Accelerate petrol and diesel ban, say UK MPs

Political control of the market for personal transport looms ever larger. The known shortcomings of electric cars (range, cost, recharging time and facilities, etc.) and the potentially massive loss of fuel tax revenue are not mentioned.

The government’s 2040 deadline for shifting to electric-powered cars criticised as ‘unambitious’, BBC News reports.

A ban on sales of new petrol and diesel cars should be brought forward by eight years to 2032, MPs have said.

The government’s current plans to ensure all new cars are “effectively zero emission” by 2040 were “vague and unambitious”, a report by Parliament’s business select committee said.

Why the Little Ice Age ended in the middle of the 19th century

Grand Aletsch Glacier, Switzerland [Image credit: Wikipedia]

It’s not the conclusion some might be expecting…

Analysis of ice cores delivers continuous data for the first time on industrial soot from 1740 to today, reports HeritageDaily.

In the first half of the 19th century, a series of large volcanic eruptions in the tropics led to a temporary global cooling of Earth’s climate.

It was a natural process that caused Alpine glaciers to grow and subsequently recede again during the final phase of the so-called Little Ice Age.

This has now been proven by PSI researchers, on the basis of ice cores.

Tony Thomas: Christiana Figueres, the Green Fairy

Ever-polite Stan Grant tried his very best to keep Christiana Figueres drifting off in a cloud of sob-sister vapours to Warmist Land, where only the transfer of vast wealth from the West to Third World kleptocrats can foil global warming. Yes, Stan gave it his best shot, but he never had a chance

Lord Tennyson with his “tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean” has been an inspiration to Christiana Figueres (left). She was secretary-general of the top-level UN climate body UNFCCC (2010-16)  and spruiked doom on Stan Grant’s Matter of Fact show on ABC-TV on October 9.

How climatic changes toppled the ancient megacity of Angkor

Angkor Wat [image credit: Bjørn Christian Tørrissen @ Wikipedia]

What might the ‘abrupt climatic changes’ described here be due to?

The city may have been overstressed by climatic changes, leading to its rapid abandonment, says Discover magazine.

Angkor, one of the most significant archaeological sites in Southeast Asia, was a thriving metropolis at the center of the Khmer Empire in the 13th century. Then its inhabitants suddenly left town.

Now, researchers find abrupt climatic changes and vulnerable infrastructure led to the city’s demise.

Tracking the movement of the tropics 800 years into the past

Credit: USGS

It turns out the influence of natural drivers of tropical belt expansion and contraction is ‘poorly understood’. The authors say: ‘Our results warn of potential socio-economic consequences of future variations in tropical belt width driven by natural climate variability or stratospheric aerosol injections, whether volcanic or artificial.’
H/T Phys.org

For the first time, scientists have traced the north-south shifts of the northern-most edge of the tropics back 800 years, reports a University of Arizona-led international team.

The movement of the tropical boundary affects the locations of Northern Hemisphere deserts including the Sonoran, Mohave and Saharan. Those deserts sit just north of the tropical belt, which includes the subtropics.

Winter deaths in Scotland at highest level in 18 years

Scottish winter forecast [credit: BBC]

Whatever the causes may be, an excess of mild weather and/or low heating bills can safely be ruled out.

The number of people who died in Scotland last winter hit a 18-year high, new statistics have revealed.

There were 23,137 deaths between December 2017 and March 2018, according to the National Records of Scotland – the highest figure since 1999/2000, reports BBC News.

It also revealed that the seasonal increase in mortality – the number of “additional” deaths in winter – was significantly higher than in 2016/17.

The main underlying causes of the deaths were influenza and pneumonia.

Hurricanes Are Not Caused By “Climate Change.” Just Nature At Work.

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Trying to impose pre-conceived dogmatic ideas about the climate onto random weather events is never going to work.

American Elephants

President Trump was asked by “60 Minutes” Leslie Stahl about Hurricane Florence: He said:

“I don’t know that it’s manmade. I will say this: I don’t want to give trillions and trillions of dollars. I don’t want to lose millions and millions of jobs.” … “I’m not denying climate change,” he said in the interview. “But it could very well go back. You know, we’re talking about over a … millions of years.”

“They say that we had hurricanes that were far worse than what we just had with Michael,” said Trump, who identified “they” as “people” after being pressed by “60 Minutes” correspondent Leslie Stahl. She asked, “What about the scientists who say it’s worse than ever?” the president replied, “You’d have to show me the scientists because they have a very big political agenda.

Well, you can imagine the outcry, Charles Schumer, distinguished Minority Leader of the United…

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Fracking row continues as UK shale gas drilling recommences

Credit: mygridgb.co.uk

Opponents seem to imagine there’s a magic button to press for extra energy when it’s dark and not windy, rather than use the reliable power of fuel-burning. But in the real world the UK already uses vast amounts of gas for heating, cooking, electricity generation, industrial processes and more.

Exploratory shale gas drilling will begin today in the UK for the first time in seven years, reports PEI.

However, already this morning protesters have tried to prevent shale gas firm Cuadrilla from recommencing ‘fracking’ at a site in Lancashire, England.

Richard Lindzen: ‘Warming of any significance ceased 20 years ago’

Earth and climate – an ongoing controversy

H/T The GWPF

This will go down like a lead balloon with the usual climate-obsessed suspects and their followers. Full lecture here.

Professor Lindzen said the IPCC report this week had reduced the alleged tipping point from 2C to 1.5C because there had been no significant warming for 20 years, reports the Daily Mail.

‘Warming of any significance ceased about 20 years ago, and 2C warming was looking increasingly unlikely.’

Professor Richard Lindzen slammed conventional thinking on global warming as ‘nonsense’ in a lecture for skeptical think tank Global Warming Policy Foundation.

Visualization of Pacific ocean temperatures shows El Niño brewing

Ocean currents
[image credit: SPL/BBC]

The latest NOAA synopsis says: ‘Overall, the oceanic and atmospheric conditions reflected ENSO-neutral, but with recent trends indicative of a developing El Niño.’ Sounds like a ‘definite maybe’ there, with models now forecasting a relatively weak El Niño.

Warming waters in the equatorial Pacific give increasing confidence that El Niño will be here soon, says Discover magazine.

It’s still not here yet, but El Niño sure looks like it’s coming.

In its latest forecast, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center says there is a 70 to 75 percent chance that El Niño will form “in the next couple of months and continue through the Northern Hemisphere winter 2018-19.”

Fracking campaigner FAILS in High Court battle

Another waste of time and money for all concerned. Time for the real work to begin.

An environmental campaigner has failed in his High Court action to temporarily block energy firm Cuadrilla from fracking in Lancashire, reports TLE.

Cuadrilla chief executive Francis Egan had described the challenge as “a last gasp attempt at trying to frustrate the process.”

BP CEO: Sanctions ‘would virtually shut down the energy systems of Europe’

From the “DON’T POKE THE BEAR WITH A STICK!” Dept:

Sanctions against Russia’s key energy companies would inevitably lead to a collapse of the European energy sector, BP CEO Bob Dudley has warned, according to Sputnik news agency.

“I do not think that would happen. If sanctions were put on Rosneft or Gazprom or LUKoil like what happened with Rusal, you would virtually shut down the energy systems of Europe, it is a bit of extreme thing to happen. We invest in Russia carefully, not just in Rosneft,” Dudley told the Oil & Money conference in London.

Russia is a key supplier of natural gas to Europe. State-run Gazprom, the world’s largest gas producer, caters for 40 percent of European energy needs. For geographical reasons, Russian supplies are by far the cheapest and safest for the continent.

Met-Office invents infallible climate prediction method

The Met-Office has issued a ‘decadal’ climate forecast which runs from 2018 to 2023. Maybe it should be called a ‘semi-decadal forecast’ instead, but we’ll let it pass, as that’s not the most amusing aspect of it by a long chalk.

For starters, there’s the baseline period chosen. 1850-1900. They’ve gone for this so they can scare us with the upper end of the blue prediction envelope exceeding the Dangerous! Global! Warming! politically chosen figure of 1.5C above “pre-industrial”.

Here’s the global measuring station coverage between 1891 and 1920. There was a lot less in 1850.

I thought it would be fun to see how the Met-O forecast is doing after 10 months, so I plotted the latest annually averaged HadCRUt 4 global data using Wood For Trees in red and overlaid it on the Met-O prediction plot:

Why the current hurricane rating system needs to be scrapped

Image credit: sanibelrealestateguide.com

A rating system that may lead people to misunderstand the likely impact of an approaching storm is obviously not satisfactory. So is there a better approach?

For decades, hurricanes have been rated on a scale of 1 to 5 based solely on a storm’s wind speeds.

But as recent hurricanes show, a tropical cyclone’s winds often tell us little about its real threats — coastal storm surge and precipitation-driven flooding, say Yale researchers.

Modern meteorological data collection gives us an unprecedented view into the real-time growth, track, and death of tropical cyclones.

IPCC SR15 Report lacks cost/benefit analysis of ‘Goldilocks thinking’

The UN climate report known as SR15 calls for high carbon taxes from $135 to $5,500/ton while a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Bjorn Lomborg of Oct. 9, 2018 says the costs of proposed CO2 cuts are not worth it, leading the Friends of Science Society to slam the UN report as Goldilocks thinking without any rational cost-benefit analysis or practical plan.

Friends of Science says the WSJ paragraph in which Lomborg describes the economic impact on Europe of cutting emissions 80% by 2050 should be front page news in every newspaper in Europe and North America. Lomborg notes that, with a well designed and coordinated climate policy (i.e. the opposite of what European and North American governments have now), the annual costs will reach U.S. $3.3 trillion, “more than twice what EU governments spend today on health, education, recreation, housing, environment, police and defense combined”.

“The policy will make the EU 24% poorer in 2050.”

Australia’s top scientist calls for hydrogen revolution to replace fossil fuels

An obvious problem with hydrogen is the likely high cost of production. Another one is the vast amounts of renewables needed to make the plan work, or if coal or gas is used, the high cost and doubtful viability of large-scale carbon capture.

Meantime, Environment Minister Melissa Price has rejected the findings of a major climate report, despite not having read it, says the Sydney Morning Herald.

The federal government’s top scientist Alan Finkel says Australia could slash global carbon emissions and create a multi-billion dollar export industry by developing hydrogen as an everyday energy source to replace fossil fuels used in vehicles, homes and industry.

What Does the New IPCC Report Say About Trends in Extreme Events?

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The IPCC seems to be long on speculation and short on evidence.

Roger Pielke Jr.

https://twitter.com/RogerPielkeJr/status/1049109464035414017

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A conversation with Brandon Gates on the causes of the ‘greenhouse’ effect

 

Rog Tallbloke‏ @RogTallbloke Oct 7

Hi Brandon, What is the best estimate of the ratio of radiation to space taking place from CO2 relative to H2O?

Brandon R. Gates‏ @brandonrgates Oct 7

Dunno Rog. MODTRAN could probably get you in the ballpark. This is CO2-only from 70 km looking down, more what I would expect an actual Nimbus retrieval to look like. http://climatemodels.uchicago.edu/modtran/ 

Rog Tallbloke‏ @RogTallbloke 24h24 hours ago

Although CO2 absorbs thermal radiation from the Earth, it emits more. Carbon dioxide is in thermal deficit in terms of radiative balance. Nitrogen and oxygen constantly feed CO2 with heat so that it maintains a temperature higher than its radiative equilibrium. CO2 is a coolant.

Most UK newspapers ignore IPCC report on their front pages

Clearly the main reason for not putting a news item on the front page is that it won’t help to sell the newspaper. UK weather variability is standard.

Today’s frontpages of most UK newspapers ignore the new IPCC report, reflecting the declining concern of most Brits about the climate agenda – despite the habitual alarm, says The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF).  

UK Survey: Brits Are Chilled About Global Warming

Press Release, Global Warming Policy Forum, 11 July 2018

IEA: Petrochemicals set to be the largest driver of world oil demand

Oil extraction [image credit: ewg.org]

A recent energy conference was told: “The world will attain the 100 million barrels a day mark of [oil] consumption later this year, much sooner than we all earlier projected.” This report notes that petrochemicals ‘are required to manufacture many parts of the modern energy system, including solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, thermal insulation and electric vehicles’.

Petrochemicals are set to account for more than a third of the growth in world oil demand to 2030, and nearly half the growth to 2050, adding nearly 7 million barrels of oil a day by then, reports Green Car Congress.

They are also poised to consume an additional 56 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas by 2030, and 83 bcm by 2050.