Surprise asteroid to give Earth a Halloween flyby

Just passing by [image credit : digitaltrends.com]

No need to duck, but an asteroid designated 2015 TB145 will pass by the Earth at around 1.3 lunar distances (approximately 310,000 miles or about 499,000 km) on October 31 this year, reports Gizmag.

Estimated to be anywhere between 280 to 620 m (918 to 2,034 ft) in diameter and traveling in excess of 126,000 km/h (78,293 mph), the asteroid was discovered less than two weeks ago using the Pan-STARRS array in Hawaii and is the largest object to so closely approach our planet in recent times.

Top UN scientist complains about UK renewables slowdown

More green propaganda

The BBC is again promoting a ‘rush to renewables’ that everyone is supposed to be engaged in, but as Jo Nova points out this is somewhat exaggerated: ‘Remember, all developed countries are going Green, and Clean Energy is everywhere. It’s only (insert your country) that is falling behind.’

BBC: Cuts in support for renewable energy in the UK have been criticised by the UN’s chief environment scientist. Prof Jacquie McGlade said the UK was shifting away from clean energy as the rest of the world rushed towards it. She said the cuts in renewables subsidies, coupled with tax breaks for oil and gas, sent a worrying signal to the coming UN climate summit in Paris.

Link between climate change and Californian wildfires is unsupported, fire experts say

Smoke from a California wildfire [image credit: BBC]

Recent California governors like Schwarzenegger have portrayed themselves as leading the ‘green charge’ – whatever that is at the time – but this one seems to have lost the plot a bit. Details from the LA Times.

The ash of the Rocky fire was still hot when Gov. Jerry Brown strode to a bank of television cameras beside a blackened ridge and, flanked by firefighters, delivered a battle cry against climate change.

Fracking ‘could give Scotland independence from England’ says top industrialist

North Sea oil and gas – a sunset industry? [image credit: matchtech.com]

The notion of an independent Scotland boosting its economy with the proceeds of North Sea oil may be looking a bit threadbare after the recent slump in the price of oil, but there could be another way forward as E&T Magazine reports.

Scotland should embrace fracking in order to gain economic independence from England according to the chief executive of chemicals company Ineos.

Jim Ratcliffe made his comments prior to a debate on the issue held today by the Scottish National Party (SNP) at its conference in Aberdeen, where party members narrowly rejected a bid to toughen up the stance on fracking amid calls for an outright ban.
Ineos has acquired fracking exploration licences across 700 square miles of central Scotland.

New insights into the dynamics of past climate change

Arctic ocean near Barrow, Alaska [image credit: Beth Ipsen/Associated Press]

A new study by the University of Cambridge ‘finds’ (their word) that changing climate in the polar regions can affect conditions in the rest of the world far quicker than previously thought. The full paper has paywalled access only, but by their own admission they say they are ‘only beginning to understand’ the processes they believe they have found.

A new study of the relationship between ocean currents and climate change has found that they are tightly linked, and that changes in the polar regions can affect the ocean and climate on the opposite side of the world within one to two hundred years, far quicker than previously thought.

Climate quiz: just the one question

[image credit: NASA]

Tony Heller has a question to ask about climate scientists, here.

Boomerang effect: investigation of RICO climate letter signatory kicks off

Congressional hearing [image credit: Wikipedia]

NASA, NOAA and NSF have all been told by the Republican chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology to release relevant documents, as Fox News reports. Getting tough can be a two-way thing it seems.

Jagadish Shukla may be regretting he ever signed a controversial letter to President Obama. The climate scientist at George Mason University made headlines when he was the lead signatory on a letter to Obama, Attorney General Loretta Lynch and the head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy “strongly” supporting using federal racketeering laws to investigate those in the private or public sector who work with the fossil fuel industry to “undermine climate science.” 

Illinois lottery winners get IOUs instead of cash

Illinois Owes U

Any Talkshop reader can probably relate to this Telegraph story, even if it’s not science.

Lottery winners in Illinois are being forced to accept an IOU, rather than cash, because the state has been unable to agree its budget. Gamblers who win more than $600 (£388) will not be given cash until the state’s financial situation has improved.

Mothballed Plants On Standby To Avoid Blackouts

It’s time for the annual ‘will they or won’t they?’ – lights stay on – as the UK National Grid limbers up for the stresses and strains of the coming winter’s electricity demands, as Sky News reports. Nobody wants to end up praying for wind….

The National Grid has insisted it has the “right tools” in place to cope with this winter’s energy demands. The company’s Winter Outlook report said that without the measures it had put in place, spare capacity – the gap between generating capacity and peak demand – would plunge to just 1.2%.

Blast waves in the Sun’s atmosphere

[credit: NASA]

The Sun still has some tricks up its sleeve for humans to ponder, as phys.org reports: ‘The waves…extended over at least half a million kilometers and propagated at a speed of approximately 300 kilometers per second’.

Two teams of researchers led by Nariaki Nitta from the Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center in the USA and by Radoslav Bucík from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany have independently discovered a new solar phenomenon: large-scale waves in the star’s atmosphere accompanied by energetic particle emissions rich in helium-3. Helium-3 is a light variety of the inert gas helium.

The huge waves may contribute significantly to accelerate the particles into space, the MPS scientists now report in the Astrophysical Journal. Decisive for this discovery were the two spacecraft STEREO A and ACE making it possible to simultaneously observe the sun from two different directions. In the near future, no such opportunity will arise again.

France’s top weatherman forced off air.

The Daily Telegraph reports that Philippe Verdier has written a controversial book on climate. It has caused something of a kerfuffle, at a sensitive time, on the brink of the Paris conference.

Analysis: depending on wind and solar energy sources is seriously misguided

Solar power tower, Spain [image credit: Coyot.es Network]

Energy blog Master Resource analyses the future of world energy generation. Several scenarios are considered, but the bottom line is that the the idea of renewables as a primary energy source can never be made to work.

Wind, Solar Mirage

Regarding the power market, wind and solar will actually play a minor, even inconsequential, role in reducing emissions by 2035. Worse still for those that believe human-caused CO2 emission are responsible for disastrous climate change, other reasonable options now available will not have a timely effect.

Adaptation, and using wealth diverted from inappropriate energy policy, is a key public-policy takeaway from this series.

Deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon down 80% in the last decade

Amazon near Manaus [credit: Wikipedia]

Read the full article by Conserve if possible – this is just the introduction.

What do you think of when you hear the words “Amazon rainforest”?

Do you think about parrots and poison dart frogs, about marmosets and massive trees, and how tropical rainforests are home to roughly 50% of the species on Earth? Do you think about the vast scale of the Amazon, an immense ecosystem that covers 40% of South America and produces 20% of the world’s oxygen?

Or do you think of deforestation, clear cutting, and environmental disaster?

Britain faces longest winter in 50 years after earliest ever arrival of Siberian swan

Bewick swan [image credit: Maga-chan / Wikipedia]

That’s what Daily Telegraph headline writers are saying anyway. Seasonal weather predictions have a mixed record.

Britain is facing its longest winter in 50 years after the earliest-ever arrival of a Siberian swan which traditionally heralds the start of the season.

Each year around 300 Bewick’s swans migrate 2,500 miles from Arctic Russia to escape the approaching cold weather which follows closely behind them. They flock to the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust reserve at Slimbridge, Glos, where their arrival has been recorded since 1963.

The first bird arrived on Sunday – a full 25 days earlier than last year and the earliest date on record.

Greenpeace wants to bid for German coal-fired power plants

Future in doubt

Slight problem for Greenpeace though – the likely price is over $2 billion, as PEI reports. This may look like another one of its publicity stunts, but some steps have already been taken.

Greenpeace is considering the purchase of more than 8,000 MW of lignite coal-fired power plant capacity, along with coal mines in Germany. The environmental group’s strategy is to prevent other interests from running the facilities and it is now looking at options to fund the purchases.

The assets are valued at $2.2bn and Annika Jacobson, head of Greenpeace in Sweden told Bloomberg, “there are many ways to finance such an acquisition and we are looking at those.”

Blow to UK energy plans as new gas plant in doubt

Gas power station [credit: gov.uk]

UK energy policy is in danger of crumbling, with delays and doubts over its nuclear plans and now a financial crisis facing its gas power plans, as the Daily Telegraph reports.

The UK Government’s plans to keep the lights on have suffered a fresh setback after it emerged the only new large gas power station due to be built in coming years is now in doubt.

Energy firm Carlton Power was awarded a subsidy contract by the Department of Energy and Climate Change last year to build a new 1.9 gigawatt plant at Trafford in Greater Manchester – big enough to supply power to 2.2 million homes.The £800 million plant was due to start generating in October 2018, but Carlton Power told the Telegraph it could no longer meet that date – and had so far failed to secure financial backers for the project to go ahead at all.

Using holography to better understand clouds

Cumulus thunderheads near Sao Paulo, Brazil [image credit: Lunar and Planetary Institute]

Another shortcoming of computer models used in climate science is exposed here, as SpaceDaily explains.

As clouds change shape, mixing occurs, as drier air mingles with water-saturated air. New research led by Michigan Technological University analyzes this mixing with a holographic imaging instrument called HOLODEC and an airborne laboratory.

The work was done in collaboration with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and Mainz University. This new way of seeing clouds – and the way wet and dry air form sharp boundaries – is the focus of the team’s study, published in Science this week.

What the team found with these naturally created boundaries, formed by completely evaporating some water drops and leaving others unscathed, is called inhomogenous mixing. And it goes against base assumptions used in most computer models for cloud formations. [bold added]

Controversial compressed air underwater cave energy project

Offshore wind farm [image credit: Wikipedia]

Is this part of the future for wind power, or just another doomed idea?

The search for new ways to produce energy are often complicated and controversial – and in Northern Ireland, a project to compress air into caverns under the seabed is no different.

It will be used, along with gas, to run turbines when the wind does not blow.

However some are worried that the process could be damaging to the natural habitat, as a short BBC video reports.

Well, it’s different if nothing else.

Albedo regulation of Ice Ages, with no CO2 feedbacks

The Aletsch Glacier in Switzerland [image credit: ESA]

Warwick Hughes points to a very interesting and detailed article: ‘Albedo regulation of Ice Ages, with no CO2 feedbacks’ featuring a ‘secret ingredient’ – you’ll have to read it to find out more.

Guest article by Ralph Ellis who welcomes constructive feedback – some familiar ice ages charts put together in a way I have not seen.

Source: Albedo regulation of Ice Ages, with no CO2 feedbacks | Errors in IPCC climate science

Why Phi? – Neptune’s moon Triton and its neighbours

The orbit of Triton (red) is opposite in direction and tilted −23° compared to a typical moon’s orbit (green) in the plane of Neptune’s equator [image credit: Wikipedia]

Triton is the seventh largest moon in the solar system. Not only that, it has over 99% of the mass of all Neptune’s moons combined. Its retrograde orbit makes it unique among the large moons of the solar system, and it is also the coldest known planetary body at -235° C (-391° F).

Turning to the orbit numbers, and looking at Triton’s closest ‘inner’ (nearer to Uranus) neighbour Proteus and the next two ‘outer’ moons, we find these values (in days):
1.122d Proteus
5.877d Triton
360.13d Nereid
1879.08d Halimede

We’ll treat Proteus and Triton as a pair, and the same for Nereid and Halimede.
Nereid is over fifteen times further from Uranus than Triton is, so hardly a neighbour at all.

Looking at the orbit ratios (which are also the rotation ratios, as usual with moons):
T/P = 5.877 / 1.122 = 5.238
H/N = 1879.08 / 360.13 = 5.218

The first thing to say is that the two results are very similar. One is about 99.62% of the other.