Jet stream not getting ‘wavier’ despite Arctic warming, say researchers

Credit: Wikipedia

This contradicts climate alarmist claims such as: Global Warming Is Messing with the Jet Stream. Whether 40 years of data is enough to establish what is ‘normal’, is another matter. The fastest jetstream on record of 231 mph has only just been set, we’re told.
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Rapid Arctic warming has not led to a “wavier” jet stream around the mid-latitudes in recent decades, pioneering new research has shown.

Scientists from the University of Exeter have studied the extent to which Arctic amplification—the faster rate of warming in the Arctic compared to places farther south—has affected the fluctuation of the jet stream’s winding course over the North Hemisphere, reports Phys.org.

Recent studies have suggested the warming Arctic region has led to a “wavier” jet stream—which can lead to extreme weather conditions striking the US and Europe.

However, the new study by Dr. Russell Blackport and Professor James Screen, shows that Arctic warming does not drive a more meandering jet stream.

Instead, they believe any link is more likely to be a result of random fluctuations in the jet stream influencing Arctic temperatures, rather than the other way around.

Fertiliser could be used to power ocean-going ships

Bulk carrier

Here comes the latest ‘green’ pipedream that won’t work, as the report almost admits. Another thin excuse to bang the tedious climate change propaganda drum.

Ocean-going ships could be powered by ammonia within the decade as the shipping industry takes action to curb carbon emissions, says BBC News.

The chemical – the key ingredient of fertilisers – can be burned in ships’ engines in place of polluting diesel.

The industry hopes ammonia will help it tackle climate change, because it burns without CO2 emissions.

The creation of the ammonia itself creates substantial CO2, but a report says technology can solve this problem.

Alternative Energy Can’t Replace Hydrocarbons

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Climate obsessives need to admit that ‘jerking around with renewables’, as Bill Gates put it, is never going to work in the modern world – whether they like it or not.

PA Pundits - International

By Larry Bell ~

As we all recognize, access to clean and reliable energy is fundamentally important to countless aspects of our lives, our social and economic communities, and our long-term abilities to live in healthy balance with natural ecosystems.

So, this being the case, can we expect a new so-called “clean energy revolution” — primarily referring to wind and solar — to replace the “dirty old” hydrocarbon industries?

For example, like what happened when hydrocarbon-fueled internal combustion horsepower disrupted buggy whip businesses of the early 1900s — and when flip-phone makers lost out at the dawn of Apple’s iPhone?

Don’t count on such reality-challenged notions regarding hydrocarbon obsolescence occurring anytime soon.

No current energy technology on the immediate horizon has a game-changing potential anywhere nearly analogous to the truly revolutionary invention of the transistor or internet.

Nor, for that matter, has any so-called “alternative” energy source or invention supplanted…

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Storm Dennis: Minister says climate change means government can’t protect everyone from flooding

Image credit: Newsyworld

Not sure where the 90 mph winds were supposed to be (the report says ‘parts of the UK’), but it has been blustery on and off for a few days. Enough for politicians to raise the spectre of ‘climate change’ once again, anyway. The video of an A380 Airbus making a hairy ‘crab’ landing at Heathrow, ending on the grass off the main runway, gives some indication of wind strength.

One reporter jokingly suggested watching the massive plane struggling to get on the ground could help climate campaigners, by putting people off flying altogether.
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Storm Dennis battered the UK with flooding, heavy rain and 90mph winds at the weekend.

A minister has said climate change means the government cannot protect every household from flooding, reports Yahoo News.

New environment minister George Eustice claimed the government had not been caught off-guard by the floods caused by Storm Dennis.

Amazon boss Jeff Bezos pledges $10bn to fight climate change

You really couldn’t make this stuff up, except possibly in jest.

The Amazon boss and world’s richest man gives 8% of his fortune to fight the planet’s “biggest threat”, reports BBC News.

The world’s richest man said the money would finance work by scientists, activists and other groups.

He said: “I want to work alongside others both to amplify known ways and to explore new ways of fighting the devastating impact of climate change.”

'Melting Greenland' likely to add up to half an inch to global sea levels by 2098

image credit https://visitgreenland.com/

Mike Waite left the following comment over at Paul Homewood’s excellent not a lot of people know that blog yesterday:

There is an interesting paper by MacGuth et al (2013) which supports you :

From their summary:

-“We calculate the future sea-level rise contribution from the surface mass balance of all of

Greenland’s glaciers and ice caps (GICs, ca. 90 000 km2) using a simplified energy balance

model which is driven by three future climate scenarios from the regional climate models

HIRHAM5, RACMO2 and MAR. Glacier extent and surface elevation are modified during the

mass balance model runs according to a glacier retreat parameterization. Mass balance and glacier surface change are both calculated on a 250 m resolution digital elevation model yielding a high level of detail and ensuring that important feedback mechanisms are

considered. The mass loss of all GICs by 2098 is calculated to be

2016 +/- 129 Gt (HIRHAM5 forcing),

2584 +/-109 Gt (RACMO2)

and 3907+/- 108 Gt (MAR). This corresponds to a total contribution to sea-level rise of

5:8 +/- 0:4,

7:4 +/- 0:3

and 11:2 +/- 0:3 mm, respectively. “-

The future sea-level rise contribution of Greenland’s glaciers and ice caps

H Machguth1,2, P Rastner1, T Bolch1,3, N M¨olg1, L Sandberg Sørensen4,

G Aðalgeirsdottir5, J H van Angelen6, M R van den Broeke6 and

X Fettweis7

Online at stacks.iop.org/ERL/8/025005

Even if subsequent calculations modified these figures they are unlikely to be an order of magnitude higher and the sea level rise to 2098 calculated here is at most 11mm (not cm or feet or metres).

Can’t someone take these activists, sit them in a quet room and just read the literature to them since they seem incapable of such study themselves.

MET-Office wants your money for a new supercomputer, but has given up decadal forecasting

Well this is a disappointment.

After the fiasco in 2018 when I revealed the data-shifting technique the MET-Office were using to never be wrong about their ‘decadal’ forecast, and the late update in 2019 , the MET-O have now disappeared the ‘decadal’ forecast altogether. This after they promised to update it in January 2020.

EDIT: The forecast has been found! See comments below.

Met Office forecasters set for ‘billion pound’ supercomputer

A beefier computer is still just a computer. The report says ‘Around half of the processing work – the research devoted to climate change – could be located in countries blessed with easy sources of clean energy. Iceland with its geothermal sources and Norway with its hydropower are both possibilities’.

Ever wondered why your village was suddenly flooded by a thunderstorm the weather forecasters hadn’t mentioned? Or why they failed to warn you about the dense fog shrouding your home in the morning?

The fact is that predicting the “big picture” of future conditions has got a lot better – Storm Dennis was spotted six days before it arrived, says BBC News.

But getting local forecasts right – street by street and hour by hour – is still a massive challenge.

And that might now change as the Met Office secures the help of a supercomputer project costing £1.2bn.

Nuclear: Trawsfynydd site could pioneer Rolls-Royce mini reactor

SMR transporter

The project aims to have the first power generated within 8 to 10 years, and more ex-nuclear sites are being considered. R-R already powers the UK’s nuclear submarine fleet.
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There is a “pretty high probability” that Trawsfynydd could be the site of the UK’s first small nuclear power station, says the company hoping to build it.

Engineering giant Rolls-Royce wants to build a network of mini-reactors, a third of the size of current stations, says BBC Wales.

It hopes to strike a deal with the UK government within the next year.

But it says the site of the old Gwynedd reactor ticks all the boxes to pioneer the technology.

If it goes ahead it would also be one of the first small modular reactors (SMRs) in the world.

Ben Pile: There's nothing democratic about this 'climate assembly'

The first two meetings of Climate Assembly UK, dubbed a ‘citizens’ assembly’ on climate change, have taken place in Birmingham over the course of a couple of weekends in January and February.

The climate assembly has brought together 110 randomly selected members of the public to discuss a range of climate issues and policies with a range of experts, including David Attenborough. The task of the assembly, which will meet over two more weekends this spring, is to decide on a set of recommendations for how the government can best meet its pledge to achieve Net Zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Arctic sea ice much more resilient than thought

Still waiting

More so than the climate alarm movement thought, anyway. Hence all the failed predictions of disappearing summer sea ice in the Arctic, and erroneous claims of ‘rapid melting’ that no longer hold water 😎
Observations show a ‘sideways trend’ in Arctic sea ice volume since around 2010, which perhaps not by chance follows a significant downturn in solar cycle intensity.
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In recent years the Arctic sea ice has shown great resiliency and is currently at higher levels for this time of year when compared to all but two years going back to 2005, says meteorologist Paul Dorian of Perspecta Inc. (via The GWPF).

Overview

Sea ice covers about 7% of the Earth’s surface and about 12% of the world’s oceans and forms mainly in the Earth’s polar regions.

Galactic cosmic rays affect Titan’s atmosphere

Saturn seen across a sea of methane on Titan by Huygens probe 2005

Some extracts from an article at Phys.org, bypassing the chemistry details. A research professor commented: “The process could be universal”. Interesting…
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Planetary scientists using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) revealed the secrets of the atmosphere of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn.

The team found a chemical footprint in Titan’s atmosphere indicating that cosmic rays coming from outside the Solar System affect the chemical reactions involved in the formation of nitrogen-bearing organic molecules.

This is the first observational confirmation of such processes, and impacts the understanding of the intriguing environment of Titan.

Models Reconsidered: There Is No Climate Emergency

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The point of climate alarmism is to try and convince us that we’re the problem. But when nothing much happens and their predictions fail, it falls flat – or should do.

PA Pundits - International

By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~

If you look carefully it turns out that the apocalyptic Climate Emergency narrative is an empty shell. Just what the looming catastrophe looks like is never explained. As the saying goes, there is no there, there. But there is a good reason for this carefully crafted silence, namely there is no plausible scenario whereby global catastrophe comes from global warming.

As the CLINTEL Manifesto points out, the emergency narrative is based on runaway computer models. As we know from video games, computer modelers can make their models do anything they want them to. The modelers are like fiction writers in this regard. Look at the past 150 years. The global temperature rose about 1 degree C, but the social and economic progress was spectacular. The global poverty was never as low as today. So, what is the problem?

The CLINTEL World Climate Declaration explains it…

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Alok Sharma appointed as minister for BEIS and COP26

Alok Sharma MP. Image Credit: Wikipedia Commons.

Alok Sharma gets a promotion in the cabinet reshuffle today:

Sharma was born in Agra, India, but moved to Reading with his parents when he was five years old.^[3] He was raised in the Reading suburbs of Earley and Whitley Wood and attended Reading Blue Coat School in Sonning^[4] and the University of Salford, from where he graduated with a BSc in Applied Physics with Electronics in 1988.^[5]

Sharma subsequently qualified as a chartered accountant.

Sharma was appointed Secretary of State for International Development by Boris Johnson following the resignation of Rory Stewart in July 2019. Upon ascending to the role, he said: “I am delighted… We will work across the whole of government to deliver Brexit and make sure UK aid is tackling global challenges that affect us all.”^[20]

Fabius Maximus: An autopsy of the climate policy debate’s corpse

Science has become a footnote in the mad rush to embrace so-called green energy policies, or so it seems. But is the climate likely to notice anything?
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The climate policy debate has died. Its autopsy shows who killed it, says Larry Kummer @ Fabius Maximus.

Summary: The climate policy debate ran for 30 years but produced little action (it ranks #17 of the public’s top 18 concerns). Now it has died. The autopsy reveals not just who killed it but also disturbing insights about America.

This is post #404 in a series about climate change that I began 12 years ago.

Ten things we’ve learned about the sun from NASA’s SDO this decade

The linked article contains more video material and images.
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In February 2020, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory—SDO—is celebrating its 10th year in space, reports Phys.org.

Over the past decade the spacecraft has kept a constant eye on the sun, studying how the sun creates solar activity and drives space weather—the dynamic conditions in space that impact the entire solar system, including Earth.

Since its launch on Feb. 11, 2010, SDO has collected millions of scientific images of our nearest star, giving scientists new insights into its workings.

SDO’s measurements of the sun—from the interior to the atmosphere, magnetic field, and energy output—have greatly contributed to our understanding of our closest star.

SDO’s images have also become iconic—if you’ve ever seen a close up of activity on the sun, it was likely from an SDO image.

SDO’s long career in space has allowed it to witness nearly an entire solar cycle—the sun’s 11-year cycle of activity.

Here are a few highlights of SDO’s accomplishments over the years.

Biofuels are meant to clean up flying’s carbon crisis – they won’t

Image credit: United Airlines

More wreck-o than eco? Here we find that ‘biodiesel from food crops emits an average of 1.8 times as much CO2 as fossil fuels which increases to three times more in case of biodiesel from palm oil.’ Looks like another non-solution to the claimed problem.

The UK’s aviation industry is touting biofuels as a way to make plane transport greener. But some biofuels can end up doing more harm than good, says Wired.

In the next 30 years, the number of flights is expected to increase by 70 per cent.

Unless things change, by 2050 the aviation industry will have used up more than a quarter of all the carbon dioxide we can safely emit while keeping global warming to under 1.5 degrees Celsius.

But the aviation industry says it has a way out.

UK Govt.’s Climate Assembly is anything but democratic

Credit: planetsave.com

No great surprise there. As usual the idea is to demonize the essential trace gas carbon dioxide, paving the way to useless ‘solutions’ to an imaginary problem. Note: Attenborough is *not* a climate expert, and admits so himself.

The first two meetings of Climate Assembly UK, dubbed a ‘citizens’ assembly’ on climate change, have taken place in Birmingham over the course of a couple of weekends in January and February, writes Ben Pile (via Climate Change Dispatch).

The climate assembly has brought together 110 randomly selected members of the public to discuss a range of climate issues and policies with a range of experts, including David Attenborough.

The task of the assembly, which will meet over two more weekends this spring, is to decide on a set of recommendations for how the government can best meet its pledge to achieve Net Zero carbon emissions by 2050.

On Cue — After Droughts And Fires, Then Come The Floods

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Once again old-fashioned weather has blown up in the faces of know-it-all climate alarm propagandists.

PA Pundits - International

From the team at CFACT ~

By Joanne Nova~

So much for the “hotter drier” Australian future they were warning us about 3 weeks ago.

As predicted, droughts in Australia often end in floods. It is the way it has always been. Today people are already being rescued from the rising water and possibly another 200 -300mm of rain may fall before Sunday warns the BOM. Many fires have been extinguished.

Climate change has made no difference to the drought trends in Australia in the last 178 years and climate models are totally skilless at rainfall. When will the climate modelers admit that these are natural cycles?

‘We’re only half way through’: East coast smashed by flashflooding and heavy winds

Forecasters become increasingly concerned that even more rain could fall even faster than expected as five people have been rescued from floods.

The NSW State Emergency Service issued a…

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The road to net zero – according to BBC Science

Enormous expense, twenty times more wind turbines, hydrogen production, much less meat eating, carbon capture, hard ‘lifestyle changes’ and so on. Maybe travel to work on a flying pig – and all for what?

It won’t be easy, but clean energy analyst Chris Goodall believes that the UK is entirely capable of becoming carbon neutral, says BBC Science.

Belatedly, the world has realised it has to eliminate greenhouse gases within a few decades.

The UK has promised ‘net zero’ emissions by 2050. Is this is an achievable aim? How much will it cost? In what ways will our lifestyles need to change?