Icy Europe, balmy North Pole: the world upside down

Temperatures at the earth’s surface on February 25 at 1200 GMT [image credit: phys.org]

The role of the lowest solar cycle for at least a century is mostly ignored by believers in man-made global warming. There are signs of climate change, but not necessarily the kind they expect.

Not for the first time in recent years, Europe has descended into a deep freeze while the Arctic experiences record high temperatures, leaving scientists to ponder the role global warming may play in turning winter weather upside down, says Phys.org.

The reversal has been dramatic.

German court allows city ban on diesel cars

The writing is on the wall for German diesel car makers after this ruling. If bans or other rules are imposed on diesels in German cities, sales are bound to take another hit – on top of the recent VW ‘dieselgate’ fiasco.

Germany’s top administrative court has ruled that it is legal for cities to ban diesel cars, reports DW.com.

The government opposes the bans, but is under pressure from the EU to do more to combat air pollution.

Germany’s Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig ruled on Tuesday that cities may be permitted to put driving bans in place for diesel vehicles.

Fiat Chrysler to stop making diesel cars by 2022

Some Fiat-Chrysler models

Negative publicity and tighter air quality rules look to be strangling the production of diesel-engined private cars, whereas hefty subsidies are on offer for electric vehicles.

Collapse in demand and rising costs lie behind decision, says The Week.

The car-maker Fiat Chrysler has announced it will stop producing diesel passenger vehicles by 2022, as costs spiral and demand falters.

Cheap energy forever: Permian’s mammoth cubes herald supersized shale future

Permian shale, Texas [image credit: fulcrium.com]

The rise and rise of US shale continues to defy the arguments of its critics, shaking up the world with new ideas and greater efficiency.
H/T Bloomberg

‘Cube development,’ which taps multiple layers of shale all at once, could accelerate the U.S. shale boom and make the world swim in cheap and abundant energy for much of the next 250 years, as The GWPF reports.

In the scrublands of West Texas there’s an oil-drilling operation like few that have come before.

Encana Corp.’s RAB Davidson well pad is so mammoth, the explorer speaks of it in military terms, describing its efforts here as an occupation.

Met Office Predicted The Cold Weather That They Did Not Predict!

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Met Office seasonal forecasting skill turns out to be below average – heading towards the lowest 20%.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Conditions over the weekend and into the early part of next week will become increasingly cold, possibly exceptionally cold.

Yellow National Severe Weather Warnings for snow are in force for parts of eastern and southeast England from 4pm on Monday and for large parts of the UK through Tuesday and Wednesday.

Snow showers are expected to develop widely during the start of the week, with some locations likely to see accumulations of 5 to 10 cm. Although other sites may see less frequent showers leading to much smaller accumulations up to 2 cm.

The very cold conditions, which are likely to be the coldest spell of weather for several years, are likely to remain in place for the remainder of next week. The cold easterly wind will persist bringing a significant wind chill which will make it feel several degrees colder than thermometers indicate. Even without…

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Rainfall’s natural variation hides climate change signal

Flooding in Houston from Hurricane Harvey 2017 [image credit: BBC]

This looks like another way of saying nobody can be sure what is natural variation and what – if anything – isn’t, when it comes to rainfall patterns at least. Or if they think they can work something out, it would have to be over a lot longer period than currently available data allows. Result: decision makers must fly blind as Phys.org suggests – probably by making assumptions based on poorly-performing climate models.

New research from The Australian National University (ANU) and ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science suggests natural rainfall variation is so great that it could take a human lifetime for significant climate signals to appear in regional or global rainfall measures.

Even exceptional droughts like those over the Murray Darling Basin (2000-2009) and the 2011 to 2017 Californian drought fit within the natural variations in the long-term precipitation records, according to the statistical method used by the researchers.

Iberdrola chief says global renewable sector facing Enron-style endgame

As the 2008 financial crash fades into history, a sudden lack of availability of cheap money for big industrial projects could undermine some of the newer renewables enterprises, if or when bankers start asking for their ‘umbrellas’ back.

The chief executive of Spanish utility Iberdrola, Ignacio Galan, has warned of the prospect of financial disaster for the global renewable energy sector, reminiscent of the collapse of Enron, reports PEI.

Galan said that the imminent end of cheap finance would have a damaging impact on the new players to the green energy market, adding that these new non-industrial entrants with little experience were making overly aggressive bids on contracts to build renewable energy, thinking it was a financial “El Dorado”.

UK weather: ‘Beast from the east’ cold snap to stay into next week

Cold end to February 2018 in Davos

Unusual for the start of March in the UK perhaps, but this looks quite tame compared to forecasts of well below -15C (overnight) for some parts of central Europe.

Forecasters warn of prolonged spell of icy and snowy conditions into early March, reports The Week.

The United Kingdom is bracing for a severe wintry snap in the coming days, as a blast of cold weather dubbed the “Beast from the East” approaches.

The icy conditions are believed to be caused by a weather phenomenon called a “sudden stratospheric warming” above the North Pole, which will drag very cold air from Siberia to the UK as early as next week.

Urban heat island effects depend on a city’s layout

Image credit: metlink.org

One finding was ‘that in the state of Florida alone urban heat island effects cause an estimated $400 million in excess costs for air conditioning’. Of course in somewhere cold like Alaska such effects would likely be beneficial.

The way streets and buildings are arranged makes a big difference in how heat builds up, study shows.

The arrangement of a city’s streets and buildings plays a crucial role in the local urban heat island effect, which causes cities to be hotter than their surroundings, researchers have found.

The new finding could provide city planners and officials with new ways to influence those effects, says MIT News.

UK Government loses clean air court case

Image credit: carspart.net

Free handy hints here from the BBC, including: forget about face masks, avoid busy roads, and – wait for it – ‘stand back’ after pressing the crossing button at traffic lights.

Campaigners win a third High Court victory over the UK government’s plans to tackle air pollution – BBC News.

The judge in the case said the government plan was “unlawful” and that more action was needed in 45 English local authority areas.

He said ministers had to ensure that in each of the areas, steps were taken to comply with the law as soon as possible.

The secret on the ocean floor

Hughes Glomar Explorer at Long Beach, California (1976) [image credit: TedQuackenbush @ Wikipedia]

One mining forecast claims ‘an emerging undersea industry in oceans around the world could be worth $30bn a year by 2030.’ Do the origins of this go back to the Cold War?

Did a 1970s CIA plot spark a boom in deep sea mining? – asks BBC News.

In the summer of 1974, a large and highly unusual ship set sail from Long Beach in California.

It was heading for the middle of the Pacific where its owners boasted it would herald a revolutionary new industry beneath the waves.

Equipped with a towering rig and the latest in drilling gear, the vessel was designed to reach down through the deep, dark waters to a source of incredible wealth lying on the ocean floor.

It was billed as the boldest step so far in a long-held dream of opening a new frontier in mining, one that would see valuable metals extracted from the rocks of the seabed.

But amid all the excited public relations, there was one small hitch – the whole expedition was a lie.

German court could open way to bans on diesel cars

Image credit: meobserver.org

The VW diesel scandal has led to media-fuelled paranoia about diesel engines in general, so any result is possible from this court hearing. Diesel vehicles could be banned from central Stuttgart, where Mercedes-Benz makes thousands of them every week and is a key employer.

One of Germany’s top courts will decide Thursday whether some diesel vehicles can be banned from parts of cities like Stuttgart and Duesseldorf to reduce air pollution, a possible landmark judgement for the “car nation”, reports Phys.org.

Eyes have turned to the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig after years of failure by federal, state and local governments to slash harmful emissions.

Nils-Axel Mörner: These researchers have a political agenda

Fiji beach [image credit: travelonline.com]

H/T The GWPF

The oceanographer Nils-Axel Mörner challenges the IPCC and warnings about sinking islands, in a recent interview.

Mr. Mörner, you have recently visited the Fiji islands in South Pacific several times in order to research changes on the coasts and sea levels. Why Fiji?

Nils-Axel Mörner: I knew there would be a science conference in New York in June 2017 that focused on sea level changes in Fiji. In addition, it was known that the island nation would chair the 23rd World Climate Conference, which took place last November in Bonn. Thus, Fiji moved into the focus of interest. It was said that the rising sea level had done a lot of damage there. I wanted to check with my own eyes if that is true.

‘First hint’ of a puzzling change in Southern Ocean revealed by CSIRO

Image credit: theozonehole.com

‘The salinity puzzle’ – something new for climate theorists to ponder and debate. Here they still refer to ‘heat-trapping’ gases, having ignored or forgotten about convection.

Researchers aboard an Australian ship undertaking pioneering work in the Southern Ocean have found the “first hint” of a shift in a decades-long trend towards fresher, less dense water off Antarctica, reports The Age.

Teams of scientists on the RV Investigator have been profiling the salinity and temperature of water between Tasmania and Antarctica at 108 locations. They also released the first batch of deep Argot floats to measure conditions as deep as 4000 metres.

But it is the early analysis of data on salinity in the so-called bottom waters near the seabed that may stir international debate.

Holy signals! Mobile providers turn to church spires to beat blackspots

Image credit: BBC

That should ring everyone’s bell (sorry). Time for a phone-call-to-God joke.

Mobile providers are preparing to install antennas in church spires across the country, after ministers and bishops signed an agreement aimed at using the Church of England’s buildings to help obliterate blackspots, reports The Daily Telegraph.

A new “accord” between the Government and the Church sets out a joint plan to improve “connectivity” in rural areas by making use of spires and towers, following the successful use of the structures to improve access to high-speed broadband in two dioceses.

Why Phi? – Jupiter, Saturn and the ice giants

Giant planets of the solar system [image credit: universetoday.com]

This post on the ice giants Uranus and Neptune follows on from this one:
Why Phi? – Jupiter, Saturn and the inner solar system

The main focus will be on Uranus. A planetary conjunction of three bodies (e.g. two planets and the Sun, in line) is also known as a syzygy.

Here’s the notation for the table shown below:
J-S = Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions
S-U = Saturn-Uranus conjunctions
U-N = Uranus-Neptune conjunctions

Each of the columns: U, S-U, J-S shows a Fibonacci progression.

Accuracy of best match is between 99.965% and 99.991%.

Quoting Wikipedia: ‘The mathematics of the golden ratio and of the Fibonacci sequence are intimately interconnected.’
The Greek letter φ (phi) represents the golden ratio.

Bitter cold at winter Olympics chills global warming hype

Another cold day at the Winter Olympics [image credit: weather.com]

Only the wooden spoon for climate propagandists at the coldest Winter Olympics for decades, if not all-time.
H/T The GWPF

The bone-chilling cold and icy winds in Pyeongchang have contributed to any number of wipe-outs for Olympic skiers and snowboarders, not to mention a public-relations face plant for the climate-change movement, says The Washington Times.

Its dire warnings about how the Winter Olympics face an existential threat from global warming have been all but buried by the flurry of reports about frigid conditions at the 2018 games in South Korea, which are expected to set an Olympic record for cold temperatures.

Key to predicting climate change could be blowing in the wind

A reconstruction of the Anglian ice sheet in Precambrian North London (credit: BBC / The Natural History Museum, London)

This isn’t the first time a dust-related theory of long-term climate change has been put forward. But this one looks at what could have caused the Earth to go into cycles of glacial and interglacial periods in the first place.

Dust that blew into the North Pacific Ocean could help explain why the Earth’s climate cooled 2.7 million years ago, according to a new study, reports ScienceDaily.

One of the co-authors was Alex Pullen, an assistant professor of environmental engineering and earth sciences at Clemson University.

“Why study the past? It’s a great predictor of the future,” he said. “The findings of this study were both interesting and very unexpected.”

A Theory Of Ice Ages

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Some blue-ice thinking from Frank Davis. We like open, out of the box discussions about the cause of ice ages at the talkshop. This is as good a starter for 10 as any.

Frank Davis

Forty years ago I was in university working on energy conservation in buildings. I worked with an electronic analogue simulation model in which thermal resistance was represented by electrical resistance, temperature by voltage, heat flow by current. My job was to control the model with one of the new microcomputers that had become available. I spent a lot of my time with a soldering iron and wires and Veroboards, getting DACs and ADCs and other bits of electronics working.

Eventually the money ran out, and I left the university, and became a freelance software engineer, working on all sorts of stuff unrelated to energy conservation.

But I never forgot what I’d learned during that time. And so I’ve always been interested in Anthropogenic Global Warming, because it’s essentially all about heat flow, although in the Earth’s atmosphere rather than in the walls and rooms of buildings. And it’s prompted me…

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Winds of change blow through German parliament

Reblogged from Pierre Gosselin’s No-Tricks-Zone

As Germany’s established CDU and SPD “mainstream” parties find themselves imploding, the smaller parties who oppose Germany’s out-of-control Energiewende(transition to green energies) are rapidly becoming a formidable force and making their presence felt in Germany’s national parliament like never before.

For example Germany’s FDP Free Democrats, who refused to forge a coalition government together with CDU/CSU and Green parties, have become increasingly vocal critics of Germany’s green energy scheme.

Politicians ignoring the concerns German citizens
Last month in her first speech ever in the German Parliament, FDP parliamentarian Sandra Weeser slammed the struggling Energiewende and the latest signals to promote it even further.