California Planted Trees to Fight Climate Change. Those Trees Are Now on Fire.

Smoke from a California wildfire [image credit: BBC]

Factors such as poor forest management policies, as mentioned by the previous US President, and arson don’t get a look in here, as it’s all about ‘fighting climate change’ and ‘the climate crisis’ and suchlike pop slogans. Nevertheless the author makes a good point about some of the hazards of so-called carbon offsets. Quote: “We’ve bought forest offsets that are now burning” – Microsoft’s carbon program manager at a carbon removal panel earlier this month.
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California’s emissions reduction program is going up in smoke because regulators severely underestimated the impact of climate change–fueled wildfires, claims Jacobin mag.

In 2013, California passed a landmark law that capped greenhouse gas emissions, but let companies offset their pollution overages by investing in forest preservation throughout the country — the idea being that trees absorb excess carbon from the atmosphere.

The statute was considered a model initiative to combat climate change, while providing businesses some flexibility in reducing their pollution.

Eight years later, though, there is a big problem: As of last week, there were more than forty-one thousand wildfires across the country, torching more than 4.6 million acres — a swath nearly the size of New Jersey.

Solar Tsunami and CME

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Sunspot AR 2860 is a ‘monster’.

Spaceweather.com

Aug. 27, 2021: Sunspot AR2859 erupted on Aug. 26th, producing a C3-class solar flare: movie. The flare, however, was not the main attraction. The eruption also caused a massive “solar tsunami.” Watch the shadowy wave ripple across the sun in this false-color ultraviolet movie from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory:

The expanding circular shadow is a wave of hot plasma and magnetism. Based on the time it took to reach the next sunspot, halfway around the sun, the tsunami was traveling faster than 110,000 mph.

Solar tsumanis always herald a CME, and this one was no exception. Soon after the tsunami broke, SOHO coronagraphs detected a plasma cloud leaving the sun: movie.

Update: NOAA analysts have modeled the CME’s trajectory. They predict an Earth impact during the late hours of Aug. 29th, possibly sparking G1-class geomagnetic storms through midday on Aug. 30th.   Aurora alerts:SMS Text.

SOLAR…

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UK Govt under fire as nuclear industry claim they have been banned from COP26

Opponents of nuclear power, of which the most obvious would be rival industries like wind and solar power, must have a strong influence within the UK government if there really is a ‘no nuclear’ policy for the forthcoming climate show. Are they serious about trying to change the weather via energy policy, or not?
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Up to 15 applications from nuclear-related bodies are understood to have been rejected by Mr Sharma’s COP26 Unit in the Cabinet Office, says The GWPF.

Alok Sharma has come under fire for preventing a series of nuclear bodies from displaying exhibits at the COP26 climate change summit.

In an open letter to Boris Johnson’s minister in charge of the event, global nuclear industry leaders revealed that “every application” so far to put on nuclear-related exhibits or events at the UN summit had been rejected.

The move comes despite senior Tories insisting that nuclear energy, including investing in a new fleet of reactors, must form a significant part of Britain’s plans to cut net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050.

Space-based solar power for the UK?

Credit: NASA

The UK is not alone in what’s billed as a new space race. China for one is in the game. If you think you’ve heard it all before, you probably have. 
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Vast solar power satellites in Earth’s orbit, beaming energy back to Earth. It’s a serious idea for green energy from the UK Space Agency, say insurers MS Amlin.

In one of his early dystopian short stories, the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov imagined a mile-wide space station that could “feed solar energy to the planets”.

Published in 1941, under the title Reason, it described a fantastical “energy converter” that gathered sunlight and beamed it across the entire solar system.

Some 80 years later, Asimov’s flight of fancy is starting to take real shape.

Fewer El Niño and La Niña events in a warmer world, says computer model

Credit: concernusa.org

A key premise of most computer models seems to be that the atmosphere, with its 0.04% CO2 content, drives ocean temperatures. As most of the energy is in the oceans, why wouldn’t it be the other way round?
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The cycling between warm El Niño and cold La Niña conditions in the eastern Pacific (commonly referred to as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, ENSO) has persisted without major interruptions for at least the last 11,000 years, says Phys.org.

This may change in the future according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change by a team of scientists from the IBS Center for Climate Physics (ICCP) at Pusan National University in South Korea, the Max Planck Institute of Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany, and the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, U.S.

The team conducted a series of global climate model simulations with an unprecedented spatial resolution of 10 km in the ocean and 25 km in the atmosphere.

Arctic Ice Hockey Stick August 2021

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It will be interesting to see what, if anything much, happens when solar minimum finally fades and the sunspot numbers pick up.

Science Matters

The graph above shows August daily ice extents for 2021 compared to 14 year averages, and some years of note.

The black line shows during this period on average Arctic ice extents decline ~2M km2 from ~6.8M km2 down to ~4.8M km2.  The Hockey Stick shape refers to the 2021 cyan MASIE line starting ~227k km2 below average but matching average by day 230, and in the last five days produced a surplus of 414k km2.  The Sea Ice Index in orange (SII from NOAA) started with the same deficit and also matched MASIE average day 230, but tracking the downward average since.  2019 and 2020 were well below average at this stage of the summer melt.

Why is this important?  All the claims of global climate emergency depend on dangerously higher temperatures, lower sea ice, and rising sea levels.  The lack of additional warming is documented in a post

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National Trust to give staff ‘Mediterranean hours’ and siestas amid climate change

Ham House

That increase in average temperatures of around one degree Celsius since the mid-19th century must be really stressful. It’s probably cheaper to offer siestas than to buy and operate suitable ventilation systems.
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The National Trust is giving its workers Mediterranean-style siestas in summer due to climate change making the weather increasingly hot, reports Indy100.com.

Staff and volunteers in the south of England will start the day earlier, finish later, and have a long lunch break to avoid the hottest part of the day, as people already do in countries such as Italy and Spain.

A spokesperson for the charity told The Guardian: “It’s fair to say that, as we experience more extreme temperatures, we will be looking to offer Mediterranean working hours, especially in the east which is likely to experience more frequent higher temperatures to ensure the health and safety of our staff and volunteers.”

Turbines use wind from passing traffic to generate power

ENLIL vertical axis wind turbine

Most of the traffic will be powered by the supposedly dreaded fossil fuels, but never mind. Natural wind can also play a part. It’s the impression of trendy modernity and conformity to prevalent climate theories that counts, presumably, as the amount of electricity produced will be limited, to say the least.
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Istanbul has installed wind turbines that generate electricity using the air turbulence generated by traffic, reports The Independent.

ENLIL is a vertical turbine developed by Istanbul Technical University and tech firm Devecitech have been placed on roadsides in Turkey’s largest city to harness the wind generated by passing vehicles, and to soak up solar energy at the same time.

The IPCC’s Deliberate CO2 Deception

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Alarmist CO2 hokum on the rise.

PA Pundits International

By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~

Many of my disagreements with the IPCC AR6 science Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) are just that, disagreements. I think their reasoning is faulty but at least I understand it. See my last article — “The UN IPCC science panel opts for extreme nuttiness“.

One SPM section, however, is so wrong that it must be a deliberate deception. The purpose seems to be to make the atmospheric CO2 increase look like a simple accumulation of our emissions. I call this the pollution model of CO2 and it is extremely misleading. The truth is well known so this must be a deceptive act on the IPCC’s part.

Here is the opening summary paragraph. The first sentence is a ridiculous 51 tortured words long, the second (and last) sentence states the hoax very clearly.

“While natural land and ocean carbon sinks are projected…

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High price and range anxiety stops Germans from buying e-cars

VW ID. model

When it comes to personal transport Germans aren’t exactly rushing to play along with the infantile mythology of climate neutrality, contrary to the wishes of their supposedly ‘green’ leaders. Sales targets look increasingly like wishful thinking.
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Germany wants to have 10 million electric cars on the road by 2030 in a bid to meet its climate targets, says DW.com.

But it’s not just the cost and limited range that’s deterring drivers to go along with this ambitious plan.

Germany’s long-established car industry is embarking on a historic transformation to try to shrink its carbon footprint.

GM recall of all Chevy Bolts due to battery fire risk likely to cost $1 billion

Chevy Bolt [image credit: GM Authority]

No hope of ever breaking even on that model now, if there was any to start with. Another edition of the recurring lithium-ion safety issue in the world of EVs: battery ’emissions’. 
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DETROIT (AP) — General Motors is recalling all Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicles sold worldwide to fix a battery problem that could cause fires.

The recall raises questions about lithium ion batteries, which now are used in nearly all electric vehicles.

President Joe Biden wants to convert 50% of the U.S. vehicle fleet from internal combustion to electricity by 2050 as part of a broader effort to fight climate change.

IPCC Proposed Banishment Of Fossil Fuels Would Place Most Of The World’s Population At Risk

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Attempts to get rid of fossil fuels will only serve to highlight how inadequate and costly the proposed substitutes are.

PA Pundits International

By Ronald Stein ~

The AR6Climate Change 2021Report just released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an intergovernmental body of the United Nations, has called out a “code red for humanity“ that “must sound a death knell for…fossil fuels, before they destroy our planet.”

The report from the IPCC has failed to acknowledge that the introduction of oil just over 100 years ago has been overwhelmingly beneficial for the prosperity of the world’s population growth to 8 billion from about 1 billion that is shown clearly in their own United Nations graph. The IPCC goal to banish fossil fuels will place most of the world’s population at risk, like the medieval times.

The members of the IPCC seem oblivious to the facts of how life was without the fossil fuels industry just 120 years ago when we had NO medications and medical equipment, NO…

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Net zero switch threatens new oil shock, warns top economist

This economist clearly has faith in IPCC climate models and theories, but he may be in for his own shock by putting all his climate eggs in the carbon dioxide emissions basket. Meanwhile, brace for economic pain.
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The vast expense of ending global warming [Talkshop comment: reality may differ] will trigger a blow to the world economy that is as damaging as the 1974 oil shock, a top international economist has warned. The Telegraph reporting.

A scramble to cut carbon emissions is likely to send energy prices rocketing and hold back living standards for years to come, Jean Pisani-Ferry said in a report published by the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Mr Pisani-Ferry – a public policy expert who has served in senior economic roles in the European Union for decades – said that although the bill is both manageable and necessary to halt climate change, politicians are failing to be honest with the public about the dramatic effect on their lives and livelihoods.

Hydrogen: UK government sees future in low-carbon fuel, but what’s the reality?

[image credit: latinoamericarenovable.com]

HMG pays another visit to climate cloud cuckoo land. Its hydrogen ‘strategy’ turns out to be as full of obvious holes as a string vest. Don’t even ask about safety issues.
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The UK’s long-awaited hydrogen strategy has set out the government’s plans for “a world-leading hydrogen economy” that it says would generate £900 million (US$1.2 million) and create over 9,000 jobs by 2030, “potentially rising to 100,000 jobs and £13 billion by 2050”. From: The Conversation (via Phys.org).

The strategy document argues that hydrogen could be used in place of fossil fuels in homes and industries which are currently responsible for significant CO2 emissions, such as chemical manufacturing and heavy transport, which includes the delivery of goods by shipping, lorries and trains.

The government also envisages that many of the new jobs producing and using “low-carbon hydrogen” will benefit “UK companies and workers across our industrial heartlands.”

On the face of it, this vision of a low-carbon future in some of the most difficult to decarbonise niches of the economy sounds like good news. But is it? And are there other options for delivering net zero that will be better for the public?

Fast changes between the solar seasons resolved by new sun clock

Our magnetic Sun [image credit: space.com]

The declining phase of the current solar cycle 25 is predicted to be short. Whether that would follow a low peak remains to be seen, but not much has happened so far in the cycle.
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Violent activity on our Sun leads to some of the most extreme space weather events on Earth, impacting systems such as satellites, communications systems, power distribution and aviation, says Phys.org.

The roughly 11-year cycle of solar activity has three ‘seasons’, each of which affects the space weather felt at Earth differently: (i) solar maximum, the sun is active and disordered, when space weather is stormy and events are irregular (ii) the declining phase, when the sun and solar wind becomes ordered, and space weather is more moderate and (iii) solar minimum, when activity is quiet.

In a new study led by the University of Warwick and published in The Astrophysical Journal, scientists found that the change from solar maximum to the declining phase is fast, happening within a few (27 day) solar rotations.

Challenging UN, Study Finds Sun –not CO2 — May Be Behind Global Warming

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Finding the Sun the main player in climate would be the default position in any normal world, but now it gets billed as the challenger.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

The sun and not human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) may be the main cause of warmer temperatures in recent decades, according to a new study with findings that sharply contradict the conclusions of the United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The peer-reviewed paper, produced by a team of almost two dozen scientists from around the world, concluded that previous studies did not adequately consider the role of solar energy in explaining increased temperatures.

The new study was released just as the UN released its sixth “Assessment Report,” known as AR6, that once again argued in favor of the view that man-kind’s emissions of CO2 were to blame for global warming. The report said human responsibility was “unequivocal.”

But the new study casts serious doubt on the hypothesis.

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Climate Modeling Civil War

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‘You’re more wrong than we are!’ – seems to be the state of play here. Are there any models that wouldn’t get improved results if their so-called ‘greenhouse gas’ forcing was reduced or even removed?

PA Pundits International

By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~

Looks like the climate modeling community may have a civil war on its hands. Some serious players are rejecting the new hot models, but probably not their owners. If so we will see modeler against modeler. Be still my heart.

The first loud public shot has been fired by the prestigious journal Science (actually it is more of a magazine but never mind). Science is devoutly alarmist but they reject the hot models in the strongest possible terms (in a lengthy article that is not paywalled).

Their blunt article title is “U.N. climate panel confronts implausibly hot forecasts of future warming“. When it comes to science, “implausibly hot” is very strong language. Scientific language is normally extremely polite. (The U.N. climate panel is of course the IPCC.)

But it gets even stronger in the text. Here we find NASA’s Gavin Schmidt, arguably…

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La Niña to emerge in Aug-Oct season, U.S. weather service says

No imminent upward pressure on global temperatures resulting from the ENSO phenomenon, judging by the latest analysis. Possibly the opposite, if current trends continue.
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Aug.12 (Reuters) — The La Niña weather pattern could potentially develop during the August-October season, and last through the 2021-22 winter, the U.S. government’s National Weather Service said on Thursday. (Yahoo Finance reporting.)

The La Niña pattern is characterized by unusually low temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean and is linked to floods and drought.

Punishing Climate Policies to Fix What’s Not Broken

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‘The higher global warming, the more rainfall’, say climate alarmists — then complain about droughts causing wildfires. Confused? Yes they are. Here, Ben Pile looks at the case of the UK .

Science Matters

Ben Pile writes at Spiked Climate policy, not climate change, poses the biggest risk to our daily lives.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Firstly, Ben provides evidence for a reasonable person to conclude the weather and climate is doing nothing out of the ordinary.  Drawing on this year’s UK State of the Climate report:

But how significant are these changes really? Take, for example, the claim that the UK’s temperatures have increased. Leaving aside the possibility that land-use change thanks to the UK’s economic development might influence temperatures, the report offers this chart depicting 140 years of anomalies in UK and global annual temperatures:

Though the chart clearly shows that UK temperatures have risen, there is substantial year-to-year variability – far greater in the UK than for the world as a whole – that might make us wonder how impactful this extra warmth really is.

The point is…

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UK plan to replace fossil gas with blue hydrogen ‘may backfire’

‘Academics warn fugitive emissions from producing hydrogen could be 20% worse for climate than using gas’, reports The Guardian. Climate claims aside, the lack of practicality in the hydrogen plan (is there one?) is becoming ever clearer. Why waste time and effort, and a fortune, for no known benefit to anyone or anything, but plenty of economic pain to citizens?
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The government’s plan to replace fossil gas with “blue” hydrogen to help meet its climate targets could backfire after US academics found that it may lead to more emissions than using gas, says The Guardian.

In some cases blue hydrogen, which is made from fossil gas, could be up to 20% worse for the climate than using gas in homes and heavy industry, owing to the emissions that escape when gas is extracted from the ground and split to produce hydrogen.