Severe North Sea tidal surge

[UPDATE]

self censored

[/update]
An extreme event is in progress, proclaimed as the most severe in 60 years (1952 1953 floods), a result of a major storm from the Artic travelling south through the Norwegian / Scotland gap and a “spring” tide. (I expect the co-incidence will be noticed by some readers)

For the UK the most severe flood warnings are in place in 64 areas, next most severe 120 areas.

Thames barriers is closed, Rotterdam barriers is closed, the first time since construction in 1990. Barriers everywhere are in place. Danemark, Germany and Netherlands are expected to receive an extreme tide where very high seas will overtop.

Ipswich Star local paper have a piece up showing rising tide effect

Daily Mail do photos, sure enough under the over the top headline Sea-walls-breached-raging-seas-hours-BEFORE-high-tide-140mph-Arctic-winds-batter-British-coastline

I’ve captured the storm as seen by Met Office land weather stations and their web site. A PDF of the data is here 736kB, autoscaled plots so be wary. (experimental software)

More missing variable shenanigans from the IPCC

IPCC neglected to account for coastal waters absorbing far more co2 than they emit since the industrial revolution, according to research published in Nature today. This from Science Daily:

Coastal portions of the world’s oceans, once believed to be a source of carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere, are now thought to absorb as much as two-thirds more carbon than they emitted in the preindustrial age, researchers estimate.

“The evidence suggests that human activities in coastal zones will continue to have an important impact on global carbon cycling,” Bauer said. “It’s a tricky area of study, but omitting the coastal ocean from the overall carbon budget leaves a gap in projections for future atmospheric CO2 levels.”

Prior to the industrial age, decomposing plant materials in coastal waters and sediments likely led to the release of carbon dioxide. The Nature paper suggests that microscopic plant growth in coastal areas, fueled by fertilizer runoff, is now leading to greater uptake of CO2. It also suggests that the atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide caused by the burning of fossil fuels is further contributing to this uptake of CO2 by coastal waters.

Top US News Orgs. Teach UK Parliament Some Democracy

This needs etching on a large steel sheet and nailgunning to the door of Parliament:

December 2, 2013

OPEN LETTER TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS HOME AFFAIRS COMMITTEE:

As news organizations, editors, and journalists who often report on government actions
that officials seek to keep secret, we write to the Committee on the eve of the forthcoming
appearance of Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger to express our grave concern over pointed calls
by those in authority for censorship of The Guardian and criminal prosecution of its journalists in
the name of national security. Such sanctions, and the chilling impact created by even the threat
to impose them, undermine the independence and integrity of the press that are essential for
democracy to function.

New report shows that wind turbines don’t deliver

UKIP MEP Roger Helmer reports on a study showing that wind turbines don’t reduce co2 emissions. Remind me why we install these bird and bat killing, sleep depriving, subsidy sucking monstrosities again…

Roger Helmer MEP

I’ve just come across a report by energy consultant Duncan Seddon in the Australasian Power Technologies publication. The title is “Do wind farms/gas turbines save carbon?”.  (Of course he means “CO₂ emissions”, not carbon – but I’m delighted to see the explicit link of turbines plus back-up).

Find the report here, page 25: Hat-tip to Benny Peiser of GWPF for drawing my attention to it.

The answer to the question, in brief, is “on average, no”.

For some time now I’ve been familiar with (and have repeatedly quoted) the paper by Professor Gordon Hughes of Edinburgh University “Why is wind power so expensive”, which makes the point that the very intermittency of wind means intermittent operation of the gas back-up, which means that you burn more gas, and emit more CO₂, per MWh, than you would if you ran the plant properly.

I’ve tended to…

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Never say die

Heartwarming story of a rescue on the seabed:

Man survives 3 days at bottom of Atlantic
By MICHELLE FAUL, Associated Press

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — About 100 feet down, on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, divers had already pulled four bodies out of the sunken tugboat. Then a hand appeared on a TV screen monitoring the recovery.

Everyone assumed it was another corpse, and the diver moved toward it.

“But when he went to grab the hand, the hand grabbed him!” Tony Walker, project manager for the Dutch company DCN Diving, said of the rescue in May.

Harrison Odjegba Okene, the tug’s Nigerian cook, had survived for three days by breathing an ever-dwindling supply of oxygen in an air pocket. A video of Okene’s dramatic rescue — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArWGILmKCqE — was posted on the Internet more than six months after the rescue and has gone viral this week.

As the temperature dropped to freezing, Okene, dressed only in boxer shorts, recited a psalm his wife had sent him earlier by text message, sometimes called the Prayer for Deliverance. “Oh, God, by your name, save me. … The Lord sustains my life.”

To this day, Okene believes his rescue after 72 hours underwater was the result of divine deliverance. The 11 other seamen aboard the tug Jascon 4 died.

On the video, there was an exclamation of fear and shock from Okene’s rescuers, and then joy as the realization set in that this hand belonged to a survivor. “What’s that? He’s alive! He’s alive!” a voice can be heard exclaiming.

Tim Cullen: Svensmark Vindicated

Guest post fromm Tim Cullen. Be sure to visit his site MalagaBay.

In 1996 Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen discovered a connection between cosmic rays and global cloud cover.

In 1996 a surprising discovery was announced that the intensity of cosmic rays incident on the earth’s atmosphere correlates closely with variations of global cloud cover [Svensmark and FriisChristensen 1996].

Clouds both reflect incoming and trap outgoing radiation, and they thus play an important role in the Earth’s radiation budget.

Center for Sun-Climate Research – Technical University of Denmark
http://www.space.dtu.dk/english/research/research_divisions/solar_system_physics/sun_climate

The discovery revealed a 2% variation in cloud cover during the solar sunspot cycle.

The reported variation of cloud cover was approximately 2% over the course of a sunspot cycle.

This may appear to be quite small; however, the possible consequences on the global radiation (energy) budget are not.

Govt: We’ll cut number of households in fuel poverty by a million – by redefining fuel poverty

Paul Homewood and I spotted this one coming a number of weeks ago. The mainstream media is now picking up the story. I suggest people consider voting for the only party with a sensible energy policy. This from the Independent:

Currently, fuel poverty refers to those households that need to spend more than 10 per cent of their income on fuel “to maintain an adequate level of warmth”. But under the new definition, contained in the Government’s forthcoming Energy Bill, which could be passed by the end of the year, it will apply only to households which need to spend more than average on fuel to keep warm and who would be left with “a residual income below the official poverty line” if they did.

Cosmic Ray Blues – Electromagnetic Shower

Great post from Tim Cullen.

MalagaBay

Cosmic Rays have fallen down the rabbit hole of post-normal science where they are semantically tortured by rival groups of astronomers and astrophysicists.

Radiation of all kinds reaches the top of the Earth’s atmosphere from outer space.

Traditionally, the science of observing electromagnetic radiation of any energy, from radio waves through visible light to gamma rays, is called astronomy.

When we observe particles or atomic nuclei, it is called cosmic ray physics, or in recent years, “particle astrophysics”.

Cosmic ray study using Air Shower Time coincidence Arrays
Chelkov, Demichev and Zhemchugov – Dzhelepov Laboratory of Nuclear Problems

Click to access UNC_cosmos.pdf

Therefore, depending upon your chosen source Cosmic Rays are either: photons, particles or both.

Are Cosmic Rays Electromagnetic Radiation?
Some people still call high energy photons (x-rays and gamma rays) cosmic rays, and you’ll still see that in some textbooks.

The more common usage (at least in scientific circles)…

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