Ben Kelly: The European Arrest Warrant: a useful tool (for a tyrant)

Reblogged from Libertarian Home

‘Garage ‘as got my gloody gottle of geer in ‘is cocket’

The erosion of liberty continues apace. Watching it happen over time is like observing the crumbling white cliffs growing ever weaker as the waves crash into them. It is generally a gradual, continuous process but eventually comes the moment when a great chunk crumbles into the sea and is washed utterly away. Today is such a day; a sad day for Britain and a shaming one for Parliament. Most distressing of all is how few people are aware of it, and how even fewer seem to care. Make no mistake; this is a significant time in British history, one that will be studied far into the future. We are in the late stages of a long process in which we are willingly surrendering the independence of our legal system. It is the Conservative Party that is leading us down the dark, illiberal path to subjugation. For shame.

The hijacking of the ECB’s euro selfie competition was swift and brutal

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European thoughts on the Euro

Donohoe et al: The missing piece of the climate puzzle

This article caught my eye because Isaac Held stuck his oar in. Talkshop readers will have a field day with this I think.

Researchers show that a canonical view of global warming tells only half the story.
Genevieve Wanucha | Program in Atmospheres Oceans and Climate
November 10, 2014

In classrooms and everyday conversation, explanations of global warming hinge on the greenhouse gas effect. In short, climate depends on the balance between two different kinds of radiation: The Earth absorbs incoming visible light from the sun, called “shortwave radiation,” and emits infrared light, or “longwave radiation,” into space.

Upsetting that energy balance are rising levels of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide (CO₂), that increasingly absorb some of the outgoing longwave radiation and trap it in the atmosphere. Energy accumulates in the climate system, and warming occurs. But in a paper out this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, MIT researchers show that this canonical view of global warming is only half the story.

Insolation, Koorin expedition and computing for clear air

A new facility here for creating clear air insolation data, without the more involved absorption effects or cloud, etc. needed some testing and so…

This plot appeared during July 2012[1] after Dr. Hans Jelbring made available hourly data from the Koorin Expedition to Daly Waters, Australia during the astral winter of 1974[2]. A new plot trace has been added, computed by a new dynamic language[3] library, a wrapper around an unaltered version of NREL SOLPOS[4]. This produces an output value for one point in time, the plots here were created by a program feeding in different parameters, producing a time series, all very simple.

This result is similar to a result with data from Chilbolton Observatory, England from a Kip & Zonnen CNR4 net pyranometer / pyrgeometer[5]. Around 22% of inward solar radiation is absorbed by the atmosphere in excess of that computed by SOLPOS.

IPCC: Definition of the greenhouse effect

From http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/518.htm

Greenhouse effect
Greenhouse gases effectively absorb infrared radiation, emitted by the Earth’s surface, by the atmosphere itself due to the same gases, and by clouds. Atmospheric radiation is emitted to all sides, including downward to the Earth’s surface. Thus greenhouse gases trap heat within the surface-troposphere system. This is called the natural greenhouse effect.
Atmospheric radiation is strongly coupled to the temperature of the level at which it is emitted. In the troposphere the temperature generally decreases with height. Effectively, infrared radiation emitted to space originates from an altitude with a temperature of, on average, -19°C, in balance with the net incoming solar radiation, whereas the Earth’s surface is kept at a much higher temperature of, on average, +14°C.

Why Phi? – giant planets: a Saturn-Uranus model

Cassini probe at Saturn
[credit: NASA]

Let’s say first of all: readers who don’t want to see the fine details will be offered a shortcut to the main points instead.

For this look at Saturn-Uranus conjunction patterns a model will be proposed, then the planetary data compared to it to see how good a match it is – or not. This post follows on from two recent posts which can be found here and here.

The model will be based on the orbit period of Uranus and the Saturn-Uranus conjunction period.

Germany To Drop 2020 Climate Targets

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Paul Homewood picks up the story on new German energy policy realism. Meanwhile the UK govt. Conti ues to apply the madcap carbon floor price and jeopardize our energy supply.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/11/17/Germanys-Social-Democrats-Descend-in-Uproar

Since the Federal elections in Germany, earlier this year, there has been a running battle between Sigmar Gabriel, minister for economic affairs and energy, and Barbara Hendricks, the environmental minister.

Gabriel has been keen to drop CO2 targets, because of the damage they have been doing to the economy, while his colleague takes the opposite view. According to Der Spiegel, it is Gabriel who has won the battle.

Breitbart report:

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Germany to Abandon Strict ‘2020’ Climate Change Targets

Coal: back to the future
[image credit: BBC]

The penny has finally dropped at the top political level in Germany that abandoning nuclear power and setting stiff carbon dioxide reduction targets is impossible, without severely damaging the economy and risking mass power shortages.

Of course the usual fanatics continue to insist that such a price has to be paid, seemingly oblivious to the long-term standstill in global temperatures that suggests so-called climate policy is largely irrelevant anyway.

Breitbart London reports: Germany’s Vice Chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, has indicated that the country will abandon its commitment to reducing CO2 emissions by 40 percent by 2020, from a 1990 base level.

The greenhouse effect that wasn’t (Part 2)

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Interesting read. Reblogged for discussion at the talkshop.

Okulær

A SIMPLE, STRAIGHTFORWARD CASE STUDY:

DOES

“THE ATMOSPHERIC RADIATIVE GREENHOUSE EFFECT”

DO WHAT IT’S SUPPOSED TO DO?

First, what is the rGHE supposed to do?

It is supposed to make the surface below a radiatively active atmosphere warmer than if this particular kind of atmosphere weren’t there. By extension, one could claim – and this is after all what the ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis’ is all about – that the stronger the rGHE, the stronger its warming effect.

Now, as far as I’m concerned, this is a prediction that should be possible to test. Or else, what good is it?

Again, what is the strictest definition of the rGHE? What is its ‘surface warming mechanism’ supposed to be, in the simplest of terms? We went through this in Part 1, where what was defined as the “greenhouse effect” of clouds was overwhelmed by their opposing “albedo effect”, leading to an overall…

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Ian Wilson: Evidence that strong El Nino events are triggered by the Moon

Writing from Australia Ian Wilson will be familiar to Talkshop regulars expounding his interest in astronomical connections with earth. He has three related recent articles and now a summary binding them together. Tim adds, the subject has a long history including false accusations of astrology by detractors; in this linked 1999 paper by a veteran scientist some of the origins and history is briefly mentioned and also that as data and computing power becomes available progress is being made. It mentions El Nino [paper see ref 1].  Strangers may need to get a conceptual understanding of the regular alignment of the earth moon and sun, where self evident effect on earth is the cyclic variation is ocean tidal height.

Over to Ian

1. A SUMMARY OF THE THREE PREVIOUS POSTS

If you are unfamiliar with this topic you may wish to read the following three post in order to understand this current covering post.

• Evidence that El Nino Events are triggered by the Moon – I
  I . The Changing Aspect of the Lunar Orbit and its
  Impact Upon the Earth’s Length of Day (LOD).
• Evidence that El Nino Events are triggered by the Moon – II
  II. Seasonal Peak Tides – The 31/62 year Perigee-Syzygy
  Tidal Cycle.
• Evidence that El Nino Events are triggered by the Moon – III
  III. Strong El Nino Events Between 1865 and 2014.

Observations of the Earth rate of spin (i.e. LOD) show that there are abrupt decreases in the Earth’s rotation rate of the order of a millisecond that take place roughly once every 13.7 days. These slow downs in spin occur whenever the oceanic (and atmospheric) tidal bulge is dragged across the Earth’s equator by the Moon. They are produced by the conservation of total angular momentum of the Earth, its oceans and its atmosphere.

More Deceptive Images From The BBC

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At least these BBC reporters don’t bother to disguise the fact that they are hardcore propagandists for climate alarmism, at licence payer expense of course.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Ron Hughes

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24742770

While we’re on the topic of BBC deception, take a look at this image of a coal power station from last year.

Bear in mind, that in 2009 the BBC Trust noted that this guidance had already been issued by BBC News on how to deal with images of cooling towers.

http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/11/13/harrabin-ignores-bbc-guidelines-on-cooling-tower-images/

The McGrath article appears to break just about every bit of the guidance:

1) The caption talks about “coal-fired plants like this”, without explaining that the cooling towers have nothing to do with CO2, and would look similar on, say, a nuclear plant.

2) It is hard to see how the cooling towers could be given more prominence.

3) The photo is used in the headline.

As for the grossly deceptive impression that black smoke is being given off, this is in clear breach of the BBC Guidelines, which state:

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Nicola Scafetta: Coherence between planetary, solar and climate oscillations: a reply to some critiques.

Nicola Scafetta has emailed me to let us know he has a new paper in press which adresses critiques of our solar-planetary theory. I can’t do justice to presenting this work by illustrating this post with figures from the paper using my cellphone, but this a seriously impressive piece of work which Nicola generously shares with Talkshop readers via a link below the break. Nicola writes:

I just would like to share my latest paper
 
Nicola Scafetta, 2014. Discussion on the spectral coherence between planetary, solar and climate  oscillations: a reply to some critiques.

Astrophysics and Space Science in press.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10509-014-2111-8

For those who followed this research, the paper strongly rebuts some interesting critiques of the planetary theory of solar and climate variation made by Holm andCauquoin et al. that emerged in the literature during the first months of the 2014. (It also rebuts the very improper and unprofessional criticism made by Anthony Watts)

Rosetta: Solar PV fails to deliver, not enough sunshine

I hope this does not come true.

A cliff hanger descended over the Rosetta space mission as fate casts a shadow when an attempt at landing went fatally awry.

It turns out that fragile and complex technology was used instead of robust tried and tested nuclear plant. Fault intolerance.

The solar cells in Rosetta’s solar panels are based on a completely new technology, so-called Low-intensity Low Temperature Cells. Thanks to them, Rosetta is the first space mission to journey beyond the main asteroid belt relying solely on solar cells for power generation. Previous deep-space missions used nuclear RTGs (Radio isotope thermal generators). The new solar cells allow Rosetta to operate over 800 million kilometres from the Sun, where levels of sunlight are only 4% those on Earth.
— http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Frequently_asked_questions

But they forgot the possibility of or ignored an unknown environment might have cliffhangers waiting. It has landed in shadow.

Philae is receiving about 1.5 hours of illumination during every 12-hour rotation of the comet. [so? not designed for this then?]

This will be insufficient to top up its battery system once the primary charge it had on leaving Rosetta runs out. That was some 60-plus hours.

It means Philae is unlikely to be operating in its present state beyond Saturday. [go into low power mode, what the EU insist the prolls do]

BBC

Warm year brings more sea ice

Ice melt [credit: BBC]

The US NOAA offers its ‘Global Summary Information – September 2014’ here.

Three quotes from their ‘state of the climate’ summary [bold added]:

‘The globally averaged temperature over land and ocean surfaces for September 2014 was the highest for September since record keeping began in 1880.’

‘Between the annual maximum extent that occurred in March and the minimum extent, the Arctic lost 3.82 million square miles of ice during the 2014 melt season, the ninth most on record but the least since 2006.’

‘The average September Antarctic sea ice extent was 7.73 million square miles, 480,000 square miles (6.60 percent) above the 1981–2010 average. This was the largest September average Antarctic sea ice extent on record and the largest average Antarctic sea ice extent for any month. This bested the previous September Antarctic sea ice extent record set last year by approximately 80,000 square miles. Much-above-average sea ice was observed in the western Pacific and Indian Ocean areas.’
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In the same year there’s said to be a record-equalling high for global average temperature, the least Arctic sea ice melt since 2006 and record Antarctic sea ice extent.

Interesting. What price the much-touted ice-free Arctic any time soon?

Nigel Farage: This government has consistently treated British people with contempt.

David Cameron PROMISED a House of Commons a vote on the European Arrest Warrant last night. Guess what? He lied. AGAIN.

This government has consistently treated the British people with contempt. Even the Conservative Party’s own Members of Parliament accused it of “deception”, and Speaker Bercow, with whom I rarely agree, called it a “sorry saga”. He was right.

Rain: Is this cause for concern?

A few days ago Paul Homewood picked up an item where the Met Office seem to make a fuss about UK heat and wet, although Robert Ward seems to be the one fussing. Since I have have the precipitation data on hand what do I make of it?

“More Misleading Claims From The Met Office” (7th Nov)

This cites Yahoo News.

I’ll ignore the temperature, here is the precipitious matter ‘since records began in 1910 it has been the second wettest.’ [1]
Presumably more than 194 million tons of water dropped on London according to calculations by the British Rainfall Organisation [3]

The Met Office ploy is add the data January through end October and make that a year by year spot value.

2008 110.07
2014 104.47
1927 103.47

Independently reproduced above. Seems a strange measure so lets look some more.

 

On the deep suspicion approach to estimating measurement uncertainty

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Excellent short post on uncertainty in global temperature error ranges.

Diagram Monkey

Estimating uncertainty in historical climate data sets is not easy. Occasionally the methods and results are criticised, often by people from an engineering background. In engineering, you have to get things right. If you don’t propagate your measurement uncertainties correctly things don’t work. You also get a lot of feedback from the real world which will let you know when you’ve screwed up. It’s not uncommon for someone with such a background to look at a global average temperature quoted with a 0.1K uncertainty and snort.

They point out that the basic measurements with which we work can’t possibly be measuring temperature with an uncertainty much less than 1K therefore, the uncertainty in the global average sea-surface temperature must be around 1K. At best, probably worse. If pressed they point out that given these are measurements of uncertain provenance, we should treat them with deep suspicion. I agree. Deep suspicion…

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Fight for your right to Habeus Corpus: Lobby Parliament Monday

From Steve Crowther – UKIP Chaiman. This is too important to be UKIP members only. Get in touch with your local branch via UKIP.org and join us at Old Palace Yard, opposite the House of Lords, from mid-day on MONDAY.

Mass Lobby of Parliament – MONDAY

THE TIME HAS COME: it has now been announced that on Monday afternoon (10^th) the House of Commons will debate the hand-over of 35 Law and Justice powers to the EU – without a referendum.

These include the infamous European Arrest Warrant, used recently to handcuff and imprison the parents of Ashya King.

These powers – part of the 135 powers that the UK can opt out of this year under the Lisbon Treaty – are being handed back to the EU voluntarily, without a referendum.

• They end the tradition of Habeas Corpus which has protected British citizens from arbitrary arrest for 900 years.
• They open the door for UK citizens to come under the power of the new European Public Prosecutor, even though the government has opted out of this.
• They constitute a clear hand-over of powers to the EU without a referendum. Given the opportunity to ‘repatriate’ powers, the government is doing the opposite – and again breaking its pledge to ask the people by holding a referendum before handing over more of OUR sovereignty.

JOIN US ON MONDAY FOR A MASS LOBBY OF PARLIAMENT.

Exceptionally detailed image of a young star 450 light years away

Exceptionally detailed image of a young star 450 light years away reveals detail of proto-planetary disc with gaps. :

This image compares the size of the Solar System with HL Tauri and its surrounding protoplanetary disc. Although the star is much smaller than the Sun, the disc around HL Tauri stretches out to almost three times as far from the star as Neptune is from the Sun.

HL Tauri — a young star, about 450 light-years away, which is surrounded by a dusty disc [1]. The resulting image exceeds all expectations and reveals unexpectedly fine detail in the disc of material left over from star birth. It shows a series of concentric bright rings, separated by gaps [2].

“These features are almost certainly the result of young planet-like bodies that are being formed in the disc. This is surprising since such young stars are not expected to have large planetary bodies capable of producing the structures we see in this image,” said Stuartt Corder, ALMA Deputy Director.

“When we first saw this image we were astounded at the spectacular level of detail. HL Tauri is no more than a million years old, yet already its disc appears to be full of forming planets. This one image alone will revolutionise theories of planet formation,” explained Catherine Vlahakis, ALMA Deputy Program Scientist and Lead Program Scientist for the ALMA Long Baseline Campaign.

Germany faces suits worth billions over nuclear phase-out

Energy made in Germany

The already high cost of Germany’s ‘energy transition’, which includes a lot of new coal power stations as well as vast expense on renewables, looks about to get even higher. Nuclear power station operators want some of their money back.
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Nuclear Power Daily reports: Germany’s phase-out of nuclear energy has triggered over 20 lawsuits by big power companies who have demanded billions of euros in damages, said a government paper released Tuesday.

Berlin after Japan’s 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster moved to immediately shutter the country’s eight oldest reactors and close all others by 2022 while boosting renewable energy such as wind, solar and biomass.

Three large electricity companies — EON, RWE and Vattenfall — have responded with a spate of court challenges, which the environment ministry has listed for the first time in response to a request by the Greens party.