Climate Alarmist Banks Go Carbon-Colonialist

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If the false ideology of a ‘carbon road block’ by big finance hits Africans looking for ways to improve their national economies and living standards, expect China to move in even more than it has done already.

PA Pundits International

By Paul Driessen and David Wojick, Ph.D. ~

Africa has the world’s lowest electrification rate. Its power consumption per capita is just 613 kilowatt-hours per year, compared to 6,500 kWh in Europe and 13,000 in the United States, African Development Bank (AfDB) President Akinwumi Adesina observed in July 2017. That’s 9.4% of EU and 4.7% of US electricity consumption. It’s equivalent to Americans having electricity only 1 hour a day, 8 hours a week, 411 hours per year – at totally unpredictable times, for a few minutes, hours or days at a stretch.

It’s actually even worse than that. Excluding significantly electrified South Africa, sub-Sahara Africans consume an almost irrelevant 181 kWh of electricity per capita – 1.4% of the average American’s!

In Sub-Saharan Africa, over 600 million people have no electricity, and over 700 million rely on wood, grass and dung for cooking and heating. The region is home…

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Extending El Niño event predictions to a year

The El Niño of 1997-8

Let’s see how this theory works out in practice.

A group of researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Beijing Normal University and Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen has found a way to predict El Niño events up to a year before they occur, says Phys.org.

In their paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes their complexity-based approach to better predicting the seemingly random weather events.

El Niño is a weather event in which the water surface temperatures in some western parts of the Pacific grow warmer than normal and then seep eastward.

Scientists are eager to learn more about such events because they can contribute to excess rainfall in some parts of the world and drought conditions in others.

What happened to Cahokia Mounds, the largest ancient city in North America?

This extract from an article at Historic Mysteries looks at the demise of the city, linked to major climatic changes that happened centuries before the arrival of the modern industrial world. Cahokia Mounds is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
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In Southern Illinois, situated along the Mississippi River in Collinsville, an ancient settlement that we call Cahokia rose to great power between 800-1200 CE.

Nicknamed America’s Forgotten City or The City of the Sun, the massive complex once contained as many as 40,000 people and spread across nearly 4,000 acres.

The most notable features of the site are hand-made earthen mounds which held temples, political buildings, and burial pits.

Cahokia Mounds are a testament to the highly organized culture of the early Mississippian people who built the largest city in pre-Columbian North America.

Steve Brown: Compilation of Solar Cycle 25 forecasts.

Contributor Steve Brown has sent me this nice plot he’s made of Solar Cycle 25 forecasts. It’s worth noting that Rick Salvador’s (blue) is the earliest, made back in 2013. The ‘NASA consensus’ forecast (green) is quite similar to Leif Svalgaard’s.

Scottish Highlands experience 16.8C December temperature record – due to the Foehn effect

The causes of the foehn effect in the lee of mountains [image credit: Depunity @ Wikipedia]

Foehn (Föhn) winds are an interesting climatic phenomenon that cause rapid temperature changes. They’re well-known in Alpine regions but not so much in the UK.
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The highest ever temperature recorded for the UK this late in the year was early on Sunday morning in the Scottish Highlands, reports LBC News.

A Met Office observation post in Cassley, in Sutherland, north Scotland, recorded a temperature of 16.8C at 3am on Sunday morning – this was well above the average nighttime temperature for that area in late December of zero degrees.

However given how early in the morning the high temperature was recorded, most people would have slept through it.

DoD study: climate change will destroy us… in 2020

This was a scenario rather than a prediction, but the two are easily confused in today’s alarm-oriented world. Interestingly they expected climate trouble ‘regardless of human activity’.

Read the DoD’s terrifying 2004 study and gain perspective about today’s warnings of Climate Emergency, says Larry Kummer @ Fabius Maximus.
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The DoD (US Department of Defense) says:

Are we prepared for history to repeat itself again?

There is a debate in newspapers around the globe today on the impact of human activity on climate change. Because economic prosperity is correlated with energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, it is often argued that economic progress leads to climate change. Competing evidence suggests that climate change can occur, regardless of human activity as seen in climate events that happened prior to modern society.

It’s important to understand human impacts on the environment – both what’s done to accelerate and decelerate (or perhaps even reverse) the tendency toward climate change. Alternative fuels, greenhouse gas emission controls, and conservation efforts are worthwhile endeavors. In addition, we should prepare for the inevitable effects of abrupt climate change – which will likely come regardless of human activity.

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Source: An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United
States National Security [October 2003 – 23 pages]

A Year Of Ineffective Climate Madness Looms

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Climate obsessives risk drowning in their own fanaticism and absurdity, while the rest of us look on in bemusement at their pointless antics.

PA Pundits International

By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~

The year 2019 saw the rapid rise of climate hysteria, but as the saying goes: “You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.” Now that the hysteria is firmly established and well organized, it is sure to get bigger and louder. But I see very little coming from it except the noise, as long as skeptics keep up the good fight.

This is especially true in the U.S. Presidential race, which is climate policy-wise by far the biggest thing going on in the world. Many of the Democrat candidates are going to try to ride the hysterical wave to victory. Their winning is not likely.

My take is the further left you go the fewer votes you get, and these folks are going far left on climate. In my view the only viable candidate in the pack is Biden and he may not be crazy enough to get…

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Forces from Earth’s spin may spark earthquakes and volcanic eruptions at Mount Etna

Mount Etna, Sicily

The article says: ‘Every 6.4 years, the axes line up and the wobble fades for a short time.’ This looks a lot like 5.4 Chandler wobbles (CW), so you would have 6.4 years minus 5.4 CW = 1 cycle, i.e. 32:27 ratio = 5 (32-27) cycles.
Much more analysis of this time period and related matters in this 2013 Talkshop post:
Ian Wilson: Solar System Timings Evolved Lunar Orbital Elements Linked to Earth’s Chandler Wobble.

New research suggests forces pulling on Earth’s surface as the planet spins may trigger earthquakes and eruptions at volcanoes, reports Phys.org.

Seismic activity and bursts of magma near Italy’s Mount Etna increased when Earth’s rotational axis was furthest from its geographic axis, according to a new study comparing changes in Earth’s rotation to activity at the well-known Italian volcano.

Jetsetters at the Davos World Economic Forum to demand global climate action

Davos

Many of the usual suspects of high finance and politics will be flying in by private jet to scope out the financial opportunities and rub shoulders with fellow power brokers. More hyped-up climate fear equals more potential profit, and never mind the ’emissions’.

An impatient demand for the world to work harder to counter “climate change” will top the agenda at the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting next month in Davos, Switzerland, says Breitbart News.

Organizers expect some 3,000 corporate and government representatives to fly in from around the world to broach climate issues at the luxury ski resort, with a squadron of some 1700 private jets providing transport for the bulk of the attendees.

Six hot rocky exoplanets orbiting very close to their stars could shed light on the geology of planets in our solar system

A researcher said of one of the new finds: “It is hard to see how the planet got there!”
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Six ‘very hot’ rocky exoplanets orbiting stars in the local region of the Milky Way hold the key to understanding more about how the Earth was formed, astronomers claim.

Researchers from the Open University have been studying planets discovered by the European Space Observatory’s planet-hunting telescope in Chile.

They are orbiting stars between 160 and 440 light years from Earth and all have hot surfaces with temperatures of around 2,012F to 3,272F.

The new findings could shed light on the geology of Earth and other rocky planets in the Solar System including Mercury, Venus and Mars, researchers say.

Full Daily Mail report here.

Munich Climate Conference 2019

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Open-minded independent scientists, not wedded to theories of man-made climate warming by minor trace gases, present some of their ideas.

Science Matters

Antifa thugs outside Munich Conference Center.

Thanks to Andreas Müller for writing at his blog hintermbusch on four key presentations at the EIKE Climate Conference on Nov. 23, 2019. As many have read, eco-terrorists forced the sessions out of the scheduled venue, but the gatherings went on elsewhere.  So much for dialogue in search of scientific truth. Here are some excerpts in italics with my bolds to encourage readers to read his informative report. (link in red above).

In this blog post, I summarize these lectures and add links to the video clips for you to follow the lectures on your own and in full detail (Only the first talk was in German and is not easily accessible for most of the international public).

Christian Schlüchter, Switzerland

Prof. em. Christian Schlüchter is a geologist and has studied the glaciers of the Alps in great detail. He reports the findings of…

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Is seaweed the solution to sustainable biofuel – or another red herring?

Image credit: cleantechnica.com

We’ve added the red herring query to the original headline. Cost, and realistic scale, of production aren’t discussed here. It still ends with fuel-burning.

Produced from organic matter or waste, biofuels play an important role in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and are one of the largest sources of renewable energy in use today.

Most of Europe’s renewable transport target is currently met with land-based biofuels,
says TechXplore.

However, many of the feedstocks like corn and alfalfa used to produce such biofuels aren’t economically and environmentally sustainable.

The human cost of the EV revolution

Child exploitation claims are casting a large shadow as a new case goes to court. Looking the other way won’t do any more, at least not if these major firms lose the legal argument – which would mean higher product prices. Not what the so-called ‘EV revolution’ needs, with high prices and other issues already deterring buyers.

Cobalt is one of the most important metals in the tech industry, but the use of child labor in cobalt mines in the DRC is a major problem for Big Tech and electric car manufacturers, says OilPrice.com.

There’s a chance that the iPhone you’re about to get for Christmas contains cobalt mined by a six-year-old. There’s also a chance that that six-year-old has been killed or maimed in the processes of mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the lion’s share of the world’s cobalt comes from.

Or, maybe, for those whose Christmas lists are more upscale, you’ll be driving around in a new Tesla next week, with a battery containing cobalt from that same mine.

Our luxuries are necessarily someone else’s sacrifice – and sometimes that sacrifice is the ultimate one.

Australia fires: PM rejects ‘reckless’ calls to limit coal industry

Lots of coal in Australia

Evidence that at least one national leader understands that winding down the economy to impress shouty ‘activists’ is not a sensible policy, despite the current emergencies.

Australian PM Scott Morrison says he will not make “reckless” cuts to the nation’s coal industry, despite criticism of his response to climate change and a deadly bushfire crisis.

Australia is being ravaged by bushfires which have killed nine people and razed hundreds of homes since September, reports BBC News.

As the crisis escalated last week, Mr Morrison faced a backlash for deciding to take a family holiday to Hawaii.

On Monday, he reiterated he would not adjust his policies through “panic”.

Trump turns the screws on Nordstream 2.

Germany can't have more than 50 thousand GREAT U.S. soldiers on their soil and take Russian gas at the same time. This is another example of how our ALLIES were fooling us for years. This time is OVER. With me. They need to choose which side they belong to!! #NordStream2

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldtrodi) December 21, 2019

DW.com has this

US sanctions targeting the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany became law on Friday evening after President Donald Trump signed off on a massive defense bill.

The sanctions target companies involved in constructing the $11 billion (€9.93 billion) energy project, which will transport Russian gas under the Baltic Sea and deliver it directly to Germany.

The bill describes Nord Stream 2 as a “tool of coercion and political leverage” that Moscow could use against Berlin — and says it risks significantly weakening US ties to Germany and other European allies.

US lawmakers in both houses of Congress overwhelmingly approved the sanctions.

Netherlands told by court to cut greenhouse gases further

Dutch Parliament buildings [credit: Wikipedia]

The descent into a climate fantasy world continues apace. Who’s next?

The highest court in the Netherlands has upheld a ruling requiring the government to slash greenhouse gas emissions by at least 25% of 1990 levels by the end of next year, reports BBC News.

The case was brought six years ago by the Urgenda environment group in a bid to force ministers to go well beyond EU targets.

However, the chances of the government reaching the target look slim. By the end of 2018, emissions were down only 15% on 1990 levels.

Goldman Sachs operative Carney slithers from BoE to UN climate con job.

Bank of England governor Mark Carney, who previously served as Canada’s top central banker, will be taking on a new role as the United Nations’ special envoy on climate action and climate finance.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres made the announcement while speaking to reporters in Madrid on Sunday, adding the move will take effect next year.

Sunspots set a Space Age Record

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The switch to solar cycle 25 must be getting close, if not here already.

Spaceweather.com

Dec. 17, 2019: Solar Minimum is becoming very deep indeed. Over the weekend, the sun set a Space Age record for spotlessness. So far in 2019, the sun has been without sunspots for more than 271 days, including the last 34 days in a row. Since the Space Age began, no other year has had this many blank suns.

Above: The blank sun on Dec. 16, 2019. Credit: NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory

The previous record-holder was the year 2008, when the sun was blank for 268 days. That was during the epic Solar Minimum of 2008-2009, formerly the deepest of the Space Age. Now 2019 has moved into first place.

Solar Minimum is a normal part of the 11-year sunspot cycle. The past two (2008-2009 and 2018-2019) have been long and deep, making them “century-class” Minima. To find a year with more blank suns, you have to go back to…

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Small nuclear reactor proposal passes latest hurdle

Small modular reactor [credit: ANS Nuclear Cafe]

The battle to make nuclear power more practical and affordable steps up a gear.

NuScale Power’s small modular reactor (SMR) design has cleared the latest stage of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)’s review process, reports New Civil Engineer.

The reactor is the world’s first SMR to undergo design certification review by the NRC, after passing phase 4 of the review process. It is on track for approval by September 2020.

SMR supporters see the reactors as a safer, more affordable nuclear power option.

Norway Names Controversial Climate Change Skeptic As New Oil Minister

Norwegian oil platform, North sea [image credit: Wikipedia]

Sounds like a woman of much commonsense, then. Of course any perceived deviation from climate alarmist orthodoxy translates as ‘controversial’ in much of the media.

Norway appointed on Wednesday a skeptic on wind power and climate change as its new oil minister who will oversee oil and gas drilling and wind turbine installations on and offshore Western Europe’s largest oil producer, reports OilPrice.com.

Sylvi Listhaug of the right-wing Progress Party was appointed Minister of Petroleum and Energy on Wednesday, replacing Kjell-Børge Freiberg who was “honourably discharged from his office,” the Norwegian government said.

Listhaug is taking over one of the most important ministries which oversees one of Norway’s top exports—oil and gas—as well as the government’s majority stake in energy giant Equinor.