Chris Packham loses appeal against HS2 rail project

‘Environmentalists say the impact of the project will lead to irreversible damage’ reports newsdevelops.com. But what about the ‘damage’ of not building it – shortage of goods train capacity, lack of seats forcing people on to other modes of travel, etc.? Trying to put the brakes on modern life via the courts has failed this time, but it surely won’t be the last attempt.
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The broadcaster Chris Packham has lost his case against HS2 in the Court of Appeal.

Environmentalists say the high-speed rail project is leading to irreversible destruction of ancient habitats and woodlands.

Packham said the case for HS2 should be revisited despite Friday’s ruling against him.

The Solar Minimum Superstorm of 1903

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A message from the past: “The timing of the storm interestingly parallels where we are now–near Solar Minimum just after a weak solar cycle.”

Spaceweather.com

July 29, 2020: Don’t let Solar Minimum fool you. The sun can throw a major tantrum even during the quiet phase of the 11-year solar cycle. That’s the conclusion of a new study published in the July 1st edition of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“In late October 1903, one of the strongest solar storms in modern history hit Earth,” say the lead authors of the study,  Hisashi Hayakawa (Osaka University, Japan) and Paulo Ribeiro (Coimbra University, Portugal). “The timing of the storm interestingly parallels where we are now–near Solar Minimum just after a weak solar cycle.”

Above: The red line marks the 1903 solar superstorm in a plot of the 11-year solar cycle. [ref] The 1903 event wasn’t always recognized as a great storm. Hayakawa and colleagues took an interest in it because of what happened when the storm hit. In magnetic observatories around the world, pens…

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Met Office: Creating a five-year window into future climate

Using computer models to make climate predictions? All we can say is: good luck with that.
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Providing annually-updated five-year climate predictions at global and continental scales is the focus of a new international science collaboration co-ordinated by the WMO and led by the UK’s Met Office.

For the first time, climate scientists have joined forces and resources to produce an annually-updated climate snapshot looking at the next five years.

Harnessing the best computer models from ten climate centres around the world, every year will produce a new climate prediction looking out to five years ahead.

A quasi-periodic ~2400-year climate cycle – or not?

We’ll look here at examples of where a 2400 year period has been identified by researchers in radiocarbon data.
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Part of the abstract below is highlighted for analysis. The original Talkshop post on the paper in question:
S. S. Vasiliev and V. A. Dergachev: 2400-year cycle in atmospheric radiocarbon concentration

Abstract. We have carried out power spectrum, time-spectrum and bispectrum analyses of the long-term series of the radiocarbon concentrations deduced from measurements of the radiocarbon content in tree rings for the last 8000 years. Classical harmonic analysis of this time series shows a number of periods: 2400, 940, 710, 570, 500, 420, 360, 230, 210 and 190 years. A principle feature of the time series is the long period of ~ 2400 years, which is well known. The lines with periods of 710, 420 and 210 years are found to be the primary secular components of power spectrum. The complicated structure of the observed power spectrum is the result of ~ 2400-year modulation of primary secular components. The modulation induces the appearance of two side lines for every primary one, namely lines with periods of 940 and 570 years, of 500 and 360 years, and 230 and 190 years. The bi-spectral analysis shows that the parameters of carbon exchange system varied with the ~ 2400-year period during the last 8000 years. Variations of these parameters appear to be a climate effect on the rate of transfer of 14C between the atmosphere and the the ocean.

UK needs hydrogen, carbon capture to meet net zero goal, National Grid says

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) [credit: cnet.com]

Aren’t they in effect spelling out why the target is unachievable, not to say ridiculous? Whichever way you look at it – cost, feasibility, technology, benefits (lack of?) etc. – it has failure written all over it.
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Britain’s goal of achieving net zero emissions by mid-century is achievable but immediate action is needed across a range of technologies including carbon capture and storage (CCS), electricity grid operator National Grid said.

Last year Britain became the first major economy to pass a law to bring all greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, compared with its previous target of at least an 80% reduction from 1990 levels, says yahoo!finance.

“Reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050 is achievable. However, it requires immediate action across all key technologies and policy areas, and full engagement across society and end consumers,” National Grid said in its annual Future Energy Scenarios report.

Mass EV charging: Is a can of worms hiding under the bonnet?

Electric car home charging point [image credit: evcompare.ie]

H/T The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)

Scenario — having been pushed into buying an electric car, and spending large sums on upgrading your home electricity system, to cope with the government’s haphazard but supposedly climate-related demands: “Should you charge visitors for a recharge? You might gift the cost to friends and relatives, but what about the plumber or the carer?” – asks Transport Xtra.
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The Government’s push to electrify road transport and domestic heating could place major cost burdens on consumers, says a new report.

Electric vehicles have become something of a panacea for politicians as they grapple with how to decarbonise the transport sector.

But for some engineers, the headlong rush to electrify road transport and domestic heating too is a major cause for concern.

Roman Warm Period was 2°C warmer than today, new study shows

Credit: OH 237 @ Wikipedia

Natural climate variability similar to what we see today has been going on for thousands, if not millions of years, whether ‘greenhouse gas’ theorists moaning about modern human activities like it or not.
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The Roman Empire coincided with warmest period of the last 2,000 years in the Med, says The GWPF.

The Mediterranean Sea was 3.6°F (2°C) hotter during the Roman Empire than other average temperatures at the time, a new study claims.

The Empire coincided with a 500-year period, from AD 1 to AD 500, that was the warmest period of the last 2,000 years in the almost completely land-locked sea.

Searching for the missing link: the hole in the zero-carbon bucket

*Missing* being the operative word. Any article such as this one, showing power station cooling towers appearing to emit black steam – by careful use of dusk shadowing – instantly announces itself as human-accusing climate propaganda, like all the others before it using the same camera trick. But as Star Trek’s Scotty used to say: ‘Ye canna change the laws of physics’, which climate dreamers tend to forget. Outlandish costs and highly inefficient methods are not going to work on an industrial scale either. In short, there’s a massive hole in their renewables-based bucket.
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Governments and electric utilities are rapidly embracing the imperative to decarbonize energy use, says the Atlantic Council.

In the context of this effort, they have made substantial commitments to renewable energy generation and battery-based electricity storage through renewable portfolio standards and contractual commitments.

But while the costs of renewable energy generation have rapidly decreased, and their performance has improved, renewable generation is intermittent, and electric-system operators continue to rely on existing thermal resources, particularly natural gas generation, to fill in the gaps when renewable generation is not available.

The Homeric Minimum – climate change of the past

World climate classification map [credit: Beck, H.E., Zimmermann, N. E., McVicar, T. R., Vergopolan, N., Berg, A., & Wood, E. F. @ Wikipedia]

The Homeric seems to have started about 2400 years before the Spörer (or Maunder?) Minimum, which may be its more recent equivalent. Researchers have found evidence of a ‘2400-year cycle in atmospheric radiocarbon concentration’ – for example, see here.

Much of the article below appears to have come from Wikipedia, but there it also says:
“Variations in the solar output have effects on climate, less through the usually quite small effects on insolation and more through the relatively large changes of UV radiation and potentially also indirectly through modulation of cosmic ray radiation. The 11-year solar cycle measurably alters the behaviour of weather and atmosphere, but decadal and centennial climate cycles are also attributed to solar variation.”
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The Homeric Minimum is a grand solar minimum that took place between 2,800 and 2,550 years before present, says the Grand Solar Minimum website.

It appears to coincide with, and have been the cause of, a phase of climate change at that time, which involved a wetter western and drier eastern Europe.

This had far-reaching effects on human civilization, some of which may be recorded in Greek mythology and the Old Testament.

Aha! “Renewable Energy” Is Only (Kind Of) Renewable ELECTRICITY

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Petroleum-based products cannot be ‘electrified’.

PA Pundits International

By Ronald Stein ~

The rage these days from the Green New Deal, the Paris Accord, and the recent Democrats Clean Energy Climate Policy are all focused on renewable energy to replace our demands from fossil fuels. But wait – renewable energy from wind and solar is only renewable ELECTRICITY! At best, that renewable electricity is intermittent as it depends on wind and sunshine to produce any electricity.

Before 1900 the world had no medications, electronics, cosmetics, plastics, fertilizers, and transportation infrastructures. Looking back just a few short centuries, we’ve come a long way since the pioneer days.

Also, before 1900, the world had very little commerce and without transportation there is no commerce. The two prime movers that have done more for the cause of globalization than any other: the diesel engine and the jet turbine, both get their fuels from oil. Road and air travel now dominate most…

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HS2 rail project touts ‘carbon benefits’ through increased freight capacity

West Coast main line and M1 motorway, southern England

Can’t blame the promoters for claiming their monster rail project is a benefit to all and sundry, by any means available. It’s obviously part of their job to try and do so. Cue climate propaganda.
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The project promoter has said that HS2 will enable new train paths on the existing network which can be used to move more goods by rail, and has released a new video to demonstrate this potential, reports New Civil Engineer.

The video uses Derby-based rail freight company DC Rail, which specialises in moving construction materials by rail, as an example. The firm is part of construction firm Cappagh Group which is currently constructing a new rail freight terminal in Wembley, on the West Coast Main Line, that will help it offer new rail services to customers in London.

HS2 Ltd has said that building HS2 will free up a “massive amount of space” by moving high speed services onto dedicated tracks to free up more train paths on the existing network for freight.

Climate Fork In The Road This November

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For US citizens of course. Do they want to saddle themselves with $trillions of extra debt in pursuit of a mirage?

PA Pundits International

By Peter Murphy~

National elections are about many things, ranging from policy issues, candidates’ personalities and the conditions of the country. The upcoming presidential election between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden in November will continue that reality.

No single issue or event will decide who will be elected president for the next four years. There are simply too many swirling for one to be decisive. One issue that will be decided, whether or not voters realize, is the direction of climate policies since the two presidential candidates have polar opposite views.

President Trump has never embraced “man-made” climate change has having any significant impact on the planet’s temperature trajectory. He has condemned the proposed Green New Deal in its various multi-trillion dollar iterations, and withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Accords that committed (some) signatory nations to reduce carbon emissions.

Among the reasons…

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Report calls for national delivery to decarbonise heating

Expensive heating [image credit: the Guardian]

Another day, another round of rampant evidence-free carbophobia. References to ‘carbon’ and ‘heat’ (amended in our headline to ‘heating’) show a dire lack of scientific understanding. They waffle about a ‘moral imperative’, but forget they rely on manipulated temperature data and failing climate models for evidence to support their lofty attitude.
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A new Heat Commission convened by the CBI and University of Birmingham has called on the Government to develop a National Delivery Body (NDB) to lead the development and implementation of a national strategy to decarbonise heat, reports Electronic Specifier.

Heat is the largest single source of UK carbon emissions, accounting for over one-third whilst decarbonising heat stands as one of the most significant challenges in reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.

To overcome this challenge it is vital business, government, regulators and communities work together to shape the policies and delivery mechanisms that will be needed.

New model proposed to reduce carbon footprint of mega-conferences

Yet another climate conference?

Carbophobes tell conference goers to tie themselves in knots over a minor trace gas in the atmosphere that’s essential to plants, trees, vegetation etc. It’s climate alarm time again.
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Prior to the global pandemic, climate researchers identified an uncomfortable truth: the very meetings and events meant to support the fight against climate change were themselves causing vast greenhouse gas emissions through international air travel, says Phys.org.

Building on learnings from the COVID-19 pandemic, the University of Otago’s Professor James Higham, of the Department of Tourism, and his Oxford University colleagues Ph.D. student Milan Klöwer, Professor Myles Allen and Associate Professor Debbie Hopkins have identified new measures that may reduce the carbon footprint of conference travel by up to 90%.

The study is published this week in the journal Nature.

Scientists discover volcanoes on Venus are still active

Venus

The presence of sulphur in the atmosphere hinted at this.
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A new study identified 37 recently active volcanic structures on Venus, reports Phys.org.

The study provides some of the best evidence yet that Venus is still a geologically active planet.

A research paper on the work, which was conducted by researchers at the University of Maryland and the Institute of Geophysics at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, was published in the journal Nature Geoscience on July 20, 2020.

“This is the first time we are able to point to specific structures and say ‘Look, this is not an ancient volcano but one that is active today, dormant perhaps, but not dead,'” said Laurent Montési, a professor of geology at UMD and co-author of the research paper. “This study significantly changes the view of Venus from a mostly inactive planet to one whose interior is still churning and can feed many active volcanoes.”

New model of predicted polar bear extinction is not scientifically plausible

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Headline chasing climate alarmists can’t let go of their polar bear scares.

polarbearscience

Apparently, a prediction that polar bears could be nearly extinct by 2100 (which was first suggested back in 2007) is news today because there is a new model. As for all previous models, this prediction of future polar bear devastation depends on using the so-called ‘business as usual’ RCP8.5 climate scenario, which has been roundly criticized in recent years as totally implausible, which even the BBC has mentioned. This new model, published today as a pay-walled paper in Nature Climate Change, also did something I warned against in my last post: it uses polar bear data collected up to 2009 only from Western Hudson Bay – which is an outlier in many respects – to predict the response of bears worldwide. The lead author, Peter Molnar, is a former student of vocal polar bear catastrophist Andrew Derocher – who himself learned his trade from the king…

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Germany’s hydrogen strategy

German hydrogen train [image credit: Euractiv]

Here comes more climate propaganda, but it gives some details of how the hydrogen might be produced if the proposals ever take off. The thorny subject of cost is not mentioned, which is usually a sign that it’s going to be way up high compared to today’s standard fuels. Using electricity to make electricity, with hydrogen in the middle, sounds clunky to say the least but climate obsessives wave away such niggles.
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Eco-friendly hydrogen is regarded as a “silver bullet” [Talkshop comment: or maybe not] when it comes to fighting climate change, asserts Deutschland.de.

With its hydrogen strategy, Germany is now promoting its production.

Hydrogen is regarded as a kind of miracle substance. In an engine or fuel cell, it burns when oxygen is added and becomes pure water.

It can be transported in pipelines or in liquefied form on tankers. Easily storable, it can replace fossil fuels in virtually every situation: in lorries, cars and trains, and in the production of steel, cement and chemicals.

Lib Dems’ Ed Davey calls for zero carbon domestic flights by 2030

Experimental E-plane [image credit: Siemens]

If only batteries could lose some of their heavy weight during flight, matching the reductions achieved by burning fuel, he might be onto something. But as they can’t, this looks like more pie in the sky.
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Exclusive: Acting Liberal Democrat leader calls for green short haul flights to be UK’s next “moon landing mission”, reports i-news.

Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey is calling for all domestic flights to be zero carbon by 2030, arguing the target must become the UK’s new “moon landing mission”.

Commercial planes run mainly on fossil fuels, and engineers are struggling to design a zero carbon passenger jet to replace them.

The tsunami that devastated ancient Britain just over 8,000 years ago: new evidence

Position of the Storegga Slide (west of Norway). The yellow numbers give the height of the tsunami wave as tsunamites recently studied by researchers [credit: Lamiot @ Wikipedia] – Mer du Nord = North Sea

The report states: ‘It is thought the tsunami, the largest to hit Northern Europe since the end of the last ice age, happened following a period of global climate change.’
We can only speculate as to the cause(s) of such climate happenings.
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Scientists have found new evidence of a massive tsunami that devastated ancient Britain in the year 6200 BC on the east coast of England, reports the Daily Mail.

The giant tsunami event, known as the Storegga Slide, was caused when an area of seabed the size of Scotland – around 30,000 square miles – under the Norwegian Sea suddenly shifted.

New geological evidence reveals three successive waves tore across an ancient land bridge connecting Britain with the rest of Europe, known as Doggerland, now submerged beneath the North Sea.

A Surprise Visit from STEVE

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Nature’s purple haze.

Spaceweather.com

July 16, 2020: Even STEVE wants to see Comet NEOWISE. On July 14th, the geomagnetic phenomenon appeared over Canada, streaking the sky with mauve ribbons of light. Harlan Thomas of Calgary, Alberta, reports: “I was out shooting the comet when I noticed a mauve-looking cloud. Wow!” I thought. “STEVE has come to visit NEOWISE. How cool is that?”

STEVE is a recent discovery. It looks like an aurora, but it is not. The purple glow is caused by hot (3000°C) ribbons of gas flowing through Earth’s magnetosphere at speeds exceeding 6 km/s (13,000 mph). It appears during some geomagnetic storms, often alongside a type of green aurora known as the “picket fence,” also shown in Thomas’s photo.

Statistics suggest that STEVE appears most often in spring and fall. What summoned STEVE in mid-summer? It may have been a CME that grazed Earth’s magnetic field on July…

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