Layman help sought in solving dwarf planet mysteries

This image of Ceres is part of a sequence taken by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft on May 5 and 6, 2015, from a distance of 8,400 miles (13,600 kilometers)

It’s ‘baffled scientists’ time again, but now they want the public to help them out, reports phys.org

Throwing open the doors to the hallowed halls of science, stumped researchers welcomed help from the public Wednesday in solving a number of nagging mysteries about dwarf planet Ceres.

NASA’s space probe Dawn, which travelled seven-and-a-half years and some 4.9 billion kilometres to reach Ceres in March this year, is the first to orbit a dwarf planet.The probe is seeking to learn more about the structure of Ceres, which circles the Sun between Mars and Jupiter, in a bid to better understand the formation of Earth and other planets.

But many of the features of Ceres have left researchers scratching their heads — including a six-kilometre (four-mile) high protrusion they have dubbed “Lonely Mountain”.

Sea ice waves

Since Roger kind of raised the subject

DO01235 do? Not very good as a dataset, never mind, use data some rate. On automatic update system here anyway.

Over the past couple of years most of the daily sea ice data has been removed from public access leaving low grade stuff. How curious.

Drawing straight lines is not good when the data is plainly natural, nature does not do straight. Any of you have examples?

My guess is as good as any and the above is what a tool on automatic spat out, less finer twiddles.

The ripple is ~22 years a la solar magnetic and surface temperature. Exactly what causes this is of course unknown just the same as other non-experimental systems.

Why the shape? Is it sane? Oh yes.

Tamino: Epidemic of Denial

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Tamino takes Ron Clutz to task for some shoddy stats work. Oh the irony.

Open Mind

Wouldn’t you know it, I just posted about how dumb it is to talk about “trends” without enough data to talk about trends intelligently, when it’s brought to my attention that there’s yet another example of doing just that.

View original post 812 more words

Meet Lisa Nandy: Labour’s shadow cabinet member for climate change and energy

Nandy was born in Manchester to Luise Nandy (née Byers) and her then husband Dipak Nandy.^[5][6][7] Luise Byers’ father, Lord Byers, was a Liberal Party MP and held many offices in the party.^[8] Nandy grew up both in Manchester and in Bury, Greater Manchester, where her family later moved to. She graduated from Newcastle University, Tyne and Wear, in 2001 with a degree in politics and obtained a master’s degree in public policy from Birkbeck, University of London. She has worked in the voluntary sector, as a researcher at the homelessness charity Centrepoint from 2003 to 2005, and then as senior policy adviser at The Children’s Society from 2005,^[5][9] where she specialised in issues facing young refugees, also acting as adviser to the Children’s Commissioner for England and to the Independent Asylum Commission.^[10]

She knows little about climate change or energy and is mostly a mouthpiece for

Her shadow DECC team which includes:

#ff to our new shadow DECC team @BarryGardiner @alanwhiteheadmp @labourlewis @Harry4BH @bryworthington

— Lisa Nandy (@lisanandy) September 25, 2015

Tony Thomas: The warmists’ golden fleece

By Tony Thomas. Originally published at Quadrant Online.

When a trace gas and plant food is denounced as a pollutant, it comes as no surprise that a cabal of climate careerists is calling for sceptics to be charged and, presumably, jailed. Much better to silence doubters than have them draw attention to money-grubbing nepotism and careerist corruptions

The global warming community has stepped up its call for the prosecution of sceptics. The latest: 20 US scientists wrote this month to  President Obama calling for prosecutions of sceptics under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), previously used against the mafia and the tobacco industry (for suppressing evidence of dangers of smoking).

This letter has become an own-goal for two of the signatories, who have been double-dipping  big-dollar salaries from their government-funded climate foundation, additional to their salaries as professors.

Sun earthquake linkage and August 2015 Chile quake

Two papers are on the way about a model linking solar field activity and large terrestrial eqarthquakes. h/t to Michele

Studies Suggest Sun Triggers Massive Earthquakes
The sun is triggering the deadliest earthquakes on the planet, including the recent M8.3 earthquake in Chile on September 16, 2015 and deadly tsunami that followed, according to two papers to be published October 5th in New Concepts in Global Tectonics. The papers investigate fluctuations in the magnetic field activity of the sun and found a statistically significant relationship between M8+ earthquakes and the extremes and reversals in magnetism of solar polar magnetic fields.

The team first announced the results in August 2014, and recently used the methods proposed in that study to provide evidence that a recent major earthquake fit the patterns observed in the foundational study. In early 2014, Dr. Christopher Holloman’s team of researchers at The Ohio State University Statistical Consulting Service was able to construct a model that exhibited very strong agreement between solar magnetism patterns and the occurrence of large earthquakes. Dr. Holloman warned that formal testing of the model can only be performed by examining its performance over the next few years, but that the agreement was sufficient to suggest that a relationship likely exists between solar polar fields, or magnetic fields associated with the north and south poles of the sun, and large earthquakes. Now we have a subsequent event that appears to comport with the initial study.

— http://spaceweathernews.com/studies-suggest-sun-triggers-massive-earthquakes/

Climate change politics and the Volkswagen scandal

Image problem for VW

Clive Crook at Bloomberg says there are several scandals linked to the VW diesel debacle. Here we’ll focus on one of them, related to so-called climate policies. Was the ‘dash for diesel’ ever a rational policy?

A third scandal, even more costly than the first two, also needs to be noticed and examined. It concerns the economic and environmental policies that first set European car manufacturers and consumers on course to this pile-up.

Remember that “clean diesel” was a government-led initiative, brought to you courtesy of Europe’s taxpayers. And, by the way, the policy had proved a massively expensive failure on its own terms even before the VW scandal broke.

It’s this scandal that teaches the most important lessons.

Met Office does claiming more extreme

Collecting valid data is hard. Paul Homewood has highlighted a Met Office report for 2014, produced it seems September 2015. If that is true, no rush, get it right.

— From State of the UK climate 2014

Figure 1. Difference between two datasets of more or less the same thing. The red linear trend line is hinting there is dataset drift.

Oh yes definitely more severe weather..

Snag, this is Met Office data against Met Office data.

Drax pulls out of £1bn UK carbon capture project

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) [credit: cnet.com]

When push comes to shove it’s finance first, supposed green window-dressing last for energy companies, as the BBC reports.

Energy company Drax has abandoned a £1bn project to introduce carbon capture technology to cut emissions. Drax was working on the scheme to store carbon dioxide next to its plant in North Yorkshire, which is the biggest coal-fired power station in the UK.

It is halting further investment because of the government’s decision to reduce subsidies for renewable energy. The company said that due to lack of profits it had to put the business and shareholders first.

Al Gore scratches head over UK energy and climate policy: ‘I’m puzzled’

[credit: blackdog4kids.com]

The UK government’s outbreak of limited common sense on some aspects of energy policy has apparently baffled professional climate propagandist Al Gore, reports the edie newsroom.

Former US Vice President Al Gore has launched a scathing attack on Britain’s floundering energy and climate policy, demanding “actions rather than words” from Prime Minister David Cameron ahead of the crucial climate change conference in Paris this December. Speaking at an event held by the Green Alliance in London earlier today (22 September), Gore wielded Barack Obama’s infamous “Yes We Can” slogan to hail the green energy revolution, but criticised Cameron’s regime for slowing the pace of change by scrapping an array of environmental policies.

“As a friend of the United Kingdom I must tell you, I am puzzled,” Gore said.

Clickable met site UK map

This article is of minor interest so no header image, save front page space.

The daily met Office site thumbnail plots I do includes a map of the UK showing the site numbers and locations. The red location cross now has a hot spot and can be clicked, taking you to a Bing maps view. Accuracy varies, not all sites have known exact locations, some have no good image, and some have disagreements Bing / Google.

Site 3772, Heathrow, initialises to showing a 747 on the runway. Click once on the + and it moves in to a superb view of the met site. Arrows allow rotation.

MET Office scientist flunks simple logic test.

I pointed Richard Betts to the Charles D. Keeling (Yes, that Charles D. Keeling) and Timothy Whorf paper on lunar tidal cycles and their connection with rapid climate change ‘The 1,800-year oceanic tidal cycle: A possible cause of rapid climate change.’

Here’s what happened:

Basically, Betts ran away. He’s a natural climate change denier. His job is to ‘do outreach’ promoting the Carbon Dioxide causes climate change hypothesis, but maintain plausible deniability that anyone ever showed him what a crock of crap it is compared to more likely explanations.

Amber Rudd: Hinckley Point nuke £90/MWhr is “great value for money”

From the dept of barefaced lies we get Amber Rudd telling us on BBCR4 Today that guaranteeing EDF energy £90/MWhr for 35 years is “great value for money. Her justification for this outrageous heist on the public purse and billpayers wallet is that it’s ‘low carbon energy’.

Hello Amber? Global surface temperature has not risen in nearly two decades while global CO2 emissions have risen faster than ever. Oil and gas prices are at a historic low, and looking likely to remain low.

Ken Haapala: Is the Sun Rising?

From Ken Haapala at SEPP:

Science: Is the Sun Rising?

Strong evidence that Svensmark’s solar-cosmic ray theory of climate is correct

The Cloud feedback

By Magnus Cederlöf. Google translation from the Stockholm Initiative site, The Hockey Schtick, Sep 12, 2015

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2015/09/strong-evidence-that-svensmarks-solar.html

Body Of Science Continues To Grow …Solar Impact On Climate System Is Major And Unequivocal

The sun drives the climate: Proof of the 90 and 200-year cycles in the earth’s climate history

By Dr. Sebastian Lüning and Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt, Translated/edited by P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Sep 16, 2015

http://notrickszone.com/2015/09/16/body-of-science-continues-to-grow-solar-impact-on-climate-system-is-major-and-unequivocal/#sthash.VAhy5X6n.dpbs

RAF and heli pilots report close calls with uncharted Scottish wind turbines

21st Century Scottish landscape

Wind Watch News highlights a press report on the problems faced by ‘low flyers’ due to large numbers of wind turbines sprouting up without warning near their flying routes over the Scottish mainland.

A “shocking” military dossier reveals a catalogue of potentially catastrophic air safety incidents, many of them related to unlit turbines and new or uncharted developments. However, the Ministry of Defence withheld more information on national security grounds meaning the real number could be much higher.

Last night, campaigners called for an urgent review of the mapping and lighting of wind turbines to prevent a fatal crash involving a low-flying aircraft. The 59 near-misses were classified from negligible to high in terms of severity with 15 cases – most of them from RAF Lossiemouth in Moray – in the high-risk category.

Do You Dare To Disagree? You Must Go To Jail!

No science here [image credit: Michigan Chronicle]

The latest absurdity of the climate controversy is summed up at the American Elephants blog.

They are panicking! Some climate people have bet the farm on a dangerously warming earth, and the need to instantly switch to clean natural energy so we aren’t polluting the world by burning nasty coal and using nasty gasoline and creating the CO2 in the atmosphere that is causing all the trouble. It’s our fault.

But we are promised a colder winter, the claims of a lack of sea ice in the Arctic and Antarctic are disproved by satellite photography. There’s millions and millions of subsidies and grants building wind farms and solar arrays, and they are still not producing much energy at all.

The science of global warming is so settled that 20 climate scientists have written to President Obama to ask him to prosecute the people who “have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change as a means to forestall America’s response to climate change.”

Solar brightness variability, illuminating paper

Tim suspects this paper is important even though it is based largely on modelling. It says the intensity of spectral lines etc. are very important in variability, ultra-violet particularly, moreover there is counter sunspot cycle. This fits with where I think we are going on understanding solar terrestrial linkage.

 

The role of the Fraunhofer lines in solar brightness variability
A. I. Shapiro S. K. Solanki, N. A. Krivova, R. V. Tagirov, and W. K. Schmutz

Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2015, open access with free registration.

ABSTRACT
Context. The solar brightness varies on timescales from minutes to decades. A clear identification of the physical processes behind such variations is needed for developing and improving physics-based models of solar brightness variability and reconstructing solar brightness in the past. This is, in turn, important for better understanding the solar-terrestrial and solar-stellar connections.
…

Does the UK need Norwegian hydropower?

Loch Doon Hydro –
Water intake for Drumjohn hydro power station
[image credit: Mark Klimek]

That’s the question posed by E & T Magazine. With generating plants closing regularly, some might say ‘yes’.

By 2021, a subsea cable built across the North Sea from Norway will provide enough power for 750,000 British homes, but with untouched hydro capacity in the UK, is this necessary?

The news that a £1.5bn, 450-mile subsea cable will be built across the North Sea to enable hydropower from Norway to light up the UK has come as something of a shock to the entire UK hydropower sector when over 26,000 sites have been identified as suitable for generating hydropower in England alone.

Tropopause height as a climate metric

[image credit: B. Geerts and E. Linacre]

Having recently noted the existence of this 2011 paper on Talkshop Suggestions, contributor Roger Clague replied to say he felt it could make for an interesting discussion, and put forward some challenging initial thoughts.
—
Abstract. We present a seasonal climatology of tropopause altitude for 78◦ N 16◦ E derived from observations 2007–2010 by the SOUSY VHF radar on Svalbard. The spring minimum occurs one month later than that of surface air temperature and instead coincides with the maximum in ozone column density. This confirms similar studies based on radiosonde measurements in the Arctic and demonstrates downward control by the stratosphere.

If one is to exploit the potential of tropopause height as a metric for climate change at high latitude and elsewhere, it is imperative to observe and understand the processes which establish the tropopause – an understanding to which this study contributes. [bold added]

Earth’s pull is ‘massaging’ our moon

The Moon in front of Earth [credit: NASA]

Talkshop regular Ian Wilson features this story in his own latest blog post at Astro-Climate-Connection:

Many scientists deny that factors external to the Earth can have a significant impact upon the Earth’s climate yet there is considerable evidence that this indeed the case. Their instincts tell them that they must always look for internal factors, and internal factors alone, to explain the Earth’s climate systems. Most will admit that Moon might have some influence upon the Earth’s climate through the dissipation of its tidal forces in the Earth’s oceans but beyond that they have little time for thinking outside the box.

It is now emerging that those who reject the idea that factors external to the Earth can have a significant influence upon the Earth’s climate are increasingly at odds with the evidence.