Tony Heller: Is the global temperature record credible?

Tony Heller, AKA Steve Goddard, has this new video up on youtube. It raises important questions about the way the global temperature record has changed over time.

Opec ‘not concerned’ by Trump’s proposal to sell US strategic petroleum reserves

Credit: ktuu.com

Holding vast stockpiles does seem outdated when you can produce your own at an increasingly rapid rate, thanks to new discoveries and modern techniques like fracking.

US President Donald Trump’s 2018 budgetary proposals, currently before Congress, have irked many and tucked in the fine print is an outrageous (says the IB Times) plan to sell over 50% or 687m barrels of the country’s government-owned strategic petroleum reserves (SPR), stockpiled in the states of Texas and Louisiana as an emergency measure.

The SPR was created by the US government following the 1973 oil crisis, which saw several Middle Eastern Opec members impose an oil embargo following Washington’s backing of Israel in the Yom Kippur War.

Unconcerned by current geopolitics, the Trump administration says the sale could generate $16bn for US taxpayers over the next 10 years.

Trappist-1: seven-planet resonance chain confirmed

Much media attention on this new paper this week. Is there a surprise lurking in the details now that the orbit period of the seventh planet has been confirmed?.

What the numbers in the diagram show is the orbits per planet in a fixed period (top row), the conjunctions per planet pair in the same period (second row), and the ratios that represents (third row).

The number of conjunctions of any two planets is the difference between the two orbit numbers in a given period, which in this case is equivalent to just under 1446 Earth days (see data below).

Apart from the obvious symmetry of the ratios, something else arose from the science paper.

Roy Spencer on ‘Santer takes on Pruitt’

US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Scott Pruitt

As Dr Roy Spencer points out: ‘You can’t build a case for human-caused warming by relying on natural warming! (But, they did anyway.)’

A new paper in Nature: Scientific Reports by Santer et al entitled Tropospheric Warming Over the Past Two Decades begins with this:

After a recent Senate confirmation hearing, Scott Pruitt the new Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency received a written question regarding observed warming estimates. In response, Mr. Pruitt claimed that over the past two decades satellite data indicates there has been a leveling off of warming. We test this claim here.

Now, exactly how does one scientifically test a claim of “leveling off of warming”?

Landslide on California highway part of $1 billion in damage

California’s Big Sur coast – ‘considered one of the finest images’ by Wikipedia

The end of the California drought hasn’t been all good news for everyone, due partly to what may be ‘the largest mudslide in the state’s history’.

A massive landslide that went into the Pacific Ocean is the latest natural disaster to hit a California community that relies heavily on an iconic coastal highway and tourism to survive, and it adds to a record $1 billion in highway damage from one of the state’s wettest winters in decades, reports SFGate.

The weekend slide in Big Sur buried a portion of Highway 1 under a 40-foot layer of rock and dirt and changed the coastline below to include what now looks like a rounded skirt hem, Susana Cruz, a spokeswoman with the California Department of Transportation, said Tuesday.

More than 1 million tons of rock and dirt tumbled down a saturated slope in an area called Mud Creek. The slide is covering up about a one-quarter-of-a-mile (0.40-kilometer) stretch of Highway 1, and authorities have no estimate on when it might re-open. The area remains unstable.

“We haven’t been able to go up there and assess. It’s still moving,” Cruz said. “We have geologists and engineers who are going to check it out this week to see how do we pick up the pieces.”

EU nations set to wipe out forests and not account for emissions

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Yes folks, they’re going to burn wood on an industrial scale and call it ‘climate-friendly’. You couldn’t make it up.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

By Fred Pearce

It looks like greenwash. European nations publicly keen to boost their climate credentials by switching to “green” biomass are accused of working behind the scenes to expunge their carbon emissions from burning wood in power stations from national emissions statistics.

“If we don’t measure emissions when trees are cut, we won’t measure them at all,” says Hannah Mowat of FERN, a European NGO working to save the continent’s forests, who has followed the EU negotiations on the issue.

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Huge reserves of natural gas under East Texas will fuel the future economy, experts say

Credit: tylertexasonline.com

Some experts call it ‘unprecedented’. But as the Tyler Morning Telegraph reports: ‘there’s a caveat. Technically recoverable doesn’t mean profitable – yet.’

As far back as 1911, geologists predicted that significant mineral wealth lay below East Texas, in what was then called the Woodbine Stratum – a formation above the Haynesville Shale.

And Columbus Marion “Dad” Joiner proved them right in 1930, when the Daisy Bradford No. 3 well struck oil just outside Henderson in western Rusk County.

It was really just a drill stem test – they weren’t expecting to hit anything. But at 3,592 feet, Joiner tapped into what was for years thought to be the largest oil and gas reserves in the world. But no-one predicted the vastness of the energy wealth available here.

First magnetic field detected “outside” of a galaxy

Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, the largest astronomical project in the world –
Magellanic Clouds near top of image [credit: NASA / Ames]

It’s unimaginably vast: astronomers say ‘this structure is a 75,000 light-year long filament of gas and dust’. Trying to separate out the effects of gravity and magnetism here should be an interesting challenge.

A magnetic field appears to span the space between the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, the two dwarf galaxies being consumed by our Milky Way Galaxy, reports Sky & Telescope via Sott.net.

For stargazers in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s easy to forget that the Milky Way is actively consuming two dwarf galaxies. Those in the Southern Hemisphere have a front row seat to watch our galaxy wreak havoc on the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC and SMC).

But there’s more to the story — the dwarfs are not only gravitationally interacting with the Milky Way but with each other as well.

Alan Carlin: A particularly lunatic week for climate alarmism

The Climate Industrial Complex (CIC) cannot be accused of thinking small, as Carlin Economics and Science explains.

At the state level, the approval of California bill SB52 by both houses of the state legislature means carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions must be lowered to levels 40% below levels measured in 1990.

This is expected to necessitate the development of massive numbers of new regulations and policies that will allow the state government to control and dictate virtually every aspect of Californians’ lives in the opinion of one observer, including:

Mysterious Tabby’s Star dims again: observations needed

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Fascinating stuff – here we go again…

https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2016/12/21/mystery-of-alien-megastructure-star-testing-astronomers-creativity/

The Lined Wolf

Let’s face it: KIC 8462852 (also Tabby’s Star or Boyajian’s Star) is a weird star. Since its unusual light variations were discovered by citizen scientists using data of NASA’s Kepler space telescope in September 2015 many, many things have been written by professional and amateur astronomers, science communicators and “searchers of mysteries”, as an interesting hypothesis about its behavior was that it could be signs of activity associated with intelligent extraterrestrial life constructing a Dyson swarm. Of course, this just run wild in general media, and many astronomers since them have been asked by journalist to talk about “Mysterious Tabby’s Star”.

In particular, this theme soon captured the attention of some of my friends at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC, Spain), as they weekly produce an amazing ~2h science communication podcast Coffee Break: Señal y Ruido (Signal to noise). I’m proud to participate in this podcast from…

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China, Japan extract combustible ice from seafloor

Credit: phys.org

Methane hydrates have been known about for years, but cost and technical difficulties have so far been barriers to exploiting them on any kind of scale. Claims that they could ‘flood the atmosphere with climate-changing greenhouse gases’ are the usual over-the-top propaganda.

Commercial development of the globe’s huge reserves of a frozen fossil fuel known as “combustible ice” has moved closer to reality after Japan and China successfully extracted the material from the seafloor off their coastlines, says Phys.org.

But experts said Friday that large-scale production remains many years away—and if not done properly could flood the atmosphere with climate-changing greenhouse gases.

Combustible ice is a frozen mixture of water and concentrated natural gas. Technically known as methane hydrate, it can be lit on fire in its frozen state and is believed to comprise one of the world’s most abundant fossil fuels.

Shale Wars: The most expensive energy battle of all time

Credit: fuelfix.com

Thanks to ever-improving technology, one shale CEO said earlier this year about U.S. oil production: “We’ve doubled it. We can double it again.”

So far it has cost Saudi Arabia something like $200 billion to undertake one of the most expensive experiments of all time, says the GWPF.

The Saudi government has been draining its massive $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund to cover revenues lost from the petroleum price collapse over the past couple of years.

What we’re witnessing is a two-part test. The first question is how much damage have low oil prices caused America’s shale industry. Then the second and far more critical part of the test: As oil prices rise, will the shale industry limp or roar back? If it roars back, high oil prices are history.

Viv Forbes: Kill the Paris Climate Treaty and rip out its roots

By Viv Forbes,
Secretary of the Clexit Coalition

The Clexit Coalition today called on President Trump to keep his election promise to withdraw from the Paris Climate Treaty and stop US payments to all UN global warming programs.

The Clexit (ClimateExit) Coalition, comprising over 175 representatives from 25 countries, aims to prevent ratification or local enforcement of the UN Paris climate treaty.
See: http://clexit.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/clexit-members.pdf

The Secretary of Clexit, Mr Viv Forbes of Australia, said that all nations will suffer from the destructive energy policies being promoted in the UN’s war on cheap, reliable hydro-carbon fuels and the backbone industries that rely on them – mining and smelting, farming, fishing, forestry, processing and manufacturing.

He was supported by Professor Will Happer, Professor of Physics at Princeton University who said today:
“Americans never felt compelled to sign up to international folly in the past. I hope the United States once again shows the common sense of its people and walks away from the Paris Agreement.”

Space weather events linked to nuclear testing

One high-altitude nuclear test even managed to create its own artificial aurora. Others knocked out orbiting satellites.

Our Cold War history is now offering scientists a chance to better understand the complex space system that surrounds us, says Phys.org.

Space weather — which can include changes in Earth’s magnetic environment— is usually triggered by the sun’s activity, but recently declassified data on high-altitude nuclear explosion tests have provided a new look at the mechanisms that set off perturbations in that magnetic system.

Such information can help support NASA’s efforts to protect satellites and astronauts from the natural radiation inherent in space. From 1958 to 1962, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. ran high-altitude tests with exotic code names like Starfish, Argus and Teak.

The tests have long since ended, and the goals at the time were military. Today, however, they can provide crucial information on how humans can affect space.

Climategate Email: UEA’s Phil Jones admits cooling trend (But adjusted data denies it)

From: Phil Jones 

To: John Christy  
Subject: This and that
Date: Tue Jul  5 15:51:55 2005

    John,
       There has been some email traffic in the last few days to a week - quite
   a bit really, only a small part about MSU. The main part has been one of
    your House subcommittees wanting Mike Mann and others and IPCC
    to respond on how they produced their reconstructions and how IPCC
    produced their report.
      In case you want to look at this see later in the email !

      Also this load of rubbish !

       This is from an Australian at BMRC (not Neville Nicholls). It began from the attached

    article. What an idiot. The scientific community would come down on me in no
    uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK it has but it is only
    7 years of data and it isn't statistically significant.

Here’s a curious thing. The current satellite data shows a flat or cooling trend from 1998 to mid 2005, but Phil Jones own HadCRUT dataset shows a warming (though not as much as the uber-manipulated NASA GISS. Is this because HadCRUT has been adjusted so that the 1998-2005.5 trend is upwards since Jones made this admission?

Joelle Gergis, Data Torturer

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The hockey jockeys never learn, and are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past ad nauseam.

Climate Audit

In 2012, the then much ballyhoo-ed Australian temperature reconstruction of Gergis et al 2012 mysteriously disappeared from Journal of Climate after being criticized at Climate Audit. Now, more than four years later, a successor article has finally been published. Gergis says that the only problem with the original article was a “typo” in a single word. Rather than “taking the easy way out” and simply correcting the “typo”, Gergis instead embarked on a program that ultimately involved nine rounds of revision, 21 individual reviews, two editors and took longer than the American involvement in World War II.  However, rather than Gergis et al 2016 being an improvement on or confirmation of Gergis et al 2012, it is one of the most extraordinary examples of data torture (Wagenmakers, 2011, 2012) that any of us will ever witness.

Also see Brandon S’s recent posts herehere.

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Updated sunspot group number reconstruction for 1749–1996 using the active day fraction method

Ilya Usoskin has kindly sent me the data for the new group sunspot number series he and his colleagues have published. I’ve done a rough and ready plot below. Excel file here in case you have problems wit the links below.

Group sunspot number average value. Missing values given as zero

T. Willamo¹, I. G. Usoskin^2,3 and G. A. Kovaltsov⁴

¹ Department of Physics, University of Helsinki, 00014 Helsinki, Finland
² Space Climate Research Unit, University of Oulu, 90014 Oulu, Finland
e-mail: Ilya.Usoskin@oulu.fi
³ Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory, University of Oulu, 90014 Oulu, Finland
⁴ Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute, 194021 St. Petersburg, Russia

Received: 4 October 2016
Accepted: 6 March 2017

1816: the year without a summer in London

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Interesting and detailed post

Wanstead Meteo

Tornadoes, earthquakes, heavy rainfall, abnormally low temperatures, pea-souper fogs and exploding meteors are phenomena that marked the Year Without a Summer around the world 200 years ago. But how did London fair?

The monthly anomalies of the two years closely follow the same pattern between March and August

When extreme weather affects Britain, such as the floods plaguing northern England and Scotland, conditions in the capital are benign by comparison.

There is not a great deal written in the press about the weather in London in 1816. So, as ever, Luke Howard’s The Climate of London, is a primary reference point.

After a wild end to 1815 that was marked with snow and lightning 1816 started dry, cold and frosty. Though cold by today’s standards January 1816 was fairly average and much warmer than the previous two when the last Thames frost fair was held.

The highs and lows…

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UK Government needs to ‘stop faffing’ over Moorside nuclear, says union

How Moorside might look [credit: in-cumbria.com]

Moorside no more? The UK doesn’t seem to be making much, if any, progress with its plans for new nuclear power plants, as the old ones head for retirement.

The GMB union has once again demanded that the government “stop faffing” and step in to save the Moorside nuclear development from falling apart, reports Utility Week.

The union made the comments after Utility Week reported yesterday that National Grid has shelved a multi-billion project to connect the proposed plant to the transmission network.

GMB slammed the government for “continued dithering” following the latest in a series of setbacks.

Climategate email revisited: Ed Cook throws the tree ring circus under the bus

Just a little reminder of the science still championed by Al Gore, Barack Obama, the UN IPCC, the UK parliament’s climate change committee and all those august institutions of science such as the Royal Society, the AAAS, and the rest. Ed cook offered to put a bomb under it in 2003 by telling the truth (in bold), but none of the Hockey Jockeys at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit wanted to know.

From: Edward Cook <drdendro@xxxx.columbia.edu>
To: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxx.ac.uk>
Subject: An idea to pass by you
Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 08:32:11 -0400
Hi Keith,

After the meeting in Norway, where I presented the Esper stuff as
described in the extended abstract I sent you, and hearing Bradley’s
follow-up talk on how everybody but him has fucked up in
reconstructing past NH temperatures over the past 1000 years (this is
a bit of an overstatement on my part I must admit, but his air of
papal infallibility is really quite nauseating at times), I have come
up with an idea that I want you to be involved in. Consider the
tentative title:

“Northern Hemisphere Temperatures Over The Past Millennium: Where Are
The Greatest Uncertainties?”

Authors: Cook, Briffa, Esper, Osborn, D’Arrigo, Bradley(?), Jones
(??), Mann (infinite?) – I am afraid the Mike and Phil are too
personally invested in things now (i.e. the 2003 GRL paper that is
probably the worst paper Phil has ever been involved in – Bradley
hates it as well), but I am willing to offer to include them if they
can contribute without just defending their past work – this is the
key to having anyone involved. Be honest. Lay it all out on the table
and don’t start by assuming that ANY reconstruction is better than
any other.

Here are my ideas for the paper in a nutshell (please bear with me):