First satellite to measure global winds set for launch

Atmospheric circulation in each hemisphere consists of three cells – the Hadley, Ferrel and polar cells. [Credit: ESA/AOES Medialab]

Good luck to the mission. A somewhat optimistic claim made here is that this will ‘improve our understanding of manmade climate change’ but, as the report states without noting any irony, the name of the mission is drawn from mythology.

A satellite designed to measure Earth’s global wind patterns is set to be hoisted into orbit Tuesday from the Arianespace launch site in French Guiana, reports Phys.org.

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Aeolus mission—named for the guardian of wind in Greek mythology—promises to improve short-term weather forecasting and our understanding of manmade climate change.

Stealing from the Solar System: the effects of a stellar fly-by

The highly tilted orbit of Eris compared to the orbits of Ceres (light blue), Jupiter (maroon), Saturn (orange, Uranus (green), Neptune (blue), Pluto (olive, and MakeMake (red) [image credit: Fandom]

Could a ‘rogue’ star passing nearby have disturbed outer parts of the early solar system? Beyond Neptune things become somewhat different.

The outer reaches of our solar system harbor a number of mysterious features. Astrobites reports on whether a single stellar fly-by could help explain them all.

A star is born from the gravitational collapse of a cloud of gas and dust. Yet not all of the material ends up in the star, and instead forms a flat protoplanetary disk that surrounds the new star. Over time, the materials in this disk coalesce to form planets, moons, asteroids, and most other objects you might expect to find near a typical star.

Since protoplanetary disks are flat, the expectation is that all of the planets and objects orbiting a star that formed out of a protoplanetary disk should orbit on a single plane. So when we find stars with planets that orbit at multiple different inclinations, this raises questions.

Most-polluting UK home fuels to be burned up

Where does this leave people who were encouraged to buy wood burning stoves?

The UK government is consulting on proposals to ban wood and coal burning in households, reports Energy Live News.

The sale of the most-polluting fuels used in UK households are to get the chop as part of government plans to reduce emissions.

Coral Bleaching Just As Bad In 18thC

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Many believe the forces of climate alarm got Professor Peter Ridd fired for saying what he thought about the recovery powers of the GBR.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

A new study finds that coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef is nothing new.

From the Evening Express:

Large-scale coral bleaching has raised concern about the future of the ecosystems and the impact their loss could have on biodiversity.

Dr Sebastian Hennige, researcher

The teams found the frequency of bleaching has increased since the 1800s and, despite corals’ ability to recover, there are fears they could now be approaching a “critical threshold”.

Dr Nick Kamenos from Glasgow’s School of Geographical and Earth Sciences said: “It’s clear in the core data we examined that bleaching has been occurring on the Great Barrier Reef for at least 400 years, but the frequency of bleaching events has increased markedly since the early 1800s and those events have affected 10% more corals since the late 1700s.

“We can see that corals have been able to acclimate and recover from past…

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Nir Shaviv: The missing link between exploding stars, clouds and climate on Earth

Nir Shaviv is co-author along with Henrik Svensmark and others of a major new paper in Nature Communications titled Increased ionization supports growth of aerosols into cloud condensation nuclei. He has a write up at his Sciencebits blog. Here’s the introduction:

Our new results published today in nature communications provide the last piece of a long studied puzzle. We finally found the actual physical mechanism linking between atmospheric ionization and the formation of cloud condensation nuclei. Thus, we now understand the complete physical picture linking solar activity and our galactic environment (which govern the flux of cosmic rays ionizing the atmosphere) to climate here on Earth though changes in the cloud characteristics. In short, as small aerosols grow to become cloud condensation nuclei, they grow faster under higher background ionization rates. Consequently, they have a higher chance of surviving the growth without being eaten by larger aerosols. This effect was calculated theoretically and measured in a specially designed experiment conducted at the Danish Space Research Institute at the Danish Technical University, together with our colleagues Martin Andreas Bødker Enghoff and Jacob Svensmark.

Figure 4: The correlation between the linearly detrended sea level measured using satellite altimetry (blue dots) and a model fit which includes just two components: The sun and el Niño southern oscillation. The excellent fit implies that the two components are by far the dominant source of sea level change on short time scales

Background:

It has long been known that solar variations appear to have a large effect on climate. This was already suggested by William Herschel over 200 years ago. Over the past several decades, more empirical evidence have unequivocally demonstrated the existence of such a link, as exemplified in the examples in the box below.

 

Diving robots find Antarctic winter seas exhale surprising amounts of carbon dioxide

Antarctica

Researchers describe this as ‘a major challenge to our current understanding’. The global carbon cycle model may have to be revisited.

More than 100 oceanic floats are now diving and drifting in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica during the peak of winter, reports Phys.org.

These instruments are gathering data from a place and season that remains very poorly studied, despite its important role in regulating the global climate.

A new study from the University of Washington, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, Princeton University and several other oceanographic institutions uses data gathered by the floating drones over past winters to learn how much carbon dioxide is transferred by the surrounding seas.

Results show that in winter the open water nearest the sea ice surrounding Antarctica releases significantly more carbon dioxide than previously believed.

Understanding the Architecture of TRAPPIST-1

Top row: artist concepts of the seven planets of TRAPPIST-1 with their orbital periods, distances from their star, radii, masses, densities and surface gravity as compared to those of Earth.
[Image credit: NASA/JPL-CALTECH]

Talkshop analysis of some of the data follows this brief report from Astrobiology at NASA.

A team of researchers has provided new information about putative planets in the outer regions of the TRAPPIST-1 system. Currently, seven transiting planets have been identified in orbit around the ultra cool red dwarf star. The scientists determined the lower bounds on the orbital distance and inclination (within a range of masses) of planets that could be beyond the seven inner planets.

Historic space weather could clarify what’s next

Solar flare [image credit: NASA/SDO]

Quoting from the research article’s plain language summary: ‘We find that some aspects of the space weather climate are in fact reproducible, they can be inferred from that of previous solar maxima. This may help understand the behaviour of future solar maxima.’ Solar wind variation is highlighted.

Historic space weather may help us understand what’s coming next, according to new research by the University of Warwick, says Phys.org.

Professor Sandra Chapman, from Warwick’s Centre for Fusion, Space and Astrophysics, led a project which charted the space weather in previous solar cycles across the last half century, and discovered an underlying repeatable pattern in how space weather activity changes with the solar cycle.

Breaking the climate spell

H/T The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)

Industrial economies can never be run on part-time low output power sources, no matter how much money is wasted on them at the expense of much more reliable and powerful alternatives. However, stating the obvious and expecting many of today’s political leaders to understand it are two different things, it seems.

Getting out of the Paris Agreement was just the first step on the road to a realist global energy policy, writes Rupert Darwall.

Thirteen years ago, a Republican president who had pulled the United States out of an onerous climate treaty faced isolation at the annual gathering of Western leaders.

Solar and wind: some suggestions on how to inflate the numbers

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Another outbreak of lies, damned lies…and statistics from the renewables publicity machine gets exposed. This time it’s Belgium in the spotlight.

Trust, yet verify

The previous post focused on the contribution-of-solar-and-wind-to-total-load metric as used by our Flemish Minister of Energy. In short, there was a lot of electricity production by solar and wind on a Saturday afternoon (when electricity consumption is traditionally low) leading to a 45% contribution by those two power sources to total load. This was praised as a “new record”. We can’t control the sun nor the wind and consumption of electricity follows certain patterns, so some pretty high contribution values are bound to happen, making it a rather meaningless metric.

He also used other equally meaningless metrics in te past. At the beginning of the year, he surprised us all with the MWh-per-km² metric. According to this metric the Belgians are among the best in “Europe” when it comes to solar and wind energy! We are in the top 3 when it comes to production of solar energy…

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YouTube Putting Pointless Labels On Climate Videos

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In which we learn that Youtube either doesn’t understand, or is not concerned about, the difference between natural warming and alleged man-made warming of the Earth climate system since the Little Ice Age ended.

PA Pundits International

By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~

The lefty BuzzFeed News has a long article saying that YouTube is beginning to label videos related to the climate with a statement that the Earth is warming. Since this fact is not a matter of debate the labels are pointless. Since the videos from both sides get labeled the same, labeling is meaningless. The clueless alarmists think this is some sort of improvement.

The label simply says this: “Global warming, also referred to as climate change, is the observed century-scale rise in the average temperature of the Earth’s climate system and its related effects. Multiple lines of scientific evidence show that the climate system is warming.” In short the Earth is warming.

I have logged over 700 YouTube videos that are skeptical of climate change alarmism and not one argues that the Earth is not warming. The debate is entirely about the…

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Parker solar probe nears launch: Heavy lifting imminent.

credit John Kraus / http://www.johnkrausphotos.com .

The Parker solar probe is headed for space tomorrow. Best of luck to the mission team.

A step closer to sustainable energy from seawater

Credit: greencarcongress.com

That’s the claim, but hydrogen still needs an energy source for its manufacture, so any sustainability depends on what that source is. And looking a bit closer, the report says: “If the extracted hydrogen gas is ultimately used as fuel, for example in a fuel cell of a car, the hydrogen reacts back to water with oxygen gas from the atmosphere.” So what happens when a hydrogen powered fuel cell vehicle trails water from its ‘exhaust’ on to a road in sub-zero temperatures? An icy, or more icy, surface seems likely to be the undesirable result.

The research group led by Leiden chemist Marc Koper has discovered a catalyst that minimizes the production of chlorine gas during salt water electrolysis, reports Phys.org.

The invention can enable the direct production of hydrogen from seawater.

Study: global forest loss over past 35 years more than offset by new forest growth

The world has more natural carbon dioxide absorbers in the shape of trees than was thought, to the tune of an extra 2.2 million kilometers² relative to 1982.

A team of researchers from the University of Maryland, the State University of New York and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center has found that new global tree growth over the past 35 years has more than offset global tree cover losses, reports Phys.org.

In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes using satellite data to track forest growth and loss over the past 35 years and what they found by doing so.

Crucial global climate fund facing ‘massive challenges’

Lack of funding after the USA pull-out, added to well-publicised internal squabbling, are creating severe problems for this somewhat strange body based in South Korea. What exactly is its point?

Political divisions between rich and poor countries make the board of the UN climate fund ‘extremely difficult to work with’, says green growth chief.

Follow The Money: Self-Interested Fiction Supplants Hard-Coal-Facts in Mythical ‘Transition’ to All Wind & Solar Future

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As ever, unpredictable part-time power is not a recipe for success in this industrial world, no matter how much subsidy is wasted on it.

STOP THESE THINGS

Ignore the voluble pomposity and faux moral piety, the sole motivation driving RE zealotry is money. Lots and lots of other people’s money.

And forget about saving the planet, this is about making a group of cynical, conniving and audacious rent-seekers fabulously, indeed filthy, rich.

In what is the greatest, state-sanctioned wealth-transfer in human history, hundreds of $billions is being funnelled from the pockets of taxpayers and consumers into the coffers of wind and solar power outfits, around the globe.

Aiding and abetting those that profit handsomely from policies that are destroying business and industry, and punishing households, with spiralling power prices, are outfits like Greenpeace and GetUp! These operations will do and say anything, provided what’s deposited in their Swiss bank accounts comes with a sufficient trail of consecutive zeros.

It’s to be remembered that the Danes are responsible for the ‘modern’ wind industry (true, the Dutch mastered the…

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Hothouse Earth

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The usual climate alarmists were bound to exploit the opportunity of summer heatwaves to push their agenda, but as climate sceptic Robert Walker points out here: ‘The article is mainly about things that could happen centuries to thousands of years into the future. … There are no dates in it, and there is no new fundamental research.’

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Latest crap from the warmist establishment, gleefully blown up by the BBC

Climate change: ‘Hothouse Earth’ risks even if CO2 emissions slashed

It may sound like the title of a low budget sci-fi movie, but for planetary scientists, “Hothouse Earth” is a deadly serious concept.

Researchers believe we could soon cross a threshold leading to boiling hot temperatures and towering seas in the centuries to come.

Even if countries succeed in meeting their CO2 targets, we could still lurch on to this “irreversible pathway”.

Their study shows it could happen if global temperatures rise by 2C.

An international team of climate researchers, writing in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, says the warming expected in the next few decades could turn some of the Earth’s natural forces – that currently protect us – into our enemies.

Each year the Earth’s forests, oceans and land…

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Unions tell Poland to push coal as UN climate host

Poland’s miners understandably don’t want their jobs to be sacrificed on the questionable altar of the UN’s climate ideology.

A government-backed trade union conference in Katowice this week puts mining jobs on the agenda of climate change negotiations, says Climate Change News.

Poland’s trade unions are mounting a defence of coal workers against the impacts of climate policies in a government-backed conference this week.

The “social pre-cop” meeting is an effort to influence the agenda of Cop24, the UN climate summit to be held in the same city of Katowice this December.

Automakers could be fined more than €14Bn for European CO2 excess emissions in 2021

With electric vehicles mostly failing to impress buyers, and diesel sales taking a nosedive, European car makers are running short of options to get anywhere near the arbitrary emissions targets imposed on them. Battering a successful industry that so many people depend on for transport and employment seems a strange, not to say crazy, policy in a competitive world.

New analysis by IHS Markit suggests that automakers failing to meet 2021 fleet CO2 emissions compliance for passenger vehicles sold in the European Union (EU) could be fined more than €14 billion (US$16 billion) in 2021, reports Green Car Congress.

Legislators in the European Union (EU) are imposing a new passenger car fleet CO2 emissions target of 95 g/km, to be phased in during 2020, with 100% application in 2021 on Worldwide Harmonized Light Vehicle Test Procedure (WLTP).

The spiralling environmental cost of our lithium battery addiction

Typical electric car set-up

As the worldwide ideological push to establish electric vehicles continues, all is not well in the world of lithium extraction and usage.

As the world scrambles to replace fossil fuels with clean energy, the environmental impact of finding all the lithium required could become a major issue in its own right, says Wired UK.

Here’s a thoroughly modern riddle: what links the battery in your smartphone with a dead yak floating down a Tibetan river?

The answer is lithium – the reactive alkali metal that powers our phones, tablets, laptops and electric cars.