Like Polar Bears, Coral Reefs Are Doing Fine

Posted on PAPundits
By Dr. Jay Lehr ~

Corals are animals, actually closely related to jelly fish but of course differing in that they have a limestone skeleton made up of calcium carbonate. Their growth rates can be studied to give us knowledge of the ocean and its sea level over thousands of years.

They have lived throughout the oceans of our planet for many thousand years. Over those many years they have experienced both much warmer and much colder periods of geologic time. The bleaching that they have experienced in the view of many climate alarmists is not a sign of their destruction or in fact ill health. It is not a sign that the end of the world as we know it is in sight.

UK Government pledges £800M carbon capture and storage fund

National energy supplies will be manipulated by the government long into the future, under the dubious banner of climate concerns. Providers will have to go along with whatever the latest prescriptive policies are, including forcing up the price of gas. Forget market forces and open competition. What could possibly go wrong?

In his Budget announcement [this week], chancellor Rishi Sunak said the CCS Infrastructure Fund would be worth “at least £800M”, with the first site to be established by the mid-2020s, reports New Civil Engineer.

The initiatives will create up to 6,000 jobs in Teesside, Humberside, Merseyside and St Fergus in Scotland – in a move described by Sunak as “levelling up in action”.

CCS can provide flexible low carbon power and decarbonise many industrial processes. It is important for the UK since other key sources of low carbon electricity – such as offshore and onshore wind and solar – are weather dependent.

Researchers find commercial fast-charging damages EV batteries

It turns out that a method based on reacting to internal resistance during fast recharges should be less damaging to the battery. However, this suggests not-so-fast mid-journey recharge times.
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Commercial fast-charging stations subject electric car batteries to high temperatures and high resistance that can cause them to crack, leak, and lose their storage capacity, according to researchers at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) in a new open-access study published in the journal Energy Storage.

To remedy this, the researchers have developed a method for charging at lower temperatures with less risk of catastrophic damage and loss of storage capacity, reports Green Car Congress.

In order to make EVs more competitive with combustion engine vehicles, development of an effective fast charging technique is inevitable. However, improper employment of fast charging can damage the battery and bring safety hazards. Herein, industry based along with our proposed internal resistance (IR) based fast charging techniques were performed on commercial Panasonic NCR 18650B cylindrical batteries. To further investigate the fast charging impact and electrode degradation mechanisms, electrochemical analysis and material characterization techniques including EIS (electrochemical impedance spectroscopy), GITT (galvanostatic intermittent titration technique), SEM (scanning electron microscopy), and XRD (X-ray diffraction) were implemented.

—Sebastian et al.

Mihri Ozkan, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and Cengiz Ozkan, a professor of mechanical engineering in the Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering, led a group that charged one set of discharged Panasonic NCR 18650B cylindrical lithium-ion batteries, found in Tesla cars, using the same industry fast-charging method as fast chargers found along freeways.

They also charged a set using a new fast-charging algorithm based on the battery’s internal resistance, which interferes with the flow of electrons. The internal resistance of a battery fluctuates according to temperature, charge state, battery age, and other factors. High internal resistance can cause problems during charging.

The UC Riverside Battery Team charging method is an adaptive system that learns from the battery by checking the battery’s internal resistance during charging. It rests when internal resistance kicks in to eliminate loss of charge capacity.

For the first 13 charging cycles, the battery storage capacities for both charging techniques remained similar. After that, however, the industry fast-charging technique caused capacity to fade much faster—after 40 charging cycles the batteries kept only 60% of their storage capacity.

Batteries charged using the internal resistance charging method retained more than 80% capacity after the 40th cycle.

Full report here.

What causes an ice age to end?

Greenland ice sheet (east coast) [image credit: Hannes Grobe @ Wikipedia]

Of course the other question about the start of an ice age still remains.

New University of Melbourne research has revealed that ice ages over the last million years ended when the tilt angle of the Earth’s axis was approaching higher values, reports Phys.org.

During these times, longer and stronger summers melted the large Northern Hemisphere ice sheets, propelling the Earth’s climate into a warm ‘interglacial’ state, like the one we’ve experienced over the last 11,000 years.

The study by Ph.D. candidate, Petra Bajo, and colleagues also showed that summer energy levels at the time these ‘ice-age terminations’ were triggered controlled how long it took for the ice sheets to collapse, with higher energy levels producing fast collapse.

Researchers are still trying to understand how often these periods happen and how soon we can expect another one.

Analysis of the 1470-year Dansgaard-Oeschger climate oscillation

Wikipedia says:

Dansgaard–Oeschger events (often abbreviated D–O events) are rapid climate fluctuations that occurred 25 times during the last glacial period. Some scientists say that the events occur quasi-periodically with a recurrence time being a multiple of 1,470 years, but this is debated. —

The 25 occurrences of 1470 years are represented in this synodic chart posted in the comments of our 2018 blog post:
Possible origin of Dansgaard-Oeschger abrupt climate events.

Re. the ‘debate’, let’s take a line from this paper:
On the 1470-year pacing of Dansgaard-Oeschger warm events
Michael Schulz
First published: 01 May 2002
Citations: 99
‘a fundamental pacing period of ~1470 years seems to control the timing of the onset of the Dansgaard-Oeschger events.’

Another study: Timing of abrupt climate change: A precise clock
Stefan Rahmstorf
First published: 21 May 2003

An analysis of the GISP2 ice core record from Greenland reveals that abrupt climate events appear to be paced by a 1,470-year cycle with a period that is probably stable to within a few percent; with 95% confidence the period is maintained to better than 12% over at least 23 cycles. This highly precise clock points to an origin outside the Earth system; oscillatory modes within the Earth system can be expected to be far more irregular in period.

[bold added]

However, researchers often admit defeat when looking for a viable mechanism to explain its regularity, or just say there isn’t one to date.

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

Returning to the synodics chart, a relevant number doesn’t appear in it. The Jupiter-Saturn conjunction of 19.865~ years is an important period in the solar system, and it returns to almost the same position after every three occurrences, as Johannes Kepler noted with his ‘trigon’, centuries ago.

We can work out the rate of movement per conjunction in degrees:
360 – ((360 / S) * J-S) = 117.147 degrees
(360 / 117.147) * J-S = 61.046482y (‘JS-360’)
[Data: https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?planet_phys_par ]

Then, from the chart:
1470*25 / ‘JS-360’ = 602.00029
Check: (602*360) / 117.147 = 1849.983 (1850 J-S, see chart)
Since ‘JS-360’ is almost exactly a whole number (602), the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction should be in its original position at the end of the 25 D-O cycles.

Adding 602 to the orbits of each planet = multiples of 25:
223(N) + 602 = 825 (25*33) = 1850-1025(S-N)
[33 = 74-41]
1248(S) + 602 = 1850 (25*74)
3098(J) + 602 = 3700 (25*74*2)

Another way to get multiples of 25:
Add 2 to each orbit number (see chart), and subtract 2 from 602.

More on the 602 number:
602 = 14*43
14*61.046482y = 854.651y
43 J-S = 854.197y
These two results are only about half a year apart, and we find:
43*43 = 1849 J-S
Add 1 = 1850 J-S completing the 25 D-O cycle.

43*61.046482y = 2625 years (2624.9987)
1470:2625 = 14:25 ratio
1470*25 = 2625*14 (hence 602 of ‘JS-360’ = 14*43)

Obliquity note:
28 D-O = 41160 years, a fair match to the expected 41 kyr period.
One paper refers to a fit between D-O and obliquity.
Others support the notion of a link — possibly a topic for another post.
(28*25*1470 = 1,029,000 years)

Example of a 1470 year period from Arnholm’s solar simulator — click on image to enlarge:

Showing Neptune, Jupiter, Saturn and Earth.
* * *
Another one — Jupiter, Neptune, Saturn

Social Changes With COVID-19 Are A Prelude To Life With Less Fossil Fuels

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Message to climate obsessives – be careful what you wish for…

PA Pundits International

By Ronald Stein ~

While the world is feverishly trying to reduce emissions from fossil fuel usage, we get hit with the horrific contagious Coronavirus COVID-19. We’ve seen extensive self-imposed social adjustments to transportation that are very similar to what will be required to live with less fossil fuels in the future.

We’ve seen a serious reduction in the usage of the transportation infrastructures of airlines, cruise ships, as well as automobiles, trucks and their impact on the leisure and entertainment industries, all to avoid crowds.

Before fossil fuels and the thousands of products made from petroleum derivatives, and electricity that followed, the world was a zero-sum snake pit. One that was at war against one another scrounging for food, water, and shelter. In the 1800’s most people never traveled 100-200 miles from where they were born. Life expectancy throughout Europe hovered between 20 and 30 years of age.

The social lifestyles…

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Cost of ‘net zero’ will be astronomical, new reports warn

It could cost over £100,000 per household, leading to zero measureable effect on the climate. Going down this rabbit hole looks like a diabolically bad idea, but it’s official UK government policy regardless of expense.
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The cost of reaching the government’s “Net Zero” target will be astronomical for the UK economy.

That’s according to analysis by two new reports published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

The reports find that decarbonising the electricity system and domestic housing in the next three decades will cost over £2.3 trillion pounds.

The final bill will surpass £3 trillion, or £100,000 per household, once the cost of decarbonising major emitting sectors like manufacturing, transport and agriculture are included.

This is the equivalent of a £100 billion HS2 project every single year.

Ancient shell shows days were half-hour shorter 70 million years ago

New laser technology delves into Earth’s history.
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Earth turned faster at the end of the time of the dinosaurs than it does today, reports Phys.org, rotating 372 times a year compared to the current 365, according to a new study of fossil mollusk shells from the late Cretaceous.

This means a day lasted only 23 and a half hours, according to the new study in AGU’s journal Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology.

The ancient mollusk, from an extinct and wildly diverse group known as rudist clams, grew fast, laying down daily growth rings. The new study used lasers to sample minute slices of shell and count the growth rings more accurately than human researchers with microscopes.

Climate mythology update: UK ‘can’t go climate neutral before 2050’

They must be hoping to bludgeon people into accepting the ‘climate neutral’ nonsense if they keep spouting it for long enough. Any government that says “you can’t fly anywhere on holiday any more” isn’t going to last long.

The UK cannot reach net zero before 2050 unless people stop flying and eating red meat, a report says.

But it warns that the British public do not look ready to take such steps and substantially change their lifestyle, says BBC News.

The report challenges the views of campaign group Extinction Rebellion.

Emissions Analytics finds pollution from tire wear can be 1,000x worse than exhaust emissions

Credit: carsdirect.com

As Green Car Congress points out, weight is a major factor for vehicles and EV batteries are heavy. Time to look at real issues instead of non-existent ‘carbon pollution’.

Pollution from tire wear can be 1,000 times worse than a car’s exhaust emissions, Emissions Analytics has found.

Emissions Analytics is an independent global testing and data specialist for the scientific measurement of real-world emissions and fuel efficiency for passenger and commercial vehicles and non-road mobile machinery.

Harmful particulate matter from tires—and also brakes—is a growing environmental problem, and is being exacerbated by the increasing popularity of large, heavy vehicles such as SUVs, and growing demand for electric vehicles, which are heavier than standard cars because of their batteries.

Vehicle tire wear pollution is completely unregulated, unlike exhaust emissions which have been rapidly reduced by car makers due to the pressure placed on them by European emissions standards.

New cars now emit very little in the way of particulate matter but there is growing concern around non-exhaust emissions (NEEs).

Non-exhaust emissions are particles released into the air from brake wear, tire wear, road surface wear and re-suspension of road dust during on-road vehicle usage.

No legislation is in place to limit or reduce NEEs, but they cause a great deal of concern for air quality. NEEs are currently believed to constitute the majority of primary particulate matter from road transport, 60% of PM2.5 and 73% of PM10.

In the 2019 report ‘Non-Exhaust Emissions from Road Traffic’, the UK Government’s Air Quality Expert Group (AQEG), recommended that NEEs are immediately recognized as a source of ambient concentrations of airborne particulate matter, even for vehicles with zero exhaust emissions of particles—such as EVs.

Full report here.

Coronavirus knocks alleged climate crisis out of the headlines

CO2 is not pollution

What a drag for climate alarmists. Anyone who thinks we have ‘carbon pollution’ (see below) has a terminology problem, so can’t be much of an expert. They’re now going all-out to pretend carbon dioxide is affecting air quality, an obvious absurdity as vegetation depends on it for growth, aka photosynthesis. Should we believe these ‘experts’ don’t know that?
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Economic shock waves from the coronavirus outbreak have curbed carbon pollution from China and beyond, says Phys.org, but hopes for climate benefits from the slowdown are likely to be dashed quickly, experts say.

As governments prepare to spend their way out of the crisis, including with large infrastructure projects, global warming concerns will be little more than an afterthought, dwarfed by a drive to prop up a stuttering world economy, they say.

Preparations for a make-or-break climate summit in November are already off track, with host Britain focused on its Brexit transition, and the challenge to its health system of the gathering epidemic.

Get Ready for Sprite Season

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Includes a beginner’s guide to the various types of sprite now known to occur.

Spaceweather.com

March 7, 2020: Sprite season is coming. Spring thunderstorms often produce the year’s first big bursts of upward-directed lightning. To get ready, Puerto Rican sprite chaser Frankie Lucena has prepared a chart to identify the different forms, including a newly-discovered type of sprite called “the Ghost.”

“This chart provides just a glimpse of what can be seen and photographed above very strong thunderstorms,” says Lucena. “I used actual images, enhanced and slightly modified to better show what they actually look like.”

“This is the first chart to show the Ghost and a Negative Sprite event,” he continues. “The Ghost is a green colored shadow that appears above some sprites. The green color is caused by electrons exciting oxygen molecules in the mesosphere, approximately 80 km high. A Negative Sprite is triggered by a -CG lightning discharge as opposed to a regular sprite which is triggered by a +CG lightning discharge.”…

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ARCTIC SEA ICE –Icebreaker Trapped Resupplying MOSAiC–

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The MOSAiC crowd ignored the fact they would be in the Arctic at solar minimum, and a deeper than usual one at that. Here’s the result.

Sunrise's Swansong

In my last post I mentioned that the Russian icebreaker  Kapitan Dranitsyn had to battle thick sea-ice to resupply the Polarstern at the MOSAiC site. Contact was successful, and cranes began to  unload and load supplies that were hauled by tractor between the two ships.

A fresh crew of scientists relieved the crew that has been working there.

With temperatures down around -30ºC, the open water in the wake of the Kapitan Dranitsyn froze over swiftly. Men could walk on the new ice within 24 hours.

By the time the transfer of men and supplies was complete the ship was frozen so fast it could not extract itself. The news is now that the Russians are sending a second icebreaker, the Admiral Makarov, to help the first icebreaker free itself. (Note the twilight in the above picture. The are located close enough to the Pole to see a very swift…

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Earth’s Ancient Barometric Pressure

Image credit: theonlinefisherman.com

A rare chance to brush up on your *vesicle paleobarometry* — or to put it another way, learn that air pressure at sea level has not always been around the 1 bar (1000 mb) that we expect to find nowadays. According to the ideal gas law, pressure and temperature are closely related, implying historic climate variability, but results so far seem inconclusive.

NASA says:
Researchers supported in part by the NASA Astrobiology Program have attempted to better understand global barometric pressure on Earth during the Archaean by studying vesicle sizes in 2.9 billion year-old lavas that erupted near sea level.

Today, Earth’s global barometric pressure is 1 bar at sea level. However, barometric pressure has changed throughout the planet’s history.

The political storm over green targets will be even bigger than Brexit – Sherrelle Jacobs

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Now the nuclear industry is holding out the begging bowl.
https://nzenews.com/2020/03/05/nuclear-industry-says-uk-climate-goal-at-risk/

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Just when we thought the war was over, it is starting to dawn on some London hacks that it has only just begun. Beyond the Red Wall are rumblings of a new revolt, utterly unanticipated by No 10 and overlooked by a liberal media still shell-shocked by the election. With its drive to “green” the economy at any cost, the Tory party has seemingly decided to celebrate its populist landslide by bogging down the country in zero-carbon paternalism. And so we career towards another People vs Establishment conflict that could be more explosive even than that sparked by the referendum.

A savvy politician like Boris Johnson can still reverse No 10’s green strategy, which moved on this week from banning petrol and diesel cars to the revival of onshore wind farms. He must – all the ingredients for another seismic uprising are already simmering.

First is…

View original post 722 more words

High energy ‘All Climate’ battery is safer for electric vehicles

EC Power’s All-Climate Battery

This type of battery, adopted by BMW among others, will be used in runabout vehicles at the next Winter Olympics in Beijing. Its self-heating feature means it can perform well in sub-zero conditions, unlike most Li-ion batteries. One report says it’s ‘only 1.5 percent heavier and costs 0.04 percent more than a conventional lithium-ion battery’.

A lithium-ion battery that is safe, has high power and can last for 1 million miles has been developed by a team in Penn State’s Battery and Energy Storage Technology (BEST) Center, reports TechXplore.

Electric vehicle batteries typically require a tradeoff between safety and energy density. If the battery has high energy and power density, which is required for uphill driving or merging on the freeway, then there is a chance the battery can catch fire or explode in the wrong conditions.

But materials that have low energy/power density, and therefore high safety, tend to have poor performance. There is no material that satisfies both. For that reason, battery engineers opt for performance over safety.

Neptune, Uranus, Pluto and the Grand Synod

Image credit: beforeitsnews.com

The aim here is to show how the synodic periods and orbits of these three planets align with the so-called Grand Synod, a period of about 4628 years which has 27 Uranus-Neptune conjunctions and almost 233 Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions. Its half-period is sometimes referred to as the Hallstatt cycle (2314 years +/- a variable margin).

1. U-N ‘long period’
1420 Uranus-Neptune conjunctions = 1477 Neptune orbits
(for calculations, see Footnote)
1477 – 1420 = 57
Uranus-Neptune 360 degrees return is 1420/57 U-N = 24.91228 U-N long period = 4270.119 years

2. GS : U-N ratio
Grand Synod = 27 U-N = 4627.967 years (= ~233 Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions)
27 / 24.91228 = 1.0838028
1.0838028 * 12 = 13.005633
Therefore the ratio of 4627.967:4270.119 is almost exactly 13:12 (> 99.956% true)

3. Orbital data
Turning to the orbit periods nearest to the Grand Synod:
28 Neptune = 4614.157y
55 Uranus = 4620.927y
(Data: https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?planet_phys_par )

4. Factor of 12
These periods fall slightly short of the 27 U-N Grand Synod (~4628 years).
However, multiplying by 12 and adding one orbit to each, gives:
28*12,+1 (337) Neptune = 55534.67y
55*12,+1 (661) Uranus = 55535.14y
27*12 (661 – 337) U-N = 55535.61y

Now the numbers match to within a year +/- 55535 years.
Also, the period is 12 Grand Synods (12*4628 = 55536y), or 13 U-N ‘long’ periods.

5. Pluto data
Pluto’s orbit period is 247.92065 years.
55535 / 247.92065y = 224.003
So 224 Pluto orbits also equate to 12 Grand Synods.

Therefore, a U-N-P synodic chart can be created for that period of time.

6. Neptune:Pluto orbits
Neptune has one more orbit in the period than an exact 3:2 ratio with Pluto – a planetary resonance.
224 P = 112*2
337 N = 112*3, +1
113 N-P = 112, +1

7. Phi factor
Uranus and Neptune both have one more orbit than this ratio:
660:336 = (55*12):(21*16)
55/21 = Phi²
12/16 = 3/4
Therefore the U:N ratio is almost (3/4 of Phi²):1

The U-N-P chart should repeat every 12 Grand synods i.e. every 55,535 years or so.
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Footnote
360 / Neptune orbit (164.79132) = 2.184581
2.184581 * U-N conjunction (171.40619) = 374.4507
374.4507 – 360 = 14.4507

Obtain nearest multiple of 360 degrees:
1420 * 14.4507 = 20519.9994
20520 / 360 = 57
1420 + 57 = 1477
1420 U-N = 1477 Neptune orbits
1420 + 1477 = 2897 Uranus orbits

Update (Dec. 2020): the number of occurrences of the Uranus-Neptune conjunction precession in the period is 337 – 324 = 13. Therefore the ratio of that period to the Grand Synod (GS) is 13:12, because the GS is 27 U-N and 324 = 27*12.

Same CO2 but ‘greener’ label for proposed UK petrol change

E10 petrol still emits carbon dioxide (CO2) when burned, just as biomass fuelled power stations do. So if there really was a ‘climate emergency’ this proposed change would have zero immediate effect on it. The report claims E10 ‘contains less carbon and more ethanol than fuels currently on sale’, but that’s negligible. What happens is that they offset the burned CO2 against CO2 captured when crops used to make the ethanol are grown. But the land used for ethanol production was probably used for agriculture before that anyway, so the argument is weak to say the least. But governments love their greenwash.
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A more eco-friendly petrol could be introduced to garages in the UK from next year, says BBC News.

The government is consulting on making E10 – which contains less carbon and more ethanol than fuels currently on sale – the new standard petrol grade.

The move could cut CO2 emissions from transport by 750,000 tonnes per year, the Department for Transport said.

However, the lower carbon fuel would not be compatible with some older vehicles.

Current petrol grades in the UK – known as E5 – contain up to 5% bioethanol.

HS2 set for green legal challenge following Heathrow ruling

That didn’t take long. Are these challengers aware the Heathrow decision was about a legal technicality, with the judges specifically saying they weren’t trying to halt the project?

A legal challenge against the construction of HS2 is to be launched by broadcaster and naturalist Chris Packham over claims the project is incompatible with the government’s net-zero carbon emissions target, days after the High Court ruled against Heathrow expansion, Construction News reports.

The move comes as Heathrow Airport warned that the government’s decision not to appeal its legal defeat last week – over a failure to comply with planning policy, as it did not take into account terms included in the Paris Agreement on climate change – could mean the scrapping of housing and roads plans.

Hybrid cars aren’t as green as makers want you to believe, report says

Hybrid car [credit: Toyota]

The electric-only motor bandwagon is now rolling in the UK, and already it looks like open season on hybrids.
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Plug-in hybrid cars are not as good for the environment as manufacturers claim because they can’t operate in electric-only mode if it’s cold, the vehicle has been put in cruise control or the electric motors can’t generate enough power.

That’s according to a green transport campaign, which highlighted the limitations of hybrid vehicles as part of a market review, says This is Money website.

Greg Archer from Transport & Environment said one leading carmaker ‘is conning its customers’ with claims of green grandeur.