Ian Wilson: Is the November 2018 Madden Julian Oscillation (MJO) a possible trigger for an El Niño?

Conservation of angular momentum – ice skater

The title says it all. Another in the author’s series of intriguing brain-teasers for followers of climate theory to explore, this time with a particularly topical theme.

1. The Madden Julian Oscillation (MJO)

The Madden Julian Oscillation (MJO) is the dominant form of intra-seasonal (30 to 90 days) atmospheric variability in the Earth’s equatorial regions (Zang 2005). It is characterized by the eastward progression of a large region of enhanced convection and rainfall that is centered upon the Equator.

This region of enhanced precipitation is followed by an equally large region of suppressed convection and rainfall. The precipitation pattern takes about 30 – 60 days to complete one cycle, when seen from a given point along the equator (Madden and Julian 1971, 1972).

Anti-Carbon-Tax revolt escalates as French lorry drivers join protests

‘Yellow vest’ diesel tax protesters in France

Mayhem in France. An attempt to escalate an unpopular tax, supposedly climate-related, is going badly. Other national leaders may want to take note of the public reaction.

The revolt against President Macron’s environmental taxes escalated today as protesters tried to block fuel depots around France, reports The GWPF.  

The move came after a second night of violence in which demonstrators have already caused chaos across the country.

Extinction Rebellion and Anti-Frackers in Westminster Bridge Footshooting incident

The extreme end of the environmentalist movement decided on a novel approach to getting the public on their side this weekend; by blocking five bridges in central London, causing a huge traffic jam. Predictably, the result was a lot of unnecessary carbon dioxide and particulate emissions from stationary vehicles.

We can only recommend the organisers read this article by Stephen Moore
published in April 2016 on the Real Clear Politics website.

The U.S. Department of Energy published data last week with some amazing revelations — so amazing that most Americans will find them hard to believe. As a nation, the United States reduced its carbon emissions by 2 percent from last year. Over the past 14 years, our carbon emissions are down more than 10 percent. On a per-unit-of-GDP basis, U.S. carbon emissions are down by closer to 20 percent.

Even more stunning: We’ve reduced our carbon emissions more than virtually any other nation in the world, including most of Europe.

UK electricity prices could double due to EU court ruling

Carrington Power Station near Manchester

H/T The GWPF

The sooner Britain gets the interfering EU off its regulatory back the better. With already questionable policies on power generation due to climate obsessions, this aggravation is the last thing needed.

Electricity prices could double after the government suspended the UK’s system for ensuring there is a back-up power supply, experts have warned.

The wholesale power price could hit £121 per megawatt hour (MWh) by next winter unless the so-called capacity market is reinstated, according to a report — risking higher energy bills for millions, reports The Sunday Times.

Scientific error upends major ocean warming study

Apparently you’re a ‘climate contrarian’ if you dare to check the claimed results of climate-related studies. The researchers ‘calculated heat based on the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide rising off the ocean, filling round glass flasks with air collected at research stations around the globe’. But now they admit this ‘novel method’ didn’t work out the way they first thought, having had the error pointed out to them.

Researchers with the University of California, San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Princeton University recently walked back scientific findings published last month that showed oceans have been heating up dramatically faster than previously thought as a result of climate change, reports Phys.org.

The toxic business of ‘recycling’ China’s electric car batteries

Chinese electric car [image credit: scmp.com]

China already has 250 million electric scooters and around 3 million electric cars, most of which face battery replacements in the next decade or so. But high costs have opened the door to ‘cowboy’ operators.

Researchers estimate it will cost nearly US$3 million to reverse the damage caused by just one illegal plant, says the South China Morning Post.

Authorities in eastern China are turning to the courts to raise the millions of yuan needed to rehabilitate water and land polluted by dumping from an illegal lead-acid battery recycling plant.

EU steps in to halt UK energy security measures

The Daily Telegraph reports

A European Court ruling has thrown the UK’s energy security into disarray by ordering the immediate halt to a £1bn scheme designed to keep Britain’s lights on.

The cornerstone energy security scheme has come to an abrupt standstill after the European Union’s Court of Justice ruled that the UK should not be allowed to pay power plants to stay open.

The shock-ruling wiped hundreds of millions of pounds from the UK’s largest listed energy companies on Thursday and threatens to bring a return of energy market price spikes over the winter.

Volkswagen to make Zwickau vehicle plant Europe’s top-performing electric car factory

VW ID. model

VW claims ‘the First complete transformation of a major car factory from internal combustion engines to e-mobility in the world’. All they have to do then is sell the products to a so-far unenthusiastic public, at a rate of about 900 a day. Before you ask: ‘Power supplies at the Zwickau plant were already changed over to 100 percent eco-power in 2017.’ And they waffle about ‘climate protection’ to appeal to wide-eyed planet-savers.

Germany’s biggest carmaker VW has substantiated plans to transform its product line and drastically scale-up the share of electric cars by revealing plans for a major e-car factory in the eastern German city of Zwickau, says CleanEnergyWire.

Anti-Carbon-Tax revolt threatens to paralyse France

Protesting in France

Leaders preening themselves on their supposedly green virtue signalling policies are running into some unpleasant realities.

France is bracing for a nationwide revolt over the weekend as angry drivers plan to block roads nationwide in protest against the government’s carbon tax and rising fuel prices, says The GWPF.

The French government approved a measure in late 2017 increasing a direct tax on diesel as well as a tax on carbon, allegedly to fight against climate change.

Electric cars can lead to local gas-burning power generation

Gas peaking plant [image credit: Clarke Energy]

Renewables advocates keep pushing the idea that there may be ‘gaps’ in power supply due to intermittency. But most sensible people realise it’s the other way round – renewables provide a small percentage of the total power and everything else has to work around that. Here’s an example of the propaganda.

The Ashford Peaking Power Plant is a 21MW facility located at Kingsnorth Industrial Estate in Kent, reports Energy Live News.

It has 14 gas engines on site, which runs for around 1,500 to 2,000 hours a year – it is fully automated, unmanned and is monitored and controlled remotely.

Why Phi? – a lunar evection model

Apogee = position furthest away from Earth. Earth. Perihelion = position closest to the sun. Moon. Perigee = position closest to Earth. Sun. Aphelion = position furthest away from the sun. (Eccentricities greatly exaggerated!)

Lunar evection has been described as the solar perturbation of the lunar orbit.

One lunar evection is the beat period of the synodic month and the full moon cycle. The result is that it should average about 31.811938 days (45809.19 minutes).

Comparing synodic months (SM), anomalistic months (AM), and lunar evections (LE) with the full moon cycle (FMC) we find:
1 FMC = 13.944335 SM
1 FMC = 13.944335 + 1 = 14.944335 AM
1 FMC = 13.944335 – 1 = 12.944335 LE

Since 0.944335 * 18 = 16.9983 = 99.99% of 17, and 18 – 17 = 1, we can say for our model:
18 FMC = 233 LE (18*13, -1) = 251 SM (18*14, -1) = 269 AM (18*15, -1)
See: 3 – Matching synodic and anomalistic months.

Greenland ice sheet hides huge ‘impact crater’

Topographic map of Greenland

Something creating a 19-mile wide dent in the Earth’s surface would clearly have been a major strike. If confirmed it would be the most northerly impact crater on Earth.

What looks to be a large impact crater has been identified beneath the Greenland ice sheet, reports BBC News.

The 31km-wide depression came to light when scientists examined radar images of the island’s bedrock.

Investigations suggest the feature was probably dug out by a 1.5km-wide iron asteroid sometime between about 12,000 and three million years ago.

Climate change: UK report suggests drastic reduction of sheep and cattle numbers

English sheep

Sadly no, we’re not making this up. This is what a dumbed-down pseudo-religious belief in failing climate models and theories can lead to.

The number of sheep and cattle in the UK should be reduced by between a fifth and a half to help combat climate change, a report says.

The shift is needed, the government’s advisory Committee on Climate Change (CCC) maintains, because beef and lamb produce most greenhouse gases, reports MercoPress.

Global warming has never stopped in the past hundred years

Earth and climate – an ongoing controversy

Researchers believe the so-called global warming hiatus ended in 2014 ‘as a new El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) event was developing’. Whether there’s a struggle between natural cooling and non-natural warming is an open question. So-called internal variability can surely vary either up or down, i.e. warmer or cooler, in any time frame.

Global warming has been attributed to persistent increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs), especially in CO2, since 1870, the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, say the researchers.

Nevertheless, the upward trend in global mean surface temperature (GMST) slowed or even paused during the first decade of the twenty-first century, even though CO2 levels continued to rise and reached nearly 400 ppm in 2013.

This episode has typically been termed the global warming hiatus or slowdown in warming. The hiatus is characterized as a near-zero trend over a period.

Cobalt – a potential bottleneck in the transition to electric mobility

Typical electric car set-up

We keep hearing this, but the suspicion is that only a fraction of vehicle users are at all bothered, as most don’t want an expensive range-limited electric car with uncertain charging options anyway. Notions of slaying phantom emissions dragons won’t be enough to make them popular, as sales to date show.

The coming electric vehicle boom will significantly increase the demand for cobalt in the EU and globally, says Phys.org.

As a result, demand is expected to exceed supply already in 2020 and the EU must take steps to boost supply and curb demand without hindering the growth in electric vehicles, according to a new report by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), presented at the EU Raw Material Week in Brussels.

Wildfire? Homes Burned, People Killed? Must be Global Warming.

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Spot the crackpot. Clue – it’s not President Trump.

American Elephants

California  Governor Jerry Brown has said that “hundreds of billions” of dollars could be needed to adapt to man-made global warming in “the span of a few years” The Democrat added that “And it’s not millions, it’s billions and tens and probably hundreds of billions even in the span of a few years. We’ve got lots of work to do.”

California does have a “Climate Adaption Strategy” that is supposed to reduce the vulnerability of populations to the effects of future global warming like higher sea levels, more intense storms and more crop failures.

President Donald Trump said he’d pull federal funding if California did not “remedy” its wildfire problems, which Trump blamed for poor forest management practices for large wildfires.

Brown did mention that better forest management was necessary to getting fires under control, but then went on to say “those who deny” man-made global warming were “definitely contributing”…

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Climate change protesters blockade government energy department

Does the UK public have much appetite for this manufactured ‘crisis’ and its over-excitable advocates? The idea that the Earth’s climate can somehow be controlled with technology is a damaging delusion.

Demonstrators have blockaded the UK energy department in London over what they call the climate change crisis, reports BBC News.

They blocked entry to the offices by lying chained together on the pavement.

The UK is seen as a leader in policies to reduce greenhouse gases and ministers will soon be considering tougher targets.

Objection to Drax gas plant on climate grounds

Drax power station [credit: drax.com]

It looks increasingly like the ‘new normal’ to try and get the courts to decide what national electricity generation policy should – or should not – be, by promoting ill-founded paranoia that blames humans for climate variability. Security of supply versus shaky ideology.

ClientEarth objects to Drax Power’s new gas power project, on the grounds that it breaches the government’s planning and climate change recommendations.

100 years of Remembrance

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

Life as a skeptic is summed up in this parody documentary

Join the fake David Attenborough for a brief sardonic tour of the little-known but fascinating – maybe – world of the skeptic (US)/sceptic (UK).

This parody documentary skewers both the skeptic and the superstitious, and accurately shows what issues skeptics face, says The BigThink.

== A video from QED 2018 has made the rounds on the internet, poking fun at skeptics and the credulous alike.