2020: The year of climate craziness

Climate laws have been passed by carbon dioxide fearing governments that won’t be in office when the due dates arrive. What happens if evidence-free climate superstition is still rampant when these legal requirements are not met?
– – –
BEFORE it even began, 2020 was already marked to be a year of climate hysteria, says The Conservative Woman.

It was the UK’s turn to host the annual UN climate meeting, which was scheduled to take place in Glasgow earlier this month.

Hence, the first eighteen months of Boris Johnson’s premiership saw the erstwhile ‘libertarian’ attempting to establish himself as a global pioneer of green policymaking: banning all that moves ahead of the conference, like some kind of overweight peroxide Ed Miliband eco-virtue-signalling on ‘our’ behalf.

The arrival of Covid-19 caused the meeting to be postponed, but this has not dented the government’s green ambitions to make the UK’s economic suicide the first in what they hope will be a global pact.

Doggerland: How did the Atlantis of the North Sea sink?

Hypothetical map of Doggerland [image credit: ancient-origins.net]

This seems semi-topical on the day Britain signs off on its new deal with the EU countries. Going back into history, but not all that far back, the river Thames flowed into the Rhine. North Sea trawlers still find bones of mammoths and other such fossils in their nets today.
– – –
For a long time, scientists believed that a powerful tsunami destroyed Doggerland 8,200 years ago, says DW.com.

Sediment analysis now suggests that the land once connecting Great Britain with the rest of Europe had a later demise.

Around 10,000 years ago, at the end of the last ice age, the sea level in northern Europe was still about 60 meters (197 feet) below what it is today.

The British Isles and the European mainland formed a continuous landmass.

Relatively large rivers crossed this landmass, but in a different way than we know today.

Noctilucent Clouds are Missing

.
.
Is it a coincidence that we’re just past the end of the lowest sunspot cycle for over a century?

Spaceweather.com

Dec. 28, 2020: Something strange is happening 50 miles above Antarctica. Or rather, not happening. Noctilucent clouds (NLCs), which normally blanket the frozen continent in December, are almost completely missing. These images from NASA’s AIM spacecraft compare Christmas Eve 2019 with Christmas Eve 2020:

“The comparison really is astounding,” says Cora Randall of the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. “Noctilucent cloud frequencies are close to zero this year.”

NLCs are Earth’s highest clouds. They form when summertime wisps of water vapor rise up from the poles to the edge of space. Water crystallizing around specks of meteor dust 83 km (~50 miles) above Earth’s surface creates beautiful electric-blue structures, typically visible from November to February in the south, and May to August in the north.

A crucial point: Noctilucent clouds form during summer. And that’s the problem. Although summer officially started in Antarctica one week…

View original post 237 more words

Ten climate predictions for 2020 that went horribly wrong

Arctic sea ice [image credit: Geoscience Daily]

H/T The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)

As ever, too much reliance on climate models is liable to lead to embarrassment and failure. But there’s always a supply of new or recycled scares to fall back on, preferably those with distant expiry dates to avoid loss of face.
– – –
It seems climate armageddon has taken a permanent sabbatical, says PJ Media.

Long before Beto O’Rourke claimed the world only had 10 years left for humans to act against climate change, alarmists had spent decades predicting one doomsday scenario after another, each of which stubbornly failed to materialize.

Many of those doomsday predictions specifically mentioned the annus horribilus of 2020.

Newly discovered Greenland hot rock mantle plume drives thermal activities in the Arctic

Topographic map of Greenland

We’re told ‘The North Atlantic region is awash with geothermal activity’. Any day now we should be hearing how a few extra molecules of (human-caused) CO2 make the Earth’s innards hotter than they used to be. Or maybe we won’t.
– – –
A team of researchers understands more about the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, says SciTech Daily.

They discovered a flow of hot rocks, known as a mantle plume, rising from the core-mantle boundary beneath central Greenland that melts the ice from below.

Demand for lithium-based EV batteries could exceed supply of materials before 2025, say researchers

Typical electric car set-up

Researchers cite lithium and cobalt production as the most likely to fall short of expected demand levels in the next few years, if EV take-up grows as desired or mandated by many political leaders. In short, new discoveries of supplies will be required if present battery technology is to be maintained. Failing that, ‘net zero’ may need a plan B.
– – –
As the world shifts to electric vehicles to reduce climate change, it is important to quantify future demands for key battery materials, says TechXplore.

In a new report, Chengjian Xu, Bernhard Steubing and a research team at the Leiden University, Netherlands and the Argonne National Laboratory in the U.S. showed how the demands of a lithium, nickel, cobalt and manganese oxide dominated battery will increase by many factors between 2020 to 2050.

As a result, supply chains for lithium, cobalt and nickel will require significant expansion and likely additional resource discovery.

New York Can’t Buy Its Way Out Of Blackouts

.
.
All these battery systems can do is give power providers a brief window to figure out what they’re really going to do about the imminent blackout situation, due to the latest weather-related dip in renewable power generation.

PA Pundits International

By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~

New York City will soon be home to the world’s biggest utility-scale battery system, designed to back up its growing reliance on intermittent renewables. At 400 MWh this batch of batteries will be more than triple the 129 MWh world leader in Australia.

The City of New York’s director of sustainability (I am not making this title up), Mark Chambers, is ecstatic, bragging: “Expanding battery storage is a critical part of how we advance momentum to confront the climate emergency while meeting the energy needs of all New Yorkers. Today’s announcement demonstrates how we can deliver this need at significant scale.” (Emphasis added)

In reality the scale here is incredibly insignificant.

In the same nonsensical way, Tim Cawley, the president of Con Edison, New York’s power utility, gushes thus: “Utility scale battery storage will play a vital role in…

View original post 706 more words

Massachusetts city to post climate change warning stickers at gas stations

Vancouver, Canada’s fuel pump notice

Festivities over – back to pointless miserablism for believers in a human-caused ‘climate crisis’ due to minor trace gases. A similar tobacco health-warning style move has been made in Vancouver, Canada. Once again theoretical ideas are presented as facts, or likely facts. This new campaign was voted through last January. The promoter say “The gas pump stickers will remind drivers to think about climate change and hopefully consider non-polluting options.” Forgetting to mention that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, and that pollution has nothing to do with climate change anyway.
– – –
Cambridge, Massachusetts, has become the first US city to mandate the placing of stickers on fuel pumps to warn drivers of the resulting dangers posed by the climate crisis, reports The Guardian.

The final design of the bright yellow stickers, shared with the Guardian, includes text that warns drivers the burning of gasoline, diesel and ethanol has “major consequences on human health and the environment including contributing to climate change”.

Warmists agonise over ‘carbon emissions’ from Christmas dinner

Yet another target for climate miserablists

Climate obsessives want to award themselves the authority to micromanage every aspect of people’s lives, using the feeble excuse of carbon dioxide, a harmless trace gas vital to plants and other vegetation. This sort of absurdity seems to be mushrooming by the day. Merry Christmas!
– – –
Around 60% of the climate impact of foods can come from cooking, according to new research, says Energy Live News.

Cooking the traditional Christmas dinner could have a major effect on the environment.

That’s according to new research by the Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Food Policy, City, University of London, Dr Christian Reynolds, who claims up to 60% of the climate impact of foods can come from cooking.

Dr Reynolds’ research shows that a reduction in meat consumption could make the traditional roast more sustainable.

There Are Liars, Damn Liars And The United Nations

.
.
Apocalypse no.

PA Pundits International

TonyfromOz prefaces:

This is a Guest Post by An Australian Scientist, Doctor John Happs who has an academic background in the geosciences with special interests in climate, and paleoclimate. He has been a science educator at several universities in Australia and overseas.

By Dr. John Happs

When it comes to telling whoppers about climate change, weather extremes and any number of climate-related catastrophes, the United Nations has no equal. Their latest (2020) report proves this beyond any doubt.

Recently released is the UN’s report, dramatically titled: “Human Cost of Disasters: An Overview of the Last 20 Years (2000-2019). This report stems from the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and its Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED).

https://www.undrr.org/publication/human-cost-disasters-overview-last-20-years-2000-2019

The report Foreword tells us that:

“This report focuses primarily on the staggering rise in climate-related disasters over the last twenty years.”

This is followed by the…

View original post 1,859 more words

No, Weather Channel, 2020 did not bring unprecedented climate disasters

The author dismantles yet another half-baked attempt to link human-caused trace gases to cherry-picked weather events.
– – –
An article published by the Weather Channel tries to link climate change to a variety of environmental “disasters,” that struck around the world in 2020.

The article cites limited evidence for any link, says H. Sterling Burnett @ Climate Realism.

In reality, none of the asserted disasters are tied to supposed human-caused climate change.

In the Weather Channel article titled, “2020’s Worst Environmental Disasters, and How Climate Change Played a Role,” the author writes, “In a year of unprecedented disasters, much of the damage done to our planet in 2020 was self-inflicted.”

Historical records and data show none of the disasters discussed in the article are, in fact, unprecedented.

Among the environmental tribulations the Weather Channel discusses are oil spills, dams breaking, and wildfires.

Regarding oil spills, humans have indeed caused some oil spills, but these have occurred either through human error or poor equipment maintenance. Climate change plays no role in oil spills, regardless of the Weather Channel’s unsubstantiated speculation.

Regarding dam failures, floods from unexpectedly heavy rainfall can undoubtedly combine with poor maintenance or poor government decision-making to result in dams failing, but there is no scientific link to climate change.

As pointed out in Climate At A Glance: Floods, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) acknowledges having “low confidence” in any climate change impact regarding the frequency or severity of floods. This includes “low confidence” in even the “sign” of any changes—meaning, it is just as likely that climate change is making floods less frequent and less severe.

In addition, a study on the climate impact on flooding for the USA and Europe, published in the Journal of Hydrology, Volume 552, September 2017, Pages 704-717, found: “The number of significant trends was about the number expected due to chance alone. Changes in the frequency of major floods are dominated by multidecadal variability.”

Regarding wildfires, the IPCC has found across the mid-latitudes (including the U.S.) there has been a modest but measurable increase in moisture, which mitigates wildfires.

The Weather Channel points to Australia’s tragic 2019-2020 wildfire season as proof of warming-induced wildfire expansion. The Weather Channel failed to note that before the 2019-2020 wildfire season, the continent had for nearly a decade experienced above-average rainfall.

At the same time, Australia’s government had decided not to manage its brush and trees, the fuel load for wildfires. These two factors combined to create tinder box conditions which exploded when Australia’s normal drought cycle reoccurred.

In California, the situation is much the same, with the article admitting, “Particularly in California … decisions on forest management and fire suppression, and expansion of homes and businesses into less-developed areas have combined to make the 2020 fire season one of the most destructive in recorded history.”

The Weather Channel blamed a “human caused global warming,” as well, but the best available data indicate no such link exists.

The article says, “[v]egetation left dry by climate change is fueling unprecedentedly large wildfires,” yet vegetation is not being left dry by climate change.

Full article here.

Eastern Alps may have been ice-free 5000 years ago

Pasterze Glacier, Austria

Climate change occurs whether humans like it or not, always has done, and always will do. Attempting to control carbon dioxide levels can never be a solution to anything.
– – –
New research suggests that some Alpine glaciers were ice-free during the mid-Holocene warm period, when Earth’s climate was warmer than it is now, says New Scientist (via The GWPF).

Glaciers in the Ötztal Alps in Austria are currently melting and may be lost within two decades, but this might not be the first time humans have seen this kind of change.

Climate change: Law used as stick to beat government

Will the law courts treat failing climate models as a justification for finding in favour of lawsuits designed to force the public to travel less? Debatable human rights arguments will be heard.
– – –
Plans for airports, energy and roads are facing multiple legal challenges over climate commitments, says BBC News.

Environmentalists are using the law to hound the government to force infrastructure plans into line with its climate change commitments.

Ministers are facing a fusillade of legal challenges on airports, energy and roads.

And now they have been threatened with new legal action unless their airports strategy reflects the drive towards a zero-emissions economy.

CLINTEL Study Finds Most Of The CO2 Increase Is Natural

.
.
Interesting, but the climate hysteria machine will keep inventing its hobgoblins regardless until someone turns off the funding.

PA Pundits International

By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~

Using a new observational approach to an old but most important question, CLINTEL President Guus Berkhout finds that about 62% of the atmospheric CO2 increase is due to natural sources, not human emissions. The study then looks at the implications for drastic CO2 reduction measures, finding that these measures will not stop the atmospheric increase. Actually, they will have very limited effect. Hence the title of the report is “Managing the Carbon Dioxide Content in the Earth’s Atmosphere“.

Professor Berkhout’s approach is based on proven technology in geophysical imaging. He calls his method spectral ‘fingerprint detection (FPD)’, because it looks at the relationship between fine-grained details of the atmospheric CO2 increase and anthropogenic emissions over time by computing auto and cross correlation functions.

Note that in the spectral FPD approach knowledge about the existence of different CO2 isotopes (C12 and C13) is…

View original post 493 more words

Jupiter, Saturn merging in night sky, closest in centuries

Credit: wcia.com

How to see it, plus videos – here.
– – –
Jupiter and Saturn will merge in the night sky Monday, appearing closer to one another than they have since Galileo’s time in the 17th century, says Phys.org.

Astronomers say so-called conjunctions between the two largest planets in our solar system aren’t particularly rare.

Jupiter passes its neighbor Saturn in their respective laps around the sun every 20 years.

But the one coming up is especially close: Jupiter and Saturn will be just one-tenth of a degree apart from our perspective or about one-fifth the width of a full moon.

They should be easily visible around the world a little after sunset, weather permitting.

Crystal ball time as the BBC and Met Office unveil their climate postcode lottery

Brits can get their fix of climate doom here. All based on greenhouse gas theory, even though the greenhouse itself is mythical. What could possibly go wrong? Just ‘Enter your postcode above to reveal how hot it could get near you’, says the BBC. Will you be roasted, flooded or maybe both?
– – –
How high might temperatures climb where you live – and is it likely to rain more?

The BBC and the Met Office have looked at the UK’s changing climate in detail to find out.

The Met Office climate projections cover different levels of global warming.

Electric cars will leave hole in tax revenues, says Treasury

They’re just stating the obvious, but now a few people have made the switch away from fuel-burning cars their warnings will no doubt become louder. Non-car owners can’t be penalised with an electricity surcharge, and EV subsidies can’t be handed out to everyone forever. They add a free dollop of climate alarm miserablism to their mutterings.
– – –
Taxes must increase or services be cut to compensate for the loss of fuel tax income thanks to the advent of electric cars, the Treasury has admitted.

Officials have been long concerned about the future loss of more than £30bn in revenue from drivers, says BBC News.

In a new review the Treasury has acknowledged the problem in a way that will spark a debate about how driving should be taxed in the future.

One idea would be to charge motorists for every mile they drive.

Wrong Again: 2020’s Failed Climate Doomsaying

Credit: nationalreview.com

We confidently predict more doom-laden claims, and more failures. Josh cartoon: GRETA THE DOOMSAYER here.
– – –
2020 has been the wildest and most unpredictable year in the memory of most people.

But did the climate doom that was predicted to occur in or by 2020 materialize? — asks Steve Milloy @ JunkScience.com.

What follows are 10 predictions made for 2020 and what really happened.

As it turns out, climate doomsayers weren’t seeing so 20-20 when it came to 2020.

Link to JunkScience.com.

Government launches long-awaited Energy White Paper

One of its claims is: ‘we will make the UK the home of green ships and planes’. Easy – just ban their engines from being started. Publishing wish lists doesn’t guarantee engineering feasibility. These policies will cost a fortune but energy bills will be ‘affordable’, they claim. Who’s paying for all the subsidies – Father Christmas?
– – –
The government has launched its long-awaited Energy White Paper to clean up the nation’s energy systems and ensure the journey to net zero by 2050 is achievable and affordable, says Energy Live News.

The white paper expands on Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s recently announced Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution and sets out the steps needed to cut emissions from industry, transport and buildings by 230 million metric tonnes.

Heathrow: Climate activists lose legal battle to stop third runway at west London airport

‘It is the latest in 17 years of wrangling over whether or not to build a third runway at Heathrow’, notes Sky News. Only 17 years? Seems like a lifetime. Climate miserablists will no doubt want to express their frustration at the apparent lack of interest in their imaginary ‘climate emergency’, sooner or later.
– – –
Climate activists have lost a long-running legal battle to stop a third runway at Heathrow.

The Supreme Court has overturned a previous Court of Appeal ruling in a case brought by Friends of the Earth and others against Heathrow Airport.