Salt pond in Antarctica, among the saltiest waters on Earth, is fed from beneath

Don Juan Pond, Antarctica [image credit: NASA]

Researchers plan to camp near this shallow pond for six weeks starting in December, to get detailed measurements of its liquid and explore the local area.

At the base of the Transantarctic Mountains lies a geological oddity, reports Hannah Hickey at UW News.

Don Juan Pond is one of the saltiest bodies of water on the planet, filled with a dense, syrupy brine rich in calcium chloride that can remain liquid to minus 50 degrees Celsius, far below the freezing point of water.

But the source of water and salt to this unusual pond remains a mystery — even as hints emerge that water in a similar form could exist on Mars.

A new University of Washington study uses the pond’s bizarre chemistry to pinpoint the water’s source.

Solar minimum surprisingly constant

It’s not known exactly what factors govern this constant minimum, but this is an interesting finding as Phys.org reports.

Using more than a half-century of observations, Japanese astronomers have discovered that the microwaves coming from the sun at the minimums of the past five solar cycles have been the same each time, despite large differences in the maximums of the cycles.

In Japan, continuous four-frequency solar microwave observations (1, 2, 3.75 and 9.4 GHz) began in 1957 at the Toyokawa Branch of the Research Institute of Atmospherics, Nagoya University. In 1994, the telescopes were relocated to NAOJ Nobeyama Campus, where they have continued observations up to the present.

Poland ready for EU climate showdown over coal use

Gateway to the COP24 climate conference in 2018

Poland doesn’t plan to undermine its economy to please the EU or anyone else with an agenda. The report notes: ‘Ironically, next year’s climate conference will be held in the southern Polish city of Katowice – the centre of the coal-producing Silesia region’. Maybe the local miners would like to pay them a visit 😎

Poland is on a collision course with EU chiefs over its continued heavy use of fossil fuels, as the country prepares to receive its first shipment of US coal, reports the GWPF.

Prime Minister Beata Szydło has warned MEPs she will “throw it back at them” if they criticise her nation’s carbon consumption at next month’s EU summit.

And that could set the scene for more stand-offs next year, when Poland hosts the next round of UN climate talks.

Germany’s ‘Energiewende has made things worse for climate’ says report

‘The donkey goes on to the ice until it breaks’ – German proverb [image credit: evwind.es]

Debatable claim in the headline, but the German ‘energy transition’ has certainly hurt electricity consumers as prices have shot up in the last decade, with fortunes being wasted on vain attempts to tweak the climate system.

As Bonn this week hosts the COP23 climate talks, a new report claims that Germany’s Energiewende programme “has made things worse for the climate”, reports PEI.

It says it has done this “by shutting down nuclear capacity and locking in dependency on coal for decades, despite hundreds of billions in investments and subsidy-schemes”.

Haze keeps Pluto cool by kicking heat out to space, say scientists

Pluto probe

Uncertainty abounds here. Scientists expected –173° Celsius but ‘the probe found temperatures closer to –203° — with no obvious explanation.’ Perhaps there is a place where enlightenment could be found, if they cared to look.

Meanwhile the ‘gas only’ theory is under pressure [sic] again, as Pluto’s atmosphere apparently defies expectations.

Pluto may be the only place in the solar system whose atmosphere is kept cool by solid hazes, not warmed by gas, says Science News.

Blame Pluto’s haze for the dwarf planet’s unexpected chilliness. Clusters of hydrocarbons in the atmosphere radiate heat back into space, keeping the dwarf planet cool, a new study suggests.

Renewables to make up half the UK’s power supply

Wind turbines towering over the landscape

When they say ‘flexible power sources’ they mean the ones that are needed when unreliable renewables have largely gone to sleep, for example at night or when it’s not windy. The costs of running such a dual system or the consequences of power shortages, especially in winter, are not mentioned, although they admit that there will be “entire weeks and months” where solar and wind will produce “little energy”. It all sounds unreal.

Renewable energy will account for more than half of the UK’s power supply by 2026, according to a new study, reports Utility Week.

The report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance and commissioned by Eaton and the Renewable Energy Association, claims there will be a “significant acceleration” in the shift to renewable sources over the next 20 years and that this move will create new opportunities for new flexible power sources.

By 2040, almost two thirds (63 per cent) of power will be generated from renewable sources, according to the report and at “certain times” wind and solar energy along could meet total power demand in both the UK and Germany.

Nils-Axel Morner: Open letter to the COP23 President

Open Letter to
Honorable Prime Minister of Fiji and President of COP23
Frank Bainimarama
Mr. President,
The community assembled at the COP23 meeting in Bonn badly wants
temperature to rise according to models proposed (but never verified, rather
seriously contradicted) and sea level changes that may pose serious flooding
threats to low lying coasts provided sea level would suddenly start to rise at
rates never recorded before (which would violate physical laws as well as
accumulated scientific knowledge over centuries).

Figure 2. Sea level changes in the Yasawa Island of Fiji (from Mörner & Matlack-Klein, 2917c). Sea level was high in the 16th and 17th century (1), low in the 18th century (2) and at about the present level over the 19th, 20th and early 21st centuries (3) with a somewhat higher level in the early 19th century and with a perfectly stable sea level during the last 50-70 years as indicated by C14-dated microatolls at multiple sites. Consequently there is a total absence of a present sea level rise – i.e. the threat of a future flooding is lifted off.

We have been in your lovely country and undertaken a detailed sea level
analysis, which beyond doubts indicates that sea level is not at all in a rising
mode, but has remained perfectly stable over the last 50-70 years. Hence all
threats of an approaching general sea level flooding is totally unfounded.
Whatever economy, politics and project agendas may want to put in the centre,
the true scientific community must insist that only facts as revealed in nature
itself and in laboratory experiments can provide trustworthy results.
These are the facts:

Electricity is “the new oil” says IEA

Credit: Entek Corp.

This overlooks the fact that ‘the majority of petroleum is converted to petroleum products, which includes several classes of fuels’. It also includes ‘conventional fertilizers [which] are commonly derived from petroleum. In fact, a single 40-pound bag contains the equivalent of 2.5 gallons of gasoline.’ Electricity is only a manufactured power source, as far as national networks are concerned.

Electricity is “the new oil” and the effect of increasing global electrification is having a “very deep rippling effect for the power sector”.

That was one of the highlights this morning at the launch of the International Energy Agency’s annual World Energy Outlook, reports PEI.

Laura Cozzi, head of the IEA’s Energy Demand Outlook Division, said: “We are seeing growing electrification happening throughout the energy sector – electricity going into sectors that were confined to other fuels before: most notably, cars, but also heating and cooling.”

BBC Forced To Withdraw Fake Sea Level Claims

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Miami ocean-facing property prices seem to be holding up quite well despite the tall tales of climate doom-mongers like the BBC.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/comp-reports/ecu/theworldatone270317

Readers may recall an item on the BBC World at One back in March about rising sea levels in Florida, when their correspondent claimed that:

1) Rising seas and flooding are turning Miami Beach into a modern day Atlantis, the city being submerged by water.

2) Sea levels at Miami are rising at ten times the global rate.

I covered the story here.

I complained to the BBC at the time, and, after being fobbed off the first time, escalated the complaint to the Executive Complaints Unit, who have now published the above judgment.

Astonishingly, they regard the claims about “Atlantis” to be “soundly based”, even though they now accept that sea levels around Miami are only rising at about 8 inches a century.

Of course, they had no choice but to withdraw the ludicrous claim about “ten times the global rate”!

But why…

View original post 45 more words

US to promote ‘universal access’ to fossil fuels at climate talks

Needless to say this will go down like a lead balloon with climate obsessives, but that’s their problem. How many of them live in parts of the world where electricity and other types of power are in short supply?

President Donald Trump’s administration has envoys at the UN-sponsored talks in Bonn, Germany, even though the US has derided the Paris Agreement climate accord and has begun a years-long process to withdraw from it, reports the South China Morning Post.

The meeting, the Conference of Parties 23, is intended to hammer out the details of the Paris Agreement’s efforts to try to fight climate change.

While a small State Department team has been on the ground for technical negotiations since the talks opened last week, the administration is sending another delegation for the second week that will include senior White House advisers.

Why the wiggle in a crowd’s walk can put a wobble in a bridge

London’s Millennium Bridge [image credit: Alison Wheeler / Wikipedia]

Researchers now believe ‘that the synchrony of the crowd might not be a root cause but instead acts as a feedback effect that amplifies pre-existing small-scale wobbles’, but leave open the question of how or why the swaying starts. So to date any such resonance seems to be largely a matter of luck – or bad luck, which ideally is where testing comes in.

Some bridges could really put a swing in your step, says Science News.

Crowds walking on a bridge can cause it to sway — sometimes dangerously. Using improved simulations to represent how people walk, scientists have now devised a better way to calculate under what conditions this swaying may arise, researchers report November 10 online in Science Advances.

When a bridge — typically a suspension bridge — is loaded with strolling pedestrians, their gaits can sync, causing the structure to shimmy from side to side.

Skeptics cheer U.S. exit from Paris pact at UN climate summit in Germany

From left to right: Craig Rucker, Lord Christopher Monckton and Marc Morano

This alternative to man-made climate doom and gloom has been held to counter the contrived scares of much of the media and the IPCC propaganda machine, which likes to claim the CO2 tail is somehow wagging the climate dog.

Dusseldorf, Germany — Global warming skeptics have descended upon the UN climate summit in Germany this week, hosting a summit of their own to highlight the errors of the UN’s climate change claims, writes Marc Morano.

On the final day of the skeptics’ climate summit, the group gathered for a champagne toast to the U.S. climate exit or “clexit” from the UN Paris pact.

The True Cost Of The Climate Change Act

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Either the Arctic, or even hell itself, will have to freeze over before our current politicians change course on their barmy and futile so-called climate policies.

That or the electorate wakes up and tells them where to get off – unlikely while media climate brainwashing is in full swing.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

http://budgetresponsibility.org.uk/efo/economic-fiscal-outlook-march-2017/

According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, the cost of Environmental Levies and the RHI scheme, (all a consequence of the Climate Change Act), will have risen to £13.5bn by 2021/22.

All of this cost is borne by energy consumers, except for the RHI, which is taxpayer funded.

But what is likely to happen to these costs in the years after 2021/22? Dieter Helm in his recent report reckons the cumulative cost will be well over £100 billion by 2030, but this appears to be way under the mark, given the costs already identified up to 2021.

There has been an ongoing conspiracy between the Government and the Committee on Climate Change to conceal the true cost of their policies.

I have therefore now undertaken a detailed study of the real costs between now and 2030, and the results are truly horrifying.

By 2030, the…

View original post 1,434 more words

Trump’s State Dept spokesman blasts Syria’s Paris deal in epic fashion

Something for the latest festival of climate obsessives to ponder as Syria gets called out in no uncertain terms.

The Department of State issued a withering and blunt critique Wednesday of Syria’s decision to join the Paris agreement more than a year after its initial draft, reports the Daily Caller.

“If the government of Syria cared so much about what was put in the air, then it wouldn’t be gassing its own people,” State spokeswoman Heather Nauert said about allegations that the war-torn country used sarin gas to put down rebel uprisings.

France delays reduction of nuclear power

French nuclear power sites [credit: neimagazine.com]

There are artificial self-imposed targets, plans and even laws – and then there’s reality, if ‘keeping the lights on’ is a priority. Scrapping nuclear capacity implies either having something convincing to replace it with, or risking the wrath of the voters if/when things start to go wrong.

The French environment minister Nicolas Hulot says the government is postponing its move to reduce the share of nuclear energy in the country’s power generation mix, reports PEI.

According to Reuters, Hulot says the grid operator RTE warned it risked supply shortages after 2020 and could miss a goal to curb carbon emissions, if it went ahead with the cull of nuclear right away, reducing the share from 75 per cent to 50 per cent.

Black Sea water temperatures may buck global trend

Cities of the Black Sea [credit: Wikipedia]

Maybe that should say ‘alleged global trend’? We learn that ‘The results of the simulation…came as a surprise to scientists who were expecting to see at least some warming trend between 1960 and 2015.’

Using a model developed at the JRC, scientists have successfully simulated the Black Sea’s long term currents, salt water content and temperature for the first time, ScienceDaily reports.

Average surface temperatures of the Black Sea may not have risen, according to the surprising results of a new study from the JRC.

The Murmansk wind park that collapsed

Murmansk harbour [image credit: Martin Lie / Wikipedia]

Too much wind for these wind turbines near the north Russian coast to cope with. The solar panels at the same site also face technical problems. Back to diesel again.

It was an innovative project which was to power several local villages with green energy. Two years after it opened, the strong Arctic winds have knocked down the turbines, says The Barents Observer.

It was cheering and rejoice in Chavanga and Chapoma, the villages on the coast of the White Sea, as a unique small-scale power generating complex was officially opened in late summer 2015.

We should use central pressure deficit, not wind speed, to predict hurricane damage

Hurricane Katrina, 2005 – The air pressure, another indicator of hurricane strength, at the center of this Category 5 storm measured 902 millibars, the fourth lowest air pressure on record for an Atlantic storm. The lower the air pressure, the more powerful the storm.
[image credit: Jeff Schmaltz, NASA/GSFC]

This is supported by Hurricanes – Science and Society, which says:
‘It is well accepted that the most influential factor in storm surge generation is the central pressure deficit, which controls the intensity of a hurricane, i.e. wind velocity and stress over the ocean surface and inverse barometric effects.’

The system for categorizing hurricanes accounts only for peak wind speeds, but research published in Nature Communications explains why central pressure deficit is a better indicator of economic damage
from storms in the United States, reports Phys.org.

“Sandy is the classic example. It was a very big storm, but in terms of maximum wind speed it was arguably not a hurricane,” said Dan Chavas, an assistant professor of atmospheric science at Purdue University who led the study. “If you looked at the central pressure deficit, you would have expected it to cause a lot of damage. But if you used maximum wind speed, as people usually do, you wouldn’t expect it to do the damage that it did.”

Central pressure deficit refers to the difference in pressure between the center of the storm and outside it. Pressure and wind speed have been used interchangeably to estimate potential damage from hurricanes for years, but the relationship between them has been a long-standing riddle in tropical meteorology.

Wind turbine breaks apart at Australia Antarctic base

The head of a turbine is lying on the ground at Australia’s Mawson Antarctic base [image processed by CodeCarvings Piczard]

Flying turbines ahoy! Fossil fuel to the rescue as usual.

The blades of a wind turbine at an Australian Antarctic base broke off and narrowly missed a storage building as they crashed to the ground, reports Phys.org, forcing the icy outpost to switch to backup power.

The head of the turbine, one of two at Mawson station, plunged 30 metres (100 feet) on Tuesday evening, despite there being only moderate gusts of wind at the time.

All 13 members of the expedition at the station are safe, and were inside their living quarters at the time, said Rob Wooding, general manager of support and operations at the base.

The second turbine was deactivated as a precaution, with the base switching to its diesel generators.

Prince Charles under fire over climate lobbying motives

Image credit: BBC News

The BBC’s Paradise Papers reporters say ‘Prince Charles lobbied on climate policy after shares purchase.’
Time for a spot of ‘denial‘ perhaps?

Private estate had secret interest in offshore firm that would benefit from rule change, leaked documents show.

Prince Charles campaigned to alter climate-change agreements without disclosing his private estate had an offshore financial interest in what he was promoting, BBC Panorama has found.

The Paradise Papers show the Duchy of Cornwall in 2007 secretly bought shares worth $113,500 in a Bermuda company that would benefit from a rule change.