Above-average Atlantic hurricane activity again expected in 2021

Typical influence of La Niña on Pacific and Atlantic seasonal hurricane activity. Map by NOAA Climate.gov, based on originals by Gerry Bell.

Prediction time as the 2021 season approaches. The expected impacts of El Niño and La Niña on hurricane seasons in both the Atlantic and Pacific ocean areas are discussed by NOAA here. Hurricane detection has improved over time, so what is considered ‘average’ now is unlikely to be the same as it used to be.
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The year 2020 saw the most active hurricane season on record and marked the fifth consecutive year for above-average activity, says Phys.org.

A University of Arizona-led hurricane forecasting team predicts another year of above-average hurricane activity over the Atlantic Ocean in 2021.

The team predicts 18 named storms, including eight hurricanes, throughout the 2021 North Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30.

In comparison, the 30-year average is 13 named storms and seven hurricanes annually.

Four storms are expected to produce major hurricanes, which are defined as category 3, 4 or 5.

If the predictions are realized, 2021 will be the sixth-consecutive year for above-average activity.

“The past decade has been very active for hurricanes,” said forecast creator Xubin Zeng, director of the university’s Climate Dynamics and Hydrometeorology Center and a professor of atmospheric sciences.

“We need to ask ourselves if this is part of the natural variability of the system, or if we are already seeing impacts of global warming,” said Zeng, who is also the Agnes N. Haury Endowed Chair in Environment in the Department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences. “If this is part of the natural variability, then after some overactive seasons, we’d expect activity to quiet down, but every year is kind of crazy in the past few years.”

While Zeng expects that a warming world is translating to warmer ocean waters that fuel hurricane development, that can’t yet be confirmed through modeling.

“In climate modeling, every model resolution (similar to a single pixel or grid box on the Earth’s surface) is about 50 miles by 50 miles. In contrast, for global weather forecasting models, the resolution is more like five miles by five miles,” Zeng said. “If we really want to simulate the impact of global warming on hurricanes, it’s preferable we have the smaller model grid box, and we just don’t have the computing power for that yet for decade-long simulations.”

Zeng predicts, however, that in another 10 years, he will have the data and confidence to say for sure that the increase in hurricane activity was outside of the natural variability of the climate.

While this season is expected to bring above-average activity, it isn’t expected to be as dramatic as last year, partly due to average climate patterns in the Pacific Ocean driven by sea surface temperatures.

When eastern tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures are below average—a weather phenomenon known as La Niña—it drives up easterly wind speeds over the Atlantic that exacerbate hurricanes.

When Pacific sea surface temperatures are above average—a weather pattern referred to as El Niño—it weakens easterly winds and weakens hurricane activity over the Atlantic.

Full article here.

Met Office and Microsoft to build climate supercomputer

Weather forecasting technology

Before they even build it, everyone knows what kind of answers the ‘climate supercomputer’ will be required to produce. These will then be presented as evidence of the pre-conceived climate theories, which will be tagged as ‘science’ and everyone will be expected to be impressed.
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The Met Office will work with Microsoft on a supercomputer which will help model climate change, says BBC News..

They say it will provide more accurate weather forecasting and a better understanding of climate change.

The UK government said in February 2020 it would invest £1.2bn in the project.

Albert Einstein said no to CO2 radiative warming of the atmosphere

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Unfortunately climate alarmists are too far down their manic road to be halted by the views of Einstein or anyone else, but worth a look anyway.
[H/T Chaeremon]

Odyssey

The hypothesis of global warming from man made CO2 depends on a much-repeated narrative about CO2 trapping infrared (IR) photons leaving the earth. Although a beguilingly simple idea, a host of assumptions underlie it. One of these is that the radiative photonic absorption – emission interactions of the trace gas CO2 dominate heat movement in the atmosphere. And it turns out, this argument, a pillar of the global warming theory, is false – it was refuted in advance by none other than Albert Einstein in 1917.

In this 1917 paper:

http://inspirehep.net/record/858448/files/eng.pdf

Einstein says this about radiative heating of a gas:

“During absorption and emission of radiation there is also present a transfer of momentum to the molecules. This means that just the interaction of radiation and molecules leads to a velocity distribution of the latter. This must surely be the same as the velocity distribution which molecules acquire as the…

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Climate mania: California says it’s time for giant carbon vacuums

Photosynthesis: nature requires carbon dioxide

Climate mania is now in full swing as catastrophism takes over. What difference its supposed remedies will make to the climate remains to be seen – or not seen. At vast cost and effort, greenhouse gas theories of climate modellers are being assumed to be broadly correct, despite consistent failure to predict even current conditions.
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Solar panels, wind turbines and electric cars will go far in helping California and the Biden administration meet their aggressive climate goals—but not far enough, claims Phys.org.

As time runs short, scientists and government officials say the moment to break out the giant vacuums has arrived.

The art of industrial-scale carbon removal—sucking emissions from the atmosphere and storing them underground—has long been an afterthought in climate-action circles: too expensive, too controversial, too unproven.

UK to speed up target to cut carbon dioxide emissions

Ever-rising energy costs and a blizzard of new regulations await as the government dives further down the climate rabbit hole.
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Radical new climate change commitments are to become law in the UK, Boris Johnson will announce this week.

The prime minister will say carbon emissions will be cut by 78% by 2035 – almost 15 years earlier than previously planned – which would be a world-leading position, says BBC News.

And for the first time the climate law would be extended to cover international aviation and shipping.

But Labour said the government had to match “rhetoric with reality”.

Greenland’s new government vows to block rare-earth mine proposed by the UK

Kvanefjeld, Greenland [image credit: polarconnection.org]

The UK government sees an opportunity to extract minerals from there for electric cars, wind turbines etc. to help satisfy its obsessive desire to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But some Greenlanders are concerned about radioactive uranium in the mine’s contents.
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Greenland’s left-wing Inuit Ataqatigiit party (IA), which has pledged to oppose a large rare-earth mining project, announced a new government coalition on Friday, as it reiterated its strong environmental stance and vowed to combat acute social issues, reports Yahoo News.

The Arctic island of 56,000 people has gained international attention since former U.S. President Donald Trump offered to buy it in 2019, partly to help address Chinese dominance of rare earth mineral supplies.

“We are one people and we must stand together in Greenland, especially because our country is under incredible focus from the outside world,” new Prime Minister Mute Egede told reporters in the capital Nuuk, accompanied by traditional Inuit music.

Africans Deflect Biden’s Demand To End Fossil Fuel Use

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Climate dogma and economic reality are not compatible. If one wins, the other loses.

PA Pundits - International

By Duggan Flanakin ~

As the merger of climate change and COVID panic materializes in front of our eyes, “global leaders” have found plenty developing world voices to join the crusade to “save the planet” from carbon (dioxide) “pollution.” But like their Chinese and Indian counterparts, many Africans, from heads of state to captains of industry and beyond, intend to expand, not shrink, reliance on fossil fuels to build their economies.

According to Oxford University researcher Galina Alova, “Africa’s electricity demand is set to increase significantly as the continent strives to industrialise and improve the well-being of its people,” but those who hope for rapid decarbonization in Africa will likely be disappointed.

Alova’s research found that Africa is likely to double its electricity generation by 2030, with fossil fuels providing two-thirds of the total, hydroelectric another 18 percent, and non-hydro renewables providing less than 10 percent.

Such an energy…

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Oceans losing oxygen mainly due to global warming, say researchers — but what about CO2?

The ocean carbon cycle [credit: IAEA]

Quoting from the article: ‘The main reason for this is global warming, which leads to a decrease in the solubility of gases and thus also of oxygen.’ Surely the same applies to carbon dioxide (CO2): warmer water causes release of some of it from the oceans into the atmosphere? Diagrams of the Earth’s natural carbon cycle seem conclusive enough.
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The life of almost all animals in the ocean depends on the availability of oxygen, which is dissolved as a gas in seawater, says Phys.org.

However, the ocean has been continuously losing oxygen for several decades. In the last 50 years, the loss of oxygen accumulates globally to about 2% of the total inventory (regionally sometimes significantly more).

The main reason for this is global warming, which leads to a decrease in the solubility of gases and thus also of oxygen, as well as to a slowdown in the ocean circulation and vertical mixing.

‘Obscene’ UK windfarm subsidies revealed

Some electricity consumers may feel like muttering obscenities if they see the figures. Meanwhile the BBC insists renewables are now cheaper than coal.
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The Global Warming Policy Forum has condemned what it called the “obscenity” of windfarm subsidies and has called for a complete rethink of energy policy.

GWPF research has shown that just six offshore windfarms are now sharing £1.6 billion pounds in subsidies between them every year.

Three receive annual subsidies of over a quarter of a billion pounds each year.

China’s Strange Endorsement Of “Net Zero”

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Soon China will be able to say ‘net zero’ fanaticism is clearly dragging major economies down, so they’re not going along with any so-called ‘climate emergency’.

PA Pundits - International

By Duggan Flanakin ~

You have to hand it to Xi Jinping. The Chinese “president for life” last September schmoozed the royalty of the United Nations with his unexpected pledge that his country aims “to have CO₂ emissions peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality (Net Zero) before 2060.”

Xi then urged other nations “to pursue innovative, coordinated, green and open development for all” through rapid deployment of new technologies so as to “achieve a green recovery of the world economy in the post-COVID era and thus create a powerful force driving sustainable development.”

The eloquent sage, confident that the mantle of world leadership was passing from the United States into his hands, concluded his prepared remarks as follows:

“The baton of history has been passed to our generation, and we must make the right choice, a choice worthy of the people’s trust and of our…

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Lithium prices could triple as EV production soars

Typical electric car set-up

Making cars is one thing, selling them another. A production slowdown is only a problem if demand exceeds supply, and to date demand for EVs has been weak in most countries. More expensive batteries forcing prices up obviously won’t help shift them. Maybe the mining firms have doubts about sales volumes and don’t want to over-produce, which could lead to price cutting.
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The global market share of electric vehicles is set to rise so quickly that battery manufacturers will not be able to meet production requirements, a Rystad Energy analysis shows.

The reason is that the mining capacity of lithium – a key ingredient in EV-purposed batteries – will fall short of demand unless investments in new mines accelerate, says OilPrice.com.

Under the current pipeline, capacity deficits could triple lithium prices towards the end of this decade.

The Climate Blame Game

A diet of daily assertions that human-caused carbon dioxide emissions are a big deal, isn’t evidence of anything.
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A paper published today shows that attempts to blame extreme weather on human-caused global warming are “overconfident and probably wrong”, says The Global Warming Policy Forum.

The paper, by statistician and philosopher of science Dr William M Briggs, reveals that mainstream attribution science is beset by flaws of reasoning, modelling and data.

The Green Mirage

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Wind is generating a mere 1-2% of UK electricity today, the cause being a high pressure weather system with very low wind speeds, which no amount of subsidy can ever prevent. Discuss.

Science Matters

John Constable writes at Civitas The Green Mirage: Why a Low-Carbon Economy May be Further Off Than We Think. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and images. h/t Real Clear Public Affairs

Findings:

• The prospects for a sustainable, low-carbon economy as the result of current UK national and EU-wide policies are poor.
• Empirical experience in Spain and Germany shows that the costs of supporting renewable energy generation are too high.
• Rising employment in the renewable energy sector compared to the wider UK economy stems from unsustainably high subsidies.
• Renewables are naturally less productive, so as they are relentlessly pursued, a painful rebalancing of the economy will occur, with fewer jobs and less economic growth.

Bottom Line: The current prospects for a sustainable low-carbon economy are poor in both the UK and across the European Union (EU). Germany and Spain have already clearly shown what happens when state coercion forces…

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Tremors around geothermal plant in France put spotlight on safety

Image credit: Jérôme Dorkel – Eurométropole de Strasbourg

Home owner insurance claims are pouring in. The local ‘net zero’ emissions plan is in serious trouble.
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A series of minor human-induced earthquakes in the area of Strasbourg, eastern France, last December has reminded local inhabitants about the safety of geothermal energy, highlighting the challenges faced by deep drilling technology, says Euractiv.

In December, the area around Strasbourg was shaken by several induced tremors, including one of 3.5 magnitude, after a geothermal company carrying out tests injected high-pressure water into the ground earlier in the autumn.

Induced earthquakes – those caused by human activity – had begun since tests started in the Alsace region in October at the geothermal plant operated by Fonroche, a French energy company.

The tremors were directly linked to the starting-up activities of the plant, said the French association of geothermal professionals, the AFPG.

China’s plans for Himalayan super dam stoke fears in India

Three Gorges Dam [image credit: caixinglobal.com]

Nothing if not ambitious. Needless to say it will need a lot of concrete, which will no doubt dismay climate botherers.
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China is planning a mega dam in Tibet able to produce triple the electricity generated by the Three Gorges—the world’s largest power station—stoking fears among environmentalists and in neighbouring India, reports Phys.org.

The structure will span the Brahmaputra River before the waterway leaves the Himalayas and flows into India, straddling the world’s longest and deepest canyon at an altitude of more than 1,500 metres (4,900 feet).

The project in Tibet’s Medog County is expected to dwarf the record-breaking Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River in central China, and is billed as able to produce 300 billion kilowatts of electricity each year.

It is mentioned in China’s strategic 14th Five-Year Plan, unveiled in March at an annual rubber-stamp congress of the country’s top lawmakers.

Rick Salvador: Final LOD model performance update

Talkshop readers will remember that as well as his work on modelling solar activity, Rick Salvador also built a planetary model to predict variation in Earth’s Length of Day (LOD). The model uses 13 frequencies derives from planetary and lunar motion to replicate changes in Earth’s spin rate.

Rick has retired from modelling now, so this is the final update on the model’s performance. The IERS LOD database was changed in early 2020, so the model performance update ends there. Over the last 4 years, Rick found that to keep it on track, he needed to add a -0.0006 second correction in June each year. The necessity for this is as yet unexplained and comments on possible reasons are encouraged.

Microwave boiler launches as retrofittable alternative to heat pumps and gas

Domestic gas central heating boiler

The battle to sell replacements for gas boilers, likely to be unavailable new in the relatively near future (2030?) in the UK, is on. As this microwave option appears we ask what, if anything, is wrong with existing electric boilers? Needless to say, anything electric can’t be more ‘low carbon’ than its electricity source, which is usually 40-60% gas in the UK. But using electricity for heating water instead of making hydrogen has some logic to it.
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A new heating technology has emerged from under the radar as a potential alternative to both heat pumps and gas boilers in the quest for low carbon heating, reports H&V News.

Heat Wayv, a UK energy technology company, has unveiled the world’s first microwave boiler intended as a zero-emissions replacement for gas boilers, with a view to the phase-out of natural gas in new-build homes from 2025.

The company originally developed the microwave technology as a portable cooking device for military use and has now applied it to the heating of water.

Current climate model simulations overestimate future sea-level rise

Emperor penguins, Antarctica [image credit: USAF / Wikipedia]

Too much alarm coming from climate models, again. This new research finds ‘some regions near Antarctica even cool under climate change’.
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The melting rate of the Antarctic ice sheet is mainly controlled by the increase of ocean temperatures surrounding Antarctica.

Using a new, higher-resolution climate model simulation, scientists from Utrecht University found a much slower ocean temperature increase compared to current simulations with a coarser resolution, reports Phys.org.

Abrupt ice age climate changes behaved like cascading dominoes

Rinks Glacier, West Greenland [image credit: NSIDC]

Interesting, but as we’ve had a temperature rise of about 1.2ºC since 1880, according to one source at least, comparisons with much bigger historical increases in shorter timescales seem somewhat ambitious, to say the least.
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Throughout the last ice age, the climate changed repeatedly and rapidly during so-called Dansgaard-Oeschger events, where Greenland temperatures rose between 5 and 16 degrees Celsius in decades, says Phys.org.

When certain parts of the climate system changed, other parts of the climate system followed like a series of dominos toppling in succession.

This is the conclusion from an analysis of ice-core data by a group of researchers that included postdoc Emilie Capron and associate professor Sune Olander Rasmussen from the Section for the Physics of Ice, Climate and Earth at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, in Denmark.

This discovery, just published in the journal Nature Communications, is concerning because the extent of sea ice in the Arctic played an important part in these dramatic climate shifts of the past.

France to declare agricultural ‘disaster’ over spring frost

A winegrower lights anti-frost candles in a French vineyard [image credit: thelocal.fr]

Government policy is to try and make the climate cooler. Now read on.
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The French government is to declare an agricultural disaster over an unusual early spring frost that has damaged crops and vines across the country, the agriculture minister said. Phys.org reporting.

Julien Denormandie told Franceinfo radio late Thursday that the cold snap had been “particularly difficult” for the sector with “significant losses” registered.

“We are completely mobilised so that the accompanying measures can be put in place as quickly as possible,” he said.