Mid April Arctic Ice Above Average

.
.
Looks normal enough. What was that desperate climate emergency again?

Science Matters

Drift ice in Okhotsk Sea at sunrise.

Previous posts showed 2022 Arctic Ice broke the 15M km2 ceiling in February, staying above that level the first week of March, then followed by typical melting in March. As the chart below shows, mid March the overall ice extent was ~400k km2 below the 16 year average, before returning to the mean day 89 and tracking the average since then.

Note the much higher ice extents in 2022 compared to 2021 or 2007.  The green lines show that the above normal ice this year is despite low extents in Sea of Okhotsk.  The averages in dark green (excluding Okhotsk) are below 2022 in light green (excluding Okhotsk) by nearly 200k km2.  IOW everywhere in the Arctic except Okhotsk ice extents are well above average.  Remember also that Okhotsk basin is outside the Arctic circle, has no Polar bears, and is among the…

View original post 203 more words

Researchers reveal variations in Arctic amplification effect during past millennium

Arctic sea ice [image credit: cbc.ca]

The researchers find ‘a significantly declining AA effect on the millennial time scale’ — but then attempt to link that to anthropogenic forcing in recent times, according to the article at least. That seems illogical if the argument is that humans are playing a part. In any case if the effect has been shown to occur over at least a millennium, that in itself casts doubt on claims that humans must be the prime (or any) cause of the most recent observed changes.
– – –
The recent amplified warming in the Arctic during the last decades has received much attention, says Phys.org.

But how Arctic amplification (AA) has varied on longer time scales and what drives these variations remain unclear.

Recently, a study has provided a new perspective on the AA effect during the past millennium based on the best available paleoclimate data and novel data assimilation methods.

Government’s Net Zero plan for tree planting may increase global warming, climate scientists find

Tree planting

Hapless climate botherers barking up the wrong tree again? Carbon dioxide capture should be left to nature.
– – –
In a new paper published in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change the scientists look at the climate effects of deforestation at different latitudes, says Net Zero Watch.

The researchers find that at latitudes 50°N to 60°N – in other words essentially all of the UK – and above, deforestation contributes to global cooling, so afforestation (which has opposing effects to deforestation) will contribute to global warming.

Welsh family farms threatened by corporates pursuing ‘carbon offsetting’ schemes

Sheep farming in Wales [image credit: BBC]

Another example of unintended consequences caused by the irrational pursuit of climate obsessions by governments.
– – –
A fifth of Welsh farms are running at a loss and there is a risk that farmers will be priced out of agriculture by big corporations buying up farmland for carbon offsetting schemes, according to a new report on family farms in Wales.

The findings of an inquiry by the Welsh Affairs Select Committee published today (7 April) paint a concerning picture for Welsh agriculture, an industry where the average farm size is just 48ha, compared to 87ha in England, says TW News.

From pressure on incomes and land availability to a lack of opportunity for new entrants, the report highlights some of the key concerns and sets out a series of recommendations to governments to address the issues.

Ban fracking, rock concerts and football matches!

Image credit: Iridescent @ Wikipedia

And heavy vehicles – or armies – from bridges, obviously.
– – –
If the government is banning fracking for producing imperceptible tremors then it should be consistent and not allow the seismic carnage caused by rock concerts or football matches for that matter, jokes Net Zero Watch.

When many members of the public think about fracking their very next thought is likely to be “earthquakes.”

That’s because in the public’s perception fracking is a danger – nobody wants an induced earthquake just as nobody would want an induced volcanic eruption or tidal wave.

Nature is capricious enough to be threatening if you live in certain parts of the world. We don’t want earthquakes near Blackpool or Burnley, do we?

That’s the problem with the word earthquake. A better term is micro-seismicity and when viewed that way such events are everywhere.
. . .
Now, have you ever wondered why armies break step on a bridge?

Full article here.

Astronomers surprised by ‘dramatic warming’ at Neptune’s south pole

Neptune

Planetary temperature conundrums are not confined to Earth. Nobody foresaw the observed changes that occurred on Neptune between 2018 and 2020.
– – –
An international team of astronomers have used ground-based telescopes, including the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), to track Neptune’s atmospheric temperatures over a 17-year period, Phys.org.

They found a surprising drop in Neptune’s global temperatures followed by a dramatic warming at its south pole.

“This change was unexpected,” says Michael Roman, a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Leicester, UK, and lead author of the study published today in The Planetary Science Journal. “Since we have been observing Neptune during its early southern summer, we expected temperatures to be slowly growing warmer, not colder.”

IPCC World’s Last Chance (Again)

.
.
The climate last chance saloon never closes.

Science Matters

Getty Images

James Macpherson reports on the latest deadline in his Australian Spectator article The IPCC say the world is ending! (Again?) .H/T John Ray.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

In the latest ‘now or never!’ since the ‘last now or never!’ the United Nations has warned the world that it is once again ‘now or never!’ to avoid disastrous Climate Change.

Forget Prince Charles’ warning back in July 2009 that we had just 96 months to save the planet.

Ignore former British PM Gordon Brown’s prediction, just three months later, that we had fewer than 50 days to avoid disaster.

And never mind French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius who, standing beside then American Secretary of State John Kerry, told the world on May 13, 2014, that ‘we have 500 days to avoid climate chaos’.

The irony of that particular Chicken Little routine was that Fabius was scheduled…

View original post 855 more words

Sweden set to regulate the ‘carbon footprint’ of imported goods

Photosynthesis: nature requires carbon dioxide

Another climate sucker falls for the idea that nature’s life giver carbon dioxide is a threat to human existence which can and should be controlled, when a lack of it would be the real problem.
– – –
A deal between Sweden’s political parties positions the country to take responsibility for the carbon footprint of imported goods, says Climate Home News.

Sweden’s political parties agreed on Thursday to include consumption-based emissions within its climate targets, making it the first country in the world to make the leap into the complex realm of overseas emissions reporting.

National climate targets rely on reporting the emissions that are created on a country’s territory.

Melting ice caps may not shut down ocean current, say researchers

A portion of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation [image credit: R. Curry, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution @ Wikipedia]

Another supposed climate tipping point, popular with the alarm-loving media, floats away? A feature that’s “built into many models” was found not to work as advertised.
– – –
Most simulations of our climate’s future may be overly sensitive to Arctic ice melt as a cause of abrupt changes in ocean circulation, according to new research led by scientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Climate scientists count the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (or AMOC) among the biggest tipping points on the way to a planetary climate disaster, says Phys.org.

The Atlantic Ocean current acts like a conveyor belt carrying warm tropical surface water north and cooler, heavier deeper water south.

Government says half of all new UK cars should be electric by 2028

The availability of new hybrids after 2030 is also thrown into question, as the government puts its foot on the climate obsession accelerator. Sales figures of full EVs will now be part of that policy decision. Basically freedom of choice will end in 2027, well before the government’s latest energy strategy has had much chance to take any effect. This looks over-ambitious in terms of electricity supply, to put it mildly.
– – –
More than half of all new cars sold in the UK must be fully electric by 2028, under detailed government proposals unveiled on Thursday to pave the way for phasing out the sale of traditional petrol and diesel vehicles by the end of the decade, says DUK News.

Ministers want to bring in a China-style sales mandate from 2024, which would force carmakers to increase the proportion of electric cars as a percentage of their sales each year until 2035, when all models must be zero emission.

Under plans unveiled two years ago, the government would ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 but allow some new hybrid models to be sold until 2035.

Specific year-by-year goals disclosed online on Thursday include a 22 per cent mandated all-electric share by manufacturer at the start of the scheme in 2024, rising every year to 52 per cent in 2028 and 80 per cent by 2030.

The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders industry body said the new rules “must encourage consumers to purchase not just compel manufacturers to produce.” It renewed its call for manufacturers to be released from the binding targets if not enough electric chargers were installed across the UK.

Last month the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast that 59 per cent of new car sales would be electric by 2027, double the level it forecast in October.

Battery-electric cars accounted for 12 per cent of the new vehicles sold last year but some manufacturers, such as Toyota, currently rely on hybrid systems to lower emissions and have only this year begun selling full electric vehicles. Jaguar Land Rover, Britain’s largest carmaker, only sells one electric model and is not due to release its next electric car until 2024.

Full article here.

French winemakers fan flames to save 2022 crop after unexpectedly sharp frosts

A winegrower lights anti-frost candles in a French vineyard [image credit: thelocal.fr]

‘Climate change’ gets the blame of course, which is code for human activities in the media, politics etc. How trace gases might cause warmth one month and frosts the next in a particular region of the world is not explained. Short video via link below.
– – –
Climate extremes in France this spring have again made it a race against time for vineyard owners to protect their crops, reports BBC News.

March warmth and April frosts in 2021 resulted in one of the country’s lowest wine production in years. This year is proving every bit as tough.
– – –
France experiences coldest April night since 1947
Published: 4 April 2022

The French weather forecaster Météo France recorded temperatures of -9C on Sunday night, reports Thelocal.fr.

Simulations explain Greenland’s slower summer warming, say researchers

Kangerlussuaq Fjord, Greenland [image credit: notsogreen.com]

‘Temperatures and rates of ice sheet melting both peaked in 2012’ – interesting quote from the report. The researchers assume that natural factors are merely impeding the inevitable warming they expect from carbon dioxide emission increases, but assumptions can be risky.
– – –
A puzzling, decade-long slowdown in summer warming across Greenland has been explained by researchers at Hokkaido University in Japan, says Phys.org.

Their observational analysis and computer simulations revealed that changes in sea surface temperature in the tropical Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles to the south, trigger cooler summer temperatures across Greenland.

The results, published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, will help improve future predictions of Greenland ice sheet and Arctic sea ice melting in coming decades.

Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng orders scientific review of fracking impact

Fracking: note the deep shaft

Can they get over the paralysis induced by their climate obsessions and get on with what the US has done successfully for years, or are they just looking for another report to hide behind? The days of thinking gas could always be reliably imported at moderate cost are over.
– – –
Senior Tories are calling for an end to the ban on shale gas extraction to help secure energy supplies, says BBC News.

The government has ordered a new report on the impact of fracking, days ahead of publishing its energy supply plan.

Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has given the British Geological Survey (BGS) three months to assess any changes to the science around the controversial practice.

Fracking was halted in the UK in 2019 amid opposition from green groups and local concerns over earth tremors.

Solar Cycle Update: The Gap is Growing

.
.
Trend or blip? The former looks more likely at the moment, but the sun can cause surprises.

Spaceweather.com

April 5, 2022: New sunspot counts from NOAA confirm that Solar Cycle 25 is racing ahead of the official forecast–and the gap is growing:

See the complete labeled plot or play with an interactive version from NOAA

Sunspot counts have now exceeded predictions for 18 straight months. The monthly value at the end of March was more than twice the forecast, and the highest in nearly 7 years.

The “official forecast” comes from the Solar Cycle Prediction Panel, a group of scientists representing NOAA, NASA and International Space Environmental Services (ISES). The Panel predicted that Solar Cycle 25 would peak in July 2025 as a relatively weak cycle, similar in magnitude to its predecessor Solar Cycle 24. Instead, Solar Cycle 25 is shaping up to be stronger.

In March 2022, the sun produced 146 solar flares, including one X-flare and 13 M-flares. Auroras were sighted as far south…

View original post 38 more words

China continues to laugh at Western “Green Energy” foolishness

Bigger energy bills and decreasing reliability of energy supply are the only guaranteed results of climate-obsessed policies.
– – –
With an energy cost crisis now striking Europe and to a lesser extent the U.S., some cracks have begun to appear in the “net zero” utopian dreams being pursued almost universally by Western politicians, says the Manhattan Contrarian.

Nevertheless, at this writing, the rapid elimination of use of fossil fuels, supposedly to fight “climate change,” remains official government policy throughout Europe, at the federal level in the U.S., in most blue American states, and as well in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

IPCC scientists say it’s ‘now or never’ to limit warming — but such powers don’t exist?

Summertime [image credit: BBC]

What evidence is there that such powers do exist? An air of unreality is palpable here, with talk of extreme dangers and use of decimal point temperature statements while brushing aside all uncertainties. Endless alarmism creates fatigue, not the fear they crave.
– – –
UN scientists have unveiled a plan that they believe can limit the root causes of dangerous climate change, says BBC News.

A key UN body says in a report that there must be “rapid, deep and immediate” cuts in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

Global emissions of CO2 would need to peak within three years to stave off the worst impacts.

Even then, the world would also need technology to suck CO2 from the skies by mid-century.

Removing ‘carbon’ from atmosphere only way to save climate, says desperate UN report

CO2 is not pollution

H/T New York Post.

Everyone knows that won’t happen. Too expensive, and no adequate methods available anyway even if it was a good idea, which it isn’t. Nobody consults the growers and planters of the world, it seems. Little or no role is allocated to natural climate variation, but that’s only one of many issues.
– – –
Sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere is the world’s only chance to avoid climate change disaster, according to a report due to be released Monday.

The paper by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is expected to say that dangerous climate change will be avoided only if vast quantities of carbon dioxide are removed from the air, the Times of London reported.

“Carbon dioxide removal is necessary to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions globally and nationally,” a draft version of the summary report said, according to The Times. If “negative emission” technologies fulfill their potential, it continues, they could even enable a reversal of global warming.

However, carbon-capturing technology is nowhere near where it needs to be. Today, 19 operational plants capture only 10,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year, compared to the 36 billion tons the world produces annually, according to the report.

The paper also says that an urgent and wholesale shift away from fossil fuels is needed for there to be any chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.

Scientists believe topping that threshold will lead to significant and irreversible harm to Earth’s climate.

But the report, commissioned and endorsed by 195 governments, acknowledges that the only “negative emissions” strategy currently used on a mass scale is tree planting.

Scientists are working on other techniques, including air capture or giant fans extracting carbon dioxide from the air and storing it underground or converting it into jet fuel.

Full article here.
– – –
BBC: Scientists race to finish key IPCC report — says the same thing.

New Small Modular Reactor proposal for the UK

[credit: green lantern electric]

The small modular reactor contest looks to be getting underway. Whether the UK wants to be the ‘test bed’ as suggested remains to be seen, but something has to take the place of all the retired power stations. Part-time weather-dependent renewables can’t do that.
– – –
A US energy developer linked to Elon Musk is in talks with the Government to build a fleet of small nuclear reactors across the UK.

Last Energy wants to build its first “mini-nuclear” power plant by 2025 and has identified its first site in Wales, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

The company intends to spend £1.4bn on 10 reactors by the end of the decade.

Last Energy’s end goal is to build “hundreds of plants” across the UK, sources close to the company said.

The proposals are a direct challenge to Rolls-Royce, which is racing to secure approval for its own British-made fleet of mini reactors.

New inquiry into how the UK can (?) cut fossil fuels and accelerate net zero transition

[image credit: latinoamericarenovable.com]

Re-writing the laws of physics is not an option. The only thing accelerating at the moment is the downward spiral into energy poverty for ever larger numbers of the population, in manic pursuit of the mystical ‘net zero’ climate target. Another trip to cloud cuckoo land beckons for these blinkered climate obsessives.
– – –
The Environmental Audit Committee announced the inquiry in response to the rise in fossil fuel prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and continued speculation on what will be included in the government’s Energy Security Strategy, reports Energy Live News.

The Committee believes protecting consumers from high fossil fuel prices and fuel poverty while ensuring security of supply and continued progress towards net zero is critical for any strategy on energy security to be successful.

Estimates of the carbon cycle—vital to predicting climate change—are incorrect, researchers show

The numbers don’t add up – another problem for climate models, and for supposedly ‘well-established’ science, as one researcher describes it. Existing predictions must once again be called into question.
– – –
Virginia Tech researchers, in collaboration with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, have discovered that key parts of the global carbon cycle used to track movement of carbon dioxide in the environment are not correct, which could significantly alter conventional carbon cycle models, says Phys.org.

The estimate of how much carbon dioxide plants pull from the atmosphere is critical to accurately monitor and predict the amount of climate-changing gasses in the atmosphere.

This finding has the potential to change predictions for climate change, though it is unclear at this juncture if the mismatch will result in more or less carbon dioxide being accounted for in the environment.