New paper: Energy policy needs to transition to reality

The reality that can’t be faced by many is that the carbon dioxide theory of climate just doesn’t stack up, for many reasons. Expensive subsidies for part-time renewables create both economic and practical problems, as some are already finding out to their cost.

The GWPF – Press release: Rapid decarbonisation is “a delusion”

A prominent Canadian economist has called for the political classes to stop making claims that they cannot fulfil and to return to energy policies grounded in reality.

In a new paper published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), Robert Lyman sets out the economic and technological constraints on delivering decarbonization over the next two or three decades.

UN IPCC Scientist blows whistle on lies about climate, sea level

Quoting from the report: ‘Mörner, meanwhile, cautioned promoters of the man-made warming hypothesis that they were going to ultimately be exposed, with catastrophic consequences for the scientific community.’

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC) is misleading humanity about climate change and sea levels, explained Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner, the retired head of the paleogeophysics and geodynamics at Stockholm University. By Alex Newman @ The New American.
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STOCKHOLM, Sweden — The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC) is misleading humanity about climate change and sea levels, a leading expert on sea levels who served on the UN IPCC told The New American.

California nixes plans for high-speed LA-SF rail line

So much for trains replacing planes in line with current US ‘green’ ideology? The UK equivalent is the HS2 project which is also under pressure from various quarters. Both eye-wateringly expensive.

California Governor Gavin Newsom announced on Tuesday that he was abandoning plans to build a high-speed rail line between Los Angeles and San Francisco, citing the high cost and the time it would take, reports Phys.org.

California Governor Gavin Newsom announced on Tuesday that he was abandoning plans to build a high-speed rail line between Los Angeles and San Francisco, citing the high cost and the time it would take.

Spain, Europe’s second largest carmaker, plans combustion engine ban

The craze for national economic self-harm in the name of supposed climate virtue-signalling seems to be spreading, among politicians at least.

Proposal put forward for country’s first climate law takes swipe at auto-industry, scraps fossil fuel subsidies and sets 2050 goal for 100% renewable power, reports Climate Home News.

Spain is proposing to ban fossil fuel subsidies, dump investments that encourage dirty energy use and drive lighter diesel and petrol vehicles off the road.

GWPF is Having a Contest To Guess 2019’s Temperature

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Predicting a global temperature rise during a solar minimum might be over-optimistic.

sunshine hours

GWPF is having a contest to guess 2019’s Temperature.

My chart of HADCRUT temperatures is below. Note how close Feb 2018 came to Feb 1878! .403 to .528

With GWPF readers having trounced the Met Office at predicting temperatures for 2018, it will very interesting to see if you can do just as well for 2019.

So we hereby announce the 2019 HadCRUT temperature prediction competition. Once again, the opportunity is there to win some magnificent prizes: more whisky, and your choice of a book from the growing range of GWPF titles.

Of course the real prize on offer is to do better than the boys in Exeter. The Met Office are again being very aggressive on the warming front. They are predicting a 0.19°C warming next year (!), plus or minus 0.12°C. So their predicted range is 0.67-0.91°C.

So will carbon dioxide sweep all before it as they think? Will…

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Scientists use eclipse data to study motions in the solar corona

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

The Sun continues to pose questions for scientists, such as the way solar cycle variability works and the surprisingly intense heat of its corona, compared to its surface.

A team of scientists who collected numerous observations of last summer’s total solar eclipse via telescopes and electronic cameras has used the data to better understand motions within the solar corona, the Sun’s outer atmosphere, says Space Reporter.

Jay Pasachoff of Williams College in Williamstown, MA, who led the team in observing the eclipse in Salem, Oregon, presented their findings to the 232nd Meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in early June.

His team has observed numerous solar eclipses during various times in the 11-year sunspot cycle.

House Of Lords Sleaze Watchdog Launches Probe Into UK Climate Change Chief John Gummer

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So far the climate-obsessed BBC News is pretending to be unaware of this story.

Iowa Climate Science Education

The Lords sleaze watchdog has launched a formal investigation into claims that John Selwyn Gummer failed to declaremore than £600,000 of payments made to his private company by ‘green’ businesses that stand to profit from his advice to Ministers. 

Five MPs lodged a complaint with Standards Commissioner Lucy Scott-Moncrieff following last week’s Mail on Sunday revelations about the business interests of the Tory peer, who chairs the influential Climate Change Committee (CCC).

Just hours later, she announced her inquiry into allegations he may have breached code of conduct rules.

A formal investigation has been launched into claims that John Selwyn Gummer failed to declare more than £600,000 of payments made to his private company

The CCC has backed taxpayer-funded subsidies for ‘renewable’ energy projects, and last week we disclosed how Gummer’s family consultancy firm Sancroft International had been paid by businesses working in the same field.

It is understood that a dossier submitted…

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Seattle receives the most snow in 70 years

Two feet of snow in Seattle?

Yes it’s winter, but this is way beyond normal weather for this region as CBS News reports.

Some areas around Seattle received more than 10 inches of snow Saturday, the most in 70 years, the National Weather Service said, and more is on the way as two more storm systems close in on the area.

Researchers find evidence for a new fundamental constant of the Sun

Active solar regions
[image credit: NASA/Goddard]

Very interesting, bearing in mind that magnetism is caused by moving electric charges. The corona has frequencies.

New research undertaken at Northumbria University, Newcastle shows that the sun’s magnetic waves behave differently than currently believed, reports Phys.org.

Their findings have been reported in Nature Astronomy.

After examining data gathered over a 10-year period, the team from Northumbria’s Department of Mathematics, Physics and Electrical Engineering found that magnetic waves in the sun’s corona – its outermost layer of atmosphere – react to sound waves escaping from the inside of the sun.

Grid-scale electricity storage can’t save renewables

Image credit: energy-storage.news

No surprise there, but the points made deserve emphasis. No amount of ideology can defeat the realities of engineering and economics.

Engineer pours cold water on battery and hydrogen technologies – GWPF press release.
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A new briefing paper from the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) dismisses the idea that grid-scale electricity storage can help bring about a UK renewables revolution.

Why Phi? – Resonances of exoplanetary system Kepler-107

Orbital (top line) and synodic relationships of Kepler-107, plus cross-checks

The system has four planets: b,c,d, and e.

The chart to the right is a model of the close orbital relationships of these four recently announced short-period (from 3.18 to 14.75 days) exoplanets.

It can be broken down like this:
b:c = 20:13
c:d = 13:8
d:e = 24:13 (= 8:13 ratio, *3)
b:d = 5:2
c:e = 3:1
(1,2,3,5,8, and 13 are Fibonacci numbers)

Australian court rejects coal mine on climate grounds

Lots of coal in Australia

Are some judges being tempted into overstepping their roles in cases like this? If they are ‘calling climate scientists to testify’ as the report says, which climate scientists get invited? The ruling could yet be appealed.

An Australian court on Friday delivered a landmark ruling by rejecting plans to build a coal mine on the grounds it would worsen climate change, reports Phys.org.

Chief Justice Brian Preston said a planned open cut coal mine in a scenic part of New South Wales state would be in “the wrong place at the wrong time”.

National Suicide: Australia’s Self-Inflicted Energy Crisis Driven by Wind & Solar Obsession

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The renewables malaise is spreading round the world like a cancer. The symptoms can be painful but are easily recognised, as Australians are finding out.

STOP THESE THINGS

Australia’s energy policy reads like a National suicide note: power prices went from the lowest in the world to the highest, in little over a decade.

Plotting the path to destruction is pretty easy: start by throwing $60 billion in subsidies at wind and large-scale solar, demonise cheap and reliable coal-fired power and put lunatics in charge of the whole operation.

Here’s Alan Moran, once again, detailing the source of Australia’s self-inflicted misery.

Reaping the fruits of political sabotage of the electricity industry
Catallaxy Files
Alan Moran
25 January 2019

The third world nature of Australia’s electricity industry was revealed this week with wholesale prices in Victoria and South Australia at the maximum $14,500 for lengthy periods in spite of thousands of customers being cut-off, major users agreeing to shut down demand in return for compensation paid by consumers, and even some oil plants being called in.

The…

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Study confirms that Vikings enjoyed a warmer Greenland

Topographic map of Greenland

We already knew that, but some of the background climate details were not as scientists had thought. They also claim ‘Medieval warmth was localized’ without offering any evidence, while admitting they aren’t sure what caused the warming. Looks like another attempt to downplay the significance of the MWP.

After reconstructing southern Greenland’s climate record over the past 3,000 years, a Northwestern University team found that it was relatively warm when the Norse lived there between 985 and 1450 C.E., compared to the previous and following centuries, says EurekAlert.

“People have speculated that the Norse settled in Greenland during an unusually, fortuitously warm period, but there weren’t any detailed local temperature reconstructions that fully confirmed that. And some recent work suggested that the opposite was true,” said Northwestern’s Yarrow Axford, the study’s senior author. “So this has been a bit of a climate mystery.”

Now that climate mystery finally has been solved.

AAA: Cold weather can cut electric car range over 40 percent

One for the ‘worse than we thought’ file. Anyone running out of power in an EV in winter due to sudden cold weather range reduction has no in-car way to keep warm while waiting for rescue.

Cold temperatures can sap electric car batteries, temporarily reducing their range by more than 40 percent when interior heaters are used, a new study found.

The study of five electric vehicles by AAA also found that high temperatures can cut into battery range, but not nearly as much as the cold, reports TechXplore. The range returns to normal in more comfortable temperatures.

2019: Already a vintage year for climate claptrap

From The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)

It has been an encouraging start to the contest for the year’s loopiest climate story.

First out of the blocks is a cracker from the geography department at University College London with the suggestion that Spanish colonisation in the Americas contributed to global cooling.

Mean streets: Self-driving cars will “cruise” to avoid paying to park

Busy day in Santa
Cruz, CA.

As if city traffic and parking isn’t a big enough headache already for anyone who attempts it, along comes another issue. The proposed cure isn’t much fun either.

Autonomous vehicles “have every incentive to create havoc,” a transportation planner says. UC Santa Cruz Magazine reporting.

With no need to park, self-driving cars will clog city streets and slow traffic to a crawl.

However, a policy fix could address these problems before autonomous vehicles become commonplace, says Adam Millard-Ball.

MET-Office update: There is no update.

In the meantime, here’s how the 2016-2021 forecast (in blue) is doing compared to the latest data (red trace).

Last year, I wrote a short post entitled Met-Office invents infallible climate prediction method, in which I showed how the MET-Office would always update their ‘decadal’ (actually semi-decadal) climate prediction before the data caught up with them.

At the time, they were promising to update their prediction in January of this year. But they haven’t, despite describing themselves as “WMO Lead Centre for Annual-to-Decadal Climate Prediction“. So instead, I’ve done a retrospective update of the data on their 2016 to 2021″decadal” prediction.

Jim Ratcliffe: Government using ‘slippery’ manoeuvres to kill off British shale gas

Credit: mygridgb.co.uk

H/T The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
Relying on interconnectors to get out of trouble when the wind isn’t blowing won’t be a good plan long-term, when most of Europe is pushing its own wind-dependent electricity plans forward. Nuclear and coal are largely fading out of the UK scene, so for industrial-scale reliable power it has to be gas or bust in the end, whether UK-sourced or not.

The chairman of Britain’s biggest private company has accused the government of using “slippery back door manoeuvres” to kill off fracking in the UK, reports City A.M.

Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the billionaire founder of Ineos, said the government is sticking to a plan which is “unworkable, unhelpful and playing politics with the country’s future”.

Obliquity, inclination and eccentricity of Earth – a model: Part 2

Kepler’s trigon – the orientation of consecutive Jupiter-Saturn synodic periods, showing the repeating triangular shape (trigon).

This of course follows on from the very recent Part 1 of the model. Since Jupiter and Saturn are the dominant planets in our solar system, we can speculate that they may have a significant effect on the obliquity of smaller bodies. Or they may not – no-one knows, but we can look at possible evidence.
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Precession of the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction (J-S) was worked out by Kepler centuries ago, as shown in his diagram to the right.

‘As successive great conjunctions occur nearly 120° apart, their appearances form a triangular pattern. In a series every fourth conjunction returns after some 60 years in the vicinity of the first. These returns are observed to be shifted by some 7–8°’ – Wikipedia.