China car dilemma: Beijing wants electric, buyers want SUVs

China’s BYD F3DM plug-in hybrid [image credit: Mariordo]

Scare stories about man-made global warming or even city pollution cut little ice with Chinese car buyers. The high cost of battery power and/or fear of running out of it on their journeys – range anxiety – seem more of a concern.

Automakers face a dilemma in China’s huge but crowded market: Regulators are pushing them to sell electric cars, but buyers want gas-guzzling SUVs, says Phys.org.

The industry is rattled by Beijing’s proposal to require that electric cars make up 8 percent of every brand’s production as soon as next year. Consumers are steering the other way: First-quarter SUV sales soared 21 percent from a year earlier to 2.4 million, while electric vehicle purchases sank 4.4 percent to just 55,929.

“It’s tough for someone with an EV to come and take away market share from SUVs,” said Ben Cavender of China Market Research Group.

Discussion thread: reactions to House Hearing

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The more open discussion of actual climate issues, the better for everyone.

Climate Etc.

by Judith Curry

Climate Feedback has interviewed a number of scientists regarding the recent House Hearing on climate science.

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New clean air stickers required for travel to French cities

French anti-pollution car stickers

A colour-coded badge of honour or shame for every car under new French regulations. UK MoT certificates won’t do for city visitors.

UK drivers planning to go to France in the coming months are going to require new ‘clean air’ stickers or face on-the-spot fines for failing to display them, as CLM reports.

Paris, Lyon and Grenoble introduced the new Crit’Air scheme in January to tackle vehicle pollution in their city centres, with another 22 towns and cities said to be planning to follow suit over the next few years.

The scheme requires all vehicles to clearly display an air quality certificate windscreen sticker, or vignette, according to how much they pollute.

At last: Britain preparing to scrap EU renewables targets after Brexit

Enthusiasm fading for renewables targets?

This could put a bit of sanity back into UK electricity generation policy, if it happens.

Britain is preparing to scrap EU green energy targets which will add more than £100 to the average energy bill as part of a bonfire of red tape after Brexit, says the GWPF.
 
Government sources told The Daily Telegraph that the target, under the EU Renewable Energy Directive, is likely to be scrapped after Brexit.

The UK is currently committed to getting 15 per cent of all energy from renewable sources such as wind and solar by 2020. Ministers have long been critical of the targets because they exclude nuclear power, carbon capture or gains from energy efficiency.

The UK is currently on course to miss the target and incur millions of pounds in fines from the European Union.

Renewables’ deep-sea mining conundrum

Deep sea mining for rare earth minerals [image credit: BBC News]

To what extent do ‘renewables’ depend on finding sources of non-renewables? Mining is involved – the raw materials have to be found and extracted from the earth.

British scientists exploring an underwater mountain in the Atlantic Ocean have discovered a treasure trove of rare minerals, reports BBC News.

Their investigation of a seamount more than 500km (300 miles) from the Canary Islands has revealed a crust of “astonishingly rich” rock. Samples brought back to the surface contain the scarce substance tellurium in concentrations 50,000 times higher than in deposits on land.

Tellurium is used in a type of advanced solar panel, so the discovery raises a difficult question about whether the push for renewable energy may encourage mining of the seabed. The rocks also contain what are called rare earth elements that are used in wind turbines and electronics.

Distant Object ‘DeeDee’ Makes the Dwarf Planet Grade

The 1,100 year orbit of ‘DeeDee’

The solar system’s dwarf-planet population is about to increase by one, reports Space.com. The far-flung object 2014 UZ224 — informally known as DeeDee, for “Distant Dwarf” — is about 395 miles wide (635 kilometers), new observations reveal.

That means the frigid object probably harbors enough mass to be shaped into a sphere by its own gravity, entitling it to “dwarf planet” status, researchers said.

Astronomers first spotted DeeDee in 2014 using the optical Blanco telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile (though they didn’t announce the discovery until 2016).

UK Electric Car Battery Projects Get Millions In Government Funding

Electric car technology

Why the motor industry needs these handouts is not obvious, unless of course the lack of public enthusiasm for electric cars means car makers expect a ‘sweetener’ before doing any related work.

The government has awarded £62 million in funding to low-emissions automotive projects, including the development of electric vehicle batteries to be be produced in the UK, as Silicon UK reports.

The funding was the sixth round to be awarded through the Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC), formed in 2013 to help develop the UK’s low-emissions vehicle manufacturing sector.

NASA to launch 12 satellites to Venus

The satellites won’t land as the surface pressure – 92 times that of Earth – and heat of Venus would destroy them. Instead they will look for a ‘mysterious substance’ thought to be lurking in its atmosphere.

NASA has spent $3.6 million to build 12 small satellites to explore the planet Venus in search of a mysterious substance that absorbs half the planet’s light, reports The Daily Caller.

The CubeSat UV Experiment (CUVE) mission will launch the satellites to investigate atmospheric processes on Venus. The 12 satellites vary in size. One is less than four inches across and weighs a few ounces. Another weighs 400 pounds.

A Swelling Volume Of Scientific Papers Now Forecasting Global Cooling In The Coming Decades

Reblogged from NoTricksZone By Kenneth Richard on 10. April 2017

Modern Solar Grand Maximum Ends: ‘Little Ice Age’ Cooling On The Way

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During the 20th and early 21st centuries, Earth’s inhabitants have enjoyed an epoch of very high solar activity that is rare or unique in the context of the last several thousand years.  The higher solar activity and warmer temperatures have allowed the planet to briefly emerge from the depths of the successive solar minima periods and “Little Ice Age” cooling that lasted from the 1300s to the early 1900s.  Unfortunately, solar scientists have increasingly been forecasting a return to a solar minimum period in the coming decades, as well as the concomitant cooler temperatures.

Tony Heller: Extreme weather of 1936 and Hiding the warmth of early C20th

Tony Heller, AKA Steve Goddard, has published two short videos on youtube covering the topics of the extreme weather of 1936 compared to today, and the way temperature data has been manipulated to hide the 1940s-1970s cooling trend. Well worth 15 minutes of your time.

The Great Folly Of Our Age–Booker

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Booker describes how fortunes are being wasted on so-called ‘green’ schemes, while achieving little except loss of reliability in the national electricity supply.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-4392220/Green-initiatives-disasters-says-Christopher-Booker.html

Booker with a hard hitting piece about the Climate Change Act in the Mail:

What a parable for our times the great diesel scandal has been, as councils vie to see which can devise the heaviest taxes on nearly half the cars in Britain because they are powered by nasty, polluting diesel.

This week, it was announced many diesel drivers will soon have to pay fully £24 a day to drive into Central London, while 35 towns across the country are thinking of following suit. Already some councils charge up to £90 more for a permit to park a diesel car.

The roots of this debacle go back to the heyday of Tony Blair’s government, when his chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, became obsessed with the need to fight global warming.

Although he was an expert in ‘surface chemistry’ — roughly speaking, the study…

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Exoplanet discovery by an amateur astronomer shows the power of citizen science

Planetary detective work [credit: superwasp.org]

Pattern recognition is still best left to humans it seems.

You don’t need to be a professional astronomer to find new worlds orbiting distant stars, as Phys.org reports.

Darwin mechanic and amateur astronomer Andrew Grey this week helped to discover a new exoplanet system with at least four orbiting planets. But Andrew did have professional help and support.

The discovery was a highlight moment of this week’s three-evening special ABC Stargazing Live, featuring British physicist Brian Cox, presenter Julia Zemiro and others.

Despite NOAA denial, growing number of new studies confirm global warming hiatus

Earth and climate – an ongoing controversy

The reality of a global temperature ‘standstill’ was accepted as fact by fervent warmist James Hansen in a paper over four years ago, but is still controversial to some people.
H/T GWPF

Despite widespread denial among climate activists, a growing number of scientific research papers in recent months have confirmed the global warming hiatus, trying to explain its possible reasons (for the latest studies see GWPF links here).  

The latest study claims that the Southern Ocean played a critical role in the global warming slowdown.

Atmosphere around low-mass Super-Earth detected

Size comparison of GJ 1132 b (aka Gliese 1132 b) with Earth [credit: Wikipedia]

Early indications from models suggest that ‘an atmosphere rich in water and methane would explain the observations very well.’

Astronomers have detected an atmosphere around the super-Earth GJ 1132b, reports the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy.

This marks the first detection of an atmosphere around a low-mass Super-Earth, in terms of radius and mass the most Earth-like planet around which an atmosphere has yet been detected.

Thus, this is a significant step on the path towards the detection of life on an exoplanet. The team, which includes researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, used the 2.2 m ESO/MPG telescope in Chile to take images of the planet’s host star GJ 1132, and measuring the slight decrease in brightness as the planet and its atmosphere absorbed some of the starlight while passing directly in front of their host star.

While it’s not the detection of life on another planet, it’s an important step in the right direction: the detection of an atmosphere around the super-Earth GJ 1132b marks the first time an atmosphere has been detected around a planet with a mass and radius close to that of Earth (1.6 Earth masses, and 1.4 Earth radii).

Unusually large swarm of icebergs blocking shipping lanes

Icebergs in the North Atlantic [image credit:
maritime-executive.com]

H/T Paul Vaughan
Whether admittedly stronger than usual winds have led to more iceberg material and/or some of the ‘normal’ icebergs have broken up into smaller ones, is not clear, perhaps not known. A record 953 icebergs were observed in April 1984.

More than 400 icebergs have drifted into the North Atlantic shipping lanes over the past week in an unusually large swarm for this early in the season, forcing vessels to slow to a crawl or take detours of hundreds of kilometres, reports CTV News (via AP).

Experts are attributing it to uncommonly strong counter-clockwise winds that are drawing the icebergs south, and perhaps also global warming, which is accelerating the process by which chunks of the Greenland ice sheet break off and float away.

As of Monday, there were about 450 icebergs near the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, up from 37 a week earlier, according to the U.S. Coast Guard’s International Ice Patrol in New London, Connecticut. Those kinds of numbers are usually not seen until late May or early June. The average for this time of year is about 80.

Record-setting electric plane tows glider up into the sky in seconds

Experimental E-plane [image credit: Siemens]

In the longer term they’re hoping this e-plane research will lead to ‘hybrid-electric airliners’.

Siemens has just announced that an electric aerobatic plane powered by its latest motor has nabbed two world speed records, as New Atlas reports.

The Extra 330LE aircraft is now the fastest e-plane under 1,000 kg, and also – after a few mods – the quickest above 1,000 kg, too. The electric test plane also became the first in the world to tow a glider up into the skies.

The Extra 330LE aerobatic plane powered by the lightweight electric motor announced by Siemens in 2015 made its first flight in July 2016.

Driverless shuttle bus to be tested by public in London

Track version of shuttle pod already in use at Heathrow airport.

No steering wheel or brake pedal, controlled by a computer, on a riverside path – do you feel lucky? Then step aboard…

Members of the British public are getting their first extended trial of a driverless shuttle bus, reports BBC News. Over the next three weeks, about 100 people will travel in a prototype shuttle on a route in Greenwich, London.

The vehicle, which travels at up to 10mph (16.1kmph), will be controlled by a computer. However, there will be a trained person on board who can stop the shuttle if required. Oxbotica, the firm that developed the shuttle, said 5,000 members of the public had applied to take part in the study.

Idaho’s $4.3 million solar road generates enough power to run ONE microwave

Credit: citymetric.com

And that’s on a good day. To call it a failed experiment would be an understatement.

An expensive solar road project in Idaho can’t even power a microwave most days, according to the project’s energy data.

The Solar FREAKIN’ Roadways project generated an average of 0.62 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity per day since it began publicly posting power data in late March, reports The Daily Caller. To put that in perspective, the average microwave or blow drier consumes about 1 kWh per day.

On March 29th, the solar road panels generated 0.26 kWh, or less electricity than a single plasma television consumes. On March 31st, the panels generated 1.06 kWh, enough to barely power a single microwave.

Graphene-based sieve turns seawater into drinking water

Credit: nationalgeographic.com

The hurdle of scaling up to industrial size awaits, but the idea sounds interesting. They say “The ultimate goal is to create a filtration device that will produce potable water from seawater or wastewater with minimal energy input.”

A UK-based team of researchers has created a graphene-based sieve capable of removing salt from seawater, says BBC News. The sought-after development could aid the millions of people without ready access to clean drinking water.

The promising graphene oxide sieve could be highly efficient at filtering salts, and will now be tested against existing desalination membranes.

It has previously been difficult to manufacture graphene-based barriers on an industrial scale. Reporting their results in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, scientists from the University of Manchester, led by Dr Rahul Nair, shows how they solved some of the challenges by using a chemical derivative called graphene oxide.

Britain’s drivers count the cost of Labour’s diesel folly

An embarrassing U-turn by the promoters of pointless carbophobia as diesel cars get the role of public enemy.
H/T Daily Mail via GWPF

It’s less than 20 years since the Labour government – backed by the vociferous green lobby and most of the scientific community – urged motorists to abandon their nasty, carbon-emitting, petrol-engine cars and convert to diesel.

With hindsight, looking at the names of the politicians who pushed this revolution – John Prescott, Neil Kinnock (then EU Transport Commissioner), Gordon Brown – we should have known it would end in tears. But at the time we were assured that driving a diesel was good for the planet and buying one was doing a public service.