Star system has record eight exoplanets

Kepler Space Telescope [credit: NASA]

The two nearest planets to the star Kepler-90 (90b and 90c) are very close to a 5:4 (i.e. first order) orbit ratio.

Nasa finds a distant star circled by eight planets, equal to the complement in our own Solar System, BBC News reports.

It’s the largest number of worlds ever discovered in a planetary system outside our own.

The star known as Kepler-90, is just a bit hotter and larger than the Sun; astronomers already knew of seven planets around it.

The newly discovered world is small enough to be rocky, according to scientists.

New paper questions Paris Agreement’s dubious temperature limits

Earth and climate – an ongoing controversy

It turns out that the temperature target of the agreement was never properly defined.

New study puts the 1.5°C and 2.0°C temperature limits of the Paris Agreement into a historical climate context, says The GWPF.

The Paris Agreement adopted in December 2015 during the COP21 climate conference stipulates that the increase in the global average temperature is to be kept well below 2°C above “pre-industrial levels” and that efforts are pursued to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above “pre-industrial levels.”

Closer inspection of the treaty text, however, reveals that the term “pre-industrial levels” is nowhere defined in this epochal UN-document, that has meanwhile been ratified by 170 Parties.

Jupiter and Saturn have equivalents of Earth’s Quasi-Biennial Oscillation

Jupiter’s cloud bands [image credit: NASA]

The report says: ‘On Earth, this relationship between distant events in a planet’s climate system is known as teleconnection.’ The surprise was to find evidence of it on both of the solar system’s two biggest planets.

Immense northern storms on Saturn can disturb atmospheric patterns at the planet’s equator, finds the international Cassini mission in a study led by Dr Leigh Fletcher from the University of Leicester.

This effect is also seen in Earth’s atmosphere, suggesting the two planets are more alike than previously thought, reports Phys.org.

Despite their considerable differences, the atmospheres of Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn all display a remarkably similar phenomenon in their equatorial regions: vertical, cyclical, downwards-moving patterns of alternating temperatures and wind systems that repeat over a period of multiple years.

These patterns—known as the Quasi-Periodic Oscillation (QPO) on Saturn and the Quasi-Quadrennial Oscillation (QQO) on Jupiter, due to their similarities to Earth’s so-called Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO)—appear to be a defining characteristic of the middle layers of a planetary atmosphere.

Climate change will cause wind farms to eventually get less efficient, say researchers

Wind turbines towering over the landscape

This doesn’t seem to tie in with alarmist claims that warming will make hurricanes worse. Note there are several contentious assertions and assumptions about present and future climate in this report, i.e. it’s aimed squarely at man-made global warming believers. But it’s not too hard to see through their spin.

Warming is causing wind farms to get less efficient in the amount of power they can generate and it is bound to get worse, says the IB Times.

Climate change will cause wind farms to eventually get less efficient because the warming planet is changing the way wind currents move around the globe. Winds that traverse the northern hemisphere are more likely to be affected by this, and it is only going to get worse, according to two studies.

Shark-spotting drones on patrol at Australian beaches

Image credit: BBC

Before anyone asks – ‘UTS are also adapting the emerging technology to spot crocodiles for a program in northern Australia.’

High-tech shark-spotting drones are patrolling dozens of Australian beaches this summer to quickly identify underwater predators and deliver safety devices to swimmers and surfers faster than traditional lifesavers, reports Phys.org.

As hundreds of people lined up in early morning sun to take part in a recent ocean swimming race at Bilgola beach north of Sydney, they did so in the knowledge the ocean had been scanned to keep them safe.

“I think it is really awesome,” 20-year-old competitor Ali Smith told AFP. “It is cool to see technology and ocean swimming getting together, and hopefully more people will feel safer and get involved.”

Considering the sun in climate change

Credit: BBC

The fact is we live in a *solar* system. As the author concludes: ‘It is time … to focus on understanding the sun-climate connection. We need to see the sun in climate change.’

There is a lot of debate about the sun’s role in global warming and climate change says David Wojick, Ph.D.. Some scientists argue that the sun plays the dominant role, making human activity insignificant.

Much of this argument is based on statistical analysis of very long proxy records. One can see a very good example of this thinking, as well as the debate surrounding it, in a recent article on Judith Curry’s Outstanding “Climate, Etc.” science blog.

The article is titled “Nature Unbound VI Centennial to millennial solar cycles.”

Bioscience paper and starving polar bear follow-up

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As Dr Susan Crockford correctly says:
‘Now folks know exactly where to go for an unbiased take on polar bear issues.’

And an expert suggests the ‘starving polar bear’ widely reported in recent days may have been a cancer victim.

polarbearscience

Between the two stories (the attack by my colleaguesand the starving polar bear hype), views at my blog have gone through the roof and one Arctic biologist speaks out on what SeaLegacy folks should have done when they saw a starving polar bear on Baffin Island this summer.

For the two weeks prior to the release of the Harvey paper (rounding to the nearest 100) the number of page views was 11,400 while for the two weeks since the Harvey et al. paper was released views were at 72,300 (with 14,900 views yesterday, 23,300 views the day before, and 12,500 the day before that). Prior to the Harvey et al. incident, my highest-ever one day blog view tally was 10,400 (a walrus haulout post!).

Several blogs were discussing the Harvey et al. paper and its implications from the first day (29 November) and a few have contacted me to…

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Heavy snow causes travel mayhem in northern Europe

Closed due to snow
Image credit: BBC

A shock to the system for many Europeans after years of being told that the world is supposed to be warming at an alarming rate, so they must pay billions for decades to try and buy a ‘better’ climate.

The heaviest snowfall in four years in Britain caused travel mayhem Sunday, while more than 300 flights were cancelled at Germany’s busiest airport and a ferry ran aground in the French port of Calais, reports Phys.org.

The heaviest snowfall in four years in Britain caused travel mayhem Sunday, while more than 300 flights were cancelled at Germany’s busiest airport and a ferry ran aground in the French port of Calais.

Hundreds of air passengers were stranded in Frankfurt, Germany’s financial capital, as well as Britain, and many took to Twitter to complain.

Mars atmosphere well protected from the solar wind

Mars from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope

The report says ‘a stronger solar wind mainly accelerates particles already escaping the planet’s gravity, but does not increase the ion escape rate’. That also raises the question of the thick Venusian atmosphere around another planet with no magnetism to speak of. Maybe some aspects of magnetosphere theory needs to be looked at again?

Despite the absence of a global Earth-like magnetic dipole, the Martian atmosphere is well protected from the effects of the solar wind on ion escape from the planet, reports Phys.org.

New research shows this using measurements from the Swedish particle instrument ASPERA-3 on the Mars Express spacecraft.

The results have recently been presented in a doctoral thesis by Robin Ramstad, Swedish Institute of Space Physics and Umeå University, Sweden.

Present-day Mars is a cold and dry planet with less than 1 percent of Earth’s atmospheric pressure at the surface.

Historically Quiet Sun Headed Towards Next Solar Minimum

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History suggests extended quiet periods on the Sun do have consequences on Earth, so it will be interesting to see how things play out over the next few years and beyond. Watch out for the length of this solar cycle as well, following a run of shorter than average cycles in the last 100 years or so.

The Next Grand Minimum

by Meteorologist Paul Dorian, Vencore, Inc.

Overview

Solar cycle 24 has turned out to be historically weak with the lowest number of sunspots since cycle 14 peaked more than a century ago in 1906 and by some measures, it is the third weakest since regular observations began around 1755. This historically weak solar cycle continues a weakening trend in solar irradiance output since solar cycle 21 peaked around 1980 and the sun is fast-approaching the next solar minimum. The last solar minimum lasted from 2008 to 2009 and the sun was as quiet during that time as it has been since 1978. The sun is likely to enter the next solar minimum phase within three years or so. The sun has been spotless for 26% of the time in 2017 (90 days) and the blank look should increase in frequency over the next couple of years leading into the next…

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Britain starts dismantling wind farms after successful Lake District campaign

Kirkby Moor [image credit: Stephen Dawson / Wikipedia]

Let’s hope other scenic but corrupted areas take up the baton to get more of these ridiculous industrial eyesores removed from our natural environment.

A dozen 140ft wind turbines on the edge of the Lake District are due to be dismantled next summer after a decision which could result in many more being removed to restore views, reports the GWPF (from The Times).

The wind farm on Kirkby Moor on the Furness peninsula in Cumbria would be the first large one to be taken down since they began appearing around Britain in 1991.

South Lakeland district council refused an application by the wind farm operator to keep the turbines operating for another ten years until 2027.

Sir Ian Byatt: The economic consequences of UK climate change policies

We’re told Peter Lilley MP ‘calculates a cumulative cost of over £10,000 per household between 2014 and 2030’. Much pain, little gain, no sense of economic reality? Many electricity customers can’t afford these massive and largely avoidable extra costs mandated by the targets of the UK Climate Change Act, in the vain hope of altering the weather.

Sir Ian Byatt, British economist, former Government advisor and a member of the GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council, is presenting a paper today at a climate conference organised by L’association des Climato-Réalistes in Paris, reports The GWPF.

Abstract: The climate change policy of successive British governments are damaging the UK economy.

The UK is unique in having ambitions (80% by 2050) targets for reducing emission of CO2 embedded in a Climate Change Act, and monitored by a Parliamentary committee.

Climate change policy could reduce average individual household income by more than £10,000 over a period from 2014 to 2030, or more if targets for electric cars are also to be met.

Black holes’ magnetism surprisingly wimpy

Intense X-ray flares thought to be caused by a black hole devouring a star [credit: NASA]

Who’s afraid of the big bad black hole now? Its imagined powers have been seriously overrated, according to new research. This poses unexpected problems for theorists.

Black holes are famous for their muscle: an intense gravitational pull known to gobble up entire stars and launch streams of matter into space at almost the speed of light, says Phys.org.

It turns out the reality may not live up to the hype.

In a paper published today in the journal Science, University of Florida scientists have discovered these tears in the fabric of the universe have significantly weaker magnetic fields than previously thought.

Alan Carlin: None of the climate alarmist apocalypses have occurred or are even possible

Earth and climate – an ongoing controversy

Lack of predictive success is a strong warning sign that something is amiss in the world of climate science in general and its modelling in particular.

The climate alarmists have long tried to sell their apocalyptic scam by claiming that their policies will avoid catastrophic increases in global temperatures, writes Alan Carlin.

The Daily Caller has recently inventoried some of the widely publicized such climate apocalypses predicted over the last 30 years by examining 12 of them.

The alarmists’ 12 apocalyptic predictions have proved uniformly wrong. That’s zero percent correct.

Emergency in Arctic waters as oil tanker gets stuck in ice, drifts ashore

Arctic Northern Sea Route

The risks of underestimating seasonal Arctic sea ice catch up with a group of over-optimistic Russian sailors.

The 35 year old vessel «Chukotka+» carried several thousand tons of oil and independently tried to make it across the Northern Sea Route, says the Barents Observer.

Little is known about the incident which probably could have triggered a serious accident along Russia’s icy northern coast.

According to Rosatom, the state company operating the fleet of nuclear-powered icebreakers, the «Chukotka+» on the 30th October entered the waters of the Northern Sea Route. The ship sailed alone and aimed for a voyage across the Arctic route without icebreaker assistance.

It was not successful.

Retraction request to Bioscience: FOIA emails document another harsh criticism of Amstrup’s 2007 polar bear model

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The gloves are off in the polar bear wars, as Dr Susan Crockford launches a strong response to a recent unfair and malicious attack on her reputation by a group of climate scientists.

polarbearscience

Today I sent a letter to the editors of the journal Bioscience requesting retraction of the shoddy and malicious paper by Harvey et al. (Internet blogs, polar bears, and climate-change denial by proxy) published online last week.

The letter reveals information about the workings of the polar bear expert inner circle not known before now, so grab your popcorn.

I have copied the letter below, which contains emails obtained via FOIA requests to the US Geological Survey and the US Fish and Wildlife Service by the Energy and Environment Legal Institute, E&E Legal, and the Free Market Environmental Law Clinic (USFWS request; USGS request) and sent to me by lawyer Chris Horner in 2014, unsolicited. I reveal some of them now, with his permission (most of the emails are boring, involving mostly technical topics not relevant to anything, as might be expected).

The emails in…

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Why you shouldn’t believe a UK snow forecast more than three days ahead

Channel 4’s Liam Dutton

TV weather presenter Liam Dutton runs through some of the pitfalls awaiting UK forecasters.

Predicting snow in the UK is difficult and weather computer models rarely get it right more than a few days ahead. But why is this the case?

The past week has seen Arctic air and snow affect the UK, and with another cold blast later this week, there is much excitement about the prospect of snow.

Twitter has been awash with graphics from various weather computer models showing large swathes of the UK covered in snow in a week’s time.

However, the bottom line is that you should never believe a detailed UK snow forecast more than three days ahead.

Earthquakes in the Himalayas are bigger than in the Alps because tectonic plates collide faster

Nepal Earthquake [image credit: BBC]

The research suggests that both magnitude and frequency of earthquakes are related to plate collision speed.

Earthquakes that happen in densely populated mountainous regions, such as the Himalaya, spell bigger earthquakes because of a fast tectonic-plate collision, according to a new study reported at Phys.org.

Researchers from Geophysical Fluid Dynamics – ETH Zürich in Switzerland, say their findings give people a more complete view of the risk of earthquakes in mountainous regions.

The new study shows that the frequency and magnitude of large earthquakes in the densely populated regions close to mountain chains – such as the Alps, Apennines, Himalaya and Zagros – depend on the collision rate of the smaller tectonic plates.

China’s first all-electric cargo ship will transport coal

Guangzhou, China

If there were prizes for irony, this would have to be a contender. Does the coal generate its electricity?

China, already the world’s biggest electric-vehicle market, is now using battery power to fuel cargo shipping as well, reports Quartz Media.

A Chinese company has built a 2,000 metric-ton (2,204 tons) all-electric cargo ship, which was launched from the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou in mid-November, according to state-run newspaper People’s Daily.

The 70-meter long (229 feet) and 14-meter wide (45 feet) ship is equipped with over 1,000 lithium batteries, with a total capacity of 2,400 kilowatt-hours.

By comparison, Tesla’s Model X is equipped with a 100-kWh battery that allows it to drive nearly 570 kilometers (350 miles).

EPA preparing red teaming on state of climate science

“There are chaotic variations internal to the climate system, and that is something that has been totally swept under the rug”, comments Dr Roy Spencer in this GWPF report.

U.S. EPA appears to be close to unveiling its program to question mainstream research on global warming, referred to as a “red team” exercise, and several candidates for that role cast doubt on the extent of climate change at the Heritage Foundation yesterday.

One theme they expressed is that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels should no longer be considered a pollutant but instead an essential ingredient in maintaining a global population boom.

They described potentially catastrophic impacts of human-caused warming as “alarmism.”