RWE planning 2.5 GW gas power plant in the UK

Former Tilbury power station

If this goes ahead it’s likely to be finished years before the troubled Hinkley Point nuclear plant.

German utility RWE has commenced the planning process for the construction of a 2.5 GW gas-fired power plant in Essex, England, reports Power Engineering International.

If the development is to proceed it would be a big boost for the UK energy system, as old coal and nuclear plants are being taken out of the equation.

RWE is starting the planning process to build a 2.5 GW gas power plant in Tilbury, Essex on the site of a former biomass station in what could be a potential boost to the UK energy system.

Going Up: Jupiter’s Auroras Get Weirder Than Ever

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Jupiter is living up to its billing as a ‘planet on steroids’.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jun/04/probe-jupiter-juno

Planet Pailly

Last week, the Juno mission flew over Jupiter’s Great Red Spot and sent back some spectacular close-ups. But I’m not ready to talk about that. Not yet. I’m still catching up on the Juno news from two months ago.

Toward the end of May, NASA released a ton of fresh data from Juno, including new information about Jupiter’s auroras. Astro-scientists had previously known about two sources contributing to these auroras: the solar wind and the Io plasma torus. Now Juno may have discovered a third.

As Juno flew over Jupiter’s poles, it detected electrically charged particles flying up.

I can’t emphasize enough how weird this is. I wanted to write about it right away, but I held off doing this post because I was sure I must have misunderstood what I was reading.

Auroras are caused by electrically charged particles accelerated down toward a planet’s magnetic poles. These…

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NASA looks to solar eclipse to help understand Earth’s energy system

Credit: NASA

The report at Phys.org explains that “Even though the moon blocking the sun during a solar eclipse and clouds blocking sunlight to Earth’s surface are two different phenomena, both require similar mathematical calculations to accurately understand their effects.”

It was mid-afternoon, but it was dark in an area in Boulder, Colorado on Aug. 3, 1998. A thick cloud appeared overhead and dimmed the land below for more than 30 minutes. Well-calibrated radiometers showed that there were very low levels of light reaching the ground, sufficiently low that researchers decided to simulate this interesting event with computer models.

Now in 2017, inspired by the event in Boulder, NASA scientists will explore the moon’s eclipse of the sun to learn more about Earth’s energy system. On Aug. 21, 2017, scientists are looking to this year’s total solar eclipse passing across America to improve our modelling capabilities of Earth’s energy.

Tourists shun Scottish regions hit by wind turbine ‘blight’

Whitelee wind farm, Scotland [image credit: Bjmullan / Wikipedia]

Wherever onshore wind turbines are built there will also be networks of electricity pylons to carry the power away. Tourism is big business in windy Scotland.

A survey carried out on behalf of the John Muir Trust (JMT) found that 55% of respondents were “less likely” to venture into areas of the countryside industrialised by giant turbines, electricity pylons and super-quarries, reports The Times (via GWPF).

Just 3% said they were “more likely” to visit such areas, while 26% said such large-scale developments would make “no difference”. The poll has rekindled calls for Scottish ministers to increase protection for wild and scenic areas that, it is argued, will protect rural tourism businesses.

Earth’s water explained by gas giant gluttony

Niagara Falls [image credit: Saffron Blaze / Wikipedia]

The author of this theory says “Jupiter and Saturn’s growth naturally pollutes the inner Solar System with water-rich planetesimals. In my mind the mechanism is very clear”. The theory does seem to bear a resemblance to this summary from the Hans Rickman Uppsala Astronomical Observatory.

Water on Earth, Mars and everywhere within the inner Solar System can be traced back to the rapid waist-expanding growth of Jupiter and Saturn, which knocked inwards a local population of icy planetesimals, as Sci-News reports.

This is according to a new model, which could also explain the current makeup of our modern asteroid belt.

Whilst Earth is often described as the blue marble, with over 70% of its surface covered in oceans, seas, rivers and lakes, water actually makes up less than 0.1% of our planet by mass.

Ten-year-old mud volcano baffles scientists

School destroyed by mud flow [image credit: Hugh e82 / Wikipedia]

Whether caused by the blowout of a natural gas well, a distant earthquake or something else, the Sidoarjo mud flow is the biggest of its kind in the world.

The world’s most destructive mud volcano was born near the town of Sidoarjo, on the island of Java, Indonesia, just over 11 years ago – and to this day it has not stopped erupting, as The Conversation explains.

The mud volcano known as Lusi started on May 29, 2006, and at its peak disgorged a staggering 180,000 cubic metres of mud every day, burying villages in mud up to 40 metres thick.

The worst event of its kind in recorded history, the eruption took 13 lives and destroyed the homes of 60,000 people. But although the mud is still flowing more than a decade later, scientists are not yet agreed on its cause.

California votes to extend cap-and-trade climate law to 2030

Dogma rules in California when it comes to supposed climate issues, as harmless and life-giving trace gas carbon dioxide continues to be treated by the government there as a ‘pollutant’.

California legislators have voted to extend a law to cut carbon emissions, weeks after President Donald Trump said the US would withdraw from the Paris climate accord, reports BBC News.

The policy, which requires firms to purchase permits to release pollutants, will be extended to the year 2030. California Governor Jerry Brown said Republicans and Democrats had taken “courageous action” with the move. The US state aims to cut greenhouse gases by 40% from 1990 levels by 2030.

Data from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory offer clues about sun’s coronal irradiance

Credit: NASA

Extreme ultraviolet radiation (EUV) is perhaps an aspect of solar activity that gets less attention than it should. The authors make the interesting point in their introduction to the research article that ‘Although the total solar irradiance at Earth varies very little, the relative variance in the EUV is as large as the mean irradiance. This EUV light interacts with Earth’s thermosphere and stratosphere and may affect climate in a “top-down” process in regions such as northern Europe’.

A pair of researchers with Aberystwyth University in the U.K. has used data from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory to learn more about how the sun’s corona behaves over differing stages of its 11-year cycle, reports Bob Yirka at phys.org.

In their paper published on the open access site Science Advances, Huw Morgan and Youra Taroyan describe attributes of the sun they observed over time and what they discovered about the “quiet corona” and its possible impact on us back here on Earth.

Pressure Warming Effect featured on WND: Study blows greenhouse theory out of the water

Ned and Karl have finally got some big exposure to the general public for their paradigm shifting breakthrough in geo and astro-physics. World Net Daily front page stories are read by over a million people. This is a great step forward for recognition of their work.

Study blows Greenhouse Theory out of the water

7-9-2017 By Alex Newman for World Net Daily

BOZEMAN, Mont. – A new scientific paper contends the entire foundation of the man-made global-warming theory – the assumption that greenhouse gases warm the atmosphere by trapping heat – is wrong.

If confirmed, the study’s findings would crush the entire “climate change” movement to restrict CO2 emissions, the authors assert

Some experts contacted by WND criticized the paper, while others advised caution.

Still others suggested that the claimed discovery represents a massive leap forward in human understanding – a “new paradigm.”

The paper argues that concentrations of CO2 and other supposed “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere have virtually no effect on the earth’s temperature.

The real cause of climate change over the last millennium

Fig 1. Integration of solar data departing from long term average as a proxy for OHC

OK, this the last post before I go. This is a comment I made this morning over at Pierre Gosselin’s place.

To understand the effect of solar variation on a large heat capacity mass like Earth’s oceans, you have to integrate the solar data to get a reasonable proxy for ocean heat content. If you look at empirical comparisons of average sunspot number during periods when the ocean temperature is steady, you can derive a value of approximately 40 sunspots per month. This also happens to be the average sunspot number over the period of record from 1749 to today. Integrating the sunspot numbers as a running total departing from this average produces a reasonable proxy for OHC.

Calibrating the Steinhilber et al TSI reconstruction based on 10Be to the same baseline, we obtain a reconstruction which compares well to the Mann et al 2008 millennial temperature reconstruction, as seen in Fig1.

We’re all going on our,,, summer holidays – have this open thread

Stuart ‘Oldbrew’ is off sunning himself with some old mates for the next 10 days and I’m off to do more work on the ‘petite ruine’ my lovely lady and I acquired in southern Brittany last year. Neither of us will have much internet access.

Monckton: Green policy kills jobs and causes energy poverty

Visit Cartoonsbyjosh.com

Excerpt from an open letter to the head of MIT:

Professor Reif of MIT says, “In 2016 alone, solar industry employment grew by 25 percent, while wind jobs grew 32%.” These numbers are highly misleading. In fact, they underscore how deficient these energy sources are as job creators.

Growing jobs by subsidy is easy, provided that one cares nothing for the far greater number of jobs destroyed by the additional taxation, energy price hikes or public borrowing necessary to pay for the subsidy. Several studieshave shown that the creation of one “green” job results in the loss of two to four jobs elsewhere in the economy. In Spain the estimated ratio was two jobs lost for each one created by renewable energy, prompting the government to finally end most renewable subsidies.

And yet, despite all those subsidies, wind and solar power generation expensively and unreliably account for 5.6% and 0.9% of total U.S. electricity production, respectively. On its own, electricity provides only a small fraction of total energy consumption, including transportation, industrial processes, heating and electricity generation, so these numbers actually exaggerate the contribution of wind and solar facilities to overall energy consumption.

Tony Thomas: The Trump Doctrine on Energy

If you go by the mainstream media’s lockstep ‘coverage’ of the US president’s first six months, he is no more nor less than a tweeting buffoon. A comforting narrative for cant-addicted newsroom hacks and groupthinkers, it handily avoids any and all mooting of Australia’s need to follow his lead.

Our federal and state politicians scuttle about looking for innovative new ways to strangle the Australian energy sector. But across the Pacific, America is unleashing a world-changing energy revolution. The world’s energy fundamentals are in transition. Donald Trump is liberating American coal, gas, oil and nuclear industries from eight years of Obama’s harassment and restrictions.

The consequences for us as a player in energy–export markets are dire. In an officially supportive environment, Australian energy could hold its share – intrinsically, it has  global competitiveness. But politics here involves ‘renewables’ targets and other sacrifices to please the climate gods,  bans  such as Victoria’s on normal and fracked gas exploration, official and green lawfare against every new energy project (think Adani), impromptu Turnbull restrictions on LNG exports, Sargasso seas of red tape, and  on-going fatwas against nuclear proposals.

Volvo to go all electric from 2019

The internal combustion engine will still be on offer, as autofreaks.com reports, but what the headline means is that there will be at least some element of electric propulsion, including electric-only models, in every Volvo from 2019. Will other car makers follow?

Volvo today announced that every model it launches from 2019 will have an electric motor, marking the historic end of cars that only have an internal combustion engine (ICE) and placing electrification at the core of its future business.

The announcement represents one of the most significant moves by any car maker to embrace electrification and highlights how over a century after the invention of the internal combustion engine electrification is paving the way for a new chapter in automotive history.

EPA to launch Red Team/Blue Team program to evaluate climate science

Interesting times ahead for US climate science, as the GWPF reports. It would be great to see Scott Pruitt include Ned Nikolov in this initiative, since his and Karl’s theory is about the only properly quantified alternative to the unproven radiative greenhouse hypothesis. Their theory successfully predicts surface temperatures across a range of planetary bodies, whereas the mainstream theory fails when it is applied to any other planet or moon apart from earth.

U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is leading a formal initiative to challenge mainstream climate science using a “back-and-forth critique” by government-recruited experts, according to a senior administration official.

The program will use “red team, blue team” exercises to conduct an “at-length evaluation of U.S. climate science,” the official said, referring to a concept developed by the military to identify vulnerabilities in field operations.

“The administrator believes that we will be able to recruit the best in the fields which study climate and will organize a specific process in which these individuals … provide back-and-forth critique of specific new reports on climate science,” the source said.

Oklahoma’s Former Governor: Subsidised Wind Power a Multi-Billion Dollar Mistake

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Governor on the wind power fiasco: ‘Decisions made now will affect, and perhaps destroy, our state government financially over the next 14 years.’

You couldn’t make it up.

STOP THESE THINGS

As Mark Twain put it: “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” And, even when the dupe accepts his folly, sorry seems to be the hardest word.

Frank Keating was governor of Oklahoma 1995-2003 and is responsible for its wind power calamity, as he calls it.

Uncharacteristically of a modern politician, Keating taps into that fast disappearing virtue – grace – not only admitting that he was fooled, but sincerely apologising for the harm caused to Okies and their State.

Frank Keating: I signed wind industry tax breaks, and I was wrong
Tulsa World
Frank Keating
25 February 2017

In 2001, when I served as governor of Oklahoma, I signed legislation creating the Zero Emissions Tax Credit for industrial wind energy. The tax credit was designed to give a jump-start to a wind industry in its infancy in Oklahoma at the time. It was…

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The Road to Grenfell Hell was clad with Green Intentions

Report written by commenter ‘stickywicket’ at Spiked online

Everyone has been shocked to the core by the images of the inferno that engulfed the Grenfell Tower, killing 79 people. Most were horrified by the suggestion in the Times that the cause of the fire might have been penny-pinching on the type of cladding used in the recent refurbishment of the building. It seems unbelievable that they didn’t spend an extra £5,000 for fire resistant cladding.

This is probably not the whole story. The revelation that a further 70+ tower blocks have failed fire safety tests tells us that there is an endemic problem. We don’t know the precise reasons for the fire yet, but we should certainly look at the influence of slavish devotion to green regulations.

Impact of Paris Climate Accord and why Trump was right to dump it

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On any other topic than climate, even the idea of spending so much money for so little, if any, measurable benefit would be laughed out of sight without more ado.

wryheat

The much touted Paris Climate Accord aims at worldwide reduction of carbon dioxide emissions in order to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels. This goal is purely arbitrary and based not upon any physical evidence, but upon the unproven assumption that carbon dioxide emissions play a significant role in global warming. What the Paris Accord really does is to transfer trillions of dollars from industrialized countries, mainly the US, to the sticky-fingered United Nations and to developing nations. It has a very minimal effect on global warming.

Several studies estimate the actual effects of the Accord. The most recent is from Bjorn Lomborg, published in the peer-reviewed journal, Global Policy (read full paper). Here is the paper abstract:

This article investigates the temperature reduction impact of major climate policy proposals implemented by 2030, using the standard MAGICC climate model [developed at the National…

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Is science publishing bad for science?

A long and interesting article about science publishing in the Guardian is largely about the history of Robert Maxwells involvement in science publication, but contains much else of interest besides. A few excerpts:

Many scientists also believe that the publishing industry exerts too much influence over what scientists choose to study, which is ultimately bad for science itself. Journals prize new and spectacular results – after all, they are in the business of selling subscriptions – and scientists, knowing exactly what kind of work gets published, align their submissions accordingly. This produces a steady stream of papers, the importance of which is immediately apparent. But it also means that scientists do not have an accurate map of their field of inquiry.

Turkish power ship proposed for Adelaide

The dash for renewables in South Australia has gone so badly wrong that crisis measures are now called for, as PEI reports.

A large-scale temporary power solution is being considered, as South Australia struggles to ensure its energy security.

A 250 MW ship-based power station is under consideration as a solution to the crisis for the Australian state, which has seen a lot of investment in renewable power over recent years, while old fossil stations were retired.

The Turkish ship could be operational by the end of the year for less than the $360m budgeted for a new state-owned gas-fired power plant of the same capacity.