Life Without Oil Is Not As Simple As You May Think

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A reminder that some people should be careful what they wish for. For example, buried in ‘other products made with Oil’ we find fertilizers, which have greatly boosted world food production.

American Elephants

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Stirling Engine test sets long-duration record at NASA Glenn

Stirling engine model [image credit: Wikipedia]

‘A Stirling engine is a closed-cycle regenerative heat engine with a permanently gaseous working fluid’ – Wikipedia.

GLENN RESEARCH CENTER, Ohio — If you are wanting to perform some science at Neptune, or Pluto, or beyond in the dark depths of the outer solar system, your spacecraft is going to need power for a very long time, says Spaceflight Insider.

Engineers at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, are working to make that happen, and have been at it for a very long time.

The engineering team in NASA Glenn’s Thermal Energy Conversion Branch recently set a run-time record for a free-piston Stirling engine at full power.

Heat Wave AGW Hysteria Not So Much. Why?

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The media is still long on climate assertions and short, if not bereft, of any supporting science – other than yet more assertions from so-called experts of the climate alarm variety.

Science Matters

An editorial at Investor’s Business Daily poses the question: Why Hasn’t The California Heat Wave Sparked The Usual Global Warming Hysteria?  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

It wasn’t long ago when the mainstream press took every opportunity, no matter how weak the connection, to blame bad things on global warming. So far, at least, we haven’t found one major story using the heat wave gripping the southwest to sound the alarm about global warming.

This lack of alarmism has not gone unnoticed.

Writing at the New Republic this week, Emily Atkin complained that despite record-breaking heat and a wildfire season that, she says, is already worse than usual, “there’s no climate connection to be found in much news coverage, even in historically climate-conscious outlets like NPR and The New York Times.”

When Atkin contacted NPR for an explanation, the network’s science editor said “You don’t just want…

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The Wind God’s New Clothes: Why Weather Dependent Power Generation Can Never Work

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Note that ‘despite a great deal of press, wind and solar make up less than 3 percent of U.S. energy consumption.’

Intermittency, high cost of subsidies and requirement of suitable land are just some of the reasons for that.

STOP THESE THINGS

The wind’s fickleness is no mystery to kite flyers and sailors, yet wind power still gets pumped as if it’s cutting edge technology.

Those few places attempting to run on nature’s wonder fuels have become economic debacles. One of those, RE ‘superpower’, South Australia has suffered routine load shedding for years, and rocketing power prices. South Australians pay the highest power prices in the world and SA is the only Australian state to suffer a statewide blackout.

South Australia’s maniacal obsession with wind and solar power sees it pick up a special mention in the pointed little video above, and is further detailed in this brilliant piece by Kenneth Haapala from the US of A, below.

The Wind God’s New Clothes
Capital Research
Kenneth Haapala
22 May 2018

Part 1: The Electrical Revolution

Summary
In recent years, many politicians and promoters have claimed that wind and solar generated electricity…

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Is Africa becoming the world’s dumping ground for dirty diesel vehicles?

Nairobi traffic

It’s debatable whether air quality was top class in many African cities before the arrival of these old diesels, but they aren’t doing much to improve it.

As emission regulations become stronger for new vehicles in industrialized countries, cars as old as 25 years no longer able to meet emission standards are being exported to Africa.

Air quality is suffering as a result, reports DW.com.

Any child playing at the Uhuru garden — a recreation park in the middle of the Kenyan capital Nairobi — is oblivious to the health dangers in the air around him or her. But that air is laden with toxic pollutants, which have become a leading cause of respiratory disease in Kenyan cities.

EU to build more terminals to import US LNG

Sabine Pass LNG Terminal, Louisiana [image credit: naturalgasnow.org]

The US President just became a successful natural gas salesman, after complaining that Germany was too dependent on Russian gas.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker made the announcement during his visit to the White House yesterday, reports Energy Live News.

The European Union plans to import more liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the US to diversify its energy supply.

The blueprint for El Niño diversity

Credit: concernusa.org

How much this research can aid ENSO predictions remains to be seen, but any advance in understanding is welcome.

A new study isolates key mechanisms that cause El Niño events to differ, says ScienceDaily.

Researchers found that the complexity and irregular occurrence of El Niño and La Niña events can be traced back to the co-existence of two coupled atmosphere-ocean oscillations, with different spatial characteristics and different frequencies.

A new research study, published this week by an international team of climate scientists in the journal Nature, isolates key mechanisms that cause El Niño events to differ amongst each other.

Worms frozen in permafrost for up to 42,000 years come back to life

Siberian permafrost [image credit: Julian Murton / BBC]

One small wriggle for a worm, one giant…etc. This discovery has novelty value and should stir the imaginations of sci-fi writers, whatever its real significance may be.

The Siberian Times reports: Nematodes moving and eating again for the first time since the Pleistocene age in major scientific breakthrough, say experts.

The roundworms from two areas of Siberia came back to life in Petri dishes, says a new scientific study.

‘We have obtained the first data demonstrating the capability of multicellular organisms for longterm cryobiosis in permafrost deposits of the Arctic,’ states a report from Russian scientists from four institutions in collaboration with Princetown University.

Booker: Yes it’s scorching, but not climate change

Credit: BBC

The occasional hot summer in the UK is nothing new. There was one in 1976 and, as Booker points out, a particularly hot one as long ago as 1846. As usual the behaviour of the jet stream is a major factor.

Yes it’s scorching, but claims that the heatwave is down to climate change are just hot air: June was even hotter when Victoria was on the throne, writes CHRISTOPHER BOOKER for the Daily Mail.

There is at least one thing about this summer of 2018 on which we can all agree: the past months have unquestionably been swelteringly, abnormally hot.

British government finally gives green light to fracking shale gas

Shale gas drilling site [image credit: BBC]

After years of wrangling, the UK (or at least England) seems to have at last run out of ways to avoid tapping in to the wealth that is the gas under the nation’s feet, in this case anyway. Why import what can be produced at home?
H/T The GWPF

Shale gas developer Cuadrilla on Tuesday became the first operator in Britain to receive final consent from the government to frack an onshore horizontal exploration well, reports Reuters.

The government said it had granted approval for so-called hydraulic fracturing to take place at Cuadrilla’s Preston New Road site in northwest England.

Cloud formation and distribution follows simple thermodynamic, statistical laws

Clouds are climate wildcards says Phys.org. This study focuses on tropical convective clouds. It seems that ‘the product of the number of clouds and their perimeter remains constant, a mathematical law known as scale invariance.’

Quoting from the ‘plain language summary’ of the study:
‘Narrowing uncertainty in forecasts of climate change has been hindered by the difficulty of representing the extraordinary complexity of clouds. Here, we show how the numbers and sizes of clouds, and their total amount, can be derived thermodynamically knowing just the atmospheric temperature and humidity profile.’

As usual an assumption of future warming is built-in, but we have to live with that approach even if we question it.

Take a look at the clouds, if there are any in your sky right now. Watch the billows, the white lofty tufts set against the blue sky. Or, depending on your weather, watch the soft grey edges smear together into blended tones that drag down through the air to the ground.

They’re an inspiration to most of us, but a nightmare for climate scientists. Clouds are exceptionally complex creatures, and that complexity makes it difficult to predict how and where they’ll form—which is unfortunate, since those predictions are essential to understanding precipitation patterns and how our climate will change in the future.

Thick atmosphere boosts how fast Venus spins

Venus

The apparent length of day on Venus (116.75 days) is nothing like its rotation time (~243 days), due to its retrograde spin. It can be stated as the time in which the sum of the number of Venus orbits (~0.52) and spins (~0.48) in the period equals 1.

As ScienceNewsforStudents reports, the thick atmosphere on Venus can change by a few minutes every day how long it takes the planet to rotate.

Time gets tricky on Venus. The planet has extremely thick air, which flows much more rapidly than the rate at which the solid planet spins.

As that thick atmosphere pushes against the planet’s mountains, it can change how quickly Venus spins, scientists now report.

Fury at plans to scrap UK renewables subsidies

They say all good things come to an end, and in this case the rug is being pulled away from support for various types of renewable project including small-scale solar systems, as PEI reports. Cue the usual wailing about the harmless trace gas carbon dioxide, as ever falsely described as ‘carbon emissions’. Coincidentally perhaps, the closure date coincides with the UK’s exit from the European Union.

Renewables and sustainability groups have reacted with fury to proposals by the UK government to scrap subsidies for green energy projects.

The feed-in tariffs scheme is the government’s subsidy scheme for small-scale low-carbon installations.

A consultation paper published yesterday sets out a proposal to close the export tariff alongside the generation tariff on 31 March 2019.

Why Phi? – a long-term Jupiter-Saturn-Uranus model

Here we find a match between the orbit numbers of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus and see what that might tell us about certain patterns in the solar system.

715 U = 60072.044 years
2040 S = 60072.895 years
5064 J = 60072.282 years
Data source: Nasa/JPL – Planets and Pluto: Physical Characteristics

The Jupiter-Saturn part of the chart derives directly from this earlier Talkshop post:
Why Phi? – Jupiter, Saturn and the de Vries cycle

Solar probe set to launch into the sun’s scorching ‘red zone’

During a total solar eclipse, the Sun’s corona and prominences are visible to the naked eye [image credit: Luc Viatour / https://Lucnix.be ]

Perhaps the probe will be able to shed some light, so to speak, on the Sun’s famous coronal heating problem.

On Aug. 6, the Parker Solar Probe will launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for one extremely intense mission: to fly closer to the sun than any spacecraft before, reports CBC News.

The probe will fly through and study the sun’s atmosphere, where it will face punishing heat and radiation. At its closest, it will come within 6.1 million kilometres of the sun.

“A lot of people don’t think that’s particularly close,” said Nicola Fox, the project scientist for the Parker Solar Probe. “But if I put the sun and the Earth in the end zones in a football field, the Parker Solar Probe will be on the four-yard line in the red zone, knocking on the door for a touchdown.”

Climate lawfare suffers another defeat

Is it any wonder that US judges are reluctant to put themselves in the position of climate experts, when the evidence for man changing the global climate is so nebulous and strongly disputed?

Today a U.S. District Judge threw out New York City’s lawsuit against five major energy companies alleging damages relating to climate change, reports The GWPF.

Judge John Keenan wrote in his opinion that, “Global warming and solutions thereto must be addressed by the two other branches of government,” not the judiciary, according to Bloomberg.

An ancient mystery henge has appeared in ‘Once in a Lifetime’ discovery in Ireland

Newgrange UNESCO World Heritage Site

The story of an amazing chance discovery by amateur drone enthusiasts at the UNESCO world heritage site near Newgrange in Ireland this week.

“What the f*** is that?”

It materialised out of almost nowhere, reports ScienceAlert.

Thousands of years after disappearing from human sight and knowledge, an ancient ‘henge’ site has been discovered hidden within the archaeological landscape of Ireland’s Brú na Bóinne.

EU court dismisses Austrian challenge to UK Hinkley nuclear subsidies

Planned nuclear power station at Hinkley Point

One less headache for the UK government’s dogma-driven energy policymakers to grapple with, as renewables fanatics get the legal brush-off on this occasion.

An Austrian appeal against the UK Government’s funding for the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station has been dismissed by the EU court, reports Energy Live News.

The European Court of Justice ruled the government’s contribution to the new nuclear plant in Somerset – being developed by French utility EDF and China General Nuclear Power – does not violate EU rules.

The Austrian Government had sought to overturn the decision as it argued the support contradicted EU policy of backing renewable forms of generation.

Arctic Ice Beats Odds July 14

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No ammunition for obsessive climate doomsters here as sea ice refuses to conform to man-made dogmas.

Science Matters

In June 2018, Arctic ice extent held up against previous years despite the Pacific basins of Bering and Okhotsk being ice-free.  The Arctic core is showing little change, perhaps due to increased thickness (volume) as reported by DMI.

The image above shows ice extents on day 195 (July 14) for years 2007, 2012, 2017 and 2018. Note this year ice is strong on both Russian and N. American sides.  Beaufort Sea and Canadian Archipelago are solid. E. Siberian and Chukchi Seas are also solid, despite early melting in Bering Sea.  Hudson and Baffin bays still have considerable ice compared to other years.

The graph below shows how the Arctic extent has faired in July compared to the 11 year average and to some years of interest.

Note that 2018 started July well above the 11 year average and other recent years.  As of day 195 (yesterday) ice extent is still…

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Wind energy’s big disposal problem

German wind farm

Optimism – or is it wishful thinking? – may not be unusual among so-called greens, but merely hoping for solutions after creating the problems doesn’t look like much of a strategy.

Germany has more than 28,000 wind turbines — but many are old and by 2023 more than a third must be decommissioned. Disposing of them is a huge environmental problem.

Expert Jan Tessmer (coordinator on wind energy research at the German Aerospace Center (DLR)) tells DW he’s optimistic.