Mass tree-planting plans ‘could ruin Scottish landscape’

Map of Scottish woodlands

A related issue is that Scottish woodland is currently being invaded by an army of wind farm constructors whenever they get the chance.

The SNP’s plans to increase the amount of woodland in Scotland in an attempt to fight climate change risks damaging the nation’s “dramatic open views and vistas”, according to mountaineering and gamekeepers groups.

The Scottish Government has proposed increasing the amount of woodland cover from 17 per cent to 25 per cent by 2050, with a commitment to planting 10,000 extra hectares of trees between now and 2022 included in its draft Climate Plan, as iNews reports.

But Mountaineering Scotland and the Scottish Gamekeepers Association (SGA) are concerned that the changes could damage the nation’s wild moorland, arguing it forms a crucial part of Scotland’s “unique” landscape.

Are Climate Alarmists Glassy-Eyed Cultists?

If not, then certainly mildly irritating to some people anyway. 😎
H/T GWPF

The word “cult” may be a little over the top, but whatever it is, it sure isn’t science, says The Manhattan Contrarian.

Will Happer is an eminent physicist at Princeton who has chosen (along with his colleague Freeman Dyson) to plant a flag on the skeptic side of the climate debate. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Happer on a couple of occasions.

Recently his name has been floated as a potential candidate for the position of Science Advisor to President Trump. (This is the position that has been held by eco-fanatic John Holdren during the Obama presidency.)  Although it is not final, and others remain in the running, Happer has said that he will take the position if offered.

Yesterday Happer gave an interview to the Guardian newspaper. When it came to the issue of “climate change,” Happer didn’t pull any punches.

Research team finds a universal law for galactic systems

The research team thinks its results are ‘difficult to understand in terms of dark matter’, reports Phys.org. The study was earlier reported here.

The distribution of normal matter precisely determines gravitational acceleration in all common types of galaxies, a team led by Case Western Reserve University researchers reports.

The team has shown this radial acceleration relation exists in nearby high-mass elliptical and low-mass spheroidal galaxies, building on last year’s discovery of this relation in spiral and irregular galaxies.

This provides further support that the relation is tantamount to a new natural law, the researchers say.

New Zealand may be part of a submerged continent

Credit: GSA Today / Sott.net

Maybe there will be some counter-arguments but it’s a novel idea.

Scientists say they have identified a new continent, and called it Zealandia, reports Sott.net.

In a new paper, a team of 11 geologists have proposed that a region of the Pacific Ocean east of Australia and containing New Zealand and New Caledonia, be considered a continent.

Geographically speaking, six continents are recognised: Africa, Antarctica, Australia, Eurasia, North America, and South America. Eurasia is the geographical landmass that includes Europe and Asia.

At 4.9 million square kilometres, Zealandia would be Earth’s smallest continent.

NOAA & The Oroville Dam

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Over forty years ago ‘climate scientists understood that global cooling causes extreme weather, and global warming causes mild weather.’ – Tony Heller.
http://www.thegwpf.com/1975-global-cooling-extreme-weather/

Nowadays many of them seem to have ‘forgotten’ about that.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Oldbrew

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/event-tracker/flooding-concerns-oroville-dam-water-levels-reach-capacity

NOAA have a good account of what has been going on with the Oroville Dam:

As mentioned previously in the Event Tracker, California is going through one of its wettest water years (October – September) on record. In particular, precipitation so far in 2017 is on a record pace for northern and central California. While the water has been a godsend in reducing and relieving drought conditions, it also has been too much of a good thing as flooding has resulted. One case in particular is the ongoing emergency at the Oroville Dam north of Sacramento. Tremendous amounts of precipitation have led to the Lake Oroville reservoir—the second largest reservoir in the state—to fill past capacity. The need to funnel water out of the reservoir and accompanying complications has led to flooding concerns and evacuations below the dam.

(top) Aerial view of the…

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EmDrive: UK scientist claims ‘new physics’ explains galaxy rotation and theoretical space propulsion

Dwarf galaxy NGC 5264 [image credit: ESA/Hubble]

Dark matter faces quantised inertia. One of these ideas must leave town, or the galaxies, it seems.

British physicist Dr Mike McCulloch, who previously used quantised inertia to explain how the controversial electromagnetic space propulsion technology EmDrive works, says that he has new evidence showing his theory can also explain galaxy rotation, which is one of physics’ biggest mysteries, as the IB Times reports.

McCulloch, a lecturer in geomatics at Plymouth University’s school of marine science and engineering, says he now has even more evidence that his “new physics theory” about quantised inertia works, and that it makes it possible to explain why galaxies are not ripped apart without using theory of dark matter.

One of the biggest problems in physics today is how galaxies rotate. Galaxies are collections of millions of stars swirling around, and galaxies spin so rapidly that their centrifugal force should cause them fly apart, as there isn’t enough visible matter in them to hold them together by the force of gravity.

Changes to Earth’s magnetic field recorded in 600-year-old Judean pottery

Kingdom of Judah [credit: IB Times]

The ‘two Iron Age spikes’ in magnetism could be worth investigating further.

Ancient clay jar handles can act as a record of the Earth’s magnetic history, a new study finds, confirming evidence of sudden, sharp spikes in the strength of the field, as the IB Times reports.

Fragments of pottery were historically stamped with an emblem of the rulers of the Kingdom Judah, which encompassed Jerusalem and nearby areas. These jars were also marked by the state of the Earth’s geomagnetic field at its time of construction, offering researchers a unique chance to reconstruct the past of the Earth’s magnetic field.

The study is based on the technique of archaeomagnetism. Some minerals in clay are magnetic, and before they are heated they are aligned randomly. As the pottery is heated during the firing process, the magnetic particles tend to align with the Earth’s magnetic field. The stronger the magnetic field, the greater the degree of alignment in the magnetic minerals.

David Whitehouse: Data, Deflection And The Pause

The arguments stirred up by the NOAA’s ‘pausegate’ whistleblower rumble on. A UK Met Office expert asserted ‘the slowdown hasn’t gone away’. This one could run and run.

David Rose’s splendid and significant article in last week’s Mail on Sunday certainly caused a stir. The initial reaction, mostly distractions, have been easily dealt with by David Rose in this week’s installment.

One of the points raised concerned a paper submitted to the Journal of Climate by Huang et al. It is about the new ERSSTv5 sea surface temperature dataset.

It is an interesting paper that claims that ERSSTv5 shows a lower rate of warming than the previous ERSSTv4 which was used by the now famous Karl et al paper in 2015 which claimed that — contrary to the IPCC — there had been no slowdown in the rate of temperature increase in the past 15 years or so – the so-called Pause.

One persistent activist said the paper was stolen and it was unethical to comment on it. In reality the preprint was obtained from a public webpage, anyone could have downloaded it. It has been in circulation for weeks.

Silicon will blow lithium batteries out of water says Adelaide firm

Credit: cleantechnica.com

One claim by the developer is that ‘its devices could increase the revenue of a wind farm by 25 per cent, through increased output and exploiting higher wholesale prices when the wind isn’t blowing’. It has to be said that battery and storage innovations have a poor record of turning into commercial success, but as ever time will tell.

An Adelaide company has developed a silicon storage device that it claims costs a tenth as much as a lithium ion battery to store the same energy and is eyeing a $10 million public float, reports Sott.net.

1414 Degrees had its origins in patented CSIRO research and has built a prototype molten silicon storage device which it is testing at its Tonsley Innovation Precinct site south of Adelaide.

Chairman Kevin Moriarty says 1414 Degrees’ process can store 500 kilowatt hours of energy in a 70-centimetre cube of molten silicon – about 36 times as much energy as Tesla’s 14KWh Powerwall 2 lithium ion home storage battery in about the same space.

A dip into solar-planetary theory

Solar system [credit: BBC]

The details of interest here are:
Jupiter’s orbit period (J): 11.862615 years
Jupiter-Saturn conjunction period (J-S): 19.865036 years (mean value)
Solar Hale cycle (HC): ~22.14 years (estimated mean value)

Looking for a solar-planetary beat frequency (BF):
28 J = 332.15322 years
15 HC = 332.1 years
28 – 15 = 13 = number of beats in the period

Since Jupiter’s orbit period is a known value:
BF (approx.) = 332.15322 / 13 = 25.550247 y

Turning to J-S, consider the ‘Jose cycle‘ of 9 J-S:
9 J-S = 178.78532 y
7 BF = 178.85172 y
The value of BF using J-S known value:
178.78532 / 7 = 25.54076 y

Percent match of the two BF values = > 99.96%

Result – on the basis of the selected Hale cycle period:
Jupiter’s orbit matches the calculated solar-planetary beat frequency in the ratio 28:13.
For the Jose cycle (9 J-S conjunctions) the equivalent ratio is 9:7.
The Hale cycle ratio is 13 BF:15 HC by the above definitions.

Conclusion: this beat frequency connects the three items of interest as described.

(Note: 9 J-S figure updated 14/02/17 due to a typo).

The new ‘climate denial’

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In a world of soundbites a two-word label is about the limit before people mentally switch off.

Climate Etc.

by Judith Curry

Interesting article in The Atlantic, but I’m still trying to figure out what is being ‘denied.’

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What happened to the sun over 7,000 years ago?

Solar activity [image credit: NASA]

A tough question on the face of it, but the researchers claim to have unearthed a ‘new type of solar event’ based on evidence from one tree (according to this report).
H/T oldmanK

Nagoya, Japan – An international team led by researchers at Nagoya University, along with US and Swiss colleagues, has identified a new type of solar event and dated it to the year 5480 BC; they did this by measuring carbon-14 levels in tree rings, which reflect the effects of cosmic radiation on the atmosphere at the time, as Scienmag reports.

They have also proposed causes of this event, thereby extending knowledge of how the sun behaves. When the activity of the sun changes, it has direct effects on the earth.

For example, when the sun is relatively inactive, the amount of a type of carbon called carbon-14 increases in the earth’s atmosphere. Because carbon in the air is absorbed by trees, carbon-14 levels in tree rings actually reflect solar activity and unusual solar events in the past.

The team took advantage of such a phenomenon by analyzing a specimen from a bristlecone pine tree, a species that can live for thousands of years, to look back deep into the history of the sun.

Carlisle Floods Due To Poor River Maintenance, Not Climate Change

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Once again the ‘climate change’ card is played by authorities to excuse their own failings.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

cflagfloodreport_12monthson

It is just over a year since Storm Desmond brought devastating floods to Carlisle.

Soon after the Carlisle Flood Action Group was formed, and they have now published a very full and highly technical account of the floods.

This is the first part of the Executive Summary:

Although Storm Desmond was severe by any account (and the report later accepts that it may have been exacerbated by global warming), the real problem was lack of river maintenance and poor management. This of course is a rerun of the Somerset floods in 2014.

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What happens with German renewables in the dead of winter?

A Merc in the murk

The ideologically-driven dash for renewable energy in Germany is heading towards a natural obstacle hiding in its winter weather. Will ‘traditional energy’ always be there to provide security of supply when needed?

Germany has a reputation for being a renewable energy leader – but some believe that the nation’s long, still and dim winters threaten such green aspirations, reports DW.COM.

The “dark doldrums” conjures images of the deep Middle Ages, when the only light to be had flickered from a tallow candle. In fact, it is the loose translation for the German word Dunkelflaute, which describes this time of year, when neither sun nor wind are to be found in great abundance.

And this is the very scenario some are suggesting could plunge the nation into, if not quite a re-enactment of its medieval past, then energy uncertainty. An article published recently in the German daily “Die Welt” warned that the Dunkelflaute could be pushing Germany’s power supply to its limits.

Blue lightning shooting upward filmed from space for the first time

Image credit: Thijs Bors

Viewing and filming ‘exotic’ electrical events from space sounds like interesting work if you can get it.

For years, scientists have been piecing together evidence of peculiar phenomena known as red sprites, blue jets, pixies and elves – exotic types of electrical discharges that emanate from thunderstorms.

Just one week after his arrival on the International Space Station, Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen captured the best evidence that blue jets exist, reports Sott.net.

Mogensen’s 160-second video documented 245 blue flashes as the space station flew 250 miles above the Bay of Bengal.

Now the findings have been published in Geophysical Research Letters. “According to the researchers, this is the first time they’ve ever seen this blue lightning shoot up like that,” Mogensen said.

It’s official – Vancouver’s snowmageddon has been recordbreaking!

Campus snowball fight, Vancouver [image credit: Daily Hive]

Imagine the global headlines if this was record heat in summer. Cold weather gets far less international attention. Locals are used to snow but not this much all at once.

You weren’t imagining it – the snowstorm which began Friday dumped a record amount of powder on Vancouver, according to Environment Canada.

Preliminary estimates reckon a huge 12 cm of snow fell on Vancouver on Friday, breaking the previous record of 10.7 cm back in 1946, reports the Daily Hive.

OK, we know it’s not anything like the depths of white stuff they get in Toronto or Montreal, but hey, we’ll take it as that’s a 71-year record!

Orbital resonance found in a four planet system

HR 8799 system [image credit: Many Worlds]

It can’t get much more obvious than this. The report says ‘it’s a one-two-four-eight resonance’ of the orbits of these massive planets, but we find it’s much nearer to 1:2:4:9, with the outer planet taking 450 years for one orbit.

The era of directly imaging exoplanets has only just begun, but the science and viewing pleasures to come are appealingly apparent says Many Worlds.

This evocative movie of four planets more massive than Jupiter orbiting the young star HR 8799 is a composite of sorts, including images taken over seven years at the W.M. Keck observatory in Hawaii. The movie clearly doesn’t show full orbits, which will take many more years to collect.

The closest-in planet circles the star in around 49 years [report incorrectly says 40]; the furthest takes more than 400 years. But as described by Jason Wang,  an astronomy graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, researchers think that the four planets may well be in resonance with each other.

New theory to explain why sun’s surface rotates slower than its core

Credit: Imperial College London

A small team of researchers with the University of Hawaii, Ponta Grossa State University in Brazil and Stanford University has found what they believe is the reason that the surface of the sun rotates more slowly than its core, reports Phys.org.

In their paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the team explains how they used a new technique to measure the speed of the sun’s rotation at different depths and what it revealed about the speed of the sun’s outer 70km deep skin.

Scientists have known for some time that the surface of the sun spins more slowly than its interior but have no good explanation for it. In this new effort, the researchers were able to take a better look at what was occurring and by doing so discovered what they believe is the source of the slowdown.

Wind Power Wilts: Brewing Voter Fury Means Coal-Power Set to Drive Australia’s Fossil Fuelled Renaissance

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Politicians who sabotage the public’s power supplies do so at their own risk.

STOP THESE THINGS

Yes, boy wonder, it’s a place called ‘Queensland’.

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In 2016 no two words struck more fear into the hearts of the city-bound, political elite than ‘Trump’ and ‘Brexit’.

In both instances, ignorance amongst the media and political class meant that – for them – what were predictable, if not inevitable, results came as visceral, gut-wrenching, bewildering shocks.

If there is a single issue that has the potential to destroy political incumbents, it has to be energy.

South Australia has proved, without doubt, that skyrocketing power prices and unreliable supply are part and parcel of attempting to run economies on sunshine and breezes. Dutifully ignoring the effect of rolling blackouts and punishing power bills on the businesses and people who grow, build and create things (other than whipping up fair-trade, skinny-soy lattes and smashed avocado on toast at hipster cafés) is a recipe for political disaster.

Ever since it became…

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NOAA Whistleblower reveals ‘Pausebuster’ scandal

Credit:NOAA

David Rose in the Mail on Sunday reports that John J Bates has revealed a host of questionable practices committed by NOAA scientists as they rushed through the ‘Pausebuster’ paper.