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McNider and Christy: We don’t understand systems we can’t model

It was the scientific skeptics who bucked the ‘consensus’ and said the Earth was round.
By Richard McNider And John Christy Updated Feb. 19, 2014

In a Feb. 16 speech in Indonesia, Secretary of State John Kerry assailed climate-change skeptics as members of the “Flat Earth Society” for doubting the reality of catastrophic climate change. He said, “We should not allow a tiny minority of shoddy scientists” and “extreme ideologues to compete with scientific facts.” But who are the Flat Earthers, and who is ignoring the scientific facts?

In ancient times, the notion of a flat Earth was the scientific consensus, and it was only a minority who dared question this belief. We are among today’s scientists who are skeptical about the so-called consensus on climate change. Does that make us modern-day Flat Earthers, as Mr. Kerry suggests, or are we among those who defy the prevailing wisdom to declare that the world is round?

Christopher Booker: Revolving door between DECC and £8Bn Offshore Wind Megaproject

Gold in them there windmills
The Telegraph
Christopher Booker
21 February 2015

The BBC didn’t tell us all the facts in its excitement about a vast new offshore wind farm, writes Christopher Booker

The BBC naturally got very excited by the news that Ed Davey, our Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, has given the go-ahead to the largest offshore wind farm in the world – 400 monster turbines covering 436 square miles of the North Sea.

What the BBC didn’t mention was that this £8 billion project, producing on average 840 megawatts of electricity, will earn for its mainly Norwegian and German owners some £900 million a year in subsidies, paid by all of us through our electricity bills.

Drill into Mars for clues to Earth’s climate

River Thames in 1677

New Scientist has a new angle on the Little Ice Age, asking: ‘Can Martian holes give climate clues?’

Digging a hole on another world may settle a nagging question about Earth’s climate.

From about 1300 to 1870, much of the Earth is thought to have endured a long cold snap dubbed the Little Ice Age. If such a freeze occurred, it is usually blamed on a dip in solar activity, but there are other suspects such as volcanoes.

If the sun was responsible, we should see evidence of it across the solar system, says Ralph Lorenz of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, Maryland. To settle the debate, he suggests digging a hole on Mars to see if it, too, had an ice age around that time.

Robert M Wilson: On The Distribution of Sunspot Cycle Periods

Back in 1987, Robert M Wilson of NASA’s Space Science Laboratory in Huntsville published this paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research. It’s important to our solar-planetary theory because it shows that the Sun is bi-modal in terms of its solar cycle lengths. They cluster around  periods of a little over ten and a little under twelve years. These periods correlate to the periods of Jupiter-Earth-Venus syzygy cycles and Jupiter’s orbital period respectively. Leif Svalgaard vehemently denied this correlation when I pointed it out to him a few years ago.

The same correlation was noted by independent researcher Timo Niroma in 1989, who conducted his own survey and analysis of solar cycle lengths. He produced this simple ascii-art graphic to present his results.

Statement by Willie Soon

Originally posted on JunkScience.com:

(March 2, 2015) — Dr. Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics released the following statement through The Heartland Institute in response to repeated attacks on his character and scientific integrity.

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Merchants of spin: Naomi Oreskes just sent me an email

You have to laugh, there’s some serious conspiracy ideation going on here, and precious little science.:

From:	Professor Naomi Oreskes <xxx@xxxxxxxx.xxx>
To:	Roger Tattersall <xxx@xxxxxx.xxx>
Date:	14:10

Slugging the Kool-aid again Naomi?

Dear Roger,

When I wrote the book Merchants of Doubt in 2010, I only wanted one thing: to uncover the truth about who was behind the widespread, and sadly, effective, campaigns to undermine the established science of climate change, and why they were doing what they were doing.

I never imagined that, a few years later, Sony Pictures would release Merchants of Doubt, a captivating feature film that exposes the ugly world of climate denial like never before.

Mean motion resonances in multiplanetary systems – new study

Exoplanet analysis is a growing field of scientific study as data pours in from the likes of NASA’s successful Kepler probe.

The abstract of a new paper explains its focus on this data:
‘Mean motion resonances and near-resonances up to the outer/inner orbital period ratio’s value of 5 and the denominator 4 are tested for all adjacent exoplanet orbits.’

Without delving into the nuts and bolts of the analysis here, let’s look at the list of results (click on image to view details):

By Marian C. Ghilea (2015)

The column ‘resonance type’ shows the planet:planet ratios we’re interested in.
Clearly there are many examples, although ‘near resonances’ are also included.

From the author’s concluding remarks:
‘Performing a simple analysis, the resonance or near-resonance states present in all the multiplanetary systems known to date can be found numerically using a computer analysis tool.’

‘The first results, presented in this paper, suggest different resonance or near-resonance distributions for different planet categories. The resonance/near resonance numbers of 2/1 and 3/2 appear to be dominant for the planets with larger masses while the 5/3 resonance seems to be the most common for terrestrial planets and mini neptunes. For giant planets, the 2/1 resonances are dominating at larger distances from the host star while the 3/2 resonance is more common at close distances from it. Resonances for values higher than 5/2 are encountered
only for planets with masses larger than 10 (ME*)’ [*Earth masses].

We can see from this that these ‘near resonances’ crop up regularly in exoplanet systems just as they do in our solar system e.g. Jupiter-Saturn 5:2, Neptune-Pluto 3:2.

Whatever the mechanism(s) involved, the frequency of their appearance can’t be regarded as accidental.

***
See also the Wikipedia page on orbital resonance

Where is Michael Mann’s AMO data from?

Well known hockeyjockey Michael Mann has a post up on Huffpo, claiming the ‘hiatus’ or ‘plateau’ in global warming which he says doesn’t exist, only happened because oscillations. To prove this he introduces a new one, which he calls the NMO. I think it stands for Numerically Magical Obfuscation.

NMO is derived from some twisty manipulation of the AMO (in blue) and the PMO (in green).

Just because Mann ‘invented’ the AMO doesn’t mean he gets to fiddle with the underlying data does it?

Head to head Bloggies

The Bloggie Finalists for 2015

I assume double finalist will come as a surprise to Paul Homewood who is on a roll at the moment.

RealClimate and WUWT in the same finalist catagory, oops, again. :-)

Solar cycle 4b, support from 10BE proxy

One of the unsolved solar mysteries is the peculiar behaviour around year 1800. The data we have is poor leading to ambiguity on whether a solar sunspot cycle is missing from the record.

Figures from paper. For a legible copy you will need to register and download the PDF.

The lost sunspot cycle: New support from 10Be measurements
C. Karoff, F. Inceoglu, M. F. Knudsen, J. Olsen, A. Fogtmann-Schulz
A&A 575 A77 (2015)
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201424927
(early preview with registration)

ABSTRACT

NOAA – 1913 Low Min Records Broken (272 tied) From 2015-02-19 to 2015-02-25

tallbloke:

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Tsk, weather eh?

Originally posted on sunshine hours:

1913 Low Min Records Broken in Last 7 Days (272 tied)  according to the NOAA.

Below is a screenshot showing location and the biggest difference between old record and new record.

The list is just the ones I could capture in a screenshot. Wow. Many records broken by over 30F.

Imagine … the old record was 15F and it is now -23F. A 38F difference.

View original

Earth’s other ‘moon’ and its crazy orbit could reveal mysteries of the solar system

Cruithne’s orbit of the Sun
[credit: GravitySimulator.com]

‘One day, Cruithne could be a practice site for landing humans on asteroids’ says a report at phys.org . Why so?

‘Cruithne has an orbit that stretches from the orbit of Mercury to beyond the orbit of Mars. But remarkably, Cruithne’s period is almost exactly the same as Earth’s. This sets the table for some interesting orbital interactions.’ – quoting GravitySimulator.com.

Phys.org takes up the story:
We all know and love the moon. We’re so assured that we only have one that we don’t even give it a specific name. It is the brightest object in the night sky, and amateur astronomers take great delight in mapping its craters and seas. To date, it is the only other heavenly body with human footprints.

What you might not know is that the moon is not the Earth’s only natural satellite. As recently as 1997, we discovered that another body, 3753 Cruithne, is what’s called a quasi-orbital satellite of Earth. This simply means that Cruithne doesn’t loop around the Earth in a nice ellipse in the same way as the moon, or indeed the artificial satellites we loft into orbit. Instead, Cruithne scuttles around the inner solar system in what’s called a “horseshoe” orbit.

Global warming slowdown probably due to natural cycles, study finds

Sorry folks [image credit: wikia]

The Guardian newspaper finally facing up to climate reality? Well, after a fashion. Their global warming can may have been kicked down the road for a while, that’s all.

The idea that natural variation could make temperatures go up as well as down is still not for discussion in their biased climate world.

H/T Lord Beaverbrook.

Guardian report: Manmade global warming over the past decade has probably been partly offset by the cooling effect of natural variability in the Earth’s climate system, a team of climate researchers have concluded.

The finding could help explain the slowdown in temperature rises this century that climate sceptics have seized on as evidence climate change has stopped, even though 14 of the 15 hottest years on record have happened since 2000.

The authors of the new paper describe the slowdown, sometimes called a global warming hiatus or pause, as a “false pause”. They warn that the natural cycles in the Pacific and Atlantic that they found are currently having an overall cooling effect on temperatures will reverse in the coming decades – at which point warming will accelerate again.

Biomass Emits Double The CO2 Of Gas

tallbloke:

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Sustainable?

Originally posted on NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT:

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President Putin: Russian gas supplies to Europe could be disrupted within days

H/T to Benny Peiser for this excerpt from a Times article (paywalled)

Putin Ready To Turn Off Europe’s Gas Supply
The Times, 26 February 2015 David Charter

Russia threatened yesterday to disrupt gas supplies to Europe within days, opening a new front in the showdown over Ukraine.

President Putin demanded immediate advance payments from Kiev to keep the gas taps on in the depths of winter. Cutting off gas would be likely to hit transit flows to Europe.

His ultimatum came on the day that the EU announced ambitious plans for an “energy union” to end Russia’s energy stranglehold over the continent.

Officials admitted, however, that it would take many years and an investment of €1 trillion in infrastructure to achieve energy security after delays caused by previous failed attempts at better EU co-operation.

New result shows CO2 has almost no effect on temperature

An article in the Daily Mail today piqued my interest. It trumpets empirical results which they say empirically confirm the theoretical CO2 greenhouse effect for the first time:

“Scientists have witnessed carbon dioxide trapping heat in the atmosphere above the United States, showing human-made climate change ‘in the wild’ for the first time.

A new study in the journal Nature demonstrates in real-time field measurements what scientists already knew from basic physics, lab tests, numerous simulations, temperature records and dozens of other climatic indicators.

They say it confirms the science of climate change and the amount of heat-trapping previously blamed on carbon dioxide.”

“These instruments, located at ARM research sites in Oklahoma and Alaska, measure thermal infrared energy that travels down through the atmosphere to the surface.

They can detect the unique spectral signature of infrared energy from CO2.

Other instruments at the two locations detect the unique signatures of phenomena that can also emit infrared energy, such as clouds and water vapor.

I am Under “Investigation”

tallbloke:

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Roger Pielke Jr gets the McCarthy treatment for daring to point out that the insurance payouts for natural disasters don’t correlate with (non)changes in the frequency of ‘extreme weather’.

Originally posted on The Climate Fix:

As some of you will already know, I am one of 7 US academics being investigated by US Representative Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) who is the ranking member of the House of Representatives Committee on Environment and Natural Resources. Rep. Grijalva has sent a letter to the president of my university requesting a range of information, including my correspondence, the letter is here in PDF.

Before continuing, let me make one point abundantly clear: I have no funding, declared or undeclared, with any fossil fuel company or interest. I never have. Representative Grijalva knows this too, because when I have testified before the US Congress, I have disclosed my funding and possible conflicts of interest. So I know with complete certainty that this investigation is a politically-motivated “witch hunt” designed to intimidate me (and others) and to smear my name.

For instance, the Congressman and his staff, along with compliant journalists…

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Solar cycle 24 enigma: TSI on the rise again

The latest results from the TIM/SORCE TSI instrument show that solar cycle 24 hit a peak on Feb 6th at around 1362.3W/m^2. Does anyone think it’ll go any higher?

Charting the costs and effectiveness of Renewable Energy in Europe

tallbloke:

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A long and well structured look at European Unreliables energy production by Ed Hoskins. Click on the ‘View original‘ link to see legible graphs!

Originally posted on edmhdotme:

A comparison of both the Capital Cost and Energy Production Effectiveness of the Renewable Energy in Europe.

The diagrams below collate the cost and capacity factors of European Renewable Energy power sources, Onshore and Off-shore Wind Farms and Large scale Photovoltaic Solar generation.  They are compared to the cost and output capacity of conventional Gas Fired Electricity generation.

• capacity factor:  installed nameplate capacity compared to the actual electrical energy output achieved
• capital cost:  comparison with the cost of equivalent electrical output produced by Gas Fired electrical generation.

Overall European renewable Energy has almost 6 times lower capacity than conventional Gas Fired power generation and it costs about 16 times more in capital expenditure alone.

In all the capital costs expended by 2013 in Europe amounted to some €1/2 trillion for ~170 Gigawatts of “nominal” installed Renewable Energy generation.  But because of the reduced capacity factor, those installations provide ~30 Gigawatts of real output electrical…

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