Ned Nikolov: In Science, New Messages Mean More than the Messengers’ Names

An Interview Given by Dr. Ned Nikolov (a.k.a. Den Volokin) to Ben Guarino,
a Staff Writer at The Washington Post
Sep. 17, 2016

Research Paper Withdrawal by the Journal Advances in Space Research  

Q1: As succinctly as possible, could you tell me why you chose to publish this work under a pseudonym?

A1: We adopted pseudonyms as a measure of last resort as we could not get an unbiased and fair review from scientific journals under our real names. This is explained in more details in the attached letter we sent to the chief editor of the Journal Advances in Space Research (JASR) on Sep. 17, 2015. In brief, our real names became known to the climate-science blogosphere in 2012 when a poster, which we presented at an International Climate Conference in Denver in 2011, became available online and caused broad and intense discussions. When we later tried to publish elements of this poster as separate articles in scientific journals, we discovered that journal editors and reviewers would reject our manuscripts outright after Googling our names and reading the online discussion. The rejections were oftentimes justified by the journals using criticisms outside the scope of the manuscript at hand.  On two occasions, journal editors have even refused to send our manuscripts for review after reading the blogs and realizing the broader theoretical implications of our results, although the manuscript itself did not explicitly discuss any new theory. For example, our first paper was rejected 4 times by different journals while submitted under our real names before it was finally accepted by SpringerPlus after submitting it under pseudonyms.

Intermittent & Unreliable ‘Delivery’ Makes Wind Power Pointless

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As the article below says:
‘The tiny contribution of wind and solar to grid electricity cannot make up for the loss of more traditional electricity sources due to low prices.’

One of many problems with renewables unfortunately. And its even more unfortunate when those problems seem to be getting ignored by those in charge of our electricity supplies.

STOP THESE THINGS

Wind can be a whole lot of fun – while it lasts …

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Intermittent Renewables Can’t Favorably Transform Grid Electricity
Our Finite World
Gail Tverberg
31 August 2016

Many people are hoping for wind and solar PV to transform grid electricity in a favorable way. Is this really possible? Is it really feasible for intermittent renewables to generate a large share of grid electricity? The answer increasingly looks as if it is, “No, the costs are too great, and the return on investment would be way too low.” We are already encountering major grid problems, even with low penetrations of intermittent renewable electricity: US, 5.4% of 2015 electricity consumption; China, 3.9%; Germany, 19.5%; Australia, 6.6%.

In fact, I have come to the rather astounding conclusion that even if wind turbines and solar PV could be built at zero cost, it would not make sense to continue to add them to…

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Nicola Scafetta: On the astronomical origin of the Hallstatt oscillation found in radiocarbon and climate records throughout the Holocene.

 

Nicola Scafetta writes:

Dear all,

it was a pleasure to meet you at London. Some of you asked me about my paper in press about a link between astronomical, solar and climate oscillations. Here it is:

Scafetta, N., Milani, F., Antonio Bianchini, A., Ortolani, S.: On the astronomical origin of the Hallstatt oscillation found in radiocarbon and climate records throughout the Holocene. Earth-Science Reviews 162, 24–43, 2016. There is a free access to the article, and is valid for anybody until November 10, 2016 by using this link  http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1TlSB2weQTZcD

(Permanent copy here)

The importance of the article is that it demonstrates quite clearly that the long Hallstatt oscillation (about 2318 year period), which is observed in climate and solar records is a major stable resonance of the solar system. The paper also evaluates the other major planetary stable resonances and we found all other typical oscillations found in climate and solar records such as a quasi 20-year oscillation, a quasi 60-year oscillation, the 82-97 year Gleissberg oscillation and the 159-185 year Jose oscillation (and others).

Researchers find ‘new natural law’ that challenges dark matter theory

Spiral galaxy NGC 5457 aka the Pinwheel Galaxy [image credit: European Space Agency & NASA]

One in the eye for dark matter theorists it seems, as Phys.org reports.

In the late 1970s, astronomers Vera Rubin and Albert Bosma independently found that spiral galaxies rotate at a nearly constant speed: the velocity of stars and gas inside a galaxy does not decrease with radius, as one would expect from Newton’s laws and the distribution of visible matter, but remains approximately constant.

Such ‘flat rotation curves’ are generally attributed to invisible, dark matter surrounding galaxies and providing additional gravitational attraction.

When lukewarmists attack

It’s a bit like being savaged by sheep. Anthony Watts and his psychotic sidekick Willis the drug-addled cowboy are at it again. They’re trying to undermine the work of Ned Nikolov and Karl Zeller, who gave an excellent presentation at our highly successful London Conference. Their theory covers the underlying physical principles which determine surface temperature across a range of solar system bodies with radically different parameters in terms of insolation, surface pressure, atmospheric composition and rotation rates. There’s not a snowball on Venus’ chance of Watts or Willis understanding it, as they amply demonstrated last time they had a go.

Dellers & The Ship Of Fools

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/09/20/ship-fools-ii-expedition-escapes-arctic-freeze-nick-time/

Dellers writes:

The Polar Ocean Challenge expedition – aka Ship of Fools II – has escaped from the Arctic by the skin of its teeth.

It was supposed to show how amazingly navigable the Arctic Circle has become now that climate change is supposedly melting the polar ice caps at a dangerous and unprecedented rate. But according to one observer who has followed their progress closely (see comments at Paul Homewood‘s place), the intrepid explorers – including a 14-year-old boy – came within just two days of calamity, after being hampered by unexpectedly large quantities of a mysterious substance apparently made of frozen water.

The southern NWP route is now closed at the NE exit, with northern Prince Regent Sound blocked by 9/10 ice in freeze up mode. Exactly where they barely made it through after hours of probing on 9/12. Northabout made it through…

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Impact of the ~ 2400 yr solar cycle on climate and human societies

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Plenty for Talkshoppers to get their teeth into here.

Climate Etc.

by Javier

The role of solar variability on climate change, despite having a very long scientific tradition, is currently downplayed as a climatic factor within the most popular hypothesis for climate change.

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UN touts list of countries ratifying Paris Climate Treaty today – No China or US

Ban now congratulates countries that have deposited instrument of ratification of #ParisAgreement today. Webcast:https://t.co/GSxPeucnCR pic.twitter.com/4vdNlS1p5F

— UN Climate Action (@UNFCCC) September 21, 2016

I’m seeing about 50% empty seats in-shot here…

The following States are expected to deposit their instruments of ratification, as of 20 September:

Albania

Antigua and Barbuda

Argentina

Bangladesh

Belarus

Brazil

Brunei Darussalam

Dominica

Guinea

Honduras

Iceland

Kiribati

Madagascar

Mexico

Mongolia

Morocco

Namibia

Niger

Panama

Papua New Guinea

Senegal

Singapore

 

Sri Lanka

Swaziland

Thailand

Tonga

Uganda

United Arab Emirates

Vanuatu

I wonder what proportion of global man-made CO2 emissions this group of countries accounts for.

Will Hinkley Point nuclear power plant make enough money?

Hinkley what’s-the-point?

The GWPF points out an inconvenient truth – that as more and more subsidised and prioritised renewables are injected into the UK’s electricity grid system, the tougher it must get for competing methods of power generation to turn a profit worth the cost and effort involved.

The UK government has, after some delays, given approval to Hinkley C nuclear power station. However, and in spite of subsidies intended to offset risks arising from renewables policy, it is still not clear that the project can actually make money. It remains to be seen whether EDF has the courage to proceed.
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Mysterious Planet Nine might have tilted our whole Solar System

A long way from the Sun: theoretical Planet Nine

This story surfaced two months ago but – better late than never – we’d like to draw it to the attention of Talkshop readers, at least those who haven’t seen it already.

Two recent studies have shown that the existence of a mysterious, hypothetical Planet Nine could explain why the planets in our Solar System don’t fully line up with the Sun, reports ScienceAlert.

Researchers have been speculating about a ninth planet since January this year, and these latest studies add more weight to the hypothesis that, at some point in time at least, there was an extra planet orbiting our Sun.

In fact, if Planet Nine does exist (or did), it would help to explain something that scientists have puzzled over for decades – why the Solar System is tilted.

Footage from our recent London Climate Conference

Our recent conference held at Conway Hall in central London was a huge success, with over a hundred attendees being treated to two days of rapid-fire 20 minute presentations and discussion sessions. The footage has now been published online by Mark Windows, and are available for you to view at your leisure.

Another video Mark has produced, introduces the circumstances around the last-minute move from UCL to Conway hall,  and also presents interviews with many of the participants.

I had a short interview with Energy Live News

 

This conference was made possible by the tireless efforts of Nils-Axel Morner in the face of great difficulties, and huge credit is due to him for his determination and organisational ability.

Arctic sea-ice melt reporting: the amazing flip-flops

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Excellent. So climate alarmists trumpeting Arctic ice melt are prone to farcical exaggeration at least, utter rubbish at worst. Who knew?

Trust, yet verify

Two posts ago, on the subject of another claim of an ice-free Arctic published in the Guardian, the discussion arose whether the journalist realized that he quoted someone with a poor track record in that matter. Commenter Chrism56 alerted me that the journalist (Robin McKie) already had written articles in the past on this subject, so he should have known that there were issues with the credibility of this claim.

The link that was provided went to an article from 2008 in which McKie reported about the claim of an ice-free Arctic that back then was expected five years further in the future.

The claim was made by Serreze, Maslowski and Wadhams. Apparently he should know about the botched prediction in the meanwhile.

I became curious whether there were more articles written by McKie on this topic and also how he wrote about it in say 2013, when it became…

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Wind Power Alert: Americans Out to Avoid Europe’s Power Price Disaster

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Electricity prices going way up and security of supply heading down – is this really what people want, or do they just not yet realize where this is going?

STOP THESE THINGS

America has some perfect examples of what not to do, if it wants to remain an industrial and manufacturing power-house, with a standard of living that much of the World can only envy.

South Australia has set the pace with spot prices that rocket in minutes from $70 per MWh to $2,000 to $4,000 and all the way to the regulated market price cap of $14,000 per MWh, every time wind power output collapses on a total and totally unpredictable basis.

And much of Europe is in the same boat: think Spain, Germany, Denmark and the UK.

From what’s coming out of the USA, Americans don’t seem that keen to follow the path set by countries facing social and economic disaster, thanks to their ludicrous attempts to run on sunshine and breezes.

Donn Dears LLC is among them.

Europe’s High Cost of Renewables
Power for USA
Donn Dears
19 July…

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Obama’s Electric Car Fail

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Donna Laframboise does the unthinkable and waves one of the US president’s promises – or predictions – under his nose, pointing out its hopeless failure to come true. Trying to get people to limit their travels to 100 miles or so is about as likely to succeed as nailing jelly to the wall.

Big Picture News, Informed Analysis

Only 40% of Obama’s electric cars are on the road. None meet the 150-mile-per gallon standard he promised.

Last year 17.5 million cars, SUVs, and light-weight trucks were sold in America. A mere 115,000 of those (two-thirds of one percent) were electric vehicles. Let’s press the rewind button back to the 2008 presidential campaign trail, in which Barack Obama declared:

we will help states like Michigan build the fuel-efficient cars we need, and we will get one million 150 mile-per-gallon plug-in hybrids on our roads within six years. [bold added]

In March 2009, two months after he became President, Obama delivered a speech at the Southern California Edison Electric Vehicle Technical Center in which he similarly asserted:

we will put one million plug-in hybrid vehicles on America’s roads by 2015.

In these closing months of 2016, it’s reasonable to ask how those green promises worked out. In…

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Hinkley Point: Overwhelming majority of British public oppose decision to approve nuclear plant

Hinkley Point C nuclear site [image credit: BBC]

The Independent’s headline may be an exaggeration, but nuclear power is not popular in Britain at present. The illusion persists in some quarters that Britain could run almost entirely on wind power, which is very far from being technically or financially realistic.

Three out of four Britons oppose the Hinkley nuclear power project that has just been approved by the Government, according to a poll.

A quarter (25 per cent) of the 2,028 people surveyed in the Populus  poll, conducted on 7-8 September, said they supported Hinkley, while nearly half (44 per cent) oppose the plans.

Recent studies show Sept ice of 3-5 mkm2 did not kill polar bears off as predicted

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Once again it turns out that polar bears are more resilient to low summer sea ice conditions than experts assumed. Maybe they should look for some other supposed problem to highlight.

polarbearscience

The annual Arctic sea ice minimum for 2016 is imminent and the hand-wringing about polar bear survival has already begun. While this year is shaping up to be another very low sea ice minimum in the Arctic – not as low as 2012 but lower than 2007 (previously the 2nd lowest since 1979) – contrary to predictions, several recent studies show that such low sea ice coverage in summer has had no (or very limited) negative effects on polar bear health and survival. In fact, for polar bears in some areas low summer sea ice has been quite beneficial (although these are not the populations that polar bear specialists predicted would do better).

Since low summer extents of recent magnitude (3.0 – 5.0 mkm2) are clearly not any sort of threat to polar bears, it seems improbable that even an ice-free (≤ 1.0 mkm2) summer (e.g…

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Pluto ‘paints’ its largest moon Charon red

Charon’s ‘red spot’ [image credit: space.com]

Scientists have discovered ‘atmospheric transfer’ taking place between Pluto and its binary partner Charon.

In June 2015, when the cameras on NASA’s approaching New Horizons spacecraft first spotted the large reddish polar region on Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, mission scientists knew two things: they’d never seen anything like it elsewhere in our solar system, and they couldn’t wait to get the story behind it, as Phys.org reports.

Over the past year, after analyzing the images and other data that New Horizons has sent back from its historic July 2015 flight through the Pluto system, the scientists think they’ve solved the mystery.

Tidal energy project launches in Scotland

Credit: Atlantis Resources

Heard it before? Questions to be addressed include the economics of this type of project and the long-term reliability of the technology in corrosive seawater. Similar previous attempts have not got very far.

Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon today launched a 398 MW tidal stream energy project, reports PEI. The MeyGen scheme is owned by Atlantis Resources, backed by £23m of Scottish government investment, and located in Scotland’s Pentland Firth.

A fully assembled 1.5 MW Atlantis tidal power turbine with foundations was unveiled today at a ceremony is Nigg before being loaded onto a jack-up vessel and transported to the MeyGen for installation.

Was Arctic sea ice minimum 2016 on the 2nd Sept?

South Korean company close to investing in UK nuclear plant

Proposed nuclear plant at Moorside [credit: in-cumbria.com]

Utility Week points to a press report that shows untried French nuclear reactors are not the only game in town for the UK, as it increasingly struggles to ‘keep the lights on’.

Korea Electric Power Corporation (Kepco) is close to investing in the £10 billion Moorside nuclear plant in Cumbria, the Financial Times has reported.

Sources said progress has been made towards a potential equity stake for Kepco as well as possible role in construction. The company is 51 per cent owned by the South Korean government, which has set the target of becoming the world’s third largest nuclear reactor exporter by 2030.