US blacklists Chinese nuclear firm involved in UK Hinkley Point C project

Planned nuclear power station at Hinkley Point

Another headache to add to the list for the UK’s struggling nuclear power ambitions, at a time when its coal-fired plants are closing fast.

China General Nuclear Power partnered with EDF to help fund a third of the £20bn cost of the nuclear power plant being built in Somerset, says Energy Live News.

A state-owned Chinese company which is funding part of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station in the UK has been placed on a US export blacklist.

The US Department of Commerce has placed China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN) to its “entity list”, which effectively blocks US companies from selling products and services to the firm without written approval.

The world’s first solar road has officially crumbled into a total failure

Solar panel road [image credit: Wattway]

The rotting leaves didn’t help, says ScienceAlert. Neither did the local tractors. Solar panels should be angled towards the Sun anyway, but that kills the whole road idea.

In July, the French daily newspaper Le Monde reported that the 0.6-mile (1 kilometre) solar road was a fiasco.

In December 2016, when the trial road was unveiled, the French Ministry of the Environment called it “unprecedented”. French officials said the road, made of photovoltaic panels, would generate electricity to power streetlights in Tourouvre, a local town.

But less than three years later, a report published by Global Construction Review says France’s road dream may be over.

Energy firm Cuadrilla resumes fracking

Note the deep shaft

Another attempt to convince a so-far reluctant UK government that shale gas work is far from being the pantomime villain that protesters want them to imagine it is. Insisting that ‘tremors’ far smaller than allowed in other comparable UK industries merit stoppages is unreasonable to say the least.

Energy firm Cuadrilla has resumed fracking at its site in Lancashire, it has confirmed.

Drilling began at the Preston New Road site in October but operations were halted on a number of occasions due to underground tremors, reports BBC News.

No fracking has taken place on the site since December.

The latest travesty in ‘consensus enforcement’

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Judith Curry writes: ‘This ranks as the worst paper I have ever seen published in a reputable journal’, calls out Nature for ‘rank stupidity’ and puts forward this query: ‘The ignorance of climate change of AOC and Greta is rather shocking. Why isn’t anyone concerned about this?’

Climate Etc.

The latest travesty in consensus ‘enforcement’, published by Nature.

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Northern tropical dry trend may just be normal variation

Intertropical Convergence Zone [image credit: University of New Mexico]

A key finding of this research concerns the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). The researchers report ‘southward mean positions of ITCZ during the early Medieval Warm Period and the Current Warm Period in the central Indo-Pacific.’ This seems to contradict claims, repeated recently, that the MWP was confined to northern parts of the European and American continents, or at least was not global. But the ITCZ is a global phenomenon, which in turn suggests any recent warming (CWP) could have similar origins to the MWP – surely a somewhat inconvenient proposition for man-made greenhouse gas theorists. Remember this Climategate story – ‘We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period’?

Rainfall variations in the tropics not only potentially influence 40% of the world’s population and the stability of the global ecosystem, but also the global hydrologic cycle and energy balance, says Phys.org.

Beginning in the 20th century, a decline in northern tropical rainfall has been observed, with researchers unsure whether the decline stems from natural or anthropogenic causes.

New rainfall research has shed some light on this question, but left the final answer up in the air.

UK weather latest: Downpours set to last ‘until end of August’

Credit: BBC

What happened to the ‘unprecedented’, ‘new normal’ hot weather that blew in from north Africa for a few days, then blew away again? Or was that just the media and warmist climate pundits shooting the breeze for yet another opportunistic headline? In any case it looks as if the Great British Summer is now back to its usual erratic self, but becoming somewhat wetter than the seasonal average.

Thunderstorms and heavy downpours are set to hit the UK this week, as Brits face what could be one of the wettest Augusts on record, says the Evening Standard.

Severe thunderstorm warnings are in place for London and the south east on Monday, with the chance of flooding, travel disruption and power cuts, the Met Office warns.

Chinese scientists warn of global cooling, impact of solar activity

Credit: Wikipedia

H/T The GWPF

The researchers say: “We have detected no evidence of human influence”, so the implications of the observed long-term natural variation are clear enough. But some reading between the lines may be needed here, due to a few of the usual nods towards man-made warming theory that climate researchers feel they have to make to survive these days.

Research sheds light on 500-year Chinese climate cycle and suggests global cooling could be on the way, reports the South China Morning Post.

A new study has found winters in northern China have been warming since 4,000BC – regardless of human activity – but the mainland scientists behind the research warn there is no room for complacency or inaction on climate change, with the prospect of a sudden global cooling also posing a danger.

The study found that winds from Arctic Siberia have been growing weaker, the conifer tree line has been retreating north, and there has been a steady rise in biodiversity in a general warming trend that continues today.

It appears to have little to do with the increase in greenhouse gases which began with the industrial revolution, according to the researchers.

Our handy ‘green’ tip for potential power blackout victims!

Randomly selected wind-up or hand-crank radio

The Talkshop doesn’t normally do product promotions, but bearing in mind the recent traumatic (for some) power failures in England, and just for fun – don’t call it a wind-up – let’s take a look at this from Best Radios UK:
Best Wind-Up Hand Crank Radios (UK 2019)

Surely it’s good to know these subsidy-free items are, among their many virtues, described as ‘a good way to reduce your carbon footprint’? ‘Climate emergency’ miserablists would approve anyway.
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Roundup of the Best Wind-Up Radios in the UK in 2019. See the top AM/FM hand crank radios with additional features such as torches, solar and phone charging.

A wind-up radio is a handy gadget to have when you’re a long way from a power socket.

A New Source of Space Radiation

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More electromagnetic goings-on near Earth’s outer fringes.

Spaceweather.com

August 9, 2019: Astronauts are surrounded by danger: hard vacuum, solar flares, cosmic rays. Researchers from UCLA have just added a new item to the list. Earth itself.

“A natural particle accelerator only 40,000 miles above Earth’s surface is producing ‘killer electrons’ moving close to the speed of light,” says Terry Liu, a newly-minted PhD who studied the phenomenon as part of his thesis with UCLA Prof. Vassilis Angelopoulos.

This means that astronauts leaving Earth for Mars could be peppered by radiation coming at them from behind–from the direction of their own home planet.

NASA’s THEMIS spacecraft ran across the particles in 2008 not far from the place where the solar wind slams into Earth’s magnetic field. Researchers have long known that shock waves at that location could accelerate particles to high energies–but not this high. The particles coming out of the Earth-solar wind interface have energies up to 100,000…

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New study traces Io’s volcanic tides

Credit: NASA [click on image to enlarge]

In a 2015 Talkshop post we found a resonant period of 486.5 days for the inner three of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter: Io, Europa and Ganymede. Here the researchers find a period of 480-484 days, which clearly looks very much the same as our period, linked to recurring volcanic activity. They find this ‘surprising’, but the repeating alignments of these moons with Jupiter – at the same time interval – look to be more than a coincidence.

Hundreds of volcanoes pockmark the surface of Io, the third largest of Jupiter’s 78 known moons, and the only body in our solar system other than Earth where widespread volcanism can be observed, says Phys.org.

The source of the moon’s inner heat is radically different than Earth’s, making the moon a unique system to investigate volcanism.

A new study in the AGU journal Geophysical Research Letters finds Io’s most powerful, persistent volcano, Loki Patera, brightens on a similar timescale to slight perturbations in Io’s orbit caused by Jupiter’s other moons, which repeat on an approximately 500-Earth-day cycle.

Tesla owner sues company for alleged battery fraud

Tesla model X [image credit: IB Times]

In a world where car makers can remotely change the characteristics of a vehicle after selling it, obviously nobody wants the result to make the car less attractive to own than before. Did that happen here?

A Tesla owner has filed a suit against the carmaker claiming the company used a software update to deliberately reduce the battery range of his vehicle in an attempt to avoid a recall due to faults in these batteries, reports OilPrice.com.

Reuters reports the suit was filed earlier this week, with the plaintiff seeking class action status on the grounds that “thousands” of other owners of older Model S and X cars could have been affected.

In some cases, according to the allegations, the range reduction came in at as much as 40 miles.

Black Friday: Did Wind Farm Failure Cause UK Blackout?

Image credit: thecount.com

H/T The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)

Some stories of Londoners stumbling around in the gloom or stranded on non-moving trains here. Obviously any emergency back-up either wasn’t there or proved ineffective.

Enappsys, an energy consultancy, said the blackout may have been caused by the unexpected shutdowns of the Hornsea offshore wind farm and the Little Barford gas-fired power plant, reports The Guardian.

Large parts of England and Wales have been left without electricity following a major power cut, electricity network operators have said, with a serious impact reported on rail and road services, including city traffic lights.

Twelve centuries of European summer droughts – problems with climate models, says study

In which we learn that ‘recent changes in drought patterns are not unprecedented as yet’. Climate models seem to be exaggerating the drought risks, according to this research.

An international team of researchers have published a study exploring the association between summer temperature and drought across Europe placing recent drought in the context of the past 12 centuries, reports EurekAlert.

The study reveals that, throughout history, northern Europe has tended to get wetter and southern Europe to get drier during warmer periods.

They also observe that recent changes in drought patterns are not unprecedented as yet and emphasise that continuing to improve understanding of the relationship between summer heat and drought is critical to projecting flood and drought risks.

Oil rigs could pump emissions below North Sea

North Sea oil platform [image credit: matchtech.com]

Another day, another madcap climate scheme. This one ‘would bring down the costs of storing carbon emissions and postpone expensive decommissioning of North Sea oil and gas infrastructure’, says Phys.org. That’s what the computer model says anyway.

North Sea oil and gas rigs could be modified to pump vast quantities of carbon dioxide emissions into rocks below the seabed, research shows.

Refitting old platforms to act as pumping stations for self-contained CO2 storage sites would be 10 times cheaper than decommissioning the structures, researchers say.

UN claims plant-based diet ‘can fight climate change’

Photosynthesis: nature requires carbon dioxide

More of the usual propaganda about ‘human-induced climate change’. Not mentioned is the fact that most of their so-called ‘greenhouse gas’ is water vapour, which has little or nothing to do with human activities, and much of the carbon dioxide has always been due to natural factors.

A major report says the West’s high consumption of meat is fuelling global warming, reports the BBC.

But scientists and officials stopped short of explicitly calling on everyone to become vegan or vegetarian.

They said that more people could be fed using less land if individuals cut down on eating meat.

Claim: No-deal Brexit would be a disaster for the climate

Misfits

It had to happen, didn’t it? ‘Project Fear’ merchants love to cite climate change and Brexit, so for them combining the two into yet another disaster rant is better still. Cue non-bendy bananas and missed emissions targets.
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Boris Johnson’s leadership increases the likelihood of a hard exit from the EU, shattering the bloc’s solidarity and empowering a radical deregulation agenda, says Climate Home News.

The new UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, seems intent on leaving the EU with or without a deal on 31 October. The repercussions of a no-deal Brexit for the UK’s domestic climate policy – and its global climate leadership – could be disastrous.

For three decades, the UK has played a central role within the EU, consistently aligning itself with the green grouping of member states.

It contributed more than its fair share of the EU’s climate efforts, is penciled in for a significantly above-average contribution to the EU’s Paris Agreement pledge, and it has decarbonized faster than any other member state.

In a no-deal Brexit, the obvious first order impact is that the UK’s influence over the EU’s climate policy would end, and its successes at cutting emissions would no longer count to the bloc’s targets.

The loss of the UK’s influence at the table will be a major blow to European climate solidarity. It will undercut the EU’s future climate ambition by tilting the balance of power towards less ambitious member states – the likes of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. This will damage the ability of the EU to project global leadership.

Even if the EU may be weakened, the UK government has been adamant that its climate diplomacy will fill the gap. It recently committed to reach “net zero” emissions by 2050, and to hosting Cop26 UN climate talks at the end of 2020.

However, in an ultra-hard Brexit, the one now on the table, the lofty ambition of UK leadership – like so much else associated with post-Brexit Britain – may be revealed as wishful thinking.

We must not forget the fantasy at the heart of Brexit – that the EU is rife with “Brussels bureaucrats” hell bent on regulating everything from the transport of smoked kippers to the bendiness of bananas.

Post-Brexit Britain, we have been reassured, is poised to “take back control” by casting off these pesky regulations.

Full article here.

With Sea-Level Rise, Climate Science Meets Reality

H/T Climate Change Dispatch

In which a scientific project gets dropped, or ignored, when it fails to produce the expected or hoped-for incriminating ‘climate change’ related data.

There is a striking disparity between sea-level datasets favored by climate catastrophists and actual observations, which mostly exists in their imaginations, writes Jack Weatherall for Quadrant Online.

The splendiferous east coast of Tasmania never ceases to please with all its myriad landscapes.

So it was a little discombobulating to recently pass a sign planted hard against the flow of traffic following the serpentine track that threads the coastal communities, proclaiming ‘Climate Change Is Killing the Planet’.

As it was only about eight degrees at the time, I was reasonably confident I would make my destination before something akin to the fate of the death star transpired and, thankfully, I was right.

It did, however, get me to thinking of how corrupt the science of the carbon cycle has truly become in the hyperbolic atmosphere of climate politics.

Cattle methane madness

Or as the BBC prefers to put it: ‘How vaccines could fix our problem with cow burps’.
Our alleged problem, that is. We’re given some technicalities of methane reduction ideas, but the questionable theory of greenhouse gases ‘trapping heat’ gets a free pass as usual.

A hefty slice of global greenhouse gas emissions come from the burps and farts of livestock, says the BBC.

Can tinkering with the microbes in their guts help to save the planet from climate change?

Where is Iceberg Alley?

Iceberg alley [credit: U.S. Coast Guard]

On the day Belfast’s Harland & Wolff – famously the builders of the Titanic – goes bust (it seems), let’s look at a question posed by the U.S. Coast Guard…

WHERE IS ICEBERG ALLEY?

The area we call “Iceberg Alley” is located about 250 miles east and southeast of the island of Newfoundland, Canada. Iceberg Alley is usually considered to be that portion of the Labrador Current, that flows southward from Flemish Pass, along the eastern edge of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, to the Tail of the Banks. This area extends approximately from 48 to 43 degrees North Latitude at 48 degrees West longitude. Icebergs and sea ice flowing south from Iceberg Alley created the Titanic disaster of 1912. This is the area of the ocean we patrol and monitor most carefully. [bold added]

https://www.navcen.uscg.gov/?pageName=iipWhereIsIcebergAlley

What is the latitude and longitude for the Titanic?
Latitude: 41° 46′ North
Longitude: 50° 14′ West
Was Titanic’s last reported position when it sank.

https://www.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_latitude_and_longitude_for_the_Titanic

(For a perhaps surprising comparison, the latitude of Italy’s capital Rome is almost the same.)

Ecological land grab: food vs fuel vs forests

This is a prelude to a new IPCC report. It’s an exercise in mixing problems that do exist, like biofuels using too much land, with ones that don’t, like excess trace gases in the atmosphere. The end product is the usual alarm-and-confusion brand of propaganda for man-made warming believers, with wild talk of meltdowns, deadly extremes and so forth. More like a Hollywood script than anything resembling reality – but over-the-top stuff like this seems to be standard fare in much of the media nowadays.

The overlapping crises of climate change, mass species extinction, and an unsustainable global food system are on a collision course towards what might best be called an ecological land grab, says Phys.org.

Coping with each of these problems will require a different way of using of Earth’s lands, and as experts crunch the numbers it is becoming unnervingly clear that there may not be enough terra firma to go around.

A world of narrowing options threatens to pit biofuels, forests and food production against each other.