europeans suffered an April this cold and snowy.

ENGLAND’S COLDEST APRIL SINCE 1922

Despite the cherry-picking, the UHI-sidestepping, and the unrelenting propaganda, the British Isles simply won’t heat up — the UK’s agenda-shoveling Met Office has admitted as much themselves.

Recently, one of the Met Office’s key data sets revealed that the 2010s actually came out cooler than the 2000s — a fact that goes against ALL mainstream logic: we were told average temperatures would rise “linearly,” always up and up and up on an endless march to catastrophe if no poverty-inducing action was taken…

The Central England Temperature record (CET) measures the monthly mean surface air temperatures for the Midlands region of England. It is the longest series of monthly temperature observations in existence anywhere in the world, with data extending all the way back to the year 1659.

The CET’s mean reading for April, 2021 (to the 18th) is sitting at just 5.8C — that’s 1.5C below the 1961-1990 average (the current standard period of reference for climatological data used by the WMO–an historically cool era btw), and ranks as the coldest April since 1922, and the 18th coldest since records began 362 years ago.

GERMANY’S CHILLIEST SINCE 1917

With a mean temperature just of 4.5C, Germany is faring even worse than England — it is on for second coldest April since records began in 1881, and its coldest since 1917, according to German DWD national weather service records.

The following chart shows Germany’s mean temperature anomalies (through the 17th) — it’s been anomalously cold across the entire country:

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climate-debate

EUROPE’S POLAR COLD TO INTENSIFY THROUGH APRIL, AS NORTH AMERICA BRACES FOR A SIMILAR FATE — GRAND SOLAR MINIMUM

by Cap Allon, April 6, 2021 in Electroverse

Land masses across the northern hemisphere are experiencing a true taste of the GRAND SOLAR MINIMUM this spring, as while brief pockets of heat have intermittently prevailed, Arctic cold has never been far away, forever-threatening to wipe out those tender early-season crops that have been “tricked” into sprouting.

Overall, Earth’s temperature is falling (the UAH for March 2021 was 0.01C BELOW 30-year baseline), but brief pockets of heat will ALWAYS occur–even during the depths of an ice age. It is actually these swings between extremes that will hasten the failure of our modern, and surprisingly fragile, food production systems — constants are workable, even if those constants are cold, it is climatic unpredictability and extreme flip-flopping that is a growers most bitter foe.

EUROPE’S POLAR COLD TO INTENSIFY THROUGH APRIL

Recently, Europe has suffered a sharp reversal of fortunes — the continent has shifted gears, going from enjoying some of its warmest March temperatures on record, to a historic blast of polar cold and snow.

The low solar activity we’ve seen over the past few years has weakened the jet stream, reverting its usual strong zonal flow to more of a wavy meridional one. At the end of March, this flow was pulling warm African air anomalously far north, which resulted in the likes of Holland, Germany, France, and Belgium registering some of their warmest March temperatures ever recorded; and now, barely a week later, this loosey-goosey jet stream has conspired to drop brutal, record-breaking Arctic air over these exact same regions.

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See also March Weather Past & Present

climate-debate

SUBSTANTIAL EARLY-DECEMBER SNOW FORECAST TO BLANKET THE UK AND EUROPE: 11 FOOT (3.28 METRES) PREDICTED IN THE ALPS

by Cap Allon, Dec 2, 2020 in Electroverse

The UK is set for a flurry of heavy and rare early-December snow this week, with even far southern regions on course for disruptive accumulations.

The first dusting is expected to arrive across the northern half of the UK today, Dec. 2, and more will follow in the coming days, to more southern regions, too, as a descending Arctic blast tightens its grip on the nation.

Heavy snow is likely to have buried vast swathes of the country by Friday, with forecasters suggesting the bitter wintry mix could even rage on until the middle of next week -at least- with hard frosts also expected: “In the clear periods between bands of wintry showers, frosts are likely and these could be sharp or even severe in prolonged clear conditions in north-western parts of the UK,” warns Steve Ramsdale, Chief Meteorologist at the Met Office.

Over the next 5 days alone, latest GFS runs reveal Britain will be hit by a substantial smattering of early-season snow as frigid polar air rides anonymously-far south on the back of a meridional jet stream—a setup shown to increase during times of low solar activity–such as we’re suffering now:

 

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better to know...?, energy and fields

Are governments able to deliver the energy transition?

by S. Furfari, Nov 16, 2020 in EuropeanScientist

On 4 December 2019, in her first Brussels press conference the newly appointed president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said she will lead a ‘geopolitical Commission’. One year later, we are still waiting for some ‘geopolitical’ results. Indeed, it is rather a ‘green Commission’, as even the Covid crisis – though its cause is totally unrelated to energy – is used to reinforce the ‘energy transition’, wanted by the German Chancellor. In September 1999, arriving as president of the European Commission Mr Romano Prodi has been convinced that energy was not so important and that it did not deserve to be managed by an energy general directorate. It merged it with the transport energy directorate. What a difference twenty later: energy is now the centre of all interest, not for its own merits, but because it is at the centre of the climate change debate. But are politicians able to drive the vast, complex and multi-dependent energy system? Is their willingness’s able to master it effective?

Not surprisingly, this concept of ‘energy transition’ was invented in Germany in the early 1980s. In a book entitled ‘Energie-Wende, Wachstum und Wohlstand ohne Erdöl und Uran’ published in 1980, researchers from a German environmentalist organisation, the Öko-Institut, proposed to stop using oil and uranium. The simplified term ‘EnergieWende’ was quickly coined to refer to the fight against climate change and the abandonment of nuclear energy. Germany has firmly followed this track since the beginning of the 21st century, aiming at a radical change in its energy policy. The German population has also adhered to this concept because, after 40 years of green nuclear bashing, it has become widely opposed tonuclear energy.

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Figure 1Correlation of electricity price for dwellings with intermittent renewable electricity production
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climate-debate

North Atlantic Cycle Change? Northern Europe October Temperature Trends Suggest Autumn Coming Sooner

by P. Gosselin, Nov 11, 2020 in NoTricksZone

Today we look at October mean temperatures for the emerald island country of Ireland, the Scandinavian country of Sweden and Finland.

Global warming alarmists claim that the globe is warming, which intuitively would tell us summers should be getting longer, which in turn would mean the start of fall is getting pushed back. In such a case, September and October temperatures should be warming, but they are not!

Cooling Ireland

First we plot the mean temperature for 7 stations in Ireland for the month of October, for which the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) has sufficient data going back 25 years:

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Data source: JMA

Seven of 7 stations in Ireland have seen a strong cooling trend for October since 1995.

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energy and fields

The West Intends Energy Suicide: Will It Succeed?

by T. Doshi, Oct 10, 2020 in Forbes

Suicide is viewed as a crime in many countries. In a court of law, it is a serious charge and the evidence needs to be conclusive for such an accusation to stand (e.g., did you actually see him attempt to jump off the bridge?). But when societies (or at least their leaders) attempt it, one can say that it safely falls under the rubric of the sovereign right to misrule. In the hallowed tradition of Western liberal democracy, so long as its political leaders are elected in free and fair elections, misrule leading to societal death by suicide is merely an unfortunate outcome of either gross negligence or culpable intention led by, say, an ideology of de-industrialization. Nevertheless, let us proceed with the case for the prosecution.

The Circumstantial Evidence Of Societal Suicide

The first piece of evidence is an astonishing article published last week in the Boston Review by a professor of anthropology in Rutgers University . The good professor opined that Zimbabwe and Puerto Rico “provide models for what we might call ‘pause-full’ electricity”. The West, he continues, has created a vast infrastructure for generating and consuming electricity 24/7, 365 days a year. Since this is based on “planet-destroying fossil fuels and nuclear power”, we need to emulate the aforementioned poor countries and save the climate by giving up the demand for the constant supply of electricity.

To be fair, the professor also noted that the Zimbabweans and Puerto Ricans did not choose to accept electricity rationing but were imposed upon by the gross negligence and corruption of their governments. The professor cannot be lightly dismissed, and the Boston Review shares its domicile with MIT and Harvard University, the temples of wisdom in modern Western civilization. And the Review has its share of kudos, at least for those of a particular persuasion: “When it comes to publishing fresh and generative ideas, Boston Review has no peer” says Robin D. G. Kelley, Professor of American History at the University of California, Los Angeles and Naomi Klein, activist and New York Times NYT-0.5% best-selling author, opines that “Boston Review is so good right now.”

Let us move on to our second piece of evidence, this time from the other side of the “climate emergency” aisle.  Professor Fritz Vahrenholt is a giant among environmental circles in Germany. (The country is well known as the world’s leading champion for all things environmental and for pushing Europe to “net zero emissions by 2050”.) Prof. Vahrenholt holds a doctorate in chemistry and started his professional career at the Federal Environmental Agency in Berlin (responsible for the chemical industry) before joining the Hessian Ministry of the Environment. From 1984 until 1990 he served as state secretary for environment, from 1991 till 1997 as minister for energy and environment in the state of Hamburg.

One day before the publication of the Boston Review article on October 5th, Prof Vahrenholt stated baldly in a German TV interview that climate science was “politicized”, “exaggerated”, and filled with “fantasy” and “fairy tales”. He pronounced that “The [Paris] Accord is already dead. Putin says it’s nonsense. […] The Americans are out. The Chinese don’t have to do anything. It’s all concentrated on a handful of European countries. The European Commission in massively on it. And I predict that they will reach the targets only if they destroy the European industries.” He lambasted Germany as a country “in denial when it comes to the broader global debate taking place on climate science”. He went on to characterize Europe’s recent push for even stricter emissions reduction targets to madness akin to Soviet central planning that is doomed to fail spectacularly.

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climate-debate

Low Solar Activity Points To Colder Than Normal 2020/21 European Winter

by P. Gosselin, Oct 16, 2020 in NoTricksZone

SnowFan here reports on the latest winter forecasts for the 2020/21 Europe winter. History and statistics show Europe could be in for a frosty winter. 

Currently a significant La Nina is shaping up, and history shows that these events in the Pacific have an impact on Europe’s winters:

 

 

The NOAA reanalysis above shows the temperature deviations (left) and for precipitation (right) from the WMO average 1981-2010 during the six La Niña years of winter in Europe. Large parts of Europe have average temperatures and precipitation is distributed differently, with Germany being slightly drier overall than the WMO average. Is a 2020/21 winter in Germany under La Niña conditions shaping up to have average temperatures and slightly less humidity?

Strong winter-solar correlation

A more important factor determining winter in Europe may be solar activity. Data from the German DWD national weather service since 1954 show a remarkable higher frequency of cold winters in times of low solar activity, such as we are now in the midst of.

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climate-debate

Claim: Historical climate fluctuations in Central Europe overestimated due to tree ring analysis

by Postdam Institute, Sep 10, 2020 in WUWT

“Was there a warm period in the Middle Ages that at least comes close to today’s? Answers to such fundamental questions are largely sought from tree ring data,” explains lead author Josef Ludescher of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). “Our study now shows that previous climate analyses from tree ring data significantly overestimate the climate’s persistence. A warm year is indeed followed by another warm rather than a cool year, but not as long and strongly as tree rings would initially suggest. If the persistence tendency is correctly taken into account, the current warming of Europe appears even more exceptional than previously assumed.”

To examine the quality of temperature series obtained from tree rings, Josef Ludescher and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber (PIK) as well as Armin Bunde (Justus-Liebig-University Giessen) and Ulf Büntgen (Cambridge University) focused on Central Europe. Main reason for this approach was the existing long observation series dating back to the middle of the 18th century to compare with the tree ring data. In addition, there are archives that accurately recorded the beginning of grape and grain harvests and even go back to the 14th century. These records, as well as the width of tree rings, allow temperature reconstructions. A warm summer is indicated by a wide tree ring and an early start of the harvest, a cold summer by a narrow tree ring and a late start of the harvest. The trees studied are those from altitudes where temperature has a strong influence on growth and where there is enough water for growth even in warm years.

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