German climate court ruling to have major impact – media commentators

According to AP: ‘Additionally, the court supported the idea that severe restrictions on freedom are acceptable when related to efforts to prevent climate change.’ Severe! You have been warned. 
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Clean Energy Wire reports:

Germany’s Constitutional Court ruling that the government’s climate policies are insufficient will have a major impact on the country’s election campaign and beyond, media commentators say.

“The political impact of the ruling is likely to be enormous,” writes Jakob Schlandt in Der Tagesspiegel. “The judges leave no doubt at all that there is a robust, actionable scientific consensus on man-made climate change,” which results in an obligation for politicians to act, Schlandt writes.

A Timeline of Great Aurora Storms

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Extreme geomagnetic storms are now thought to occur about once every 45 years, or every four solar cycles, on average.

Spaceweather.com

April 30, 2021: Imagine living in Florida. You’ll never see the Northern Lights … right? Actually, the odds may be better than you think. A new historical study just published in the Journal of Space Climate and Space Weather shows that great aurora storms occur every 40 to 60 years.

“They’re happening more often than we thought,” says Delores Knipp of the University of Colorado, the paper’s lead author. “Surveying the past 500 years, we found many extreme storms producing auroras in places like Florida, Cuba and Samoa.”

This kind of historical research is not easy. Hundreds of years ago, most people had never even heard of the aurora borealis. When the lights appeared, they were described as “fog,” “vapors”, “spirits”–almost anything other than “auroras.” Making a timeline 500 years long requires digging through unconventional records such as personal diaries, ship’s logs, local weather reports–often in languages that are foreign to…

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Europe’s heavy industry unlikely to survive Net Zero

Irsching 4 gas power plant, Bavaria [image credit: E.ON]

Government interfering in commercial markets for ideological reasons may well work out badly, and this looks like an obvious example. Bowing down to climate dogma doesn’t do anybody any favours.
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It is becoming ever more evident that much of Europe’s heavy industry is unlikely to survive the EU’s unilateral Net Zero policy, says The GWPF & Financial Times.

The EU’s carbon price reached a new record high of 45 euros ($54) a tonne on Tuesday.

As the carbon price is expected to increase much further in the next few years, European industrial groups are desperately calling for the introduction of a carbon border tax, hoping that it will save them from international competitors that are able to produce much cheaper.

Carbon cycle conundrums: cave deposits show surprising shift in permafrost over the last 400,000 years

Six most common speleothems [image credit: Dave Bunnell / Under Earth Images @ Wikipedia]

The MIT research article this report is based on includes the phrase ‘carbon cycle conundrums’ in its title. In the discussion section we find this: ‘However, atmospheric CO2 and CH4 concentrations did not exceed Holocene levels during MIS 11, seemingly indicating that widespread ground thaw did not initiate a permafrost carbon feedback where increased atmospheric greenhouse gases and subsequent warming thaw permafrost that releases more greenhouse gases.’ If no ‘carbon feedback’, what does that say about the theories behind current climate paranoia?
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Nearly one quarter of the land in the Northern Hemisphere, amounting to some 9 million square miles, is layered with permafrost—soil, sediment, and rocks that are frozen solid for years at a time, says Phys.org.

Vast stretches of permafrost can be found in Alaska, Siberia, and the Canadian Arctic, where persistently freezing temperatures have kept carbon, in the form of decayed bits of plants and animals, locked in the ground.

Scientists estimate that more than 1,400 gigatons of carbon is trapped in the Earth’s permafrost.

April set to be frostiest in UK for 60 years

High pressure over the UK

Why isn’t rising CO2 putting an end to all the frostiness, we may ask, if currently fashionable climate theories are so smart?
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This month is provisionally the frostiest April in the UK for at least 60 years, the Met Office has said.

The month saw 13 days of air frosts in the UK, compared with the previous record of 11 in April 1970, reports BBC News.

Northern Ireland had eight days of air frosts, while Scotland recorded 16.

The Met Office says the conditions have been challenging for farmers and growers and are advising gardeners to keep their tender plants indoors.

Tech needed to halt climate change still underdeveloped, IEA complains

The notion of buying a climate with the aid of future tech is looking as far away as ever. Certainly not within the dreamt-up deadlines we’re fed with almost daily, at the present rate of ‘progress’. The obvious solution being of course to ditch the unscientific ‘net zero’ fantasies and rejoin the real world, but that’s too much to ask of the climate obsessives running most governments today.
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Global climate targets can only be reached with a major acceleration in clean-energy innovation, as many of the technologies required to bring down CO2 emissions are currently only at the prototype or demonstration phase.

This is the conclusion of a joint report released Tuesday from the European Patent Office (EPO) and the International Energy Agency (IEA), reports DW.com.

“Around half the emissions reductions to get to net zero by 2050 may need to come from technologies that are not yet on the market,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol in a press release.

There Is No Climate Emergency

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The thing is: ‘Warmings, similar to or larger than the current one, have been observed many times in the past few millennia when there has been negligible use of fossil fuels.’

PA Pundits International

TonyfromOz prefaces ~

The following is a Guest Post from an Australian retired Consulting Geologist Geoff Derrick. The first two images are related to Australia and in the first, Angus Taylor is the Australian Federal Government Minister For Energy And Emissions Reduction. The second image includes the mention of the article by Richard Lindzen and William Happer, and that full article from The National Review is posted under that second image.

By Geoff Derrick ~

Geoff Derrick is a now retired Consultant Geologist and was Director of GM Derrick Geology in Brisbane Australia.

Climate ‘Emergency’? Not So Fast

By Richard Lindzen and William Happer~

National Review- Capital Matters -April 16, 2021 6:30 AM
https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/04/climate-emergency-not-so-fast/

People’s Climate March in New York City in 2014. (Mike Segar/Reuters)Americans should not be stampeded into a disastrous climate crusade.

By obligating the United States once more to the Paris agreement, and by signaling very…

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Vertical turbines could be the future for wind farms, say researchers

One of many vertical axis wind turbine designs

Vertical axis wind turbines aren’t new, but early reliability problems are supposed to have been largely ironed out now. The gearbox and generator are close to the ground, and they require less land per unit, but there’s less wind lower down. Given that we’re stuck with the wind power obsession for now, they may be worth a try if the computer simulations are anything to go by.
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The now-familiar sight of traditional propeller wind turbines could be replaced in the future with wind farms containing more compact and efficient vertical turbines, says TechXplore.

New research from Oxford Brookes University has found that the vertical turbine design is far more efficient than traditional turbines in large scale wind farms, and when set in pairs the vertical turbines increase each other’s performance by up to 15%.

A research team from the School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics (ECM) at Oxford Brookes led by Professor Iakovos Tzanakis conducted an in-depth study using more than 11,500 hours of computer simulation to show that wind farms can perform more efficiently by substituting the traditional propeller type Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines (HAWTs), for compact Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs).

Climate spies: Has new MI6 boss read the Paris Agreement?

Another climate job creation scheme gets launched at public expense. Not understanding the clear difference between climate and pollution issues is a poor start.
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Richard Moore, the new chief of the UK’s secret service, suggests countries such as China will be watched to ensure climate commitments are kept, says The Daily Telegraph (via The Global Warming Policy Forum).

What climate commitment? Has nobody at MI6 informed Mr Moore about the Paris Agreement?

After all, under international law, China, India, and all emerging and developing nations are exempt from any CO2 emission cuts until 2030 or later.

MI6 is placing the climate emergency at the forefront of its international espionage with “green spying” on the world’s big polluters, its new chief has revealed.

Richard Moore, head of the UK’s foreign intelligence service, described climate change as the “foremost international foreign policy item for this country and for the planet”.

It means the big industrial countries will be monitored by MI6 to ensure they are upholding their commitments to combating rising global temperatures.

Mr Moore, known as ‘C’, took charge of the intelligence agency in October and has become the first head of the service to ever give a broadcast interview.

He indicated that British spies will make China the focus of much of their climate-related espionage by pointing out that Beijing is “certainly the largest emitter” of carbon.

. . .

Continued here.

Environmentally unfriendly as Formula E race runs out of juice

Not the latest model

That sinking feeling when your EV wheels stop turning…
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PARIS: Electrically-powered Formula E racing fell flat on Saturday (Apr 24) when 12 of 24 cars taking part in the Valencia Grand Prix ran out of energy and failed to finish, reports Channel News Asia.

On a wet track where collisions were frequent, the safety car was called upon five times.

However, the regulations provide that the level of energy available to the single-seaters is recalculated downwards during such pauses in racing.

The world’s ‘most powerful tidal turbine’ launches in Scotland

They keep trying, but tidal turbines have yet to make it to the big league in terms of competing with established alternatives like wind turbines. The report calls it a vessel.
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Scottish floating tidal turbine technology provider Orbital Marine Power has successfully launched its 2MW tidal turbine, the Orbital O2, from the Port of Dundee , reports insider.co.uk.

The operation was managed by Osprey Heavy Lift and saw the 680-tonne tidal turbine transferred from the Forth Ports quayside facility in Dundee into the River Tay using a submersible barge.

The launch marks the completion of the turbine build, managed by TEXO Fabrication, and the O2 will now be towed to the Orkney Islands, where it will undergo commissioning before being connected to the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC), becoming the world’s most powerful operational tidal turbine.

EV’s Not Family Workhorses, But Short-Range Second Cars

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EVs are looking more and more like the non-solution to the non-problem.

PA Pundits International

By Ronald Stein ~

With half of the EV’s in the entire country being located in California, the recent 2021 California study may be a downer for the EV excitement as it shows that EV’s are driven half as much as internal combustion engine vehicles. The study illustrates that EV’s are generally second vehicles and not the primary workhorse vehicle for those few elites that can afford them.

To date, zero and low emission vehicles are generally from the hybrid and electric car owners which are a scholarly bunch; over 70 percent of EV owners have a four-year college or post-graduate degree. This likely explains why the average household income of EV purchasers is upwards of $200,000.

If you are not in that higher educated echelon and the high-income range of society, and a homeowner or resident of a NEW apartment that has charging access there may…

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Above-average Atlantic hurricane activity again expected in 2021

Typical influence of La Niña on Pacific and Atlantic seasonal hurricane activity. Map by NOAA Climate.gov, based on originals by Gerry Bell.

Prediction time as the 2021 season approaches. The expected impacts of El Niño and La Niña on hurricane seasons in both the Atlantic and Pacific ocean areas are discussed by NOAA here. Hurricane detection has improved over time, so what is considered ‘average’ now is unlikely to be the same as it used to be.
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The year 2020 saw the most active hurricane season on record and marked the fifth consecutive year for above-average activity, says Phys.org.

A University of Arizona-led hurricane forecasting team predicts another year of above-average hurricane activity over the Atlantic Ocean in 2021.

The team predicts 18 named storms, including eight hurricanes, throughout the 2021 North Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30.

In comparison, the 30-year average is 13 named storms and seven hurricanes annually.

Met Office and Microsoft to build climate supercomputer

Weather forecasting technology

Before they even build it, everyone knows what kind of answers the ‘climate supercomputer’ will be required to produce. These will then be presented as evidence of the pre-conceived climate theories, which will be tagged as ‘science’ and everyone will be expected to be impressed.
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The Met Office will work with Microsoft on a supercomputer which will help model climate change, says BBC News.

They say it will provide more accurate weather forecasting and a better understanding of climate change.

The UK government said in February 2020 it would invest £1.2bn in the project.

Albert Einstein said no to CO2 radiative warming of the atmosphere

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Unfortunately climate alarmists are too far down their manic road to be halted by the views of Einstein or anyone else, but worth a look anyway.
[H/T Chaeremon]

Odyssey

The hypothesis of global warming from man made CO2 depends on a much-repeated narrative about CO2 trapping infrared (IR) photons leaving the earth. Although a beguilingly simple idea, a host of assumptions underlie it. One of these is that the radiative photonic absorption – emission interactions of the trace gas CO2 dominate heat movement in the atmosphere. And it turns out, this argument, a pillar of the global warming theory, is false – it was refuted in advance by none other than Albert Einstein in 1917.

In this 1917 paper:

http://inspirehep.net/record/858448/files/eng.pdf

Einstein says this about radiative heating of a gas:

“During absorption and emission of radiation there is also present a transfer of momentum to the molecules. This means that just the interaction of radiation and molecules leads to a velocity distribution of the latter. This must surely be the same as the velocity distribution which molecules acquire as the…

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Climate mania: California says it’s time for giant carbon vacuums

Photosynthesis: nature requires carbon dioxide

Climate mania is now in full swing as catastrophism takes over. What difference its supposed remedies will make to the climate remains to be seen – or not seen. At vast cost and effort, greenhouse gas theories of climate modellers are being assumed to be broadly correct, despite consistent failure to predict even current conditions.
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Solar panels, wind turbines and electric cars will go far in helping California and the Biden administration meet their aggressive climate goals—but not far enough, claims Phys.org.

As time runs short, scientists and government officials say the moment to break out the giant vacuums has arrived.

The art of industrial-scale carbon removal—sucking emissions from the atmosphere and storing them underground—has long been an afterthought in climate-action circles: too expensive, too controversial, too unproven.

UK to speed up target to cut carbon dioxide emissions

Ever-rising energy costs and a blizzard of new regulations await as the government dives further down the climate rabbit hole.
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Radical new climate change commitments are to become law in the UK, Boris Johnson will announce this week.

The prime minister will say carbon emissions will be cut by 78% by 2035 – almost 15 years earlier than previously planned – which would be a world-leading position, says BBC News.

And for the first time the climate law would be extended to cover international aviation and shipping.

But Labour said the government had to match “rhetoric with reality”.

Greenland’s new government vows to block rare-earth mine proposed by the UK

Kvanefjeld, Greenland [image credit: polarconnection.org]

The UK government sees an opportunity to extract minerals from there for electric cars, wind turbines etc. to help satisfy its obsessive desire to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But some Greenlanders are concerned about radioactive uranium in the mine’s contents.
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Greenland’s left-wing Inuit Ataqatigiit party (IA), which has pledged to oppose a large rare-earth mining project, announced a new government coalition on Friday, as it reiterated its strong environmental stance and vowed to combat acute social issues, reports Yahoo News.

The Arctic island of 56,000 people has gained international attention since former U.S. President Donald Trump offered to buy it in 2019, partly to help address Chinese dominance of rare earth mineral supplies.

“We are one people and we must stand together in Greenland, especially because our country is under incredible focus from the outside world,” new Prime Minister Mute Egede told reporters in the capital Nuuk, accompanied by traditional Inuit music.

Africans Deflect Biden’s Demand To End Fossil Fuel Use

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Climate dogma and economic reality are not compatible. If one wins, the other loses.

PA Pundits International

By Duggan Flanakin ~

As the merger of climate change and COVID panic materializes in front of our eyes, “global leaders” have found plenty developing world voices to join the crusade to “save the planet” from carbon (dioxide) “pollution.” But like their Chinese and Indian counterparts, many Africans, from heads of state to captains of industry and beyond, intend to expand, not shrink, reliance on fossil fuels to build their economies.

According to Oxford University researcher Galina Alova, “Africa’s electricity demand is set to increase significantly as the continent strives to industrialise and improve the well-being of its people,” but those who hope for rapid decarbonization in Africa will likely be disappointed.

Alova’s research found that Africa is likely to double its electricity generation by 2030, with fossil fuels providing two-thirds of the total, hydroelectric another 18 percent, and non-hydro renewables providing less than 10 percent.

Such an energy…

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Oceans losing oxygen mainly due to global warming, say researchers — but what about CO2?

The ocean carbon cycle [credit: IAEA]

Quoting from the article: ‘The main reason for this is global warming, which leads to a decrease in the solubility of gases and thus also of oxygen.’ Surely the same applies to carbon dioxide (CO2): warmer water causes release of some of it from the oceans into the atmosphere? Diagrams of the Earth’s natural carbon cycle seem conclusive enough.
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The life of almost all animals in the ocean depends on the availability of oxygen, which is dissolved as a gas in seawater, says Phys.org.

However, the ocean has been continuously losing oxygen for several decades. In the last 50 years, the loss of oxygen accumulates globally to about 2% of the total inventory (regionally sometimes significantly more).

The main reason for this is global warming, which leads to a decrease in the solubility of gases and thus also of oxygen, as well as to a slowdown in the ocean circulation and vertical mixing.