Retreating Greenland glacier is growing again

Jakobshavn glacier, West Greenland [image credit: Wikipedia]

Without jumping to hasty conclusions, this is an interesting development not predicted by the IPCC’s supposed experts. Natural ocean/climate oscillations are implicated. Against assumptions, rising carbon dioxide levels cannot explain these latest observations.

A new NASA study finds a major Greenland glacier that was one of the fastest shrinking ice and snow masses on Earth is growing again, reports The GWPF.

The scientists were so shocked to find the change, Khazendar said: “At first we didn’t believe it.

“We had pretty much assumed that Jakobshavn would just keep going on as it had over the last 20 years.”

South Korea accepts geothermal plant probably caused destructive quake

National flag of South Korea

Is this the end for ‘enhanced’ geothermal technology? Note this quake was 1,000 times stronger than the next one of similar causes.

The nation’s energy ministry expressed ‘deep regret’, and said it would dismantle the experimental plant, as Nature News reports.

A South Korean government panel has concluded that a magnitude-5.4 earthquake that struck the city of Pohang on 15 November 2017 was probably caused by an experimental geothermal power plant.

The panel was convened under presidential orders and released its findings on 20 March.

The Long March To #Brexit : Current analysis

I’ve been on the March To Leave for a week, and just got a day off to visit family and give my plates of meat a rest. I’m back on the march tomorrow, so no time for a big write up yet. Here is my simple summary, as delivered to ITN news two days ago, and below, some more complex analysis of the current situation from Simon Pearson on twitter

As crowds gather for the #PutItToThePeopleMarch, Leavers say Remainers need to accept the result#MarchToLeavehttps://t.co/kP3pfGyiR4 pic.twitter.com/OK0uU2vp1a

— ITV News (@itvnews) March 23, 2019

I’ve worked it out. Bear with me…

1. The EU pronouncement on extensions to 12 Apr or 22 May was conditional on the WA being either approved or rejected.
2. For the WA to be approved or rejected Parliament has to have MV3.
3. No MV3 means no approval or rejection…👇

— Simon Pearson #xmil #StandUp4Brexit FB (@SimonPearson961) March 24, 2019

4. Which means EU dates become irrelevant and we still leave on 29 March.
5. Unless, that is, Remainers sieze control of Govt business from the back benches and across party?
6. But can they? To stop UK leaving on 29 March requires primary legislation – it is the law if the land.

Climate Adversely Affecting Humans? The Facts Show Otherwise

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Joe Bastardi continues his pushback against the false prophets of climate hysteria.

PA Pundits - International

Joe Bastardi  ~  

This is the third part of a trilogy intended to get readers to examine more deeply the climate debate. I always tell people they should go look for themselves. I do not expect any person to blindly accept what they are told, and that applies to me also. I do ask that you look at these ideas to gain a greater vision of what’s going on.

The first part addressed perspective. I noted that the timescale we are looking at is only a snapshot of what is a multibillion-year “movie” that contains many scenes leading up to the total story.

The second part challenges the idea that extreme weather events are getting worse.

Which brings us to today’s subject matter: Climate is not impeding human progress. In fact, it’s been quite the opposite in the fossil-fuel era.

Here are some charts to make my point.

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What can machine learning reveal about the solid Earth?

The ability to recognize patterns in Earth’s behaviour by sifting through masses of geological data could be programmed into machines.

Scientists seeking to understand Earth’s inner clockwork have deployed armies of sensors listening for signs of slips, rumbles, exhales and other disturbances emanating from the planet’s deepest faults to its tallest volcanoes.

“We measure the motion of the ground continuously, typically collecting 100 samples per second at hundreds to thousands of instruments,” said Stanford geophysicist Gregory Beroza. “It’s just a huge flux of data.”

Yet scientists’ ability to extract meaning from this information has not kept pace, reports Phys.org.

Alan Carlin: The “Green New Dealers” have lost all perspective

Do we have a climate problem or a bad science problem? The author argues for the latter.

Perhaps the worst aspect of the “Green New Deal” (GND) recently proposed by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Edward Markey is that the authors have lost (or possibly never had) all perspective on climate change, writes Alan Carlin.

They are acting as if climate change were as bad a problem as the Great Depression, and that another “New Deal” is required for the US to survive.

This shows that they they really have no understanding of climate change and that Congress should never appropriate any funds for the purposes proposed by the GNDers.

Electric car batteries damaging to environment: Amnesty International

Typical electric car set-up

H/T Euronews

So this claimed solution turns out to be part of the supposed problem. Of course they are promoting their imaginary ‘climate crisis’ at the same time, while insisting that ‘the batteries which power green vehicles will continue to be tainted by human rights abuses’. EV owners should be feeling as bad as their diesel counterparts by now, with such negative press.

Extracting the minerals for the lithium-ion batteries powering electric vehicles and electronics is fossil-fuel intensive, the NGO warned on Thursday.

Amnesty International called out electric car manufacturers on Thursday for producing batteries through unethical and fossil-fuel intensive methods.

Energy giants spent $1bn on climate lobbying, PR since Paris: watchdog

Oil extraction [image credit: ewg.org]

It would be optimistic to expect any business to willingly cave in to pressure to become less successful, or let attempts to demonize it go unchallenged, especially for the sake of shaky climate theories. As long as the demand for their products is there, so will they be. World demand for oil is on the rise, regardless of those who wish otherwise.

The five largest publicly listed oil and gas majors have spent $1 billion since the 2015 Paris climate deal on public relations or lobbying that is “overwhelmingly in conflict” with the landmark accord’s goals, a watchdog said Friday.

Despite outwardly committing to support the Paris agreement and its aim to limit global temperature rises, ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, BP and Total spend a total of $200 million a year on efforts “to operate and expand fossil fuel operations,” according to InfluenceMap, a pro-transparency monitor.

Two of the companies—Shell and Chevron—said they rejected the watchdog’s findings, reports Phys.org.

Approval for £175m Cumbria coal mine

An artist’s impression of Woodhouse Colliery (Credit: West Cumbria Mining)

The ‘new-found energy realism of Cumbrian councillors’ has been praised by the GWPF and others, but has predictably dismayed hardline climate miserablists..

Cumbria County Council has backed plans for a £175m metallurgical coal mine on a brownfield site near Whitehaven with work set to get under way by the end of the year, reports Place North West.

The plans by West Cumbria Mining cover mineral extraction over 50 years over a 689-acre site running to and beyond the St Bees coast, along with associated development such as the refurbishment of two existing drifts leading to two new underground drifts; coal storage and processing buildings; office and change building, an access road, ventilation, power and water infrastructure and landscaping.

Geologists may have traced the source of last year’s unexplained massive Earth shake

Location of Mayotte, in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Southeast Africa

Epic. Why are ‘schools of dead fish appearing in the water?’

Last November, a huge seismic event that shook the planet left experts wondering about its possible source, says ScienceAlert.

Researchers now think they know what might have caused it: an offshore volcanic event unlike any other in recorded history.

If the hypothesis is right, and there has been a massive movement of magma underneath the sea floor, that has implications for nearby Mayotte and the neighbouring Comoros islands off the coast of Africa.

Henrik Svensmark: FORCE MAJEURE The Sun’s Role in Climate Change

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The author writes in his 40-page document: ‘This report is not meant to be an exhaustive representation of all the published papers related to a solar influence on Earth’s climate, but aims to give a clear presentation of the current knowledge on the link between solar activity and climate.’

Where does cosmic ray variation fit into the ‘big picture’ of solar influences on the Earth?

The Next Grand Minimum

I am still studying this paper but wanted to share and get your feedback

Executive Summary

Over the last twenty years there has been good progress in understanding the solar influ- ence on climate. In particular, many scientific studies have shown that changes in solar activ- ity have impacted climate over the whole Holocene period (approximately the last 10,000 years). A well-known example is the existence of high solar activity during the Medieval Warm Period, around the year 1000 AD, and the subsequent low levels of solar activity during the cold period, now called The Little Ice Age (1300–1850 AD). An important scientific task has been to quantify the solar impact on climate, and it has been found that over the eleven- year solar cycle the energy that enters the Earth’s system is of the order of 1.0–1.5 W/m2. This is nearly an order of magnitude larger than what would be…

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Spiraling giants: Witnessing the birth of a massive binary star system

Pairs or multiple systems of stars which orbit their common center of mass. If we can measure and understand their orbital motion, we can estimate the stellar masses.

How does this work? The two massive stars in question are orbiting each other at a distance of 180 AU (astronomical units), six times greater than that of Neptune to the Sun. Each orbit may take nearly 600 years.

Scientists from the RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research in Japan, Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden and the University of Virginia in the USA and collaborators have made observations of a molecular cloud that is collapsing to form two massive protostars that will eventually become a binary star system, reports Phys.org.

While it is known that most massive stars possess orbiting stellar companions it has been unclear how this comes about—for example, are the stars born together from a common spiraling gas disk at the center of a collapsing cloud, or do they pair up later by chance encounters in a crowded star cluster.

Researchers create hydrogen fuel from seawater

Desalination in California

As usual with these types of experiment, nothing can be assumed unless or until the tests of economic and industrial viability have been passed. They say the electrode ‘is able to go more than a thousand hours’ but that’s still only a few weeks. Storage and management of hydrogen is known to be tricky and expensive compared to most other fuels.

Stanford researchers have devised a way to generate hydrogen fuel using solar power, electrodes and saltwater from San Francisco Bay, reports Phys.org.

The findings, published March 18 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, demonstrate a new way of separating hydrogen and oxygen gas from seawater via electricity.

Existing water-splitting methods rely on highly purified water, which is a precious resource and costly to produce.

#Parody Canada’s Climate Refugee Plan

Tired of being harangued by insistent climate doomsters with their wildly over-hyped scaremongering and dubious ‘science’? Read on for some well-earned light relief.

Gavin Schmidt tweeted that he liked a #ClimateStrike poster that read “Soon even moving to Canada isn’t going to solve our problems.” 

That reminded us that we had a parody submission on the Canadian government’s tiered climate refugee program, that would at least be worth a laugh, if not serious consideration for some!!

See what you think, say Friends of Science Calgary.

Solar tsunami can trigger the sunspot cycle

Sunspots [image credit: NASA]

Something else for solar theorists to ponder. The researchers say: ‘We have demonstrated here a physical mechanism, the solar tsunami, which gives birth to the new cycle’s sunspots precisely within a few weeks from the cessation of old cycle’s spots.’

According to the model, the next sunspot cycle can be expected to begin in 2020, says The Hindu.

It is believed that the “solar dynamo” — a naturally occurring generator which produces electric and magnetic fields in the sun — is linked to the production of sunspots.

What kick-starts the 11-year sunspot cycle is not known. Now, a group of solar physicists suggests that a “solar tsunami” is at work that triggers the new sunspot cycle, after the old one ends.

Climate Crisis? Four Major Metrics That Say Otherwise

Credit: planetsave.com

Joe Bastardi argues that loud claims of a climate about to spin out of control are out of tune with various actual observations.

I have long advocated that climatologists take a course on long-range forecasting so they can better understand the inherent errors in trying to predict the weather or climate, says Joe Bastardi at Patriot Post.

In the debate over the fate of the planet, where one side is always pushing hysteria, the weather is plainly not cooperating with the missive.

Forecasters take climatology classes and are now being taught the one-sided climate narrative, but in general, climatologists do not have to learn how to forecast.

Polar vortex helping forecasters predict New Zealand weather

What is the dominant climate for Oceania, Australia, New Zealand, and Antarctica?

They refer to the ‘no-show El Niño event’ but allow that a weak version could still show up at some point this year, in theory at least.

Move over El Niño, and make room for SAM, says NZ’s Stuff website.

While attention over the summer focused on the much-promised but yet to arrive El Niño, SAM – or the Southern Annular Mode, to give it its proper name – has been working away quietly in the background determining our weather.

Forecasters are becoming increasingly enamoured with SAM for the valuable guidance it gives of likely weather conditions up to two weeks ahead.

What are the opponents of Donald Trump’s climate review committee afraid of?

Credit: nationalreview.com

Dr Roy Spencer tries to strike a note of sanity amidst the latest bout of doom-laden climate hysteria doing the rounds via cynical manipulation of the minds of school kids. What is accelerating is the bluster of alarmists, who lack credible empirical evidence of ‘human-caused’ as opposed to natural climate variation.

On March 5, 58 senior military and national security leaders sent a letter to President Trump denouncing his plan to form a National Security Council panel to take a critical look at the science underpinning climate change claims.

Their objections to such a Red Team effort were basically that the “science is settled”, writes Roy Spencer in The Washington Times.

But if the science is settled, what are they afraid of? Wouldn’t a review of the science come to the same conclusion as the supposed consensus of climate scientists?

James Bond going electric in next film with Aston Martin Rapide E

Not the 2019 model [image credit: camaro5.com]

A short post from our Hollywood reporter, or something – amidst reports of ‘007 going green’ (is he ill?) and ‘Dr No…petrol’ – and we’re not making any of this up. You’d need to be on a big budget to afford his ride though – the price is shocking.

Silent EV in Her Majesty’s secret service will have all the gadgets, reports Autoblog.

England’s The Sun newspaper, in a piece fabulously titled “The Spy Who Plugged Me … In,” reports that James Bond will drive an Aston Martin Rapide E in the next franchise installment.

Quoting “an insider,” it’s said director Cary Joji Fukunaga is a “total tree-hugger” and pushed to include a more environmentally friendly set of wheels.

Tectonics in the tropics trigger Earth’s ice ages, says study

Glacier in Patagonia

The latest Ice Ages theory rolls off the production line. This one relies on ‘pulling enough carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere’, so we can see how they’re thinking. A possible problem there is that historical data from ice cores usually show carbon dioxide changes following temperature changes by a few hundred years, which seems to contradict the findings here. It’s the old chicken and egg conundrum – effects can’t precede causes. An important part of the carbon cycle is ocean outgassing of CO2 (response to warming) and absorption (response to cooling).

Over the last 540 million years, the Earth has weathered three major ice ages—periods during which global temperatures plummeted, producing extensive ice sheets and glaciers that have stretched beyond the polar caps.

Now scientists at MIT, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of California at Berkeley have identified the likely trigger for these ice ages, reports Phys.org.