A Warning from History: The Carrington Event Was Not Unique

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It may not even have been the biggest one in recent centuries, and the Quebec Blackout of 1989 wasn’t far behind in intensity.

Spaceweather.com

Sept. 1, 2020: On Sept. 1st, 1859, the most ferocious solar storm in recorded history engulfed our planet. Named “the Carrington event” after British scientist Richard Carrington, who witnessed the flare that started it, the storm rocked Earth’s magnetic field, sparked auroras over Cuba, the Bahamas and Hawaii, set fire to telegraph stations in North America, and wrote itself into history books as the Biggest. Solar. Storm. Ever.

But sometimes what you read in history books is wrong. Modern researchers looking into the Carrington Event are coming to new and different conclusions.

“The Carrington Event was not unique,” says Hisashi Hayakawa of Japan’s Nagoya University, whose recent study of solar storms has uncovered at least two other events of comparable intensity (in 1872 and 1921). “While the Carrington Event has long been considered a once‐in‐a‐century catastrophe, historical observations warn us that this may be something that occurs much more frequently.”

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How Britain’s grid became ‘cleaner, cheaper, and harder to control’ during the Covid-19 lockdown

The study talks about the need for more ‘grid flexibility’, but as one union leader put it: “The political aspiration is for a low carbon future but politicians have no credible way of delivering it”. Despite the ‘cheaper’ claim, it turns out that ‘the costs of managing the grid skyrocketed to a record high’, which looks ominous given existing energy policies.
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Lockdown measures taken to combat Covid-19 in March led to a much greener and cheaper electricity system in Britain in the weeks that followed, but at the same time the increased reliance on renewables made managing the grid far more challenging, offering a glimpse of the UK’s future power requirements as the economy transitions towards net zero emissions.

That is the conclusion of independent research released today by Imperial College London and energy firm Drax, which saw experts assess the tumultuous impact of the coronavirus crisis on Britain’s electricity system from April to June 2020, a period characterised by near historically low levels of demand for power, says BusinessGreen.

Climate Elite Say Thee, Not Me, Must $acrifice For The Planet

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Climate virtue signalling is a popular sport among the uber-wealthy and glitterati, but hard-working taxpayers are left to stump up most of the cash for the futile pursuit of imaginary carbon redemption that they demand.

PA Pundits International

By Peter Murphy~

The rich are different from you and me, as the saying goes. They have money. The super-rich have even more.

Some of the wealthiest people on the planet are driving and funding the climate change political agenda for more electric cars, wind turbines and solar panels, and eradication of nuclear energy and fossil fuels. Their message is clear: America and the world must reduce their reliance on traditional energy sources and adapt in order to save the planet. That means higher costs, less energy consumption and reduced living standards.

The problem with such people advocating these climate policies, with all their negative ramifications, is that none of them are leading by example, which calls into question their own sincerity and the validity of their cause.

One example among many is Michael Bloomberg, the successful former three-term mayor of New York City and spectacularly unsuccessful presidential…

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Hypocrisy claim as scientists call on EU to ‘correct’ biomass carbon accounting rules

Carbophobes discover biomass burning is far from ‘carbon neutral’. It’s taken some of them a long time to admit that it’s one of their clumsiest attempts to ‘tackle’ the phantom that is human-caused climate change.
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Europe’s academies of science have called on EU lawmakers to introduce a “radically new standard” in the blocs’ Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) to ensure net carbon emissions from biomass power stations are “properly accounted for and declared”, reports Euractiv.

The ETS is the EU’s flagship tool for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, and obliges power generators, industrial emitters as well as airlines to buy CO2 permits on the market to cover some of the pollution they emit.

But although the ETS currently assumes that all biomass is carbon neutral, Europe’s academies of science say this is mostly not the case.

Reuse, Recycle, Or Just Reduce Solar Panel Waste?

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A preview of ‘the coming panel-demic’.

PA Pundits International

By Duggan Flanakin ~

Is solar power truly Green?

This question is important, because in today’s world, that which is Green is favored even if it is more expensive and less reliable. We have been taught that solar is Green. But does it pass the Three R’s Test that for 50 years has been the Green standard?

Legend has it that the mantra “reduce, reuse, recycle” entered the collective consciousness somewhere before or after the first national EARTH DAY in 1970. Shortly afterward, President Nixon created the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Congress passed the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.

Logic indicates that a Green product should therefore reusable (with reasonable effectiveness) or recyclable (at reasonable cost). If it is neither, then should we not ask whether we just need to reduce its supply (especially since solar energy is intermittent and still requires backup power)?

The EPA website, for…

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Europe’s climate goal: Revolution

As usual, EU leaders are long on rhetoric but short on commonsense. All their expensive plans will have no effect worth mentioning on the climate, but a big and unwelcome effect on the economies of their countries.
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European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen likes to compare her Green Deal to “Europe’s man on the moon moment.” That’s almost certainly a galactic understatement, says Politico.eu.

Cutting the Continent’s emissions to “net zero” — meaning Europe would sequester at least as much greenhouse gases as it produces — by 2050 will require a radical overhaul of nearly every aspect of the modern economy.

Jupiter’s ocean moons raise tides on each other

Credit: NASA [click on image to enlarge]

The effects of relative proximity between these large moons seem to have been underrated. Not forgetting that Jupiter does have a big effect on Io, the closest Galilean moon to it.
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Jupiter’s “ocean world” moons may have strong gravitational effects on each other, raising big tides in each others’ subsurface seas, a new study suggests [Space.com reporting].

Surprisingly, these moon-moon tidal forces might generate more heat in the satellites’ oceans than the gravitational tugs of giant Jupiter, study team members found.

“That’s kind of interesting, because Jupiter is the biggest mass in that system, so its tidal forces are much bigger than one moon on another,” lead author Hamish Hay, who performed the work while at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, said in a statement.

Brits brace for possible ‘coldest Bank holiday on record’

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Gloves and woolly hats at the ready – you have been warned!

Dude – where’s our global warming?

Why is Scotland’s green energy manufacturing industry in crisis, in a ‘climate emergency’?

Image credit: BBC Scotland

Nothing to do with the ‘climate emergency’ being a man-made myth, surely? Once again the so-called green economy fails miserably to deliver on its promises, including one of jobs galore.
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Amid the GERS hullabaloo yesterday, there was some other interesting things going on that deserve a bit more attention, says Source News.

First, the STUC, Scotland’s leading trade union body, have written to Alok Sharma MP and Paul Wheelhouse MSP, UK and Scottish Energy Ministers respectively, calling for an urgent bilateral summit to discuss the “renewable construction and green manufacturing jobs crisis”.

Given how little this is getting talked about, you might be surprised to hear that it is a crisis, but it really is.

How cold was the ice age? Researchers now know – but blame ‘carbon’

Ice core sample [image credit: Discovering Antarctica]

But they ignore the fact that historical changes in carbon dioxide levels always followed changes in temperatures, so could not be the cause of such changes. The article below asserts the opposite, and talks about ‘better understanding’ while promoting a greenhouse climate theory that says one minor trace gas is all that matters.
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A University of Arizona-led team has nailed down the temperature of the last ice age—the Last Glacial Maximum of 20,000 years ago—to about 46 degrees Fahrenheit (7.8 C), says Phys.org.

Their findings allow climate scientists to better understand the relationship between today’s rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide—a major greenhouse gas—and average global temperature.

The Last Glacial Maximum, or LGM, was a frigid period when huge glaciers covered about half of North America, Europe and South America and many parts of Asia, while flora and fauna that were adapted to the cold thrived.

“We have a lot of data about this time period because it has been studied for so long,” said Jessica Tierney, associate professor in the UArizona Department of Geosciences. “But one question science has long wanted answers to is simple: How cold was the ice age?”

Black turbine blade ‘can cut bird deaths’

Admitting the problem is a start, but not installing the turbines in the first place is obviously the most effective solution. Reducing deaths and injuries would hardly be a triumph.
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Painting one blade of a wind turbine black could cut wind farms’ fatal bird strikes by up to 70%, reports BBC News.

Painting one blade of a wind turbine black could cut bird strikes at wind farms by up to 70%, a study suggests.

Birds colliding with the structures has long been considered to be one of the main negative impacts of onshore wind farms, the authors observed.

New confirmation that climate models overstate atmospheric warming

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Quote re. the Canadian climate model…
The sticker should read: “WARNING! This model predicts atmospheric warming roughly 7 times larger than observed trends. Use of this model for anything other than entertainment purposes is not recommended.”

Climate Etc.

by Ross McKitrick

Two new peer-reviewed papers from independent teams confirm that climate models overstate atmospheric warming and the problem has gotten worse over time, not better.

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Team warns negative emissions technologies may not solve alleged climate crisis

Photosynthesis: nature requires carbon dioxide

Wrong diagnosis, unworkable cures? All is not well in the strange world of climate hysteria, as its promoters flounder in the mire of their own creation. Crippling costs could sink their supposed solutions.
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A team led by researchers at the University of Virginia cautions that when it comes to climate change, the world is making a bet it might not be able to cover, says Phys.org.

The team’s new paper in Nature Climate Change explores how plans to avoid the worst outcomes of a warming planet could bring their own side effects.

The handful of models the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and decisions makers around the world trust to develop strategies to meet carbon neutrality commitments all assume negative emissions technologies will be available as part of the solution.

Can renewables fully sustain our current way of life? No chance

We’ve added the ‘no chance’ to the original headline, but this OilPrice.com article (extract below) confirms it right away. ‘Net zero’ climate obsessives, instead of trying to blame humans for changing the weather, need to stop running away from reality and face some inconvenient facts.
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“The reason renewables can’t power modern civilization is because they were never meant to. One interesting question is why anybody ever thought they could.”

Michael Shellenberger, Time magazine “Hero of the Environment,” wrote this commentary in an article in Forbes.

According to Shellenberger, president at Environmental Progress and an expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), renewables are simply incapable of sustaining our current way of life.

Ross McKitrick: Save the economy, ditch the ‘green recovery’ plans

Any ‘green’ ideas were never about economic sanity anyway, but that problem is now even more acute.

H/T The GWPF
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Green technologies that were known money-losers before the pandemic are still money-losers today.

There’s a curious idea floating around that the COVID crisis undid the principles of economics, says Ross McKitrick.

Nobody puts it exactly like that, but it’s implied in the various proposals for restructuring the post-pandemic economy so that it will look very different from the one we experienced up to the end of January.

Amid the buzzwords about “Resilient Recovery” and “Building Back Better” are proposals for an investment push into green technologies and new environmental policies, including initiatives that failed to pass standard economic tests before the pandemic.

So how, exactly, did the pandemic change the criteria for evaluating policies, investments and major public projects?

The short answer is: it didn’t, and any claim otherwise is untrue.

Greenland Ice Varies, Don’t Panic

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‘Once again, history is a better guide than hysteria.’ — Indeed, but hysteria makes bigger headlines, which are the aim of the climate alarm game. But in the end, we will all be the losers if we fall for it.

Science Matters

The scare du jour is about Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS) and how it will melt out and flood us all.  It’s declared that GIS has passed its tipping point, and we are doomed.  Typical is the Phys.org hysteria: Sea level rise quickens as Greenland ice sheet sheds record amount:  “Greenland’s massive ice sheet saw a record net loss of 532 billion tonnes last year, raising red flags about accelerating sea level rise, according to new findings.”

Panic is warranted only if you treat this as proof of an alarmist narrative and ignore the facts and context in which natural variation occurs. For starters, consider the last four years of GIS fluctuations reported by DMI and summarized in the eight graphs above.  Note the noisy blue lines showing how the surface mass balance (SMB) changes its daily weight by 8 or 10 gigatonnes (Gt) around the baseline mean from 1981…

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Electric roads will help cut UK road freight emissions, report says

E-truck test route [image credit: transport-online.de]

The bill for such a system would be massive and a lot of fuel duty revenue would be lost. What does it offer to anyone outside the haulage industry?
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Electrification of 7,500 km of the UK’s major road network would enable most lorries to be powered by overhead charging cables, resulting in dramatically reduced carbon emissions, a new report has found.

A team from the Centre for Sustainable Road Freight (SRF) – bringing together heavy vehicle engineering expertise from the Department of Engineering and logistics expertise from Heriot-Watt University and the University of Westminster and a consortium of industry partners—has proposed that building a so-called ‘electric road system’ could be used to decarbonise 65% of UK lorry kilometers traveled by 2040, says TechXplore.

California doomed to frequent blackouts due to battery shortage – Bloomberg Green

A self-induced shortage of reliable electricity generation is the real issue in California but its leaders can’t accept that, for mistaken ideological reasons supposedly related to the climate of the Earth. Instead they create their own problems due to unworkable energy policies, then discover they can’t solve them. Other leaders with similar ideas should take note and learn, but probably won’t, preferring to parrot ‘net zero’.

H/T The GWPF
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Problem is there aren’t enough of these massive batteries to go around right now, says Bloomberg Green.

As the threat of blackouts continues to plague California, officials are pointing to battery storage as a key to preventing future power shortfalls.

Big oil need not apply: UK raises the bar for UN climate summit – then all head for the airport?

What do these sanctimonious blowhards imagine all the journeys to the conference — without which it wouldn’t take place at all — will be powered by? The hypocrisy is epic.
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The UK government will not accept sponsorship from fossil fuel companies for next year’s UN climate summit in Glasgow, Climate Home News understands.

Like in previous years, the UK hosts of the two-week event are seeking corporate sponsors to shoulder some of the cost, initially estimated at £250 million ($330m).

Unlike in previous years, which have seen large polluters use such deals to bolster their green credentials, sponsors of Cop26 are expected to have a credible plan to cut their emissions to net zero by 2050, the official website states.

Modern Grand Solar Minimum will lead to terrestrial cooling – Valentina Zharkova

Sunspots [image credit: NASA]

But it should be a lot shorter than the famous Maunder Minimum, if the prediction in this editorial works out. There’s also a new paper, introduced here by the GWPF, which concludes:
“The fundamental oscillations of solar irradiance, in turn, may be linked to the oscillations of the baseline terrestrial temperature, independent of any terrestrial processes of radiative transfer and heating.”
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In this editorial I will demonstrate with newly discovered solar activity proxy-magnetic field that the Sun has entered into the modern Grand Solar Minimum (2020–2053) that will lead to a significant reduction of solar magnetic field and activity like during Maunder minimum leading to noticeable reduction of terrestrial temperature.

Sun is the main source of energy for all planets of the solar system. This energy is delivered to Earth in a form of solar radiation in different wavelengths, called total solar irradiance.

Variations of solar irradiance lead to heating of upper planetary atmosphere and complex processes of solar energy transport toward a planetary surface.

The signs of solar activity are seen in cyclic 11-year variations of a number of sunspots on the solar surface using averaged monthly sunspot numbers as a proxy of solar activity for the past 150 years.

Solar cycles were described by the action of solar dynamo mechanism in the solar interior generating magnetic ropes at the bottom of solar convective zone.

These magnetic ropes travel through the solar interior appearing on the solar surface, or photosphere, as sunspots indicating the footpoints where these magnetic ropes are embedded into the photosphere.

Continued here.
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Appendix 1: S-E distances from the ephemeris

Appendix 2: Solar irradiance variations based on the distance changes