Funding appeal: Mike McCulloch needs your help to make interstellar travel possible.

Dr Mike McCulloch has been making truly remarkable discoveries about some of the mysteries of the cosmos over the last two decades. He has answers to fundamental questions such as ‘what causes the force that resists the change in speed and direction of any mass?’, ‘why do observations indicate that the inertial force varies with acceleration in the outer reaches of galaxies?’ and ‘how can we tap into the implicated energy fields to generate propellant-less thrust, and potentially generate electrical energy to power our homes, industries and vehicles?’. His published papers cover the first two of these questions, and touch on the third, although there’s plenty more to be teased out of the implications of his Quantised Inertia theory. The third question is the acid test.

Mike believes science has to have practical, applicable results, and for the last few years, he has been successfully generating those at his lab in Plymouth University, funded by DARPA. He has been getting measurable thrust from purely electrical input. Other collaborating labs have similar results. Exciting times indeed.

But like many scientists who threaten the established and accepted theory in their field, his work has been largely ignored because it falsifies mainstream ‘dark matter’ theory, or dismissed because it ‘must be impossible’. Although he has got measurable results, DARPA funding is ending, and he has no more teaching work to return to at Plymouth University. Mike wants, as far as possible, to keep the ongoing developments of QI publicly accessible, by crowdfunding. He needs our help to fund and equip a new lab, and set up a ‘Horizon Institute’, online initially, to enable the collaboration of academics and citizen scientists. Please read his message below, and then I’ll let you know how you can help.

Strange anomaly in sun’s solar cycle discovered in centuries-old texts from Korea

Perhaps we should be looking out for an anomalously short solar cycle to provide support for predictions of an approaching return to
cooler planetary conditions? The aurora-based result doesn’t appear in the 2021 tree ring study reported here, which goes back as far as AD 969.
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The sun’s solar cycles were once around three years shorter than they are today, a new analysis of centuries-old Korean chronicles reveals.

This previously unknown anomaly occurred during a mysterious solar epoch known as the “Maunder Minimum,” more than 300 years ago, says LiveScience.

The sun is constantly in a state of flux. Our home star cycles through periods of increased activity, known as solar maximum, when solar storms become more frequent and powerful, as well as spells of reduced activity, known as solar minimum, when solar storms almost completely disappear.

Britain ‘will need gas to avoid blackouts for decades’

The story here refers to Britain’s ‘gas addiction’, but a renewables addiction will be far more problematic. At present gas power stations are being made ever more uneconomic by government net zero policies, but low wind days and hours are a given. Energy intensive carbon capture plans will only make matters worse.
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The man running Britain’s gas network has said the country will need fossil fuels to prevent blackouts for decades to come despite calls for the Government to begin shutting off the pipes. — The Telegraph reporting.

Jon Butterworth, chief executive of National Gas, said a growing reliance on intermittent power sources such as wind and solar meant Britain would be increasingly reliant on gas to make up for shortfalls when renewable energy sources are not generating power.

Mr Butterworth said: “In 2022, the wind didn’t blow enough or at all for 262 days. And in those 262 days, we would have had rolling blackouts, or a full blackout across the UK if it wasn’t for gas.”

Electric cars risk becoming uninsurable

BMW i3 electric car plus battery pack [image credit: carmagazine.co.uk]

Over-sensitive and unpredictable lithium-based batteries continue to be a headache, for various reasons. Is the EV industry really ready for prime time, as government ‘net zero’ mandates take hold?
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Electric cars risk becoming effectively uninsurable as analysts struggle to put a price on battery repairs, the researcher for the car insurance industry has said. — The Telegraph reporting.

Jonathan Hewett, chief executive of Thatcham Research, the motor insurers’ automotive research centre, said a lack of “insight and understanding” about the cost of repairing damaged electric car batteries was pushing up premiums and resulting in some providers declining to provide cover altogether.

Electric cars can be particularly expensive to repair, costing around a quarter more to fix on average than a petrol or diesel vehicle.

Experts have previously warned electric vehicles are being written off after minor bumps because of the cost and complexity of fixing their batteries.

UK smart meter upgrade fiasco

Smart or not?

Introduction of predictably obsolete technology gets rubbished by the UK’s ‘Queen of the Select Committees‘. What a waste of money.
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Billpayers will be forced to foot the cost of upgrading seven million smart meters which will become obsolete in less than 10 years, the spending watchdog has warned. — The Telegraph reporting.

In a damning report highlighting a number of failures in the smart meter roll out, the Public Accounts Committee said seven million smart meters would need to be replaced before the 2G and 3G networks they use are switched off in 2033.

It warned that the financial burden of replacing the redundant smart meter hubs will be ultimately borne by energy bill payers and could be “very significant”, exceeding previous estimates.

The report went on to say that demand for the smart devices, designed to help consumers monitor their energy use and cut bills, had dried up.

Greenpeace loses legal challenge to UK’s new North Sea oil and gas licenses

North Sea gas rig [image credit: safety4sea.com]

Trying to subvert democracy with ‘climate lawfare’ fails again.
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LONDON (Reuters)– Britain’s decision to authorise new licences for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea was lawful, London’s High Court ruled on Thursday, dismissing a legal challenge by Greenpeace, reports Yahoo News.

The environmental campaign group had argued Britain’s failure to assess the greenhouse gases produced by consuming oil and gas – so-called end-use or downstream emissions – rendered its offshore energy plan unlawful.

But lawyers representing Britain’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said at a hearing in July that ministers were not required to assess end-use emissions, though they nonetheless considered them.

Judge David Holgate rejected Greenpeace’s case in a written ruling on Thursday.

Full report here.

Carbon dioxide ‘pollution’ nonsense reaches record high

Photosynthesis [image credit: Nefronus @ Wikipedia]

Funny how plants, trees, vegetation etc. rely on ‘pollution’ for photosynthesis, according to so-called climate science. Meanwhile the costly renewables craze mandated by politicians can’t even keep pace with the inexorable global rise in demand for coal, oil and gas.
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Global emissions of planet-heating carbon dioxide [Talkshop comment – a tiny 0.04% of the atmosphere] are expected to rise around one percent to reach a new all-time high in 2023, the climate scientist behind the preliminary research said Tuesday.

Scientists say carbon pollution will need to be cut almost in half this decade to meet the world’s targets of limiting global warming and avoiding catastrophic climate impacts, parrots Phys.org.

Global CO2 emissions should be falling by around five percent this year, said Glen Peters, research director at the CICERO climate research institute in Norway.

Instead they have continued to rise, according to his research, with current expectations that the year will see emissions up between 0.5 percent and 1.5 percent.

The BBC’s “due impartiality” hypocrisy – Net Zero Watch

Who if anyone does the BBC consider itself accountable to, or is it just a law unto itself these days?
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“Due impartiality” means one thing when it’s terrorists, and another when it’s critics of Net Zero, says Andrew Montford @ Net Zero Watch.

The BBC is currently taking a lot of flak for its refusal to refer to Hamas as “terrorists”. Its editorial guidelines, say that that journalists need to mindful of the need for “due accuracy and impartiality”, but say that the t-word is “a barrier to understanding”.

This is a strange position to take. As many people have observed, Hamas is, in law, a proscribed terrorist organisation, so one would have thought that any journalist who was interested in accuracy would need to refer to them as, well, terrorists.

Norwegian archaeologists are salvaging priceless artifacts from melting glaciers—why were they found there?

Innlandet county, Norway [credit: NordNordWest @ Wikipedia]

An earlier article, featured here at the Talkshop said ‘artifacts have come to light thanks to a warming climate, proving that a mountain pass served as an important trade network’. We’re told ‘The pass was in use between the years 300 and 1500 AD, and most active around the year 1000. Its use declined with the Little Ice Age, around 1300, and the Black Death, around 1400.’ All of which suggests it was a popular route when conditions were warm enough. Of course any warmth back then that was similar to today can’t be ascribed to the non-natural causes claimed by climate alarmists as the only explanation for the current conditions. But they don’t address that issue.
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There is surely little upside to the environmental changes posed by global warming [Talkshop comment – standard doomster-speak], but nevertheless, a group of Norwegian archaeologists is seizing the opportunities presented by the country’s rapidly melting glaciers, says Artnet News.

That group is Glacier Archaeology Program—snappy internet alias: Secrets of the Ice—and since receiving permanent government funding in 2011 it has been responsible for 90 percent of Norway’s glacial finds.

Granted, the group’s success is partly tied to the topography of Innlandet. The county boasts many of Norway’s highest peaks, and the team has pursued salvaging artefacts from remote locations in a comprehensive and systematic manner. To date, it has made 4,000 finds across 66 sites.

Powering AI could use as much electricity as a small country

Image credit: technologyhill.com

The definition of a ‘small’ country could change to ‘not so small’ quite quickly. When so-called net zero climate policies are threatening to make electricity supplies more restricted and unreliable, the added effect of AI demand could become significant. This is on top of the issue with data centres – the BBC recently reported that Data centres use almost a fifth of Irish electricity.
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Artificial intelligence (AI) comes with promises of helping coders code faster, drivers drive safer, and making daily tasks less time-consuming, says TechXplore.

But in a commentary published October 10 in the journal Joule, the founder of Digiconomist demonstrates that the tool, when adopted widely, could have a large energy footprint, which in the future may exceed the power demands of some countries.

“Looking at the growing demand for AI service, it’s very likely that energy consumption related to AI will significantly increase in the coming years,” says author Alex de Vries, a Ph.D. candidate at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Net Zero Watch calls for a clearout at the Climate Change Committee

Net Zero Watch expresses the mood of many observers who are fed up with the antics of the Climate Change Committee, who talk up pie-in-the-sky ‘Net Zero’ targets while sidestepping vital issues like their cost, feasibility and effectiveness (or lack thereof).
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London, 13 October – Campaign group Net Zero Watch has called for a management clearout at the Climate Change Committee (CCC), accusing it of ‘shameless’ deceit over the costs of Net Zero.

The CCC yesterday criticised the Prime Minister’s delay of a few Net Zero plans, claiming that energy bills would be driven upwards as a result. But Net Zero Watch director Andrew Montford points out that the CCC is being highly misleading with their claims.

“If your landlord is forced to put in expensive insulation measures in your flat, you might end up with lower heating bills. But you will certainly end up with higher rent bills, and you could even find yourself out of a home”.

Mr Montford points out that such duplicity is characteristic of the CCC’s behaviour.

US oil production hits all-time high, conflicting with efforts to cut ‘heat-trapping pollution’ (aka vital trace gas)

Another media trip to climate cloud cuckoo land, as they insist on cutting supply of oil as demand increases, without viable alternatives in place, to feed their unrealistic climate obsessions and tired beliefs. But it’s just not happening.
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United States domestic oil production has hit an all-time high last week, contrasting with efforts to slice heat-trapping carbon emissions [Talkshop comment – no ‘heat-trap’ evidence offered] by the Biden administration and world leaders, says AP News.

And it conflicts with oft-repeated Republican talking points of a Biden “war on American energy.”

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration reported that American oil production in the first week of October hit 13.2 million barrels per day, passing the previous record set in 2020 by 100,000 barrels.

Weekly domestic oil production has doubled from the first week in October 2012 to now.

Energy leaflet: ‘Preparing for a power cut’

The UK electricity network is clearly not what it used to be. Can it be any coincidence that as coal power disappears thanks to ‘net zero’ type climate obsessions, leaflets like this start arriving on the domestic mat like this one today?

SP Energy (aka Scottish Power) covers parts of southern Scotland, North West England and North Wales. If other energy providers are doing the same type of leafletting or similar (emails etc.), let us know.

One section is about ‘Storms and Severe Weather’ but the one about ‘Preparing you for extreme events’ gets to the heart of the matter: ‘the possible but unlikely scenario of an energy shortage due to the current energy landscape’. They can’t even bring themselves to say electricity (see leaflet title)!

The Nuclear Microreactor Race Is Heating Up

Image credit: turbosquid.com

The supposed climate/emissions angle is useful to the makers, although the article points out that ‘some experts and activists contend that the world can radically scale back hydrocarbons without using more nuclear power’. Of course not being intermittent and weather dependent is a selling point for electricity generation devices these days, for example in EV charging away from home.
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During a wide-ranging interview with The Epoch Times, the leadership of Nano Nuclear Energy Inc. predicted they would win the race to commercialize a reactor small enough to fit in a shipping container, says ZeroHedge (via OilPrice.com).

“By 2030, we’re pretty convinced we’ll be the first company to sell microreactors,” said Nano Nuclear CEO James Walker, a nuclear physicist who previously led the development of the Rolls-Royce Nuclear Chemical Plant.

Nuclear microreactors are meant to be nimble, mobile sources of heat or up to 20 megawatts of electricity.

Energy firms adding £242 to domestic bills as profits soar

Anyone feeling the financial strain of high energy bills, whether the charges are blamed mainly on subsidies or other factors, won’t find this pleasant reading. Tariff Watch says its report is ‘revealing the secret data behind Britain’s broken energy system’.
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Energy companies’ operating costs are making up a substantial portion of customers’ bills, says Energy Live News.

On average, these operating costs add £242 to each customer’s annual energy bill, accounting for approximately 13% of the total bill, according to a report from the Warm This Winter Tariff Watch.

The report indicates that energy firms are allocating a considerable chunk of their operating costs to marketing activities.

This category encompasses expenses related to sponsoring football teams, event venues and the creation of television adverts.

Beer faces unbitter future due to climate change, study claims

Another day, another manufactured climate scare! This time it features a popular (in the UK and Ireland at least) style of beer, but before crying bitter tears, note the last sentence of the article: ‘Brewers can also try to modify their methods to adapt to the reduced bitterness in hops’.
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Climate change threatens the cultivation in Europe of aromatic hops which gives beer its bitterness, according to a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications.

European varieties of hops are prized and used by brewers around the world, but rising temperatures and less rain are reducing yields and the concentration of the compounds that provide beer its refreshing tartness, says Phys.org.

The researchers observed this trend by analyzing data from five sites in the Czech Republic, Germany, and Slovakia, which along with Poland are the primary hops growers in Europe, study co-author Miroslav Trnka said.

The Sun’s Magnetic Poles are Vanishing (again)

The Sun’s Magnetic Poles are Vanishing

The Sun usually finds ways to keep the pundits guessing.

World can’t ‘unplug’ existing energy system: COP28 head

Will the never-ending annual COP show series ever get to grips with the utter inadequacy of renewables? Or of the uselessness of blaming trace gases for the weather, as the globe-trotting hordes of delegates produce ever more of them to get to and from the venue?
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The president of the upcoming COP28 climate talks in Dubai called on Sunday for governments to abandon “fantasies” such as hastily ditching existing energy infrastructure in pursuit of climate goals, reports Phys.org.

“We cannot unplug the energy system of today before we build the new system of tomorrow. It is simply not practical or possible,” Sultan Al Jaber said during the opening session of Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Climate Week, a UN-organized conference hosted in the Saudi capital Riyadh.

“We must separate facts from fiction, reality from fantasies, impact from ideology, and we must ensure that we avoid the traps of division and distraction.”

Much of international climate diplomacy revolves around the thorny issue of how and when to quit fossil fuels.

Has the Sun’s true role in global warming been miscalculated?

Nice day

Of course the IPCC’s preferred idea is that the Sun can be ignored as a variable in climate influence, and all attention should focus on minor trace gases (mainly CO2 at 0.04%) in the atmosphere. A recent study by Spencer & Christy weighed in on a related topic: Our new climate sensitivity paper has been published, which proposes that actual observations indicate significant IPCC over-estimation of (theoretical) non-solar climate factors.
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A new international study published in the scientific peer-reviewed journal, Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics, by 20 climate researchers from 12 countries suggests that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) might have substantially underestimated the role of the Sun in global warming, says Ceres-Science.

The article began as a response to a 2022 commentary on an extensive review of the causes of climate change published in 2021.

The original review (Connolly and colleagues, 2021) had suggested that the IPCC reports had inadequately accounted for two major scientific concerns when they were evaluating the causes of global warming since the 1850s:

The global temperature estimates used in the IPCC reports are contaminated by urban warming biases.

The estimates of solar activity changes since the 1850s considered by the IPCC substantially downplayed a possible large role for the Sun.

On this basis, the 2021 review had concluded that it was not scientifically valid for the IPCC to rule out the possibility that global warming might be mostly natural.

Chris Packham issues legal challenge against Rishi Sunak

Photosynthesis [image credit: Nefronus @ Wikipedia]

Climate lawfare by carbophobes again. ‘The ball is in your court, Prime Minister’. At the same time the Scottish Nationalists have reported the PM to the police over comments in his conference speech.
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Chris Packham has sent a legal challenge to the Prime Minister over his decision to delay the phase-out of new gas boilers and petrol and diesel cars, reports The National (via Yahoo News).

If Rishi Sunak does not reverse the changes he announced last month, Packham said he will apply to the High Court to challenge this in a judicial review – arguing that such a delay is unlawful given the Government is required to follow a series of carbon budget plans on the way to becoming net zero by 2050.

The Prime Minister said the sale of new fossil fuel cars will not be phased out in 2030 but in 2035 and that only 80% of gas boilers will need to be phased out by that date, instead of 100%.

NSW fireghters foil fire risk at smoking green energy unit

Credit: mgathermal.com

Storing electricity, e.g. from renewables, is an ongoing headache with a recurring problem. If things go wrong ‘hazardous materials crews’ may be needed, along with a ‘bulk carbon dioxide tanker’ to cool things down – spot the irony. The company’s aim of ‘Making 24/7 renewables a reality’ is looking a tad optimistic.
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Firefighters have called in expert technicians to help deal with a dangerous heat build-up at a cutting-edge renewable energy storage plant but the incident has been stabilised, reports The New Daily.

MGA Thermal is behind a new form of thermal energy storage that allows retrofitted coal-fired power stations to distribute renewable energy long after it was produced.

But the company had to call in firefighters on Friday morning at its demonstrator plant in the Tomago industrial area, north of Newcastle.

Initial assessments of over-heating machinery led to the evacuation of 15 businesses.