Solar cycle 4b, support from 10BE proxy

One of the unsolved solar mysteries is the peculiar behaviour around year 1800. The data we have is poor leading to ambiguity on whether a solar sunspot cycle is missing from the record.

Figures from paper. For a legible copy you will need to register and download the PDF.

The lost sunspot cycle: New support from 10Be measurements
C. Karoff, F. Inceoglu, M. F. Knudsen, J. Olsen, A. Fogtmann-Schulz
A&A 575 A77 (2015)
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201424927
(early preview with registration)

ABSTRACT

NOAA – 1913 Low Min Records Broken (272 tied) From 2015-02-19 to 2015-02-25

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Tsk, weather eh?

sunshine hours

1913 Low Min Records Broken in Last 7 Days (272 tied)  according to the NOAA.

Below is a screenshot showing location and the biggest difference between old record and new record.

The list is just the ones I could capture in a screenshot. Wow. Many records broken by over 30F.

Imagine … the old record was 15F and it is now -23F. A 38F difference.

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Earth’s other ‘moon’ and its crazy orbit could reveal mysteries of the solar system

Cruithne’s orbit of the Sun
[credit: GravitySimulator.com]

‘One day, Cruithne could be a practice site for landing humans on asteroids’ says a report at phys.org . Why so?

‘Cruithne has an orbit that stretches from the orbit of Mercury to beyond the orbit of Mars. But remarkably, Cruithne’s period is almost exactly the same as Earth’s. This sets the table for some interesting orbital interactions.’ – quoting GravitySimulator.com.

Phys.org takes up the story:
We all know and love the moon. We’re so assured that we only have one that we don’t even give it a specific name. It is the brightest object in the night sky, and amateur astronomers take great delight in mapping its craters and seas. To date, it is the only other heavenly body with human footprints.

What you might not know is that the moon is not the Earth’s only natural satellite. As recently as 1997, we discovered that another body, 3753 Cruithne, is what’s called a quasi-orbital satellite of Earth. This simply means that Cruithne doesn’t loop around the Earth in a nice ellipse in the same way as the moon, or indeed the artificial satellites we loft into orbit. Instead, Cruithne scuttles around the inner solar system in what’s called a “horseshoe” orbit.

Global warming slowdown probably due to natural cycles, study finds

Sorry folks [image credit: wikia]

The Guardian newspaper finally facing up to climate reality? Well, after a fashion. Their global warming can may have been kicked down the road for a while, that’s all.

The idea that natural variation could make temperatures go up as well as down is still not for discussion in their biased climate world.

H/T Lord Beaverbrook.

Guardian report: Manmade global warming over the past decade has probably been partly offset by the cooling effect of natural variability in the Earth’s climate system, a team of climate researchers have concluded.

The finding could help explain the slowdown in temperature rises this century that climate sceptics have seized on as evidence climate change has stopped, even though 14 of the 15 hottest years on record have happened since 2000.

The authors of the new paper describe the slowdown, sometimes called a global warming hiatus or pause, as a “false pause”. They warn that the natural cycles in the Pacific and Atlantic that they found are currently having an overall cooling effect on temperatures will reverse in the coming decades – at which point warming will accelerate again.

Biomass Emits Double The CO2 Of Gas

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Sustainable?

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

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President Putin: Russian gas supplies to Europe could be disrupted within days

H/T to Benny Peiser for this excerpt from a Times article (paywalled)

Putin Ready To Turn Off Europe’s Gas Supply
The Times, 26 February 2015 David Charter

Russia threatened yesterday to disrupt gas supplies to Europe within days, opening a new front in the showdown over Ukraine.

President Putin demanded immediate advance payments from Kiev to keep the gas taps on in the depths of winter. Cutting off gas would be likely to hit transit flows to Europe.

His ultimatum came on the day that the EU announced ambitious plans for an “energy union” to end Russia’s energy stranglehold over the continent.

Officials admitted, however, that it would take many years and an investment of €1 trillion in infrastructure to achieve energy security after delays caused by previous failed attempts at better EU co-operation.

New result shows CO2 has almost no effect on temperature

An article in the Daily Mail today piqued my interest. It trumpets empirical results which they say empirically confirm the theoretical CO2 greenhouse effect for the first time:

“Scientists have witnessed carbon dioxide trapping heat in the atmosphere above the United States, showing human-made climate change ‘in the wild’ for the first time.

A new study in the journal Nature demonstrates in real-time field measurements what scientists already knew from basic physics, lab tests, numerous simulations, temperature records and dozens of other climatic indicators.

They say it confirms the science of climate change and the amount of heat-trapping previously blamed on carbon dioxide.”

“These instruments, located at ARM research sites in Oklahoma and Alaska, measure thermal infrared energy that travels down through the atmosphere to the surface.

They can detect the unique spectral signature of infrared energy from CO2.

Other instruments at the two locations detect the unique signatures of phenomena that can also emit infrared energy, such as clouds and water vapor.

I am Under “Investigation”

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Roger Pielke Jr gets the McCarthy treatment for daring to point out that the insurance payouts for natural disasters don’t correlate with (non)changes in the frequency of ‘extreme weather’.

The Climate Fix

As some of you will already know, I am one of 7 US academics being investigated by US Representative Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) who is the ranking member of the House of Representatives Committee on Environment and Natural Resources. Rep. Grijalva has sent a letter to the president of my university requesting a range of information, including my correspondence, the letter is here in PDF.

Before continuing, let me make one point abundantly clear: I have no funding, declared or undeclared, with any fossil fuel company or interest. I never have. Representative Grijalva knows this too, because when I have testified before the US Congress, I have disclosed my funding and possible conflicts of interest. So I know with complete certainty that this investigation is a politically-motivated “witch hunt” designed to intimidate me (and others) and to smear my name.

For instance, the Congressman and his staff, along with compliant journalists…

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Solar cycle 24 enigma: TSI on the rise again

The latest results from the TIM/SORCE TSI instrument show that solar cycle 24 hit a peak on Feb 6th at around 1362.3W/m^2. Does anyone think it’ll go any higher?

Charting the costs and effectiveness of Renewable Energy in Europe

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A long and well structured look at European Unreliables energy production by Ed Hoskins. Click on the ‘View original‘ link to see legible graphs!

edmhdotme

A comparison of both the Capital Cost and Energy Production Effectiveness of the Renewable Energy in Europe.

The diagrams below collate the cost and capacity factors of European Renewable Energy power sources, Onshore and Off-shore Wind Farms and Large scale Photovoltaic Solar generation.  They are compared to the cost and output capacity of conventional Gas Fired Electricity generation.

• capacity factor:  installed nameplate capacity compared to the actual electrical energy output achieved
• capital cost:  comparison with the cost of equivalent electrical output produced by Gas Fired electrical generation.

Overall European renewable Energy has almost 6 times lower capacity than conventional Gas Fired power generation and it costs about 16 times more in capital expenditure alone.

In all the capital costs expended by 2013 in Europe amounted to some €1/2 trillion for ~170 Gigawatts of “nominal” installed Renewable Energy generation.  But because of the reduced capacity factor, those installations provide ~30 Gigawatts of real output electrical…

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EU: Backpedalling the emissions reduction bicycle

EU ‘Backtracks’ On CO2 Targets In UN Accounting Fudge
Responding to Climate Change 24 February 2015

Ed King

Europe’s proposed new climate goals could be weaker than previously announced due to its method of accounting for changes in land use.

Last October the bloc agreed to target greenhouse gas cuts of 40% on 1990 levels by 2030, a rise on its 20% goal for 2020.

But in a leaked document outlining the European Commission’s plans for curbing carbon pollution, the 40% goal now includes land use, land use change and forestry accounting.

This means the growth of existing forests could be used towards EU targets, which analysts say could mean the 40% drops to 35% in reality.

Niklas Höhne, an analyst at the NewClimate Institute, told RTCC this would place less pressure on other sectors such as energy and transport to reduce their carbon footprint.

“Forests grow and sequester more and more carbon without an additional intervention… they allow in the end accounting for reductions without any additional action,” he said.

Farmlands, wetlands and forests cover 90% of the EU’s land mass, and are currently regarded as a carbon sink, sucking and storing carbon from the atmosphere. […]

“Given that heads of states agreed to “at least” 40%, including the land use sector would not be in line with the political decision that has already been taken,” said Eva Filzmoser from the Carbon Market Watch NGO.

“It would also be seen as ‘backsliding’ from the originally presented 40% target and would set the EU off on a bad start towards agreeing on an ambitious international climate treaty in Paris in December 2015.”

Full story

APOD: Auction of photos from early days of space exploration

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/02/24/rare-photos-from-the-golden-age-of-space-exploration/

IPCC Chief Pachauri Resigns – Too much on his hands

UN climate panel head Rajendra Pachauri steps down after sex claims http://t.co/YMOejl2Z7B pic.twitter.com/9Ux2l41XFs

— Agence France-Presse (@AFP) February 24, 2015

Natalie Bennett: Launches election campaign with no knickers on

Interviewed by Nick Ferrari on LBC radio this morning, Natalie tells Nick she’s going to build 500,000 social homes. Nick asks how much it’ll cost. Natalie shuffles her feet, coughs, feigns a severe cold, and then says costings will be done, but won’t appear in the manifesto. 3 mins audio. Enjoy.

And from the archives, footage I shot as I went to meet Benny Peiser a couple of year ago:

Jiang et al: Solar forcing of Holocene summer sea-surface temperatures in the northern North Atlantic

H/T to Chaeremon for flagging up this recent paper from Jiang et al which gets better detail on solar forcing of climate. Paywalled, abstract only, but there is a fugure from Jiang’s earlier 2005 paper covering 1200 years around Iceland.

Abstract

Mounting evidence from proxy records suggests that variations in solar activity have played a significant role in triggering past climate changes. However, the mechanisms for sun-climate links remain a topic of debate. Here we present a high-resolution summer sea-surface temperature (SST) record covering the past 9300 yr from a site located at the present-day boundary between polar and Atlantic surface-water masses. The record is age constrained via the identification of 15 independently dated tephra markers from terrestrial archives, circumventing marine reservoir age variability problems. Our results indicate a close link between solar activity and SSTs in the northern North Atlantic during the past 4000 yr; they suggest that the climate system in this area is more susceptible to the influence of solar variations during cool periods with less vigorous ocean circulation. Furthermore, the high-resolution SST record indicates that climate in the North Atlantic regions follows solar activity variations on multidecadal to centennial time scales.

John Brignell: How we know they know they are lying

H/T to tweeter ‘ILuvCO2’ for reminding me about this essay from the excellent ‘numberwatch’ website, written by its owner John Brignell back in 2009. Still fresh and relevant.

That a lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright,
But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight.
Tennyson – The Grandmother.

It is to some extent forgivable when people adopt extreme positions out of misapprehension or delusion. It is quite another matter if they mislead others by deliberate falsehood. Politicians, of course, treat the lie as part of their professional equipment. Indeed, in some circumstances they are obliged to use it (when, for example, telling the truth about the economy would cause a run on the currency). In science, up to recent times, there is no circumstance in which a deliberate falsehood is justifiable. It requires at a minimum being drummed out of one’s learned society.

All that has changed with the rise of authoritarian government. In Britain this took the form of nationalisation of the universities, begun under Thatcher and completed under Blair.  In the USA it took the form of new state-funded bureaucracies, such as the EPA, who maintained control by the monopoly of funding. The global warming religion changed everything.

New BBC Programme On Climate Change

Paul Homewood previews the BBC’s forthcoming IPCC Paris conference wind-up

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t QV

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02jsdrk

The BBC have a programme on climate change going out tonight next Monday. According to the blurb:

This programme aims to remedy that, with a new perspective on the whole subject. Presented by three mathematicians – Dr Hannah Fry, Prof Norman Fenton and Prof David Spiegelhalter – it hones in on just three key numbers that clarify all the important questions around climate change. The stories behind these numbers involve an extraordinary cast of characters, almost all of whom had nothing to do with climate change, but whose work is critical to our understanding of the climate.

The three numbers are:
0.85 degrees (the amount of warming the planet has undergone since 1880)
95 per cent (the degree of certainty climate scientists have that at least half the recent warming is man-made)
1 trillion tonnes (the total amount of carbon we can afford to…

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Quote of the day from the MET Office

‘Burst of warming may end lull in rising temperatures’ http://t.co/hDxn3CZfyB – also on @ClimatePrimate @dougmcneall paper in @NatureClimate

— Richard Betts (@richardabetts) February 23, 2015

From the New Scientist article Richard links:

Even if the best estimate is for temperatures to rise in the next few years, we shouldn’t be too surprised if the pause continues 

Talk about hedging your Betts! 🙂

Lets add some science to the uncertainty. This plot is taster for a Lunar based ENSO prediction technique.

Ian Wilson El Nino and Lunar timing study

Astrophysicist Ian Wilson has an interesting theory that we may well see an El Nino this winter – just in time for the IPCC COP in Paris to scream “WARMING – Told you so”.

UK’s Biomass revolution feeling the heat

The ever increasing appetite for wood pellets, most notably for the Drax powerstation, from the United States has recieved some unwanted attention from several Environmental groups and the EPA. This has resulted in the Secretary of State Ed Davey agreeing to meet with the environmental groups to explain why they are wrong.

Record Antarctic sea ice still ‘a mystery’

Tackling Antarctic sea ice [image credit: BBC / BAS]

There seems no end in sight to the long-term growth of seasonal Antarctic sea ice, reports RTCC (link below). This continues to ‘baffle scientists’, to quote the usual expression.

‘Conventional’ climate theories can’t account for this phenomenon except by stretching the existing logic to the limit and beyond.

Sea ice coverage in the Antarctic continues to increase, according to data released on Thursday by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The ocean’s sea ice levels were 44.6% higher than the 1981-2010 average, breaking a previous record set in 2008 by 220,000 square miles.