Data Update Shows Orwellian Climate Science

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Even if so-called greenhouse gases were a climate problem, CO2 is only a very minor player compared to water vapour, and human-caused CO2 is only a small fraction of total atmospheric CO2. So what problem do we think we can solve?

Science Matters

Climate science is unsettling because past data are not fixed, but change later on.  I ran into this when I set out to update an analysis done in 2014 by Jeremy Shiers, which I discussed in a previous post reprinted at the end.  Jeremy provided a spreadsheet in his essay Murray Salby Showed CO2 Follows Temperature Now You Can Too posted in January 2014. I downloaded his spreadsheet intending to bring the analysis up to the present to see if the results hold up.  The two sources of data were:

Temperature anomalies from RSS here:  http://www.remss.com/missions/amsu

CO2 monthly levels from NOAA (Moana Loa): https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/data.html

Uploading the CO2 dataset showed that many numbers had changed (why?).

The blue line shows annual observed differences in monthly values year over year, e.g. June 2020 minus June 2019 etc.  The first 12 months (1979) provide the observed starting values from which differentials are calculated. …

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Report suggests SUVs are a health risk, or equivalent to one

Image credit: Carbuyer

A ‘climate think tank’ proposes trying to choke off SUV demand by banning adverts, but the most obvious advert is the vehicle that’s already on the road, visible to all. This report claims ‘soaring sales for electric vehicles’, but the actual numbers are tiny compared to total sales of all propulsion types – especially SUVs.
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A new report draws parallels between the ban on tobacco advertising and changed behaviors, says Greenbiz.

The United Kingdom should ban the advertising of sports utility vehicles (SUVs) in order to help drive down transport emissions and accelerate progress towards the country’s net zero goals, a study published this week has urged, drawing parallels with the ban on tobacco advertising and its success in changing behaviors.

Produced by climate think tank the New Weather Foundation, the report highlights how average emissions for new cars sold in the U.K. increased in 2019 for the fourth year in a row.

The same trend has been documented across much of Europe, as soaring sales for electric vehicles and low emission models are more than offset by increased demand for heavier and more polluting SUVs, which made up four in 10 of the U.K.’s new car sales last year.

By contrast, while sales of electric and plug-in hybrid models are growing exponentially, they are doing so from a low base with data from the European Environment Agency showing that fewer than two in every 100 new cars are fully electric.

The growth in SUV sales comes alongside increased advertising expenditure to promote the vehicles, the study adds, a marketing strategy that appears to run in conflict with the stated decarbonization ambitions of some of the world’s biggest car firms.

The study highlights the example provided Ford, which has set a net zero emissions target and promised to invest $11.5 billion in developing electric models through to 2022, but has at the same time stepped up efforts to promote its most high carbon models.

From September 2016 to September 2018, Ford went from a roughly 50/50 split in U.S. advertising spend between cars and SUVs/pickup trucks, to spending 85 percent on the latter, in pursuit of the higher profit margins provided by larger vehicles, the study notes.

Full article: We banned advertising for cigarettes. Should we do the same for SUVs?

Campaign granted permission for judicial review of £27 billion UK roads programme

Once more the courts are asked to intervene in UK transport policy on the grounds of ‘climate change objectives’ and other supposed issues, while the roads get ever more overcrowded.
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Transport Action Network (TAN) has been granted permission for judicial review of the Transport Secretary Grant Shapps’ decision to go ahead with the £27 billion roads programme (Roads Investment Strategy 2 or RIS2), reports Ekklesia.

Mrs Justice Lieven gave the go ahead for the review, saying that TAN’s case that Mr Shapps had not properly considered the impact of the multi-billion pound roads-building scheme on climate change objectives, including the carbon budgets under the Climate Change Act 2008 and the Paris Agreement, was arguable.

The Judge also declared the case to be “significant” which means it will be fast-tracked and should be heard at the High Court by early November.

About those ‘Green Energy’ unicorns… – The GWPF

Green blob [credit: storybird.com]

The Manhattan Institute reckons: ‘By 2050, with current plans, the quantity of worn-out solar panels—much of it nonrecyclable—will constitute double the tonnage of all today’s global plastic waste, along with over 3 million tons per year of unrecyclable plastics from worn-out wind turbine blades. By 2030, more than 10 million tons per year of batteries will become garbage.’

Before then, all that future waste has to be manufactured, largely from mined materials. Is the world ready for this?
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You think those baby unicorns grow on trees? Better think again, says Michael Walsh @ The Pipeline.

“Green” energy, in fact, comes with a very high price tag as this report from the Manhattan Institute makes clear.

As policymakers have shifted focus from pandemic challenges to economic recovery, infrastructure plans are once more being actively discussed, including those relating to energy.

A cool July ends with notable heat

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We learn that ‘The UK as a whole was -0.8°C below the long-term (1981-2010) average for the month.’ This is described as ‘a fairly unremarkable month’ until a warm last day. Would it also have been unremarkable if it was 0.8C *above* the long-term average?

Official blog of the Met Office news team

July 2020 was looking to be a fairly unremarkable month in terms of climate statistics for the UK, until hot conditions closed the month on the 31^st.

Overall it was a cool month, with most days having temperatures below average. Successive low pressure systems brought cloud, rain and predominantly westerly winds across parts of the UK, keeping temperatures down. The UK as a whole was -0.8°C below the long-term (1981-2010) average for the month. As the anomaly map indicates, the south-east of the UK was the only region to get close to average temperatures for July.

One outlier of the July statistics is the maximum temperatures recorded on Friday 31^st July. Tim Legg from the Met Office’s National Climate Information Centre, said: “An area of low pressure in the Atlantic acted to draw warm air up from the continent, bringing a day of heat to much of…

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NZ to trial world-first commercial long-range, wireless power transmission

Nikola Tesla in the lab with a few million volts of electricity overhead.
[image credit: Wikipedia]

Sounds interesting, but of course experiments don’t always go according to plan – as Tesla well knew.
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A New Zealand-based startup has developed a method of safely and wirelessly transmitting electric power across long distances without the use of copper wire, and is working on implementing it with the country’s second-largest power distributor, reports New Atlas.

The dream of wireless power transmission is far from new; everyone’s favorite electrical genius Nikola Tesla once proved he could power light bulbs from more than two miles away with a 140-foot Tesla coil in the 1890s – never mind that in doing so he burned out the dynamo at the local powerplant and plunged the entire town of Colorado Springs into blackout.

Tesla’s dream was to place enormous towers all over the world that could transmit power wirelessly to any point on the globe, powering homes, businesses, industries and even giant electric ships on the ocean.

Investor J.P. Morgan famously killed the idea with a single question: “where can I put the meter?”

Top court forces Ireland to strengthen climate plans

Irish wind farm [image credit: RTG @ Wikipedia]

Climate virtue signalling comes back to bite vote-chasing politicians, who expected they could dump many of the potentially unpopular decisions on taxes and spending arising from their 2015 law onto a later government. They now have to lay out plans for the next 30 years, long after their mandate to govern.
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Judges ruled the government’s national mitigation plan fell “well short” of what was needed to meet Ireland’s climate commitments, ordering a more ambitious strategy, as Climate Home News reports.

The Irish government has been ordered to take more aggressive action on climate change, following a ruling by the country’s top judges.

In a judgment published today [31/07/2020], the supreme court said Ireland’s existing emission cutting plans fell “well short” of what was required to meet its climate commitments and must be replaced with a more ambitious strategy.

Ireland is obliged to cut its emissions by 80% by 2050 compared to 1990 levels, under its Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015. In 2017 it published a National Mitigation Plan explaining how it intended to meet that goal.

There aren’t enough batteries to electrify all cars – switch to plan B?

Tesla plant [image credit: Steve Jurvetson @ Wikipedia]

H/T TechXplore

But Plan B includes putting heavy batteries in already heavy trucks, making them too heavy for hauling goods — or reducing their payloads. But at least the fact that there aren’t going to be anywhere near enough batteries to replace all fuel-powered vehicles with expensive EVs is out in the open, leaving climate obsessives with yet another headache. Wade through the usual paranoid propaganda to see how big the problem is.
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We need to change our transportation system, and we need to do it quickly, claims The Conversation.

Road transportation is a major consumer of fossil fuels, contributing 16 percent of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, which warm up the Earth’s atmosphere and cause changes to the climate.

It also pollutes the air, threatening health and costing taxpayers billions of dollars annually.

At the same time, electric vehicles are getting cheaper, and vehicle range and the availability of charging stations are improving.

This is exciting for many because it seems to suggest an easy and convenient answer to the problem of transportation emissions: if everyone swapped their fossil-fuelled vehicle for an electric equivalent, we could all keep driving, safe in the knowledge that we are no longer killing the planet by doing so—and all while enjoying a new car that is quiet, cheap to power and fun to drive.

Everybody wins, right? Unfortunately, it’s unlikely to be that simple.

Rupert Murdoch’s son James quits News Corp in climate change row

Someone else who can’t believe the climate can change naturally. But it always has done so.
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He resigns from the influential media company’s board, citing “disagreements over editorial content”, reports BBC News.

In a filing to US regulators, he said he also disagreed with some “strategic decisions” made by the company.

The exact nature of the disagreements was not detailed.

But Mr Murdoch has previously criticised News Corp outlets, which include the Wall Street Journal, for climate change coverage.

Chris Packham loses appeal against HS2 rail project

‘Environmentalists say the impact of the project will lead to irreversible damage’ reports newsdevelops.com. But what about the ‘damage’ of not building it – shortage of goods train capacity, lack of seats forcing people on to other modes of travel, etc.? Trying to put the brakes on modern life via the courts has failed this time, but it surely won’t be the last attempt.
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The broadcaster Chris Packham has lost his case against HS2 in the Court of Appeal.

Environmentalists say the high-speed rail project is leading to irreversible destruction of ancient habitats and woodlands.

Packham said the case for HS2 should be revisited despite Friday’s ruling against him.

The Solar Minimum Superstorm of 1903

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A message from the past: “The timing of the storm interestingly parallels where we are now–near Solar Minimum just after a weak solar cycle.”

Spaceweather.com

July 29, 2020: Don’t let Solar Minimum fool you. The sun can throw a major tantrum even during the quiet phase of the 11-year solar cycle. That’s the conclusion of a new study published in the July 1st edition of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“In late October 1903, one of the strongest solar storms in modern history hit Earth,” say the lead authors of the study,  Hisashi Hayakawa (Osaka University, Japan) and Paulo Ribeiro (Coimbra University, Portugal). “The timing of the storm interestingly parallels where we are now–near Solar Minimum just after a weak solar cycle.”

Above: The red line marks the 1903 solar superstorm in a plot of the 11-year solar cycle. [ref] The 1903 event wasn’t always recognized as a great storm. Hayakawa and colleagues took an interest in it because of what happened when the storm hit. In magnetic observatories around the world, pens…

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Met Office: Creating a five-year window into future climate

Using computer models to make climate predictions? All we can say is: good luck with that.
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Providing annually-updated five-year climate predictions at global and continental scales is the focus of a new international science collaboration co-ordinated by the WMO and led by the UK’s Met Office.

For the first time, climate scientists have joined forces and resources to produce an annually-updated climate snapshot looking at the next five years.

Harnessing the best computer models from ten climate centres around the world, every year will produce a new climate prediction looking out to five years ahead.

A quasi-periodic ~2400-year climate cycle – or not?

We’ll look here at examples of where a 2400 year period has been identified by researchers in radiocarbon data.
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Part of the abstract below is highlighted for analysis. The original Talkshop post on the paper in question:
S. S. Vasiliev and V. A. Dergachev: 2400-year cycle in atmospheric radiocarbon concentration

Abstract. We have carried out power spectrum, time-spectrum and bispectrum analyses of the long-term series of the radiocarbon concentrations deduced from measurements of the radiocarbon content in tree rings for the last 8000 years. Classical harmonic analysis of this time series shows a number of periods: 2400, 940, 710, 570, 500, 420, 360, 230, 210 and 190 years. A principle feature of the time series is the long period of ~ 2400 years, which is well known. The lines with periods of 710, 420 and 210 years are found to be the primary secular components of power spectrum. The complicated structure of the observed power spectrum is the result of ~ 2400-year modulation of primary secular components. The modulation induces the appearance of two side lines for every primary one, namely lines with periods of 940 and 570 years, of 500 and 360 years, and 230 and 190 years. The bi-spectral analysis shows that the parameters of carbon exchange system varied with the ~ 2400-year period during the last 8000 years. Variations of these parameters appear to be a climate effect on the rate of transfer of 14C between the atmosphere and the the ocean.

UK needs hydrogen, carbon capture to meet net zero goal, National Grid says

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) [credit: cnet.com]

Aren’t they in effect spelling out why the target is unachievable, not to say ridiculous? Whichever way you look at it – cost, feasibility, technology, benefits (lack of?) etc. – it has failure written all over it.
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Britain’s goal of achieving net zero emissions by mid-century is achievable but immediate action is needed across a range of technologies including carbon capture and storage (CCS), electricity grid operator National Grid said.

Last year Britain became the first major economy to pass a law to bring all greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, compared with its previous target of at least an 80% reduction from 1990 levels, says yahoo!finance.

“Reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050 is achievable. However, it requires immediate action across all key technologies and policy areas, and full engagement across society and end consumers,” National Grid said in its annual Future Energy Scenarios report.

Mass EV charging: Is a can of worms hiding under the bonnet?

Electric car home charging point [image credit: evcompare.ie]

H/T The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)

Scenario — having been pushed into buying an electric car, and spending large sums on upgrading your home electricity system, to cope with the government’s haphazard but supposedly climate-related demands: “Should you charge visitors for a recharge? You might gift the cost to friends and relatives, but what about the plumber or the carer?” – asks Transport Xtra.
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The Government’s push to electrify road transport and domestic heating could place major cost burdens on consumers, says a new report.

Electric vehicles have become something of a panacea for politicians as they grapple with how to decarbonise the transport sector.

But for some engineers, the headlong rush to electrify road transport and domestic heating too is a major cause for concern.

Roman Warm Period was 2°C warmer than today, new study shows

Credit: OH 237 @ Wikipedia

Natural climate variability similar to what we see today has been going on for thousands, if not millions of years, whether ‘greenhouse gas’ theorists moaning about modern human activities like it or not.
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The Roman Empire coincided with warmest period of the last 2,000 years in the Med, says The GWPF.

The Mediterranean Sea was 3.6°F (2°C) hotter during the Roman Empire than other average temperatures at the time, a new study claims.

The Empire coincided with a 500-year period, from AD 1 to AD 500, that was the warmest period of the last 2,000 years in the almost completely land-locked sea.

Searching for the missing link: the hole in the zero-carbon bucket

*Missing* being the operative word. Any article such as this one, showing power station cooling towers appearing to emit black steam – by careful use of dusk shadowing – instantly announces itself as human-accusing climate propaganda, like all the others before it using the same camera trick. But as Star Trek’s Scotty used to say: ‘Ye canna change the laws of physics’, which climate dreamers tend to forget. Outlandish costs and highly inefficient methods are not going to work on an industrial scale either. In short, there’s a massive hole in their renewables-based bucket.
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Governments and electric utilities are rapidly embracing the imperative to decarbonize energy use, says the Atlantic Council.

In the context of this effort, they have made substantial commitments to renewable energy generation and battery-based electricity storage through renewable portfolio standards and contractual commitments.

But while the costs of renewable energy generation have rapidly decreased, and their performance has improved, renewable generation is intermittent, and electric-system operators continue to rely on existing thermal resources, particularly natural gas generation, to fill in the gaps when renewable generation is not available.

The Homeric Minimum – climate change of the past

World climate classification map [credit: Beck, H.E., Zimmermann, N. E., McVicar, T. R., Vergopolan, N., Berg, A., & Wood, E. F. @ Wikipedia]

The Homeric seems to have started about 2400 years before the Spörer (or Maunder?) Minimum, which may be its more recent equivalent. Researchers have found evidence of a ‘2400-year cycle in atmospheric radiocarbon concentration’ – for example, see here.

Much of the article below appears to have come from Wikipedia, but there it also says:
“Variations in the solar output have effects on climate, less through the usually quite small effects on insolation and more through the relatively large changes of UV radiation and potentially also indirectly through modulation of cosmic ray radiation. The 11-year solar cycle measurably alters the behaviour of weather and atmosphere, but decadal and centennial climate cycles are also attributed to solar variation.”
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The Homeric Minimum is a grand solar minimum that took place between 2,800 and 2,550 years before present, says the Grand Solar Minimum website.

It appears to coincide with, and have been the cause of, a phase of climate change at that time, which involved a wetter western and drier eastern Europe.

This had far-reaching effects on human civilization, some of which may be recorded in Greek mythology and the Old Testament.

Aha! “Renewable Energy” Is Only (Kind Of) Renewable ELECTRICITY

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Petroleum-based products cannot be ‘electrified’.

PA Pundits - International

By Ronald Stein ~

The rage these days from the Green New Deal, the Paris Accord, and the recent Democrats Clean Energy Climate Policy are all focused on renewable energy to replace our demands from fossil fuels. But wait – renewable energy from wind and solar is only renewable ELECTRICITY! At best, that renewable electricity is intermittent as it depends on wind and sunshine to produce any electricity.

Before 1900 the world had no medications, electronics, cosmetics, plastics, fertilizers, and transportation infrastructures. Looking back just a few short centuries, we’ve come a long way since the pioneer days.

Also, before 1900, the world had very little commerce and without transportation there is no commerce. The two prime movers that have done more for the cause of globalization than any other: the diesel engine and the jet turbine, both get their fuels from oil. Road and air travel now dominate most…

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HS2 rail project touts ‘carbon benefits’ through increased freight capacity

West Coast main line and M1 motorway, southern England

Can’t blame the promoters for claiming their monster rail project is a benefit to all and sundry, by any means available. It’s obviously part of their job to try and do so. Cue climate propaganda.
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The project promoter has said that HS2 will enable new train paths on the existing network which can be used to move more goods by rail, and has released a new video to demonstrate this potential, reports New Civil Engineer.

The video uses Derby-based rail freight company DC Rail, which specialises in moving construction materials by rail, as an example. The firm is part of construction firm Cappagh Group which is currently constructing a new rail freight terminal in Wembley, on the West Coast Main Line, that will help it offer new rail services to customers in London.

HS2 Ltd has said that building HS2 will free up a “massive amount of space” by moving high speed services onto dedicated tracks to free up more train paths on the existing network for freight.