Cotopaxi erupting, precautionary evacuations, state of emergency, not serious

Famous name

Photo by Lee Siebert, 1978 (Smithsonian Institution)

Most news feeds have items and there is at least one current photograph, many are not, 400 people evacuated as a precaution, this volcano has previous. Ash has fallen in Quito. Earth tremors started during May/June but no major eruption is forecast.

Cotopaxi is a stratovolcano that has erupted 50 times since 1738. The 1877 eruption melted snow and ice on the summit, which produced mudflows that traveled 60 miles (100 km) from the volcano. The most recent eruption of Cotopaxi ended in 1904. Reports of an eruption in 1942 have not been confirmed. The most recent activity was an increase in steam emissions, melting snow, and small earthquakes from 1975-1976

— http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/cotopaxi

Enjoy

http://earthquake-report.com/2015/04/02/volcano-news-by-volcanologist-janine-krippner/ (and donate if you are flush)

Professor says Wikipedia unreliable on science controversies

[credit: softpedia.com]

Phys.org is running an article headed: On Wikipedia, politically controversial science topics vulnerable to information sabotage. This is no great surprise apart possibly from the fact that it’s being openly discussed by academics.

Wikipedia reigns. It’s the world’s most popular online encyclopedia, the sixth most visited website in America, and a research source most U.S. students rely on. But, according to a paper published today in the journal PLOS ONE, Wikipedia entries on politically controversial scientific topics can be unreliable due to information sabotage.

Antarctic Glaciers Were Retreating In The 19thC

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Yet another inconvenient story to be swept under the ‘official climate science’ carpet.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

We are supposed to believe that Antarctic glaciers have only recently started to recede.

Back in 1932, they knew that the process had begun in the 19thC.

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/23150667

Sir James Ross undertook his expeditions to the Antarctic in the 1840’s.

Interestingly, Bernacchi accompanied Scott on the 1901-04 Antarctic expedition. and Scott was best man at his colleague’s wedding in 1906. Bernacchi was invited to go on Scott’s ill fated second expedition, but declined due to family commitments.

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Time To Connect The Dots

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New York Times 2005: ‘Hurricanes have therefore become bigger and more destructive and are likely to grow even more violent in the future.

This cycle cannot be reversed any time soon.’

Climate fortune telling is a risky business.

Real Climate Science

Ten years ago, experts told us that hurricanes like Katrina and Rita were the new normal, due to global warming.

Time to Connect the Dots – The New York Times

The period since has been the quietest on record for US hurricanes, with no major (category 3-5) hurricanes.

Weather Street: 2015 Atlantic Hurricanes and Tropical Storms

It is time to connect the dots, and recognize that climate experts have absolutely no idea what they are talking about.

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Astronomer creates music using star oscillations

[image credit: etsy.com]

Something a bit off-beat here: a paper entitled ‘The Multiperiodic Pulsating Star Y Cam A as a Musical Instrument’. A music extract can be played in the linked Phys.org report. It’s described as ‘a mixed bag of eerie pulsating sounds combined with a simple piano melody.’

Astronomer Burak Ulaş, with the Izmir Turk College Planetarium in Turkey has taken his work into a musical dimension, using star oscillations as a source for a musical composition. He has uploaded a paper describing what he has done along with sheet music and an audio recording of his work to the preprint server arXiv—along with a shout-out to other pioneers in the field, from Kepler to Pythagoras to modern composer scientists Jenő Keuler and Zoltán Kolláth.

Astronomers and other star-gazers have long associated celestial bodies with music, the twinkling of some stars offers a tempting back-beat and some stars in particular offer a variety of opportunities. One such star, Y Cam A, Ulaş noted, offered enough oscillation data for its use in creating chords.

Wind turbines: how big is too big?

Yes and no [image credit: Clean Technica]

Size matters with wind turbines because, as one developer put it, ‘You have the ability to get all the oink out of the pig’. But too big means difficulties arise, such as means of delivery. Wind Energy News investigates.

From megawatts to the size of rotors, everything about wind turbines has been getting bigger.

But even proponents of wind power say they may be reaching a limit as logistics and a lack of social acceptance over their size start to hinder growth.

Spin Cycle: Carbon Dioxide Is NOT “Carbon Pollution”

Spin doctor at work

Cato at Liberty reports from the US on the myth of carbon dioxide as ‘carbon pollution’, when in fact it’s essential to life on Earth. What we really have is state-sponsored mind pollution.

The Spin Cycle is a reoccurring feature based upon just how much the latest weather or climate story, policy pronouncement, or simply poo-bah blather spins the truth. Statements are given a rating between 1-5 spin cycles, with less cycles meaning less spin.

President Obama is keen on calling carbon dioxide emitted from our nation’s fossil fuel-powered energy production, “carbon pollution.” For example, last week, when introducing EPA’s Clean Power Plan—new regulations limiting carbon dioxide emissions from the power plants that currently produce 67 percent of the country’s electricity—he used the term “carbon pollution” ten times. For example:

Climate Change is Now a $1.5 Trillion Industry

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So this is what they mean by ‘runaway climate change’.

American Elephants

The Climate Change Business Journal has calculated that Climate Change is now its own $1.5 trillion global “climate change industry” that is growing at between 17 and 24 percent annually from 2005-2008. Following the recession, growth slowed to between 4 to 6 percent with the exception of a bump in 2011 of 15 percent growth. These results were published in the Insurance Journal, for the climate journal is not available for free online.

The publication includes nine segments and 38 sub-segments including renewables, green building and hybrid cars. It also includes the climate change consulting market which the journal estimates at $1.9 billion worldwide, and $890 million in the U.S. The consulting market is expected to double in the next five years. The report’s authors believe the climate change industry as a whole will grow even faster. The Climate Change Consulting market  had billings of $600 million in 1976 and…

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Wireless power transfer tech: Trials set for England’s offroads

Charging station [image credit: Dean Wormald]

The UK has an impressively large development budget for its so-far unimpressively small collection of electric cars, as Phys.org reports. Is there any high-tech cure for ‘range anxiety’?

Wireless charging technology that is built into the road, powering electric cars as they move, is to undergo trials on England’s offroads. Announced on Tuesday, the technology will address the need to power up electric and hybrid vehicles on England’s roads. The trials will get under way later this year.

Solar — Hide The Decline

Couple of days ago oldbrew posted an article highlighting an article at phys.org, one thing leads to another

Figure 1, Annotated copy of plot. from mis-rendering web page where mis-render covered the time scale.

Figure 2, screen capture from web browser showing misrendering hiding the time scale and that tripped “why?”

The caption makes claim of a comparison but makes no mention of omitting recent data which does differ between the two versions (see fig 6). Additionally the plot start is 1749 as the monthly time series but the data plotted is the annual time series not the monthly.

Figure 3, reproduction of the dubious work using WDC-SILO data except showing all the data, less the very early part as above.

Nir Shaviv, nice one: The Sun, still is.

Oh my, The Sun, still is.

Enjoy

The Sunspots 2.0? Irrelevant. The Sun, still is.
By shaviv

After being asked by 5 independent people about the new sunspot number reconstruction and that it doesn’t show that the sun should have contributed any warming to the 20th century, I decided to write about it here. I have one word to describe it – irrelevant. It is also a good opportunity to write about new results (well, one that saw the light of day a few months ago) showing again that the sun has a large effect on climate. Yet, the world will still continue to ignore it. Am I surprised? No I’m not.
— http://www.sciencebits.com/sunspots_2.0

Hybrid-power converted diesel buses bound for London

London double-decker [image credit: buses world news]

The bad experience with batteries in London’s own-design hybrid buses hasn’t deterred further investment in the technology, reports E&T Magazine.

The first diesel buses converted to hybrid power will run on the streets of London early next year.

London is introducing an ultra low emission zone in 2020, so diesel buses will have to be replaced or converted to hybrid or all electric power.

While the price of fuel is rising, government subsidies are being cut. Vantage Power estimates that switching to hybrid power saves operators around £20,000 per bus per year and said retrofitting can convert four old buses for the price of one new one.

The question they never ask about renewables

[credit: New York Daily News]

Christopher Booker highlights the obvious key issue facing those who promote renewable energy – intermittency.

Last week in the White House, to a roomful of 150 cheering environmental activists, President Obama unveiled his answer to what he called “the greatest threat facing the world”. Variously billed as a bid “to cement his legacy as a world leader” and an attempt to salvage brownie points from December’s talks on a global climate treaty (which he knows will fail, because India, China and the Republican majority in Congress won’t buy it), Obama’s “Clean Energy Plan” for the US is twofold.

On one hand, to bypass those Republicans in Congress, he wants to use federal regulations to impose crippling new CO2 emissions cuts on the fossil-fuel power plants that still currently supply the US with about 70 per cent of its electricity. This even poses a serious threat to the shale gas industry, which has more than halved US energy costs and played a key part in its economic recovery.

Corrected sunspot history fails to find modern solar maximum

The ‘before’ version of sunspot numbers [Credit: Wikipedia]

This result has been at least half-expected ever since the ‘revision’ of sunspot numbers was announced. The phrase ‘desired outcome’ springs to mind.

The Sunspot Number is a crucial tool used to study the solar dynamo, space weather and climate change, reports Phys.org. It has now been recalibrated and shows a consistent history of solar activity over the past few centuries. The new record has no significant long-term upward trend in solar activity since 1700, as was previously indicated. This suggests that rising global temperatures since the industrial revolution cannot be attributed to increased solar activity.

The analysis, its results and its implications for climate research were made public today at a press briefing at the International Astronomical Union (IAU) XXIX General Assembly, currently taking place in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.

Panama Canal ship size limit linked to El Niño

Sea surface height relative to normal ocean conditions on Dec. 1, 1997 [image credit: NASA/JPL]

This type of restriction was also imposed due to the ‘super El Niño’ of 1998, inviting comparisons with what’s happening to El Niño this season. No doubt various claims will be made about the causes. BBC News reports:

The Panama Canal Authority says it will temporarily cut the size of ships allowed through because of drought caused by El Niño. From 8 September, the maximum draft of ships will be cut to 39ft (11.89m), which may affect up to 20% of traffic. A similar restriction was imposed for the same reason in 1998.

The authorities say a further cut in the draft could be imposed on 16 September if the situation does not improve.The authority has taken the action because water levels in the Gatun and Alhajuela lakes has reduced as a result of the El Niño weather phenomenon. The current draft limit is 39.5ft, which will be cut to 39ft on 8 September and then potentially to 38.5ft on 16 September. Shipping companies had been warned the cuts could be coming.

Hekla eruptions, when, how big

Not been much recently for volcano folks

Northern lights near Hekla, Iceland. Picture by Moyan Brenn on Flickr

Paul Vaughan posted a link on Suggestions to a story on an Icelandic web site.

Hekla eruption aviation risk warning
Iceland’s Hekla volcano poses a real threat to passenger jets, according to Professor of Geophysics at the University of Iceland, Páll Einarsson.

Despite written warnings from Einarsson to the Icelandic Transport Authority, transatlantic jets are still flying directly over South Iceland’s famous active volcano and are taking a “needless risk”.
— link

The riposte is as usual and yet the good professor only suggests a tiny change in route… I’d keep well clear unless there is a jolly good reason, lot of space on long haul. Technically I can guess why, aircraft route between radio beacons.

More headwinds for the UK Met Office

[image credit: Richard Austin News Pictures]

Long-time critic Christopher Booker says: THE MORE MONEY THE MET OFFICE GETS, THE MORE INACCURATE ITS DOOM-MONGERING [Date: 07/08/15, Daily Mail]

The performance of the Met Office for which we pay £220 million a year is not just a joke, but a major scandal. And well done the BBC for allowing Quentin Letts, for once, to point this out.

Very surprisingly and somewhat boldly, on Wednesday morning Radio 4 put out a programme by the Mail’s Quentin Letts which ran flatly counter to the BBC’s normal party line on one of its very favourite subjects, global warming.

Approval paves way for world’s largest offshore wind farm

Windy enough today?

There goes another £8 billion pounds or so for unreliable part-time power.

The second half of the world’s biggest offshore wind farm, which will be built in the North Sea, has received planning consent from the Government, as E & T Magazine reports.

The Dogger Bank Teesside A and B project proposed by the Forewind consortium of SSE, RWE, Statkraft and Statoil would see as many as 400 turbines built around 100 miles off England’s North East coast, with the potential to power roughly two million homes.

The Government granted a similar sized scheme, also at Dogger Bank, planning consent in February, and combined, the two adjacent projects would be the world’s biggest offshore wind farm.

Too late for OPEC to stop the shale revolution

[image credit: mining.com]

Saudi Arabia may go broke before the US oil industry buckles, reports the Daily Telegraph.

If the oil futures market is correct, Saudi Arabia will start running into trouble within two years. It will be in existential crisis by the end of the decade.

The contract price of US crude oil for delivery in December 2020 is currently $62.05, implying a drastic change in the economic landscape for the Middle East and the petro-rentier states.

The Saudis took a huge gamble last November when they stopped supporting prices and opted instead to flood the market and drive out rivals, boosting their own output to 10.6m barrels a day (b/d) into the teeth of the downturn.

July 2015 was about as ordinary as it gets

A bit scruffy but here is an attempt to show all recent movement in one.

Or as PDF (110kB half the size of the above clickable)

Thumb plots for the 17 UK regions, 5 different monthly parameters Tmin, Tmean, Tmax, Sunshine, Rainfall. Any newcomers note these are Z-scores after compensating the data for asymmetry and normal variation throughout a year in an attempt to show true weather noise. We know it rains during the autumn so that is of no interest but deviations are. (see earlier works for a full explanation)

Scotland was slightly cool and damp, Northern Ireland also. England notwithstanding brief warm patch in the south on the 1st the end result was English summer weather. Must be the cricket.