Antarctic sea ice retreats due to wind patterns

.
.
Funny how decades of increasing seasonal sea ice in the Antarctic were ignored or somehow explained away, but a glimmer of a retreat and it’s banner headlines everywhere. Confirmation bias?

Let’s see whether we get a multi-year trend along the same lines in this region. If not it will look like a one-off weather pattern, as seems very possible.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/

While Arctic ice extent has been at low levels lately, coincidentally, strange things have been going on down under.

Bucking the trend of recent years when Antarctic sea ice extent has been steadily rising, it has dropped away in the last few months.

Naturally this has led to the alarmists having a field day. I have, however, used the word “coincidentally” deliberately, as there is no evidence whatsoever that the Arctic and Antarctic events are connected. Or that the latter has anything to do with global warming.

So what has been happening in the Antarctic? NSIDC offer a clue in their October edition of Arctic Sea Ice News, after it reached winter maximum on a record early date:

View original post 451 more words

Revolutions in understanding the ionosphere, Earth’s interface to space

There seems to be plenty going on up there so how it all works, and how that might affect Earth, must be well worth pursuing. Phys.org reporting. [Click on graphic to enlarge]

Scientists from NASA and three universities have presented new discoveries about the way heat and energy move and manifest in the ionosphere, a region of Earth’s atmosphere that reacts to changes from both space above and Earth below.

Far above Earth’s surface, within the tenuous upper atmosphere, is a sea of particles that have been split into positive and negative ions by the sun’s harsh ultraviolet radiation. Called the ionosphere, this is Earth’s interface to space, the area where Earth’s neutral atmosphere and terrestrial weather give way to the space environment that dominates most of the rest of the universe – an environment that hosts charged particles and a complex system of electric and magnetic fields.

Britain may scrap international climate funding

Has it finally occurred to UK leaders that pouring money down the ‘climate drain’, without even knowing how it was spent, may not be a useful way to spend limited funds?
H/T GWPF

Britain’s chancellor has given the first hint that the promise to protect the international aid budget could be scrapped after the next election, reports The Times.

Philip Hammond confirmed that all protected areas of spending would be re-examined before the Conservative manifesto is produced before the 2020 election.

Oil change? Fossil fuel advocate to run State department

Rex Tillerson

After years of being persecuted by climate alarmists, the oil giant Exxon now finds its CEO nominated for a top post
in the next US government. What’s he like? Tough at times, as this BBC report notes: ‘At the Exxon AGM, journalists from the Guardian were barred from the meeting in Dallas – Exxon argued that the newspaper was not “objective” in their reporting.’

Good news for environmental campaigners: President-elect Trump has finally nominated someone to his cabinet who actually believes in climate change science.

The bad news for those same campaigners is that this true believer happens to be CEO of Exxon Mobil, and also sees fossil fuels as critical to humanity’s survival.

Rings around young star suggest planet formation in progress

The spacing of the three rings described has a ratio of 3:5:8 according to the data given (60:100:160 AU) by Phys.org. This Fibonacci pattern may be telling us something about planetary formation.

Rice University astronomers and their colleagues have for the first time mapped gases in three dark rings around a distant star. The rings mark spaces where planets are thought to have formed from dust and gas around the star.

All the rings around HD 163296 are devoid of dust, and the international team of researchers led by Rice astronomer Andrea Isella is sure that planets, probably gas giants with masses comparable to Saturn, are responsible for clearing the outermost ones.

But the inner ring has far more carbon monoxide than the other two, leading them to believe no planet exists there. That remains unexplained, he said.

UK Govt spending £319bn on quest to change future weather

Via Jo Nova

The geniuses in the UK government decided to take £10,800 from every UK household to cool the world by a figure which, rounded to the nearest tenth of a degree, is 0.0 degrees C a century from now.

Hot air: Bombshell report shows green levies backed by government will cost the economy £319bn by 2030
The huge sum is three times the annual NHS budget for England
The policy will be adding an average burden of £584 a year to every household by 2020 and £875 by 2030

Massive potential for new oil production technique

Via GWPF

 

Potential extraction for three types of U.S. oil reserves (from top to bottom): zapping, tapping and fracking. These figures from the USGS show “technically recoverable” deposits. Scale: 1:4.2 trillion. GETTY/SHUTTERSTOCK

What do Hot Pockets and oil shale have in common? As it turns out, more than you might imagine. True, you can’t bake oil shale the way you can Hot Pockets. And you can’t steam Hot Pockets (unless you like ’em soggy) the way you can oil shale when you want to siphon off its black gold. But there is one preparation method that works for both these two improbable sources of abundant energy, and it’s probably in your kitchen at this very moment: microwaves.

The evolution of gas reciprocating engines

Experts say reciprocating gas engines can respond faster to load changes than any other prime mover, can compete with small gas turbine systems and also help fill in an efficient way the gap left by the lack of energy storage in most grid systems, as Power Engineering reports.

In southern Minnesota, where wind turbines and ethanol plants are commonplace, two communities have turned to reciprocating engine technology to meet their future power generation needs.

The Fairmont Energy Station, a 25-MW project completed in 2014, and the Owatonna Energy Station, a 38-MW project now under construction, feature highly flexible, quick-starting, low-maintenance reciprocating engines suited for today’s market, which places a premium on rapid-cycling capabilities.

Minnesota is home to about 100 wind power projects and ranks No. 7 in net wind power production in the U.S. That means Minnesota power producers must have reliable backup power to fill the sudden gaps created by growing supplies of intermittent wind power. The $30 million Fairmont plant is well suited for the job, capable of reaching full capacity in just eight minutes. That’s significantly faster than power plants using the latest gas turbine technology.

Scott Adams on global warming

Tim wrote

Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) has an article up

The Non-Expert Problem and Climate Change Science

Before I start, let me say as clearly as possible that I agree with the scientific consensus on climate change. If science says something is true – according to most scientists, and consistent with the scientific method – I accept their verdict.

…

So when I say I agree with the scientific consensus on climate change, I’m endorsing the scientific consensus for the same reason I endorsed Hillary Clinton for the first part of the election – as a strategy to protect myself. I endorse the scientific consensus on climate change to protect my career and reputation. To do otherwise would be dumb, at least in my situation.

…

Global warming protest met with bitter cold, snow

Global warming takes the day off in Colorado

Outdoor protesting in December in the Northern Hemisphere can have its drawbacks, as The Daily Caller describes. Maybe add embarrassment to the list when you’re claiming that humans are making the world warmer.

A small group of global warming activists protesting oil and gas drilling outside the Department of Interior office in Colorado Thursday morning were met with bitter cold weather and snow.

About 10 “Keep It In The Ground” activists waved signs next to a busy road in the Denver area, calling for the Obama administration to stop issuing leases so companies can drill on public lands.

Activists say drilling only exacerbates global warming. The irony, however, is activists stood outside in about 4 inches of snow with temperatures hovering in the 20s — in degrees Fahrenheit.

Trump picks prominent climate sceptic as EPA chief

A man who has regularly sued the US Environmental Protection Agency is about to become its boss.
Scott Pruitt says: ‘Dissent is not a crime’.
H/T GWPF

President-elect Donald Trump is poised to name Scott Pruitt, a prominent skeptic of climate science and an ardent foe of government action on climate change, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), according to media reports.

Pruitt, the attorney general of Oklahoma, has been a leading architect of legal opposition to President Barack Obama’s climate and environmental policies.

Lord Donoughue: Labour Must Ditch Its Climate Change Obsession

.
.
Good advice but unlikely to be heeded any time soon.

Lord D: ‘I decided to study climate change. The more I explored it, the more I began to question what was being claimed by the evangelical climate change movement’

Funny how often people who look into the real details react like that.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

http://www.thegwpf.com/lord-donoughue-labour-must-ditch-its-climate-change-obsession/

From GWPF:

In 2008, I was one of the many members of both houses who unquestioningly voted for Ed Miliband’s Climate Change Act, with its legal commitments to rapidly decarbonise the British economy. The measure was not properly costed (now forecast at upwards of £360bn by 2050). I had not studied the Bill. This seemed a noble, if eye-wateringly ambitious, project: to ‘save the planet’. Who could object to that?

View original post 1,022 more words

How a 70-year-old idea could make engines way more efficient

Achates engine design

That’s the sales pitch for an opposed-piston alternative to today’s vehicle engines. No valves, no cylinder head. But will it get off the drawing board? WIRED reporting.

IF YOU POP THE hood on your car and yank out the plastic cover beneath it, you’ll see a beautiful bit of mind-boggling engineering: the internal combustion engine.

Today’s engines harness around 100 explosions of fuel and oxygen each second, generating massive power with minimal emissions. That’s great, but tightening pollution standards around the world mean automobiles must become increasingly efficient.

Electric cars offer one way forward, but they remain expensive and hobbled by range anxiety—the fear, often unfounded, that you’ll end up stranded with a dead battery. Internal combustion isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, with advancements like turbochargers, direct injection, and variable valve timing squeezing more miles from every gallon.

Achates Power in San Diego believes it has a better way: Ditch the design that has dominated engine design for the past 130 years in favor of an idea abandoned in the 1940s and see a 30 percent bump in efficiency.

Autumn weather 2016

Tim writes quickly to get this article out,

The Met Office updated their areal datasets promptly this month end so I have been able to update my z-score derivation before the weekend passes.

November just gone was slightly dry, sunshine was a little above normal, max and mean temperature was normal, minimum was more noticeably low.

The dryness perhaps fits with the failure of the south westerly Atlantic airstream to deliver much in the way of autumn wind and rain storms across the whole country. If you look at the shape of the annual curves you will see we are around peak wet at this time of the year, yet this year we have have a lot of the dry east and north winds.

With that fits more sunshine. Less clear is why temperatures were normal except for minimums, night-times. Less than usual wind would play a part by allowing still air radiative cooling.

Britain forced to subsidise gas power plants to keep lights on

Carrington Power Station near Manchester

Britain has backed itself into a corner over electricity supply by rigging the market to favour renewables, but as the Daily Telegraph explains, things will have to change.
H/T GWPF

As a result of Britain’s energy policies, building new gas-fired power plants is no longer economic. Now, the Government has to subsidise gas investors to keep the lights on.

Four years ago this week, the Government unveiled plans for a bold new dash for gas. New gas-fired power stations, then-energy secretary Ed Davey said, would be required to “provide crucial capacity to keep the lights on”.

Nigel Farage lambasts media for one-sided coverage of the wind industry

From 3 mins in (but listen to all of it anyway) 🙂

Europe’s green energy policy is a disaster for the environment.

H/T to ‘Wanstead Weather’ for this story from New Scientist

By Michael Le Page

The European Union’s proposals for revising its renewable energy policies are greenwashing and don’t solve the serious flaws, say environmental groups.

The EU gets 65 per cent of its renewable energy from biofuels – mainly wood – but it is failing to ensure this bioenergy comes from sustainable sources, and results in less emissions than burning fossil fuels. Its policies in some cases are leading to deforestation, biodiversity loss and putting more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than burning coal.

“Burning forest biomass on an industrial scale for power and heating has proved disastrous,” says Linde Zuidema, bioenergy campaigner for forest protection group Fern. “The evidence that its growing use will increase emissions and destroy forests in Europe and elsewhere is overwhelming.”

Roger Pielke Jr.: My unhappy life as a climate heretic

Tropical storm [image credit: BBC]

Despite being what might be termed a ‘lukewarmer’, this professor has been a target of climate fanatics for a long time for pointing out a few inconvenient truths they would prefer the public not to hear, as the Wall Street Journal reports. Now with a new US President on the way he has chosen to speak out about his unfair treatment.
H/T GWPF

My research was attacked by thought police in journalism, activist groups funded by billionaires and even the White House. Much to my surprise, I showed up in the WikiLeaks releases before the election.

In a 2014 email, a staffer at the Center for American Progress, founded by John Podesta in 2003, took credit for a campaign to have me eliminated as a writer for Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight website.

In the email, the editor of the think tank’s climate blog bragged to one of its billionaire donors, Tom Steyer: “I think it’s fair [to] say that, without Climate Progress, Pielke would still be writing on climate change for 538.”

You are in line for being hacked, By Law; 2017 bodes ill

Tim writes about politics, not my usual fare,

http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2015-16/investigatorypowers.html

Published by aljazera…

The IP Act: UK’s most extreme surveillance law
Snowden’s revelations didn’t preclude the passing of the most invasive surveillance law in the UK.

Jim Killock is Executive Director of Open Rights Group, which campaigns for privacy and free speech.

The Investigatory Powers Act will come into force at the start of 2017, and will cement ten years of illegal surveillance into law.

It includes state powers to intercept bulk communications and collect vast amounts of communications data and content. The security and law enforcement agencies – including government organisations such as HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs) – can hack into devices of people in the UK.
…” http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/12/ip-act-uk-extreme-surveillance-law-161201141317587.html

And as if that isn’t enough our old friend[1] Warwick Hughes has an article up pointing to an analysis by an outside party of EU fun coming 2017

Tony Thomas: Teach ‘em Green, Raise ‘em Stupid

According to the latest international comparison, Australian kids are falling further behind, despite ever-larger sums of taxpayer cash being poured into the Chalk-Industrial Complex. One reason we’re raising another generation of dolts: propaganda passed off as wisdom

Green/Left lobby Cool Australia, backed by Labor’s teacher unions and Bendigo Bank, is achieving massive success in brainwashing school students about the inhumanity of the federal government’s asylum-seeker policies, the evils of capitalism, and our imminent climate peril. The Cool Australia’s teaching templates are now being used by 52,540 teachers in 6,676 primary and high schools (71% of total schools). The courses have  impacted just over a million students via 140,000 lessons downloaded for classes this year alone. Students’ uptake of Cool Australia materials has doubled in the past three years.

Teachers are mostly flummoxed about how to prioritise “sustainability” throughout their primary and secondary school lessons, as required by the national curriculum.[1]  Cool Australia has marshaled a team of 19 professional curriculum writers who offer teachers and pupils easy templates for lessons that  include the sustainability mantra along with green and anti-government propaganda.