Moons behaving badly: NASA makes press call for ‘surprising’ observations

WASHINGTON, May 28, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — NASA will host a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, June 3, to discuss the Hubble Space Telescope’s surprising observations of how Pluto’s moons behave, and how these new discoveries are being used in the planning for the New Horizons Pluto flyby in July.

Participants in the teleconference will be:

• John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington
• Mark Showalter, senior research scientist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California
• Douglas Hamilton, professor of astronomy at the University of Maryland, College Park
• John Spencer, scientist at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado
• Heidi Hammel, executive vice president of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington

Paul Vaughan: Sun-Climate 101: Solar-Terrestrial Primer

Paul Vaughan has produced a six page .pdf document crammed with the fruits of his research into the ways in which solar variation affects Earth’s climate. Several of the observations and concepts coincide with the work we have been doing here at the talkshop over the last six years to unravel the mysteries of solar system dynamics and their effect on Terrestrial variation. Paul has applied his stats and visualisation skills and thorough approach to referencing, including direct links to data. This has resulted in a landmark document which readers will find both useful and inspiring. It demonstrates the progress that has been made in solar-terrestrial theory, (with hints about the underlying planetary solar relations too).

 

Ian Wilson: The El Niños during New Moon Epoch 5 – 1963 to 1994

This repost of Ian Wilson’s Jan 1st article at his Astro-Climate-Connection blog continues development of his hypothesis that the Moon triggers El Nino events. This is relevant as we are currently on the cusp of El Nino, which may develop as the year goes on. Ian predicted El Nino for later this year in a comment here last year, based on his investigations.

The El Niños during New Moon Epoch 5 – 1963 to 1994
Jan 1st 2015 : Ian Wilson PhD

A detailed investigation of the precise alignments between the lunar synodic [lunar phase] cycle and the 31/62 year Perigee-Syzygy cycle between 1865 and 2014 shows that it naturally breaks up into six 31 year epochs each of which has a distinctly different tidal property. The second 31 year interval starts with the precise alignment on the 15th of April 1870 with the subsequent epoch boundaries occurring every 31 years after that:

Epoch 1 – Prior to 15th April  1870
Epoch 2 – 15th April 1870 to 18th April 1901
Epoch 3 – 8th April 1901 to 20th April 1932
Epoch 4 – 20th April 1932 to 23rd April 1963
Epoch 5 – 23rd April 1963 to 25th April 1994
Epoch 6 – 25th April 1994 to 27th April 2025

The hypothesis that the 31/62 year seasonal tidal cycle plays a significant role in sequencing the triggering of El Niño events leads one to reasonably expect that tidal effects for the following three epochs:

New Moon Epoch:

Epoch 1 – Prior to 15th April  1870
Epoch 3 – 8th April 1901 to 20th April 1932
Epoch 5 – 23rd April 1963 to 25th April 1994

Ian Wilson: Connecting the Planetary Periodicities to Changes in the Earth’s LOD

Relevant to current discussions on the talkshop concerning changes in Earth’s length of day (LOD) and the effect of planetary orbital resonances on the Moon’s orbital parameters and Earth climatic variation; this is a repost from Ian Wilson’s excellent Astro-Climate-Connection website. Ian very generously opens with a hat tip to this blog, (at which he is one of the ‘collaborators’ he mentions). 

Connecting the Planetary Periodicities to Changes in the Earth’s LOD
Monday, October 14, 2013 : Ian Wilson PhD

[(*) Some of the findings in this blog post concerning the connection between the Earth’s rotation rate and the planetary configurations have also been independently discovered by Rog “Tallbloke” Tattersall and his collaborators]

A. The Connection Between Extreme Pergiean Spring Tides and Long-term Changes in the Earth’s Rotation Rate as Measured by the Rate-of-Change of its Length-of-Day (LOD). (*)

If you plot the rate of change of the Earth’s Length of Day (LOD) [with the short-term atmospheric component removed] against time [starting in 1962] you find that there is a ~ 6 year periodicity that is phase-locked with the 6 year period that it takes the lunar line-of-nodes  to re-align with the lunar line-of-apse [see the first note directly below and reference [1] for a description of the method used to determine the time rate of change of LOD].

NB: The pro-grade precession of the lunar line-of-apse once around the Earth with respect to the stars takes 8.8504 Julian years (J2000) while the retrograde precession of the lunar line-of-apse line-of-nodes once around the Earth with respect to the stars takes 18.6000 Julian years (J2000). Hence, the lunar line-of-apse and the ascending node of the lunar line-of-nodes will realign once every:

(18.6000 x 8.8504) / (18.6000 + 8.8504)  = 5.9969 Julian years

Figure 1

EPA plan to ban coal hits major roadblock

US coal train [credit: Wikipedia]

The US Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to degrade the country’s coal industry into oblivion with ruinous regulations has run into a legal roadblock, reports the SPPI Blog:

The EPA proposal to impose a de facto ban on new coal-fired power plants received more than two million comments from the public – but it looks like it was just one five-page comment from the Energy and Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal) that sent EPA scrambling back to the drawing board. The draft rule mandated the use of so-called carbon capture and storage, a technology that would inject carbon dioxide underground but which has so far proved to be little more than a white elephant experiment.

To mandate this technology, the law required the EPA to prove it was “adequately demonstrated” and “commercially available.” Thanks to E&E Legal, they failed.

Global climate on the verge of multi-decadal change

The journal Nature has published a study from the University of Southampton and the National Oceanographic Centre (NOC) that suggests the the global climate is on the brink of “broad scale change” that could last for a number of decades.  This time they are talking of cooling not warming.

Drought-hit Californians paint their lawns green

The green green grass of home
[image credit: AP / Daily Mail]

Terradaily reports on the feel-good factor of green grass:
The heat is stifling, the soil dry as a bone, and a new law in drought-stricken California restricts the use of sprinklers.

But far from saying farewell to their beloved lawns, some Californians are coping with the drought by… painting them green.

With a simple squeeze of a spray gun, dried-out yellow grass regains its lush green color before the eyes of its proud owners.

It is a kind of make-over which is becoming increasingly common in California, which is now in the fourth year of a historic drought.

Non-Sequiteur of the day: Ban Ki Moon Visits Ireland

From RTE

On the second day of his visit to Ireland, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has urged Ireland to “to align its climate efforts with its admirable engagement on hunger”.

Speaking at Dublin Castle tonight at an event marking the 70th anniversary of the United Nations as well as Ireland’s 60th year as a UN member.

He praised Ireland for its overseas aid saying that while Irish unemployment rose, Ireland worked hard to provide aid to other countries and “in going through your own period of austerity you refused to inflict it on others”.

Scientific integrity versus ideologically-fueled research

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Judy Curry grasps the nettle of the ideological bias that has skewed climate science.

Climate Etc.

by Judith Curry

The main intellectual fault in all these cases is failing to be responsive to genuine empirical concerns, because doing so would make one’s political point weaker or undermine a cherished ideological perspective. – Heather Douglas

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EU Referendum – What Are We Voting For?

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Peter Widdows asks an important question about the EU referendum. What would a vote to stay in entail?

Why Phi? – a Jupiter-Venus-Mercury model

Planetary conjunction [image credit: EPA / Daily Mail]

For the Jupiter-Venus-Mercury (JVMe) model, we start with this basic synodic conjunction relationship:
61 Jupiter-Venus (J-V) = 100 Venus-Mercury (V-Me) = 161 Jupiter-Mercury (J-Me) conjunctions in 39.58 years.
Orbit numbers per 39.58y: 64.337~ Venus, 164.337~ Mercury, 3.3365~ Jupiter

[3 x 39.58 years = 118.74 years]

Since the ratio 61:100:161 is only one conjunction different from 60:100:160 (= 3:5:8), there is a very close match to a Fibonacci-based ratio as 3,5 and 8 are all Fibonacci numbers.

In the model we convert the orbits to whole numbers using a multiple of 3, to obtain a triple conjunction period where there are (very close to) a whole number of orbits of the relevant planets, as per the chart [right].

Cooling The Past In The Faroes.

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Another instance of ‘adjustments’ completely distorting temperature history – from Paul Homewood.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Thorshavn, Faroe Islands

In 2003, two proper scientists wrote a paper on the climate of the Faroe Islands, which lie between Iceland and Norway.

http://research.iarc.uaf.edu/NICOP/DVD/ICOP%202003%20Permafrost/Pdf/Chapter_026.pdf

They published this graph of air temperatures at the capital Torshavn.

And commented:

So we find confirmation of the 1925-40 warm period, and that the recent temperature rise is no more than a natural recovery from the colder 1950-80 interval.

Of course, temperatures may have risen since 2003, but the raw GISS data shows otherwise.

Below is their graph based on the raw GHCN V2 temperatures, as they appeared in 2011. (The warmest year was 2003 itself).

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/show_station.cgi?id=652060110003&dt=1&ds=1

Now, you can probably guess where we are going here!

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Water World

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Let’s put this up for discussion as the dominant role of WV often gets buried in all the focus on man-made carbon dioxide emissions.

Musings from the Chiefio

This posting just points to a very well done page that calculates the relative contributions to the greenhouse effect as used by the AGW thesis, by various gasses. In particular, it includes water vapor. The result is a conclusion that human caused CO2 is not relevant to global temperature. Something I have said before, but without the nice graphs and calculations.

It really is all about the water on our water world.

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

Water Vapor Rules the Greenhouse System

Just how much of the “Greenhouse Effect” is caused by human activity?

It is about 0.28%, if water vapor is taken into account– about 5.53%, if not.

This point is so crucial to the debate over global warming that how water vapor is or isn’t factored into an analysis of Earth’s greenhouse gases makes the difference between describing a significant human contribution to the greenhouse effect, or a negligible one.

Subscribe…

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Magnitude 4.3 Earthquake Rocks Kent: Woke Some People Up

Epicentre of the 4.3 quake was at 9.5km depth near Sandwich, Kent.

So we just had a 4.3 magnitude earthquake in Kent and my housemates slept through the entire thing -.- certainly woke me up! #earthquake

— Vikki Petts (@vikkipetts) May 22, 2015

BBC report

EU member Poland breaks ground on new coal fired plant

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

By Kelvin Ross

A groundbreaking ceremony has taken place in Poland on the site of a €800m lignite power plant in Turów.

The ceremony was attended by Poland’s Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz and representatives Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems Europe (MHPSE), which will build the plant in co-operation with Polish company Budimex and Técnicas Reunidas from Spain.

MHPSE said that the lignite unit will have a gross capacity of just under 500 MW and an efficiency of more than 43 per cent. It will be operated by PGE, Poland’s largest power supplier.

MHPS Europe will supply the utility steam generator, the entire flue gas cleaning equipment, piping, turbine/generator, instrumentation & control and will also place the power plant into service.

The new unit – which is due to be operational in 2019 – will be built at an existing power plant where there are currently six units with an installed capacity of 1500 MW.

MHPSE chairman Rainer Kiechl said the new plant “will be one of the most modern of its type in the world”.

He added that it would make a “significant contribution to a dependable supply of power in an economy which is continuing to grow strongly”.

Why Tesla’s Powerwall Is Just Another Toy For Rich Green People

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It’s more than a rumour that batteries degrade within ten years.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Musk with utility-scale “Powerpack.” (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

You may have heard about Elon Musk’s plans to save us all from climate apocalypse by selling us all Tesla batteries, so that we can store electricity from wonderful solar panels.

A couple of articles which go into the economic detail and find that the idea just does not stack up.

It sounds like an attempt to offset the losses from their core auto business.

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Making beer from fog in Chile

Made at The Fog Catcher Brewery [image credit: BBC]

BBC News reports:
The dry, red earth could almost be mistaken for a Martian landscape. It is in fact the Atacama desert in Chile, one of the driest places on Earth.

Average rainfall here is less than 0.1mm (0.004 in) per year and there are many regions which have not seen any precipitation for decades.

But while there is little rain, the clouds here do carry humidity. Coastal fog forms on Chile’s shore and then moves inland in the form of cloud banks. The locals call it “camanchaca”.

Read the rest here.

Also from the report: ‘The largest expanse of fog catchers is located in Tojquia in Guatemala, where 60 fog catchers trap 4,000 litres of water a day.’

The Penny Drops (into the long grass)

.@GarthGodsman No, because "global warming" is not just about mean surface temperature. It's about energy of whole system. @BarryJWoods

— Prof Richard Betts (@richardabetts) May 19, 2015

Shifting eclipses and 3:2 orbital ratio found in giant exoplanets

NASA’s next exoplanet hunter (TESS)
[image credit: MIT]

Try to imagine Saturn and Uranus orbiting the Sun in 8 and 12 days respectively. Far-fetched? In our solar system, yes, but something very similar has been observed in an exoplanetary star system, as was recently discussed by scientist and blogger Hugh Osborn, one of the co-authors of a study of the surprising 2-planet system.

In his blog post, Osborn notes re the March 2015 solar eclipse:
Calculating something so far ahead seems like an impressive feat but in fact astronomers can precisely work out exactly when and where eclipses will occur for not just the next hundred, but the next million years. Such is the way for most transiting exoplanets too, the calculations for which could probably be valid in thousands of years.

But a new planetary system, discovered by a team that includes Warwick astronomers (including me), doesn’t yet play by these rules. It consists of two planets orbiting their star, a late K star smaller than our sun, in periods of 7.9 and 11.9 days. The pair have radii 7- and 4-larger than Earth, putting them both between the sizes of Uranus and Saturn. They are the 4th and 5th planets to be confirmed in data from K2, the rejuvenated Kepler mission that monitors tens of thousands of stars looking for exoplanetary transits. (36 other planet candidates, including KIC201505350b & c, have been released previously).

But it is their orbits, rather than planetary characteristics, that have astronomers most excited. “The periods are almost exactly in a ratio of 1:1.5” explains Dave Armstrong, lead author of the study. This can be seen directly in how the star’s brightness changes over time. This lightcurve appears to have three dips of different depths, marked here by green, red and purple dips. ”Once every three orbits of the inner planet and two orbits of the outer planet, they transit at the same time”, causing the deep purple transits.

Trident whistleblower: chaos, incompetence & near disasters.

A Navy submariner has released details of a nuclear deterrent that, if true, passes from one crisis to another, barely able to leave port, let alone pose a threat to potential enemies.

William McNeilly (Navy engineering technician submariner) has released a document cataloging his experiences training and serving on Britain’s multi billion pound nuclear missile submarine fleet. He lists countless examples of non existent security, fires, floods, equipment failures, fights and a collision. An attitude amongst the crews of lethargy, more akin to the Big Brother household than a fighting force. He describes a number of incidences that could easily have resulted in the loss of submarines and crews.