Campaigners to challenge Bristol Airport expansion in court

Once again the courts are cast in the role of arbiter of climate obsessions as so-called ‘campaigners’ try to suppress modern developments, intended to meet rising demand, by the usual claim that any minor increase on the 0.04% carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a problem rather than a benefit.
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Bristol Airport Action Network (BAAN) has lodged an appeal against the Planning Inspectorate’s recent decision to approve the expansion, after raising more than £20,000 to cover legal fees, reports New Civil Engineer.

BAAN believes the expansion will be damaging for local people and the environment, and lead to a rise in road traffic, increased noise and air pollution and an “inevitable rise in carbon emissions”.

BAAN representative Stephen Clarke said: “This decision is so damaging for the local people and the climate that it simply cannot be allowed to stand unchallenged.”

The BBC’s fake news about fracking

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The UK can follow the US lead and tap its own land-based gas resources using the latest expertise, or it can compete for uncertain and expensive supplies on the world market. Energy security or…??

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Philip Bratby

The seasons are changing, and for many of us that means it’s time for a spring clean. My back patio has been gathering months’ worth of soil and winter debris, so I now need to blow it up. I will use the same method to clean the grime off my car. After ensuring the area is clear, and any nearby houses or pedestrians are safe, I will subject the car to lots of explosions. In each case, I shall be using a power washer, of the kind that Halfords sells for around 50 quid.

At this point, I expect the pedants among you to start quibbling. The hydraulic pressure from my power washer is not an ‘explosion’, you might point out. Water pressure does not cause ‘a sudden and rapid expansion’, which is how many dictionaries define ‘explosion’. But according to the BBC’s most…

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Ancient El Niños reveal limits to future climate projections

Unravelling the assumptions and the strange cause/effect logic suggested by the article is a challenge here. They say they’re looking for “clues on how sensitive El Niño is to changes in climate”, but “if there’s another big El Niño, it’s going to be very hard to attribute it to a warming climate or to El Niño’s own internal variations.”
Why invent such a conundrum at all?
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The climate pattern El Niño varies over time to such a degree that scientists will have difficulty detecting signs that it is getting stronger with global warming, says Phys.org.

That’s the conclusion of a study led by scientists at The University of Texas at Austin that analyzed 9,000 years of Earth’s history.

The scientists drew on climate data contained within ancient corals and used one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers to conduct their research.

Australian court strikes down landmark climate ruling

Lots of coal in Australia

Goodbye landmark. Yet another attempt to use the courts to try to establish the myth that governments can somehow control the climate bites the dust, for now at least.
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An Australian court on Tuesday threw out a landmark legal ruling that the country’s environment minister had a duty to protect children from climate change, reports Phys.org.

Last year’s legal win by a group of high school children had been hailed by environmental groups as a potential legal weapon to fight fossil fuel projects.

But the federal court found in favour of an appeal by Environment Minister Sussan Ley, deciding she did not have to weigh the harm climate change would inflict on children when assessing the approval of new fossil fuel projects.

National Grid wants ‘low-carbon’ back up generators to replace diesel

Photosynthesis: nature requires carbon dioxide

It goes without saying any alternative will be more expensive than diesel. But cost can’t stand in the way of climate dogma and obsessing about ‘carbon emissions’, i.e. the trace gases that nature relies on for photosynthesis.
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National Grid Electricity Transmission (NGET) has launched their first ‘Call for Innovation’ to businesses across the UK to find a new low carbon alternative to backup diesel generators – Press release.

NGET currently use batteries alongside diesel generators to provide backup power to a substation for key activities such as cooling fans, pumps, and lighting, enabling it to continue to perform its crucial role in the electricity transmission system.

Still No Global Warming, Cool February Land and Sea

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According to NOAA’s ENSO blog triple dip La Ninas are now on the menu of imminent possibilities.

Science Matters

The post below updates the UAH record of air temperatures over land and ocean.  But as an overview consider how recent rapid cooling has now completely overcome the warming from the last 3 El Ninos (1998, 2010 and 2016).  The UAH record shows that the effects of the last one were gone as of April 2021, again in November, 2021 and now in January and February 2022. (UAH baseline is now 1991-2020).

For reference I added an overlay of CO2 annual concentrations as measured at Mauna Loa.  While temperatures fluctuated up and down ending flat, CO2 went up steadily by ~55 ppm, a 15% increase.

Furthermore, going back to previous warmings prior to the satellite record shows that the entire rise of 0.8C since 1947 is due to oceanic, not human activity.

The animation is an update of a previous analysis from Dr. Murry Salby.  These graphs use Hadcrut4 and…

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Giant impact crater in Greenland occurred a few million years after dinosaurs went extinct

Credit: Uwe Dedering @ Wikipedia

Another crater controversy ends as two different dating methods produced the same result.
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Danish and Swedish researchers have dated the enormous Hiawatha impact crater, a 31 km-wide asteroid crater buried under a kilometer of Greenlandic ice, says the University of Copenhagen.

The dating ends speculation that the asteroid impacted after the appearance of humans and opens up a new understanding of Earth’s evolution in the post-dinosaur era.

Ever since 2015, when researchers at the University of Copenhagen’s GLOBE Institute discovered the Hiawatha impact crater in northwestern Greenland, uncertainty about the crater’s age has been the subject of considerable speculation.

Could the asteroid have slammed into Earth as recently as 13,000 years ago, when humans had long populated the planet? Could its impact have catalyzed a nearly 1,000-year period of global cooling known as the Younger Dryas?

The Original Climate Crisis: How the Little Ice Age Devastated Early Modern Europe

Frost fair

The key phrases in this article could be: ‘Whatever its causes’ and ‘Average temperatures in the British Isles cooled by 2°C’. Climate science is unable to offer a specific explanation, although theories abound, but natural variation for whatever reasons is built-in and always will be. Quantifying it remains out of reach, but computer models are still supposed to be the answer to everything climate.
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Just as the UK was recovering from storms Eunice and Franklin, scientists of UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a landmark report warning of a future with spiraling weather extremes, fiercer storms, flash flooding, and wildfires, says The Conversation (via Singularity Hub).

This isn’t the first time that Britain has experienced drastic climate change, however. By the 16th and 17th centuries, northern Europe had left its medieval warm period and was languishing in what is sometimes called the little ice age.

Starting in the early 14th century, average temperatures in the British Isles cooled by 2°C, with similar anomalies recorded across Europe.

Do Wind Farms Change The Weather?

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More research needed it seems, but it hasn’t been ruled out.

PA Pundits International

By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~

The effect of lots of wind turbines on weather and climate is a small but active research area. Wind power converts wind energy into electricity, thereby removing that energy from the air.

The research issue of how taking a lot of energy out might affect weather or climate seems to have emerged as early as 2004. Studies range from the global climate impact down to the local effects of a single large wind facility.

Here is a nontechnical article on a key global climate scale paper in 2011: “Wind and wave farms could affect Earth’s energy balance“in New Scientist magazine, March 30, 2011. Must register to read here: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028063-300-wind-and-wave-farms-could-affect-earths-energy-balance/

Here is the seminal technical paper: “Estimating maximum global land surface wind power extractability and associated climatic consequences” by L. M. Miller, F. Gans, and A. Kleidon; Earth System Dynamics…

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Researchers propose critical role of desert dust in Earth’s climate system

Several types of cirrus clouds [image credit: Piccolo Namek @ Wikipedia]

Headline: ‘Airborne study reveals surprisingly large role of desert dust in forming cirrus clouds’. Researchers found ‘Even at low concentrations dust was found to play a big role in controlling cloud properties’. One said: “These results are a striking message to the aerosol and cloud science community, that we need to improve our treatment of dust and cloud formation in climate models to more accurately predict current and future climate.” Not much faith can be put in predictions of the future climate if predicting the present one is known to be inaccurate?
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Every year several billion metric tons of mineral dust are lofted into the atmosphere from the world’s arid regions, making dust one of the most abundant types of aerosol particles in the atmosphere, says Phys.org.

Now, scientists are learning that tiny bits of dust from the hottest and driest parts of the Earth are a surprisingly large driver in forming the delicate, wispy ice clouds known as cirrus in the cold, high-altitudes of the atmosphere.

While scientists have known that desert dust particles can seed certain clouds, the extent of that relationship has been a long-standing question.

PM Overrules Energy Regulator

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Let’s hope this decision is not just a publicity stunt to be kicked around for the duration of the Ukraine disaster, with no end result.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

According to press reports, the Prime Minister has opened the door to the revival of the UK’s shale gas industry in the aftermath of the Government’s ban on imports of Russian oil.

According to the Daily Telegraph “the Prime Minister wants his ministers to look again at whether fracking, which has been under a moratorium for more than two years, can help diversify the country’s energy supply.”

Officials are said to be working on an “energy supply strategy”.

Meanwhile, the US administration is ratcheting up pressure on shale gas producers, telling them they should be doing “whatever it takes” to increase shale supplies and tame energy prices that have soared following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Even the EU’s newly released energy plan makes absolutely clear that the first and overriding priority is to obtain non-Russian natural gas to shore up security of supply.

Net Zero…

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Endurance: Shackleton’s lost ship is found in Antarctic

The Endurance

After the search vessel nearly suffered the same fate, what was one of the world’s greatest undiscovered shipwrecks is identified on the Antarctic seafloor.
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Scientists have found and filmed one of the greatest ever undiscovered shipwrecks 107 years after it sank, reports BBC News.

The Endurance, the lost vessel of Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, was found at the weekend at the bottom of the Weddell Sea.

The ship was crushed by sea-ice and sank in 1915, forcing Shackleton and his men to make an astonishing escape on foot and in small boats.

Video of the remains show Endurance to be in remarkable condition.

EU unveils plan to end reliance on Russian gas

A roadmap to cut imports of Russian gas by two thirds in a year – but they’ll need somewhere else’s gas, whether from fracking or not, plus some coal, instead. Gas storage is to be greatly increased. But how exactly they plan to ‘ramp up’ hydrogen production, and at what cost, remains to be seen. Climate obsessions will have to be shelved for a while.
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The European Commission has outlined a new energy roadmap designed to cut reliance on Russian gas by two thirds in just a year, reports BBC News.

The plan envisages ending reliance on all Russian fossil fuels “well before” 2030.

In the short term, gas should be sourced from the US and Africa while some countries may need to use more coal in the months ahead.

Brexit Leader Farage Launches Crusade Against ‘Net Zero Madness’

Not before time. The idea that ‘the climate’ is in imminent danger from human activities has no serious scientific basis, other than unreliable computer models. Current so-called green policies are ‘net stupid’ says Farage.
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Establishment beware: ‘Mr. Brexit’ Nigel Farage has launched a new campaign with Britain’s ‘net zero madness’ in his crosshairs, calling for ruinous green policies to be put to a referendum, says Breitbart (via Climate Change Dispatch).

British political firebrand and Brexit pioneer Nigel Farage has turned his sights on what he calls the UK government’s “net zero madness”, and will now campaign for a referendum on green policies championed by Boris Johnson.

Boris Johnson’s ‘climate change pass’ for natural gas welcomed

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Being stuck between Putin and climate zealots on energy policy isn’t a great place to be. He should ask himself how he got there.

Iowa Climate Science Education

London, 7 March – Net Zero Watch has welcomed Boris Johnson’s proposal for a “climate change pass” for natural gas and his call for ramping up natural gas production in the United Kingdom.

According to news reports the Prime Minister is calling on Western nations to ramp up natural gas production, countering his energy minister, Mr Kwarteng, who continues to oppose UK shale gas production and claims that Britain “needs to move away from expensive fossil fuels.”

As European gas prices are skyrocketing and are now 16 times higher than US shale gas, the Times reports that “Johnson wants the West, particularly the US and Canada, to ramp up its own production of gas to help remove the “massive leverage” Russia has over EU countries.”

European gas prices are now nearly 16 times higher than US shale gas

Net Zero Watch believes the US and Canada would want to see…

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Ukraine war, gas and the fertiliser problem

A key point here is that (quote) ‘Huge amounts of natural gas are needed to produce ammonia, the key ingredient in nitrogen fertiliser’. The boss of a major producer says: “Half the world’s population gets food as a result of fertilisers… and if that’s removed from the field for some crops, [the yield] will drop by 50%”. Climate obsessives calling for gas to be removed from the energy scene need to explain where the world’s nitrogen fertilisers would then come from.
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The war in Ukraine will deliver a shock to the global supply and cost of food, the boss of one of the world’s biggest fertiliser companies has said.

Yara International, which operates in more than 60 countries, buys considerable amounts of essential raw materials from Russia, says BBC Business News.

Fertiliser prices were already high due to soaring wholesale gas prices.

Yara’s boss, Svein Tore Holsether, has warned the situation could get even tougher.

“Things are changing by the hour,” he told the BBC.

Climate worriers bemoan ‘decades of failure’

CO2 is not pollution

Somehow this is largely due to ‘top-down diktats from Davos’ and ‘Davos culture’ needs to be disrupted, according to this article. The central sticking points of course being that pulling out of fossil fuel use equates to giving up on being a modern and prosperous industrial society, and doing so wouldn’t alter the climate in any noticeable way anyway. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.
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Carbon emissions are 60% higher than they were in 1990, when the first IPCC report was published. This is a symptom of a highly unsustainable political economy, asserts Climate Home News.

The UK Government approves new North Sea oil fields and presides over airport expansion. The EU ignores climate science, embraces ‘gas as a transition fuel’ and sees SUV sales soar to a record high.

Across the Atlantic, US president Joe Biden’s climate claims are undermined by $25 billion of federal funding for airport development and a rise of over 6% in US CO2 emissions in 2021.

The Mystery of Orange Auroras

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Why now, we may ask. Either we didn’t notice them before or they weren’t there.

Spaceweather.com

March 4, 2022: A recent display of auroras over Canada has experts scratching their heads. The mystery? They were orange. Pilot Matt Melnyk was flying 36,000 feet over Canada on Feb. 23rd when he saw the strangely-colored lights from the cockpit window:

“I have been chasing and photographing auroras for more than 13 years (often from airplanes) and this is the first time I have ever seen orange,” says Melnyk.

What’s so strange about orange? Joe Minow of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center explains: “Theoretically, nitrogen and oxygen (N2, N2+, and O2+) can produce emissions at orange wavelengths, but these are typically weak compared to stronger emissions from the same molecules at the red end of the spectrum. It is hard to understand how orange could dominate in an auroral display.”

Even so, Melnyk says “these appeared to be real auroras.” The orange fringe danced in sync with regular red…

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Study: the effect of renewable energy incorporation on power grid stability and resilience

Where are existing climate-obsessed energy policies taking us? The drive toward renewable energy production in new building developments can make microgrids susceptible to outages, this research article suggests. Batteries are not a solution, they say.
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The abstract of the article says:

Contemporary proliferation of renewable power generation is causing an overhaul in the topology, composition, and dynamics of electrical grids. These low-output, intermittent generators are widely distributed throughout the grid, including at the household level. It is critical for the function of modern power infrastructure to understand how this increasingly distributed layout affects network stability and resilience. This paper uses dynamical models, household power consumption, and photovoltaic generation data to show how these characteristics vary with the level of distribution. It is shown that resilience exhibits daily oscillations as the grid’s effective structure and the power demand fluctuate. This can lead to a substantial decrease in grid resilience, explained by periods of highly clustered generator output. Moreover, the addition of batteries, while enabling consumer self-sufficiency, fails to ameliorate these problems. The methodology identifies a grid’s susceptibility to disruption resulting from its network structure and modes of operation.’

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Full research article here: Science Advances, March 2022

Pielke Jr.: The IPCC goes all-in with implausible scenarios and political activism

Credit: BBC

Using far-fetched worst-case scenarios, the IPCC has become a cheerleader for emissions reductions. Propaganda has overtaken real science in a big way.
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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an important organization with a primary purpose to assess the scientific literature on climate in order to inform policy, says Roger Pielke Jr. @ Climate Change Dispatch.

The IPCC spans the physical sciences, impacts, adaptation and vulnerability, and economics.

I have often stated that the IPCC is so important that if it did not exist we’d need to invent it because the challenge of climate change presents significant risks.