energy and fields

France to cut renewable growth

by The Energy Advocate, September 26, 2018

The French Government will drastically reduce the growth of its renewable spending in 2019, with the ecology ministry’s draft budget showing a 1.3% rise, which will effectively be flat after inflation.

Total spending on renewable projects will equate to €7.3 billion and will mostly go towards wind and solar schemes.

The move will force France to seek alternative forms of energy after last year France had to import UK coal power to fuel the country as temperatures plummeted in the winter months.

…

climate-debate

Sea Level Speculation Irresponsibly Threatens Property Owners

by Jim Steele, September 26, 2018 in WUWT

…

The suggested steady 3.3 mm/year rise since 1992 conflicted with CO2-driven model predictions of acceleration. So, based on the difficulties of calibrating altimetry with tide gauge data, various researchers claimed satellite drift and biases had over-estimated early estimates of sea level rise from 1994-2002. Various adjustments were then evoked, and varying rates of sea level rise published. New global sea level estimates rose at an accelerating rate from 1.8 in 1993 to 3.9 mm/yr today, others at 2.2 mm/yr in 1993 to 3.3 mm/yr in 2014, yet others found satellite adjustments lowered the average rate of sea level rise to 2.6 mm/yr over that same period. Elsewhere Harvard geophysicists were analyzing the effects of mass change on the earth’s rotation and wobble and were disturbed by the misfit between geophysical observations and sea level estimates. They argued that only if 20thcentury sea level rise was limited to 1.2 mm/yr could there be a good fit with geophysical expectations.

climate-debate

Another Dis-alarming Analysis of Arctic Sea Ice David Middleton / 17 hours ago September 26, 2018

by David Middleton, September 26, 2018 in WUWT

Anthony recently posted an excellent Arctic sea ice analysis by Ron Clutz.  In a similar vein, I decided to look at Arctic sea ice from a couple of other dis-alarming perspectives.

We keep hearing about the Arctic being ice-free anytime from next month up until a continuously rolling forward decade or so.  One question that has to be answered is:

What does ice-free mean?

When does ice-free mean ice-free?

First, we need to clarify what exactly an “ice-free” Arctic summer is.

By “ice-free”, scientists usually mean a sea ice extent of less than one million square kilometres, rather than zero sea ice cover.

–Dr Alexandra Jahn, Assistant Professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and Fellow at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado. Carbon Brief, August 25, 2016.

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climate-debate

The Shameful Politicization Of Hurricanes

by H.S. Burnett, September 26, 2018 in ClimateChangeDispatch

…

Here are several facts that dispel these myths.

First, although the Atlantic hurricane season is not over yet, thus far, the number of hurricanes occurring this year is below average.

During a typical six-month Atlantic hurricane season, 12 named storms form, six become hurricanes, and three of those become major hurricanes – meaning Category 3 or higher.

This season, 10 named storms have formed in the Atlantic Basin, three of which became hurricanes.

Two other hurricanes briefly became minor storms off the west coast of Africa – and only Florence became a major hurricane.

Furthermore, only one has made landfall in the United States: Florence.

Before the above-average Atlantic hurricane season of 2017, the United States experienced the longest period in recorded history, nine years, without a major hurricane (Category 3 or higher) striking the country.

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energy and fields

China coal power building boom sparks climate warning

by Matt McGraph, September 27, 2018 in BBCNews

Building work has restarted at hundreds of Chinese coal-fired power stations, according to an analysis of satellite imagery.

The research, carried out by green campaigners CoalSwarm, suggests that 259 gigawatts of new capacity are under development in China.

The authors say this is the same capacity to produce electricity as the entire US coal fleet.

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See also here

climate-debate

The Great Global Warming Hoax?

by The Middlelbury Community Network, September 2018

Editor’s Introductory Note: Our planet has been slowly warming since last emerging from the “Little Ice Age” of the 17th century, often associated with the Maunder Minimum.  Before that came the “Medieval Warm Period“, in which temperatures were about the same as they are today.  Both of these climate phenomena are known to have occurred in the Northern Hemisphere, but several hundred years prior to the present, the majority of the Southern Hemisphere was primarily populated by indigenous peoples, where science and scientific observation was limited to non-existent.  Thus we can not say that these periods were necessarily “global”.

However, “Global Warming” in recent historical times has been an undisputable fact, and no one can reasonably deny that.

….

Summary – Exactly what have we learned here?

1.  The “Greenhouse Effect” is a natural and valuable phenomenon, without which, the planet would be uninhabitable.2.  Modest Global Warming, at least up until 1998 when a cooling trend began, has been real.

3.  CO2 is not a significant greenhouse gas; 95% of the contribution is due to Water Vapor.

4.  Man’s contribution to Greenhouse Gasses is relatively insignificant.  We didn’t cause the recent Global Warming and we cannot stop it.

5.  Solar Activity appears to be the principal driver for Climate Change, accompanied by complex ocean currents which distribute the heat and control local weather systems.

6.  CO2 is a useful trace gas in the atmosphere, and the planet would actually benefit by having more, not less of it, because it is not a driver for Global Warming and would enrich our vegetation, yielding better crops to feed the expanding population.

7.  CO2 is not causing global warming, in fact, CO2 is lagging temperature change in all reliable datasets.  The cart is not pulling the donkey, and the future cannot influence the past.

8.  Nothing happening in the climate today is particularly unusual, and in fact has happened many times in the past and will likely happen again in the future.

9.  The UN IPCC has corrupted the “reporting process” so badly, it makes the oil-for-food scandal look like someone stole some kid’s lunch money.  They do not follow the Scientific Method, and modify the science as needed to fit their predetermined conclusions.  In empirical science, one does NOT write the conclusion first, then solicit “opinion” on the report, ignoring any opinion which does not fit their predetermined conclusion while falsifying data to support unrealistic models.

10.  Polar Bear populations are not endangered, in fact current populations are healthy and at almost historic highs.  The push to list them as endangered is an effort to gain political control of their habitat… particularly the North Slope oil fields.

11.  There is no demonstrated causal relationship between hurricanes and/or tornadoes and global warming.  This is sheer conjecture totally unsupported by any material science.

12.  Observed glacial retreats in certain select areas have been going on for hundreds of years, and show no serious correlation to short-term swings in global temperatures.

13.  Greenland is shown to be an island completely surrounded by water, not ice, in maps dating to the 14th century.  There is active geothermal activity in the currently “melting” sections of Greenland.

14.  The Antarctic Ice cover is currently the largest ever observed by satellite, and periodic ice shelf breakups are normal and correlate well with localized tectonic and geothermal activity along the Antarctic Peninsula.

15.  The Global Warming Panic was triggered by an artifact of poor mathematics which has been thoroughly disproved.  The panic is being deliberately nurtured by those who stand to gain both financially and politically from perpetuation of the hoax.

16.  Scientists who “deny” the hoax are often threatened with loss of funding or even their jobs.

17.  The correlation between solar activity and climate is now so strong that solar physicists are now seriously discussing the much greater danger of  pending global cooling.

18.  Biofuel hysteria is already having a disastrous effect on world food supplies and prices, and current technologies for biofuel production consume more energy than the fuels produce.

19.  Global Warming Hysteria is potentially linked to a stress-induced mental disorder.

20. In short, there is no “climate crisis” of any kind at work on our planet.
climate-debate

Retracing Antarctica’s glacial past

by Louisiana State University, September 25, 2018 in ScienceDaily

More than 26,000 years ago, sea level was much lower than it is today partly because the ice sheets that jut out from the continent of Antarctica were enormous and covered by grounded ice — ice that was fully attached to the seafloor. As the planet warmed, the ice sheets melted and contracted, and sea level began to rise. Researchers have discovered new information that illuminates how and when this global phenomenon occurred.

…

More recently in 2002, in the northern part of Antarctica called the Antarctic Peninsula, the Larsen Ice Shelf collapsed. The collapse of this ice shelf quickly led to inland glaciers buttressed by the Larsen Ice Shelf to break up and melt. Scientists have thought that a similar process could have occurred when the Ross Ice Shelf collapsed thousands of years ago in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

However, Bart and colleagues from the University of South Florida, Auburn University and the Polish Academy of Sciences found that there was a centuries-long delay from when the Ross Ice Shelf collapsed and the grounded ice began to contract. In the Ross Sea, the delay was between 200 to 1,400 years later. This new information adds a layer of complexity for sea level rise computer simulations and predictions.

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climate-debate

The ‘Trick’ of Anomalous Temperature Anomalies

by Kip Hansen, September 25, 2018 in WUWT

It seems that every time  we turn around, we are presented with a new Science Fact that such-and-so metric — Sea Level Rise, Global Average Surface Temperature, Ocean Heat Content, Polar Bear populations, Puffin populations — has changed dramatically — “It’s unprecedented!” — and these statements are often backed by a graph illustrating the sharp rise (or, in other cases, sharp fall) as the anomaly of the metric from some baseline.  In most cases, the anomaly is actually very small and the change is magnified by cranking up the y-axis to make this very small change appear to be a steep rise (or fall).

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climate-debate

A Test of the Tropical 200- to 300-hPaWarming Rate in Climate Models

by R. McKitrick and J. Christy, July 6, 2018 in AGU100

Abstract
Overall climate sensitivity to CO2
doubling in a general circulation model results from a complex
system of parameterizations in combination with the underlying model structure. We refer to this as the model’smajor hypothesis, and we assume it to be testable. We explain four criteria that a valid test should meet: measurability, specificity, independence, and uniqueness. We argue that temperature change in the
tropical 200- to 300-hPa layer meets these criteria. Comparing modeled to observed trends over the past
60 years using a persistence-robust variance estimator shows that all models warm more rapidly than
observations and in the majority of individual cases the discrepancy is statistically significant. We argue that
this provides informative evidence against the major hypothesis in most current climate models.
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sciences-general

Ancient Mars had right conditions for underground life, new research suggests

by Brown University, September 24, 2018 in ScienceDaily/EPSL

A new study shows evidence that ancient Mars probably had an ample supply of chemical energy for microbes to thrive underground.

“We showed, based on basic physics and chemistry calculations, that the ancient Martian subsurface likely had enough dissolved hydrogen to power a global subsurface biosphere,” said Jesse Tarnas, a graduate student at Brown University and lead author of a study published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters. “Conditions in this habitable zone would have been similar to places on Earth where underground life exists.”

…

New research shows that ancient Mars likely had ample chemical energy to support the kinds of underground microbial colonies that exist on Earth.
Credit: NASA / JPL
better to know...?, climate and geology

Geologists: No Link Between Climate Warming And Rock Slides in European Alps!

by P. Gosselin, September 23, 2018 in NoTricksZone

Last year, August, 2017, a massive rockslide occurred on the north flank of the Piz Cengalo (3369 m) in the Swiss Alps, above the village of Bondo, located near the border to Italy.

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No data suggesting warming is behind rock slides

In total some 4 million tonnes of rock and mud came tumbling down. The dramatic incident highlighted the hazards posed by rock slides for villages located near the picturesque mountains of the European Alps.

Though rockslides are not unusual, there has been growing scrutiny behind their causes lately. Unsurprisingly climate alarmists are opportunistically pointing the finger at climate warming.

 

 

climate-debate

The BBC’s Naive View of the UN’s Climate Machine

by Donna Laframboise, September25, 2018 in BigPictureNews

SPOTLIGHT: Bureaucracies put their trust in other bureaucracies.

BIG PICTURE: A few weeks back, Joanne Nova perfectly captured the position of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) regarding the scandalous UN entity known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

A recent internal document gives BBC journalists advice about how to report on climate matters. In Nova’s words, it declares that the “IPCC is God, can not be wrong.”

The document’s exact words:

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climate-debate, press and newspapers

30 YEARS AGO OFFICIALS PREDICTED THE MALDIVES WOULD BE SWALLOWED BY THE SEA. IT DIDN’T HAPPEN

by Michael Bastasch, September 21, 2018 in TheDailyCaller

Environmental officials warned 30 years ago the Maldives could be completely covered by water due to global warming-induced sea level rise.

That didn’t happen. The Indian Ocean did not swallow the Maldives island chain as predicted by government officials in the 1980s.

In September 1988, the Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported a “gradual rise in average sea level is threatening to completely cover this Indian Ocean nation of 1196 small islands within the next 30 years,” based on predictions made by government officials.

Then-Environmental Affairs Director Hussein Shihab told AFP “an estimated rise of 20 to 30 centimetres in the next 20 to 40 years could be ‘catastrophic’ for most of the islands, which were no more than a metre above sea level.”

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climate-debate

Arctic Ice Made Simple

by Ron Clutz, September 22, 2018 in ScienceMatters

People are overthinking and over-analyzing Arctic Ice extents, and getting wrapped around the axle (or should I say axis).  So let’s keep it simple and we can all readily understand what is happening up North.

I will use the ever popular NOAA dataset derived from satellite passive microwave sensors.  It sometimes understates the ice extents, but everyone refers to it and it is complete from 1979 to 2017.  Here’s what NOAA reports (in M km2):

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climate and geology

A Geological Feud Over the Meghalayan? Or Just More Rubbish Published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science of America?

by David Middleton, September 24, 2018 in WUWT

Alternate Title: Yes, We Have No Anthropocene, We Have No Anthropocene Today! (Sung to the tune of Yes, We Have No Bananas)

…

 

Figure 4 from Finney & Edwards.  “Workflow for approval and ratification of a Global Standard Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) proposal. Extensive discussion and evaluation occurs at the level of the working group, subcommission, and International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) Bureau. If approved at these successive levels, a proposal is forwarded to the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) for ratification. This process is also followed for other ICS decisions on standardization, such as approval of names of formal units, of revisions to the units, and to revision or replacement of GSSPs.”

climate and geology

500 Million Years of Unrelatedness between Atmospheric CO2 and Temperature

by Davis W.J., 2017 in Climate/CO2Science

…

One final gem from Davis’ work is a pronouncement that follows a discussion on the lack of correlation between CO2 and temperature across the historical record, where he aptly reminds us that “correlation does not imply causality, but the absence of correlation proves conclusively the absence of causality.” Consequently, there should be no more doubt regarding the ineffectiveness of atmospheric CO2 to control or drive climate change. It is simply nothing more than a bit player, whose influence has been continually overestimated by climate alarmists. The big question now is whether or not 500 million years of these data will convince them otherwise!

from Davis 2017

Egalement: Le changement climatique : la règle en géologie

climate and geology

Iceland’s monster volcano charging up for eruption

by Anthony Watts, September 20, 2018 in WUWT

The Katla volcano, hidden beneath the ice cap of Mýrdalsjökull glacier in Iceland, has historically erupted violently once every 40-80 years.  In-as-much as it’s last such eruption took place one hundred years ago, in 1918, Katla’s next eruption is long overdue.

An eruption in Katla would dwarf the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption, scientists have warned.

A new study by Icelandic and British geologists showed that Katla is emitting enormous quantities of CO2 – at least 20 kilotons of CO2 every day. Only two volcanoes worldwide are known to emit more CO2, Evgenia Ilyinskaya a volcanologist with the University of Leeds told the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service RÚV.

…

N ICE CAULDRON IN MÝRDALSJÖKULL Geothermal activity in the volcano’s caldera melts the glacier, creating cauldrons in the ice. Photo/Fréttablaðið

climate-debate, energy and fields

“There Has Never Been An Energy Transition”

by David Middleton, September 20, 2018T in WUWT

One of my favorite sayings is, “We didn’t leave the Stone Age because we ran out of stones.”  Technically we never left the Stone Age because we use more rocks now than we did in the Stone Age.

And we never left the “Wood Age.”  There was no energy transition from biomass (wood) to fossil fuels. Coal piled on top of biomass, oil piled on top of coal and natural gas piled on top of oil

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climate-debate

Scientists Throw Cold Water On Claims Linking Hurricane Florence To Global Warming

by M. Bastasch, September 19, 2018 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Hurricane Florence made landfall on Friday in North Carolina, bringing heavy rains and flooding. But before the storm touched down in the U.S., scientists and news outlets were already linking the storm to global warming.

However, not all scientists agree that man-made warming is making hurricanes, including Florence, bigger, slower and wetter as is often claimed in the media.

Climatologist Judith Curry called efforts by the “mainstream climate community” to link Florence to man-made global warming “woefully inadequate and misleading to scientists, the public and policymakers.”

…

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climate-debate

Climategate continues: Release of University of Arizona Climate Emails Imminent

by Anthony Watts, September 19, 2018 in WUWT

Nearly seven years ago, on December 7th, 2011, the Free Market Environmental Law Clinic’s (FME Law) sought public records from the University of Arizona related to the Mann-Bradley-Hughes temperature reconstruction that looks like a hockey stick, and development of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.  They refused much of the request and FME Law sued.  Now (on September 18th, 2018) legal counsel for the University informed FME Law that they were done, that they would be withdrawing their appeal of the trial court’s decision, end the case and disclose the records.

Included in the release will be emails that, for example, provide the full context of the discussions between Michael Mann and colleagues and Chick Keller on whether there was a medieval warm period and a little ice age.  Mann, Bradley and Hughes (MBH) were the authors of the “hockey stick” graph that became the icon of climate alarmism.  Dr. Keller was, at the time, Director of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at the Los Alamos National Lab and affiliated with the University of California at San Diego, and wanted to reconcile data which appeared to refute the MBH papers.  Also within this collection will be the full discussion on events surrounding an effort to remove editors of journals willing to publish peer-reviewed papers that contradicted the MBH and related papers on which climate alarmism was built.  This collection of emails is particularly important in that they will provide the full context of Climategate emails that have been described as “cherry picking.”

…

better to know...?

New Study: German Mid-Sized E-Cars Produce Less CO2 Than Diesel Autos…After 364,000 Miles!

by P. Gosselin, September 19, 2018 in ClimateChangeDispatch

The German ADAC association, the equivalent of America’s AAA, carried a CO2 comparison for a variety e-autos and combustion engine cars. The results were very surprising, says German magazine Autobild here.

Today’s electric cars are being pushed as a clean and environmentally friendly alternative, while diesel and gasoline burning engines are being villainized as polluters and climate killer …

climate-debate

COTES DE FLANDRE, SUBMERSIONS FAITS ET LEGENDES

by Jo Moreau, 20 septembre 2018, in Belgotopia

Les côtes de Flandre n’ont pas toujours été aussi paisibles qu’aujourd’hui, et je n’oublie pas le raz-de-marée du 31 janvier 1953 qui toucha les Pays-Bas et notre littoral, faisant plus de 1800 morts et des dégâts considérables. (photo : à Ostende).

Pêchés dans diverses chroniques et ouvrages (notamment “La Flandre mystérieuse” de Saint Hilaire), j’en ai fait une compilation qui n’a bien entendu aucune prétention scientifique ou historique, mais ces événements avaient laissé une trace dans la mémoire populaire, trace qui a hélas fortement tendance à s’effacer.

J’y ajoute quelques événements survenus en France et aux Pays-Bas, dont on peut raisonnablement penser au vu de leur localisation, qu’ils eurent des conséquences sur nos côtes

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climate-debate

How constant is the “solar constant?”

by Andy May, September 19, 2018 in WUWT

The IPCC lowered their estimate of the impact of solar variability on the Earth’s climate from the already low value of 0.12 W/m2 (Watts per square-meter) given in their fourth report (AR4), to a still lower value of 0.05 W/m2 in the 2013 fifth report (AR5), the new value is illustrated in Figure 1. These are long term values, estimated for the 261-year period 1750-2011 and they apply to the “baseline” of the Schwabe ~11-year solar (or sunspot) cycle, which we will simply call the “solar cycle” in this post. The baseline of the solar cycle is the issue since the peaks are known to vary. The Sun’s output (total solar irradiance or “TSI”) is known to vary at all time scales (Kopp 2016), the question is by how much. The magnitude of short-term changes, less than 11 years, in solar output are known relatively accurately, to better than ±0.1 W/m2. But, the magnitude of solar variability over longer periods of time is poorly understood. Yet, small changes in solar output over long periods of time can affect the Earth’s climate in significant ways (Eddy 1976) and (Eddy 2009).

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climate-debate

Statistical study of past temperature records suggest possible undetected natural climate forcing cycles

by Anthony Watts, September 18, 2018 in WUWT

Godfrey Dack writes in with this:

Everyone will be familiar with the difficulty of listening to a conversation held with a friend in a crowded room with many other conversations going on at the same time. So it is with many fields of scientific investigation where it is difficult to tease a particular trend out from masses of data. In the first case, we could call the friend’s conversation ‘The Signal’, and the background conversations ‘The Noise’.

In looking at climate data, trends (the signal) can be graphically represented by a (generally) smooth curve, usually flanked by a range of experimentally predicted or actually measured values (the noise). Joining up every point on a graph of such data would give a jagged line which could be thought of as a combination of many alternating functions over a wide range of frequencies.

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La géologie, une science plus que passionnante … et diverse