New evidence that solar forcing is greater than CO2 forcing.

An IPCC scientist on twitter alerted me to this animation created by Chris Rentsch which analyses the data from the AIRS satellite measuring outgoing longwave radiation.

This GIF took 3 years to make.

Python/Jupyter #dataviz of 17 years (1,400 GB) of 🛰️ measurements, visualized in 17 seconds.

This is the first analysis of 🌎 outgoing IR declining at 13-15μm due to rising CO₂. Warming at 10-13μm is also evident. pic.twitter.com/GFo6USqm37

— Chris Rentsch (@crentsch) October 23, 2020

Here’s a still from the end of the video sequence.

As we can see, by 2019, there is a decrease in OLR at the wavelengths absorbed by CO2 (13-15um) as its atmospheric fraction increases. But we can also see that there is a much bigger increase in OLR at the wavelengths within the ‘atmospheric window’ (10-13um) where it isn’t absorbed by any atmospheric gases.

Information Tribunal orders Committee on Climate Change to reveal Net Zero calculations

Money down the drain [image credit: thisismoney.co.uk]

Show us your numbers! You have 35 days to do so, no more ducking and weaving allowed. ‘It is likely MPs were misled’ — strong stuff. Results due before the COP26 climate gab-fest.
– – –
The Information Tribunal has ordered the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) to publish the calculations behind its claim that the UK economy can be decarbonised at modest cost, reports The GWPF.

The CCC’s figures were presented to Parliament ahead of the Net Zero emissions target nodded through in June 2019 to enshrine it in law.

The case was brought by Andrew Montford, the deputy director of the Global Warming Policy Forum.

The ruling, which dismisses almost all of the CCC’s arguments, comes after a two-year battle to obtain the cost calculations.

COP26: Climate minister criticised for international – and quarantine free – travel

Airport scene [image credit: Wikipedia]

Here, there and everywhere by jet in pursuit of ‘net zero’ = not zero. What happened to the alleged climate emergency they claim we’re in? Farcical, and his US counterpart does the same.
– – –
The president of the UK’s upcoming climate change conference is under fire for reportedly travelling to more than 30 countries in seven months, says BBC News.

The Daily Mail said seven of the places visited by Alok Sharma were also on the Covid red list – but he used an exemption available to ministers to not have to quarantine on his return.

The government said face-to-face meetings were “crucial” ahead of COP26.

But Wales’ First Minister Mark Drakeford called it “inexplicable”.

Net zero targets ‘unrealistic’ says Oxfam report

Photosynthesis: nature requires carbon dioxide

It’s pie in the sky time again as charity Oxfam trashes various so-called climate pledges, calling them greenwashing. For starters they reckon the amount of land required to fulfil them would far exceed anything likely to be available worldwide.
– – –
Oxfam says governments and companies are “hiding behind unreliable, unproven and unrealistic carbon removal schemes” in order to hit targets, reports BBC News.

Global attempts are being made to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

But the charity claims net zero targets are often a “greenwashing exercise”.

Net zero means any emissions that can’t be stemmed by clean technology in 2050 will either be buried using carbon capture and storage, or soaked up by plants and soils.

Tory rebels vow to fight 2030 ban on new petrol and diesel cars

The GWPF has produced a 64-page Fair Fuel document. See the Chairman’s Summary on pages 56-58 for a flavour of the many present and future problems with the unplanned rush to EVs, which the ‘rebels’ fear is likely to be a disaster both for themselves and the motoring public. But they’re mixing up carbon dioxide emissions cuts with pollution, which is an entirely separate issue. Such confusion plays into the hands of the so-called ‘green’ activists.
– – –
Tory rebels have vowed to fight the 2030 ban on new petrol and diesel cars, reports The Sun (via The GWPF).

Thirteen MPs urged the Government to think again or face public fury.

The Fair Fuel all-party parliamentary group today calls on ministers to publish a full-cost analysis of what it will mean for the economy to go electric, and how they will slash emissions.

Net Zero heat pump plans are dead and buried

Hydrogen future? [image credit: cleantechnica.com]

The UK’s next problem is that there’s no domestic hydrogen supply, and it will be costly to create one, then (in theory) produce vast amounts of hydrogen from renewables and/or nuclear power. Unless hydrogen for homes is going to be cheaper than electricity then electric boilers, with none of hydrogen’s safety issues and available now, could be a viable competitor in the home heating market if/when gas is shut down.
– – –
It would appear that Boris Johnson’s Net Zero promise to install 600,000 heat pumps per year by 2028 won’t happen after all now that Britain’s big boiler firms have promised households that they will be able to buy cheap hydrogen boilers instead says The GWPF.

The only question is how much the hydrogen that is supposed to heat our homes will cost consumers.

We’ll have to wait for the government’s hydrogen strategy which is reported to be launched at the end of August.

UN climate chief moans about lack of emission ambition before global summit

‘Climate chief’ – really?
– – –
A few months before the COP26 global climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, the United Nations climate chief has called on the international community to make more ambitious plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, says Phys.org.

Patricia Espinosa said on Saturday that significantly more countries had submitted their plans for emissions reduction by Friday’s deadline than had been submitted six months earlier.

However, only 58% of the countries have met the cut-off deadline, and proposals were often not ambitious enough.

Tesla big battery fire in Victoria under control after burning more than three days

Big battery fire [image credit: reneweconomy.com.au

Three days plus! They hadn’t even started using it. It all sounds so simple on the Tesla megapack website. ‘No assembly is required, all you need to do is connect Megapack’s AC output to your site wiring.’
– – –
A large blaze at Victoria’s “big battery” project has been brought under control by firefighters after burning for more than three days, allowing investigators to begin examining the site, reports The Guardian.

A Tesla battery bank caught fire while it was being set up in Moorabool on Friday morning, and then spread to a second battery.

The fire burned throughout the weekend and into a fourth day, before it was declared under control just after 3pm on Monday.

Fire crews will remain at the site for the next 24 hours “as a precaution in case of re-ignition” and will take temperature readings every two hours, the Country Fire Authority said.

Arctic climate change may not be making winter jet stream ‘weird’ after all

Arctic sea ice [image credit: Geoscience Daily]

‘New research is pouring cold water on once-hot theory’ – WashPo. Researchers refer to ‘overestimation’. (Weird in this context at least tends to mean something like ‘not well understood’).
– – –
An influential, highly publicized theory — that a warming Arctic is causing more intense winter outbreaks of cold and snow in midlatitudes — is hitting resistance from an ongoing sequence of studies, including the most comprehensive polar modeling to date, says the Washington Post.

The idea, first put forth in a 2012 paper by Jennifer Francis, now at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, and Stephen Vavrus, at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, is that two well-established trends — Arctic amplification (intensified global warming at higher latitudes) and depleted sea ice — can force the polar jet stream to dip farther south, thus causing more intense bouts of winter weather than might have otherwise occurred.

Over the past decade, this hypothesis sparked widespread public interest and scientific debate, as various high-profile cold waves and snow onslaughts hit North America and Eurasia, including a deadly, prolonged cold wave in Texas last February.

Locals fascinated as rare heavy snow covers Brazil

Dude! What’s this cold white stuff doing here?
– – –
Brazil has experienced rare heavy snowfall since Thursday, threatening crops and bewildering locals who don’t usually see snow, reports The Independent.

More than 40 cities in the state of Rio Grande do Sul had icy conditions and at least 33 municipalities had snow, reported the meteorology company Somar Meteorologia.

On Friday, there were warnings of cold temperatures as a polar air mass travelled toward the centre-south of the agricultural powerhouse, threatening coffee, sugarcane and orange crops with frost.

The unusually cold temperature in the country has already forced coffee prices to rise.

Home car chargers at risk from hackers

Even local electricity blackouts could be on the cards for determined hackers, it seems. A far cry from rolling up at the local filling station for a few minutes.
– – –
Security researchers have discovered failings in two home electric car chargers, reports BBC Click.

The researchers were able to make the chargers switch on or off, remove the owner’s access, and show how a hacker could get into a user’s home network.

Most of the faults have now been fixed but owners are being told to update their apps and chargers, to be safe.

It comes as proposed new legislation on cyber-security for appliances – including chargers – is published.

Science magazine blows the whistle on climate model failure

Image credit: livescience.com

It’s not as hot as we thought, they could say. That’s been obvious for a long time, but the defensive bluster of modellers has finally dried up, it seems. Time to dump the pointless and ‘implausible’ extreme scenarios and think seriously about some of the assumptions, such as greenhouse gas theory and its supposed climate consequences, and other suggested shortcomings.
– – –
Leading climate scientists conceded that models used to estimate how much the world will warm with rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are running too hot, reports The Australian (via The GWPF).

“It’s become clear over the last year or so that we can’t avoid this,” Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told Science ­magazine.

The admission is seen as a significant development by scientists who argue that not enough attention has been paid to natural ­cycles in the earth’s climate.

It puts another question mark over the use of the most extreme scenarios generated by models, RCP8.5, to estimate what could be expected in a warming world.

UK government proposes trials of high-temperature gas reactors

Rolls-Royce’s revised reactor building design.

An obvious problem here is that the latest nuclear ‘plan’ looks a long way behind the closure dates of most of the UK’s existing nuclear facilities. What happens in the meantime is anyone’s guess but a yawning gap in electricity production is on the horizon, if not nearer. The government can waffle about ‘carbon emissions’, but sensible people are likely to be more interested in their lights and appliances etc. coming on when required.
– – –
The UK government has published a call for evidence setting out its suggested approach for building the first advanced modular reactor (AMR) demonstrator: part of its plan for a zero-carbon economy.

The plan proposes exploring high-temperature gas reactors (HTGRs) as the most promising route forward, says E&T.

The £170m AMR demonstration programme aims to explore the potential for AMRs to play a part in the UK’s energy future; it will be delivered by the early 2030s. it is part of a larger £385m package to accelerate the development of more flexible nuclear technologies.

Could Pacific Northwest heatwave, European floods have been caused by the Sun?

Credit: The Weather Network

Of course they could have been. The question is, were they? Assigning weather events to ‘global warming’ is ambiguous without a full definition of what the assigner means by that term. Jet stream blocking events discussed below are well-known to meteorologists, and constantly claiming them as evidence of a new human-caused problem with the climate is a stretch, to say the least.
– – –
The recent record-shattering heat wave in the Pacific northwest and devastating floods in western Europe have both been ascribed to global warming by many climate scientists, says Science Under Attack.

But an alternative explanation, voiced by some climatologists yet ignored by the mainstream media, is that the disasters were caused by the phenomenon of jet-stream blocking – which may or may not be a result of global warming, and could instead arise from a weakening of the sun’s output.

Blocking refers to the locking in place for several days or weeks of the jet stream, a narrow, high-altitude air current that flows rapidly from west to east in each hemisphere and governs much of our weather.

One of the more common blocking patterns is known as an “omega block,” a buckling of the jet stream named for its resemblance to the upper-case Greek letter omega, that produces alternating, stationary highs and lows in pressure as shown in the figure below. Under normal weather conditions, highs and lows move on quickly.

According to the blocking explanation, the torrential rains that hovered over parts of western Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands came from a low-pressure system trapped between two blocking highs to the west and east – the opposite situation to that shown in the figure.

Precipitation tends to increase in a warmer world because of enhanced evap­oration from tropical oceans, resulting in more water vapor in the atmosphere. So with a blocking low stuck over the Rhine valley and the ground already saturated from previous rainfall, it’s not surprising that swollen rivers overflowed and engulfed whole villages.

A similar argument can be invoked to explain the intense “heat dome” that parked itself over British Columbia, Washington and Oregon for five blisteringly hot days last month. In this case, it was a region of high pressure that was pinned in place by lows on either side, with the sweltering heat intensified by the effects of La Niña on North America.

Several Pacific northwest cities experienced temperatures a full 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) above previous records.

There’s little doubt that both of these calamitous events resulted from jet-stream omega blocks. Blocking can also induce cold extremes, such as the deep freeze endured by Texas earlier this year. But how can blocking be caused by the sun?

Over the 11-year solar cycle, the sun’s heat and visible light fluctuate, as does its production of invisible UV, which varies much more than the tenth of a percent change in total solar output. It’s thought that changes in solar UV irradiance cause wind shifts in the stratosphere (the layer of the atmosphere above the troposphere), which in turn induce blocking in the tropospheric jet stream via a feedback effect.

Blocking can also stem from other mechanisms. In the North Atlantic at least, a 2008 research paper found that during periods of low solar activity, blocking events in more eastward locations are longer and more intense than during higher solar activity.

Right now we’re entering a stretch of diminished solar output, signified by a falloff in the average monthly number of sunspots as depicted in the next figure.

The decline in the maximum number of sunspots over the last few cycles likely heralds the onset of a grand solar minimum, which could usher in a period of global cooling.

Full article here.

UK government backs scheme for motorway cables to power lorries

E-truck test route in Germany [image credit: transport-online.de]

Another one from the Department of Bad Ideas? Before they rush into anything, they might want to note the assessment of a writer for Mass Transit magazine 10 years ago, on the subject of overhead (catenary) lines. Here’s the opening paragraph in full: ‘They are expensive. They are dangerous. They are unsightly.’ Much more here, but let’s quote a few other comments:
‘Overhead lines require a lot of maintenance given the direct contact of the pantographs and their constant exposure to weather’
‘Winter storms play havoc with overhead wire systems’
‘Loose wires in the summer and wire breaks in the winter as a result of lines contracting and expanding with the temperature also create maintenance headaches’
‘A catenary line is a live wire suspended in the air. Weather issues therefore become serious safety concerns.’

Did somebody mention climate change as a reason for the road experiment?
– – –
The government will fund the design of a scheme to install overhead electric cables to power electric lorries on a motorway near Scunthorpe, as part of a series of studies on how to decarbonise road freight, reports The Guardian.

The electric road system – or e-highway – study, backed with £2m of funding, will draw up plans to install overhead cables on a 20km (12.4 miles) stretch of the M180 near Scunthorpe, in Lincolnshire.

If the designs are accepted and building work is funded the trucks could be on the road by 2024.

Critics warn carbon price proposal would exacerbate energy poverty

No surprise that cranking up the cost of essentials is a greater burden for people on low incomes than for others. But nothing can be allowed to stand in the way of overblown climate obsessions, it seems. Carbon dioxide must be demonised no matter how tenuous the evidence against its tiny 0.04% share of the atmosphere, much of which pre-dates the modern era anyway.
– – –
Energy poverty could be exacerbated ad prices rise under the European Commission’s proposed revamped emissions trading scheme, the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) has warned, with other stakeholders raising similar misgivings.

Proposals under the European Commission’s Fit for 55 package include creating a new emissions trading scheme to impose a carbon price on road transport and buildings (ETS II), says Euractiv.

But stakeholders are warning that the move would hit society’s most vulnerable.

Net Zero by 2050 is dead in the water. So what’s plan B?

More to come? [image credit: thecount.com]

Futile climate obsessions over 0.01% of the Earth’s atmosphere have clouded the political world so badly that thinking straight seems to have gone out of the window. Bad news for voters, left with no-one sensible to turn to.
– – –
Boris Johnson has always tried to take a ‘cakeist’ position on Net Zero, says the Telegraph (via The GWPF).

We can drastically cut carbon emissions while boosting living standards, he claims.

But the truth is, the sacrifices being demanded of us in the name of Net Zero are incompatible with democracy, and the PM knows it.

Climate Change: An Excuse For Political Incompetence

.

The title speaks for itself. Severe flooding events in towns for example have been recorded for centuries.

PA Pundits - International

By Dr. John Happs ~

People have always been drawn to the coast and rivers because of their scenic locations. In earlier times there were clear advantages from riverside and coastal living since they provided easier trade and communication with other parts of the country and overseas. Around the world, building on the fertile soils of riverside floodplains has been widespread and still continues even though we know that floodplains are plains that will always flood.

Queensland Floods 1974

Climate change received little or no mention by the media or politicians during the inundation of Queensland floodplains in 1974:

After this event, houses were rebuilt only to suffer later flooding. There were floodplain inundations in Queensland during 2011, 2012, 2013, 2018, 2019 and 2020. The more recent floods were met, not with expressions of regret for allowing building to continue in these areas, but with the anticipated cries of “global…

View original post 2,309 more words

Santa Ana winds and power line failures found to be behind autumn and winter fires in Southern California

Smoke from forest fires in Southern California [image credit: NASA]

Will this be the end of climate alarmists feeding their confirmation biases over these events, resulting in the usual hysteria against atmospheric gases generated by humans? Almost certainly not, as they can still cling to the notion that the summer fires aren’t mostly due to lightning, arson or faulty power lines. Another report says: ‘Further analyses suggested that large fires were not associated with higher temperatures’.
– – –
A team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions in the U.S. and one in Canada has found that the increasing number of large fires in Southern California during the autumn and winter months is mostly due to the Santa Ana winds and power line failures, rather than rising temperatures, reports Phys.org.

In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes their study of fires in Southern California going back to 1948.

Large wildfires in California regularly make the news because of their magnitude and ferocity.

Boris Johnson’s Net Zero goal in disarray as Chancellor baulks at the £1.4 trillion cost

The cost of all this climate folly is likely to be a major under-estimate anyway. Hammering the economy for no good reason, and hitting people’s incomes with carbon taxes and other so-called climate regulations, won’t sell well at election time either. Obsessing about the weather has gone way too far.
– – –
Proposals to reduce emissions to ‘net zero’ as part of Boris Johnson’s plan to make the UK a ‘world leader’ in green policies have been thrown into disarray after Rishi Sunak raised objections to the eye-watering cost to the Treasury, says the Mail on Sunday (via The GWPF).

As part of the net zero plan –which would decarbonise the economy by 2050 – No 10 had been expected to publish in the spring details of the strategy for moving away from gas boilers ahead of Glasgow’s COP26 climate change conference in November.

But this has been delayed until the autumn amid mounting alarm about the bill.