Andrea Leadsom MP: #Brexit is best for Britain’s energy security

Andrea Leadsom MP

From the Daily mail:

In March Energy Minister Amber Fudd claimed energy bills would soar by £500 million a year if we left the EU, adding: ‘The thing about the gas market is you don’t know what shocks and what changes there can be to it.’

But in a remarkable rebuttal to her boss’s claims, Ms Leadsom said today that Brexit would threaten ‘absolutely none’ of the three ‘critical considerations’ at the forefront of Britain’s energy policy.

‘Leaving the EU will give us freedom to keep bills down, to meet our climate change targets in the cheapest way possible, and of course, keep the lights on,’ she said in a speech in central London.

Under the European Commission’s ‘Winter Package’ proposals all 28 EU member states would ‘take on legal responsibility for each other’s gas security’.

This would ensure that EU member states that face having their gas supplies cut – due to political disputes with countries such as Russia or contracts expiring, for example, – would see its gas supplies guaranteed by fellow member states.

Setting out the ‘real threat out continued membership of the EU will have on our energy security,’ Ms Leadsom said: ‘The European Commission’s ‘Winter Package’, contains a number of proposals which make painfully clear the direction of travel in EU energy policy.

‘Two of those suggestions pose a potential threat to our continued energy security.

Silence of the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group on the 2015 IUCN Red List assessment

.
.
Hiding the non-decline in polar bear numbers? Why would anyone want to bury good news – unless they had an agenda?

polarbearscience

It’s been six months and still the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group has not updated its website with a link to the 2015 IUCN Red List assessment for polar bears, which was made public with some fanfare in November 2015. They are not the only group still ignoring the Red List decision but their silence is the most damning – the IUCN is the parent body of their organization.

On May 7th, I wrote to the IUCN Red List folks (redlist@iucn.org) about this situation (excerpt below) but as yet have received no reply.

In part, my letter to the Red List said:

“The IUCN PBSG website is one of the first places people are directed to when they look online for official information about the conservation status of polar bears. Yet by early May 2016, no mention is found of the November 2015 Red List assessment of polar bears on…

View original post 749 more words

Matt Ridley: In the name of science, Britain must leave the EU

CapX has a cogently argued piece from Matt Ridley on the reasons why Britains science endeavours would be benefited by #Brexit.

Britain – for its size – is probably the world’s leading scientific country. We have less than 1% of the world’s population, but 15% of the most highly cited scientific papers, and more Nobel prize winners than any other European country. We are world leaders in biotechnology and digital technology and our greatest potential collaborators and potential rivals in both fields are in Asia and America, not Europe.

So it is vital that we remain open to the world, not stuck in little Europe. A regional customs union protected by tariff walls and run from a central bureaucracy is a 1950s idea – an analogue project in a digital era, as Michael Gove puts it. In an age when container shipping has collapsed the cost of intercontinental trade; when the internet and budget airlines and Skype have made it as easy to collaborate with Asia and America and Africa as in Europe, regionalism makes less sense.

Full DC appeals court to decide on Obama carbon-cutting plan

District of Columbia Court of Appeals Seal [credit: Wikipedia]

How a court is supposed to figure out what is just or unjust in climate matters is an interesting question, but it’s going to happen anyway as Yahoo News reports. There will probably be a new US president before all the legal battles are over.

MICHAEL BIESECKER May 17, 2016 WASHINGTON (AP) — The full appeals court in Washington will hear arguments in the legal fight over President Barack Obama’s plan to curtail greenhouse gas emissions, potentially accelerating the case’s path to the Supreme Court.

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued an order Monday scheduling oral arguments on the legality of the Clean Power Plan for September 27.

Blank sun provides more evidence for solar-planetary theory

The Sun usually exhibits ~11 year cycles of activity, but the historical sunspot record shows quite a large variance on this average figure. Here at the Talkshop, we have been developing a theory which relates solar activity levels to the motion of the planets, and in particular the motion of Jupiter, Earth and Venus. Simple indexes of ‘most aligned days’ were devised by Jean-Pierre Desmoulins, and later by NASA physicist Ching Cheh Hung, which was replicated by Talkshop contributor Roy Martin.

Cameron loses more public trust following #ProjectFear psy-ops

David Cameron’s #projectfear uses a well know psychological technique called loss aversion. Wiki:

In economics and decision theory, loss aversion refers to people’s tendency to strongly prefer avoiding losses to acquiring gains. Most studies suggest that losses are twice as powerful, psychologically, as gains.^[1] Loss aversion was first demonstrated by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman.^[2]

This leads to risk aversion when people evaluate an outcome comprising similar gains and losses; since people prefer avoiding losses to making gains.

This is why politicians always say in advance they will “run a positive campaign” but then end up running a negative one – fear of downsides outsides potential benefits of upsides in the average person’s mind.

That’s also why entrepreneurs, inventors and explorers tend to be in the vanguard of the Leave campaign – they don’t allow irrational fear of small risks to keep them from trying for the big prize.

Distant dwarf planet ‘Snow White’ may be third largest of its kind

More details
The orbit of 2007 OR10 compared to the orbit of Eris, Pluto, and the outer planets
[credit: Gravity Simulator by Tony Dunn]

What the report doesn’t say is that the second largest dwarf planet Eris is a close neighbour of “Snow White”. Eris completes 52 orbits of the Sun to every 53 of “Snow White”. Both have highly inclined orbits.

A faraway object nicknamed “Snow White” is considerably larger than scientists had thought, and is in fact the third-largest dwarf planet in the solar system, a new study suggests.

Snow White is about 955 miles (1,535 kilometers) in diameter rather than 795 miles (1,280 km) wide as previously believed, according to the new study. That makes it the largest still-unnamed object in our solar system, NASA officials said. (The dwarf planet has not yet been formally named and currently goes by the placeholder designation 2007 OR10.)

RICO-20 Campaign Against Sceptical Climate Scientists Revealed In Emails

credit: gambacortalaw.com

The biter bit – H/T GWPF
Date: 14/05/16 Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal)Washington, D.C.

– Today the public came one big step closer to learning the truth behind how university professors launched “a national campaign” to have state attorneys general investigate and prosecute political opponents under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) — investigations which have now swept up think tanks and climate scientists who have dared challenge the climate agenda and claims made to force it into place.

Representing Christopher Horner and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, attorneys from the Free Market Environmental Law Clinic successfully argued that the public records of Professor Edward Maibach should now be disclosed to all, having previously been submitted to the court under a protective order.

23 THE DEARLY BELOVED ANTARCTIC OZONE HOLE: A FUNCTION OF ATMOSPHERIC DYNAMICS

.
.
Erl Happ looks at Solar-Geomagnetic effects on ozone and weather.

reality

BACKGROUND

Source of data here.

Ozone is a greenhouse gas that absorbs radiant energy from the Earth at 9-10 um heating the air. It accumulates in the winter hemisphere. However, directly over the Antarctic continent the descent of very cold, dense, ozone deficient air from the mesosphere is promoted by increased surface pressure in winter. The resulting difference in air density either side of about 60-70° of latitude intensifies the circulation of the air by promoting the formation of polar cyclones that have their origin in the ‘weather-sphere’ where differences in air density between 300 hPa and 50 hPa create upper level troughs that propagate to the surface.

The term NOx refers to the mono nitrogen compounds of nitrogen, NO and NO2. NOx is abundant in the troposphere and less so in the mesosphere. Where it is introduced to the stratosphere, NOx catalytically destroys ozone.

The depression in surface pressure…

View original post 4,055 more words

@BrexitTheMovie goes online despite censorship efforts

The full version of Brexit The Movie is now available on Vimeo. Google took it down from Youtube citing copyright infringement. Establishment forces are still trying to prevent the truth about the EU getting out there.

https://vimeo.com/166389884

 

The premiere was a superb occasion. with many top Brexiteers in attendance. At the aftershow party I got the chance to chat with several including Nigel Farage MEP, Lord Matt Ridley, Dan Hannan MEP, David Davis MP, Steven Woolfe MEP, Suzanne Evans, James Delingpole and of course, Martin Durkin. Pics below the break.

Exoplanets’ complex orbital structure points to planetary migration in solar systems

The Kepler-223 planetary system, which has long-term stability because its four planets interact gravitationally to keep the beat of a carefully choreographed dance as they orbit their host star.
[credit: W.Rebel]

As the report says: ‘Kepler-223’s two innermost planets are in a 4:3 resonance. The second and third are in a 3:2 resonance. And the third and fourth are in a 4:3 resonance.’ They are ‘far more massive than Earth’. Interesting to say the least.

The four planets of the Kepler-223 star system seem to have little in common with the planets of Earth’s own solar system. And yet a new study shows that the Kepler-223 system is trapped in an orbital configuration that Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune may have broken from in the early history of the solar system.

“Exactly how and where planets form is an outstanding question in planetary science,” said the study’s lead author, Sean Mills, a graduate student in astronomy & astrophysics at the University of Chicago. “Our work essentially tests a model for planet formation for a type of planet we don’t have in our solar system.”

Birds scupper £2bn offshore wind farm

Scottish offshore wind project [image credit : urbanrealm.com]

The project is certainly on the ropes but a knockout punch may not yet have been applied, as the report explains.
H/T Daily Telegraph

A £2 billion offshore wind farm is set to be scrapped after it lost a Government subsidy contract due to an ongoing legal challenge over its impact on birds.

The proposed Neart na Gaoithe wind farm would see 64 turbines built nine miles off the coast of Fife and was one of only two offshore wind projects to win a subsidy contract from the Government last year.

Swarm tracks Earth’s turbulent magnetic field

Earth’s magnetosphere [image credit: SPL / BBC]

The BBC report by Jonathan Amos includes two ‘blink-and-you-miss-it’ videos that offer a global view of the magnetic patterns. The three-year east-west oscillation sounds interesting.

Europe’s Swarm mission is providing an unprecedented view of Earth’s turbulent magnetic field, scientists say. The three-satellite constellation is now routinely mapping its convulsions, allowing researchers to probe the mechanisms that drive the “invisible shield” in remarkable new detail.

Colorado Supreme Court rules fracking bans are “invalid and unenforceable”

Shale formation for natural gas in Pennsylvania, USA.
[image credit:
businesskorea.co.kr]

Another setback for fear-and-doubt merchants with this legal victory for shale gas development, as Somewhat Reasonable reports. Lack of evidence perhaps?

On Monday, May 2 the Colorado Supreme Court ruled on what the New York Times (NYT) called: “a lengthy battle for energy production.” The court’s unanimous decision to strike down two cities’ limits on fracking is a victory for oil-and-gas companies and a “disappointment” to anti-fossil-fuel activists. 

Several states, including Colorado’s neighbors, New Mexico and Texas, have faced similar anti-oil-and-gas initiatives that have also been shot down.

Breakdowns force National Grid to issue power supply crunch alert

Image credit: colombogazette.com

Britain is walking a tightrope with electricity supply as this incident shows. We’re in a minor heatwave at present and daylight hours are long.
H/T Daily Telegraph

A series of power plant breakdowns and the partial failure of a key electricity import cable forced National Grid to issue an urgent call for more power to keep the lights on on Monday night.

China: 33 missing after landslide buries hydroelectric power facility

Image credit: itv.com

H/T Power Engineering International

Rescue workers in southern China are attempting to rescue 33 people missing after a landslide buried a hydropower project.

8 construction workers have been pulled out alive after the facility was engulfed following days of heavy rain, officials and state-run media reported.

Early Earth’s air weighed less than half of today’s atmosphere

credit: cgtrader

This will have theorists scratching their heads.

The idea that the young Earth had a thicker atmosphere turns out to be wrong. New research from the University of Washington uses bubbles trapped in 2.7 billion-year-old rocks to show that air at that time exerted at most half the pressure of today’s atmosphere.

The results, published online May 9 in Nature Geoscience, reverse the commonly accepted idea that the early Earth had a thicker atmosphere to compensate for weaker sunlight.

The finding also has implications for which gases were in that atmosphere, and how biology and climate worked on the early planet.

Get ready for Brexit The Movie: The Premiere

You can still book! click here

Excitement is building for the premiere of Brexit The Movie tomorrow. The red-carpet event is taking place at Leicester Square Odeon in London – the most prestigious location in the country for such an event. I’d like to make a final big THANK YOU! to all talkshoppers who have contributed to getting the movie’s production off the ground with their generous donations. Yesterday, Martin Durkin was interviewed on Sky News, see the footage below the break.

Enceladus jets: Surprises in starlight

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Cornell/SSI

The text below is the caption to the graphics shown here, taken from a new Phys.org report. It gives some interesting insights into the physics of moons and sets some new puzzles for theorists.

This set of images from NASA’s Cassini mission shows how the gravitational pull of Saturn affects the amount of spray coming from jets at the active moon Enceladus. Enceladus has the most spray when it is farthest away from Saturn in its orbit (inset image on the left) and the least spray when it is closest to Saturn (inset image on the right).

First Shale Gas Could Hit UK Market In 2017 – Cuadrilla

[credit: cityam.com]

Certain cake-baking celebrities won’t want to read this.

First supplies of shale gas, extracted using the unconventional fracking process, could enter the British gas market as early as mid-2017, the head of shale gas firm Cuadrilla Resources told Reuters on Friday.
H/T GWPF

Britain is estimated to have substantial amounts of shale gas trapped in underground rocks and Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged to go all out to extract those reserves to help offset declining North Sea oil and gas output.

But progress has been slow as applications for shale gas projects have been held up at local government level where they have faced vocal opposition from environmental campaigners.

Cuadrilla initially wants to carry out fracking — which injects water, sand and chemicals into rock formations to release shale gas — at two sites in northwest England.

It hopes to get government approval to start operations at the sites before August.

“If we get good results from the wells … gas could go into the system next year,” said Francis Egan, chief executive of Cuadrilla, 46 percent owned by Australian engineer AJ Lucas.

Gas flows from initial testing would be small but Egan said full production could start in 2018 if necessary permits are obtained.

Lancashire Council last year rejected Cuadrilla applications for fracking at the sites, underscoring local community concerns about the technique.

However, Britain has since changed planning rules to allow government intervention to approve or reject shale gas drilling permits and give priority to appeals involving the projects.

A planning inspector is expected to make recommendations on Cuadrilla’s Lancashire applications to local government minister Greg Clark by July 4 and he will then make the final decision.

Egan said he is confident the project will be approved since the government has voiced strong support for the technology, while the local authority had previously received legal advice to approve one of the applications.

The government hopes a shale gas boom will help generate jobs in the oil and gas industry which has been hard hit by a 60 percent slump in oil and gas prices in the last two years.

Source: First Shale Gas Could Hit UK Market In 2017 – Cuadrilla | The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)