UK start-up battery firm Britishvolt near collapse as it seeks funding

The UK’s supposedly marvellous ‘net zero’ electric future hits a bump in the road.
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UK battery start-up Britishvolt could run out of money and go into administration after the government rejected a £30m advance in funding, reports BBC News.

The firm wants to build a factory in Blyth in Northumberland which would build batteries for electric vehicles.

The government, which had championed the development, had committed a total £100m to Britishvolt for the project.

It is understood the firm wanted to draw down nearly a third of the funding early but the government refused.

Putting the climate spin on the unseasonal warm spell in Europe

Autumn on a UK beach [image credit: BBC]

Living in Europe and feeling a bit warmer than usual this October? Ignore any Met Office reports of warm air originating from Africa and be concerned by ‘a sign of accelerating climate change’, say climate obsessives. For example, it hasn’t been ‘this hot’ in Spain, since…1961.
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October morning temperatures topping 30 Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) in Spain may have brought cheer to the tourists, but they are provoking concern among environmentalists, says Phys.org.

The mercury has been rising well above the norm across vast swathes of Europe, from Spain to as far north as Sweden.

After a summer marked by repeated heatwaves across much of the continent, Europe is experiencing exceptional temperatures even as it heads into the start of autumn—a sign of accelerating climate change.

Greenhouse gases ‘reached record highs’ in 2021, say UN climate worriers

Climate alarmists love to refer to ‘heat-trapping’ greenhouse gases, but never explain how trace gases – or any gases – can trap heat in an openly convecting atmosphere. The UN also conveniently forgets that water vapour is by far the most prevalent radiative gas, while claiming ‘the warming effect of greenhouse gases has risen by nearly 50% between 1990 and 2021’. Methane is measured in parts per *billion* in the atmosphere but is still deemed good for regular alarm attempts. All grist to their COP27 mill.
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The world saw a record jump in levels of methane in the atmosphere last year as the main heat-trapping greenhouse gases reached new highs, UN experts said.

The World Meteorological Organisation’s (WMO) annual bulletin shows the three main greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide – all reached record high concentrations in the atmosphere in 2021, showing the world was “heading in the wrong direction” on climate change, says The Ecologist.

And potent greenhouse gas methane saw the biggest year-on-year jump in levels since measurements began nearly 40 years ago.

Miyake event radiation deluges still unexplained as solar flare theory questioned

When they say ‘sudden’ they don’t mean short-lived. The report notes that ‘some of the events, unlike the brief flashes we recognize as solar flares, lasted for one or two years’. Only a handful of these so-called ‘cosmic barrages’ have occurred in the last 9000 years or so, according to the data.
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One of the events was 80 times more powerful than the strongest solar flare ever recorded, says LiveScience.

A series of sudden and colossal spikes in radiation levels across Earth’s history could have come from a series of unknown, unpredictable and potentially catastrophic cosmic events, a new study has revealed.

Named Miyake events after the lead author of the first study to describe them, the spikes occur roughly once every 1,000 years or so and are recorded as sudden increases in the radiocarbon levels of ancient tree rings.

The exact cause of the sudden deluges of radiation, which periodically transform an extra chunk of the atmosphere’s nitrogen into carbon sucked up by trees, remains unknown.

Insects can have similar effects on atmospheric electricity as weather events, say researchers

Image credit: beeculture.com

Even a world-famous naturalist was baffled by the ‘aeronaut spiders’ appearing from nowhere on his ocean-going ship. Does this solve Darwin’s puzzle?
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By measuring the electrical fields near swarming honeybees, researchers have discovered that insects can produce as much atmospheric electric charge as a thunderstorm cloud, says ScienceDaily.

This type of electricity helps shape weather events, aids insects in finding food, and lifts spiders up in the air to migrate over large distances.

The research, appearing on October 24 in the journal iScience, demonstrates that living things can have an impact on atmospheric electricity.

COP27: UN chief kicks off another round of climate catastrophism

As another travelling circus of climate ‘delegates’ jet off to their annual conference, generating vast amounts of CO2 to get there and back, the claim that such minor trace gases in the atmosphere are a dire threat to the world gets talked up again. But we’ve heard it all before, many times.
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Countries must re-prioritise climate change or the world faces catastrophe, the UN chief has told BBC News.

Secretary General António Guterres was speaking in New York ahead of a major climate conference in Egypt.

“There has been a tendency to put climate change on the back burner,” he said. “If we are not able to reverse the present trend, we will be doomed.”

UK fracking moratorium reinstated

Fracking: note the deep shaft

The people doing the banning conveniently forget they can’t enough gas at the moment, including from the US obtained by the method they profess not to like. But importing fracked gas is no problem, essential even.
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The ban on fracking in England will be reinstated, new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said.

It reverses a decision by his predecessor Liz Truss, says BBC News.

Fracking was first halted in England in 2019, amid opposition from green groups and concerns about earth tremors.

What is fracking?

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a technique for recovering gas and oil from shale rock.

It involves drilling into the earth and directing a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals at a rock layer, to release the gas inside.

Wells can be drilled vertically or horizontally in order to release the gas.
. . .
What has the government said about fracking?

Rishi Sunak was asked about fracking at his first Prime Minister’s Questions, by Green Party MP Caroline Lucas.

He told the Commons he “stands by” the 2019 Conservative Party manifesto, which pledged to maintain a ban on the practice in England.

It had banned fracking earlier that year and stated that it would not be allowed unless the science changed. A scientific review into fracking by the British Geological Survey says there is still a limited understanding of the impacts of such drilling.

Mr Sunak’s stance reverses a decision taken by the government in September, when Liz Truss was prime minister.

At that time it said fracking could go ahead in some places. It said it could help the UK strengthen the security of its energy supplies, amid uncertainty caused by the war in Ukraine.

The Scottish and Welsh governments continue to oppose fracking, and say they will not use their powers to grant drilling licences.

Full article here.

The BBC’s Hurricane Unreality Checked

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New Yorkers were unlucky that Sandy arrived at the time of a full moon, amplifying its effects.
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[See Net Zero Watch video in link below]

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

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Vapour buoyancy flaw leads to inaccurate simulations of cloud distributions in climate models, study finds

Tropical scene

The researchers say ‘climate models often differ on the precise degree of future warming, largely due to their representation of clouds.’ For decades we’ve been told to believe variations in carbon dioxide are the key to any future warming, but climate model forecasts have been unable to deliver the hoped-for precision. Predicting future cloud variations looks like a tall order.
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Quick Summary

— Study adds a missing piece to the climate science puzzle of simulating clouds.
— Lightness of water vapor influences the amount of low clouds.
— Some leading climate models don’t include this effect.
— Including vapor buoyancy into climate models helps improve climate forecasting.

Clouds are notoriously hard to pin down, especially in climate science, says UC Davis.

A study from the University of California, Davis, and published in the journal Nature Geoscience shows that air temperature and cloud cover are strongly influenced by the buoyancy effect of water vapor, an effect currently neglected in some leading global climate models.

Climate COVID? The Guardian Insists ‘Next Pandemic’ May Come From … ‘Melting Glaciers’

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The Guardian goes batty on climate again.

PA Pundits International

By Joseph Vazquez ~

It’s happened. The eco-crazies in the liberal media are trying to mesh climate change and the pandemic into one big fear porn monstrosity.

The Guardian released a nutty story Oct. 18 propagandizing how “[t]he next pandemic may come not from bats or birds but from matter in melting ice, according to new data.”

The liberal outlet tried to frighten readers into believing in the imaginary specter of climate COVID: “The findings imply that as global temperatures rise owing to climate change, it becomes more likely that viruses and bacteria locked up in glaciers and permafrost could reawaken and infect local wildlife, particularly as their range also shifts closer to the poles.”

The headline for the article didn’t beat around the bush: “Next pandemic may come from melting glaciers, new data shows.”

The Guardian, however, conceded a glaring contradiction that upended its fear-mongering, which it conveniently…

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Derbyshire fossil study wanders into climate alarm zone

Credit: douglal @ Wikipedia

Headline: ‘Derbyshire fossil study reveals insights into Peak District’s 12 million year-old climatic past’. Sounds plausible perhaps. But the article below contains a big blunder, or at least a propaganda trick. The relevant quote: ‘Today Derbyshire has a mean annual temperature of around 8°C with up to 1000mm of rain a year, 12 million years ago it was 12-18°C with 1200-1400mm of rain. This doubling of temperature was with atmospheric carbon dioxide levels similar to those predicted for 2060.’ Doubling? In Kelvin terms the increase is more like 3%, but maybe that wouldn’t sound startling enough. The expressed idea here turns out to be to promote ‘carbon capture’.
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A decade-long study into unique rocks near a Derbyshire village has been uncovering the secrets of what the county and the Peak District might have looked like under a much warmer and wetter past, says Northumbria University (via Phys.org).

Although first studied over 10 years ago, the most recent investigation into geological deposits near Brassington was initiated in 2019, with an international team of researchers from Northumbria University, the British Geological Survey, Morehead State University in the U.S. and CONICET in Argentina now assessing their latest findings.

The complex techniques used can analyze the fossil pollen of plants and spores of fungi captured within the rock layer, helping to form a picture of past habitats and reconstruct likely climatic conditions far beyond our most recent understanding of the Peak District.

Sales of £1,400 batteries surge amid winter blackout fears

In demand

Soothing words about electricity supplies from power bosses and politicians are not fooling the public. If the wind doesn’t blow on a cold winter evening they need to be prepared. Net zero ideology matters more than people’s well-being it seems.
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Britons are snapping up large batteries costing up to £1,400, as concerns grow over winter power cuts, reports The Telegraph.

A large manufacturer of portable batteries, Anker Innovations Technology, has said that sales were up to three times higher in October than in the previous month.

Normally, it sells power station products to the US where power cuts are more common, while UK customers have traditionally only bought them for camping.

But Britons who worry about blackouts this winter are now stocking up, PR manager Lorna Smith told Bloomberg.

The 757 Powerhouse model, which costs around £1400 and can recharge a portable fridge for 22 hours, is sold out until December “due to overwhelming demand”.

Full article here.
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Meanwhile the UK National Grid informs:
Without the Demand Flexibility Service, we would expect to see a reduction in margins. In this scenario on days when it was cold (therefore likely high demand), with low levels of wind (reduced available generation), there is the potential to need to interrupt supply to some customers for limited periods of time in a managed and controlled manner. [bold added]

Cold comfort: Leaked scripts reveal BBC response to potential blackouts this winter

London power failure [image credit: strangesounds.org]

Official UK policy, following the notorious 2008 Climate Change Act, of closing down power stations and gas storage in favour of part-time renewables to help ‘save the climate’ (aka ‘net zero’) has led to this state of affairs. Thanks for nothing, politicians.
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Secret scripts prepared by BBC to be broadcasted in the event of rolling blackouts this winter have been leaked, says Energy Live News.

The scripts seen by the Guardian aim to keep the public informed if a ‘major loss of power’ occurs.

Britons will allegedly be advised to stick to car radios or battery-powered receivers to get the necessary information amid a power cut.

You Can’t Make Green Energy Using Only Green Energy

Credit: cleantechnica.com

This article argues it will never be possible. The killer phrase is ‘energy intensive’.
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Not being a dope, you likely realized a long time ago that it was going to take a lot of energy to manufacture the components of the future green energy utopia, says Francis Menton (via Climate Change Dispatch).

Wind turbines, solar panels, electric cars, and so forth — there is lots of steel, other metals, and silica involved that all need to be melted at high temperatures to get formed into the devices.

How are they going to achieve that at a reasonable cost using just the wind and sun as energy sources?

Powerful Gamma-Ray Burst Made Currents Flow in the Earth

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‘It came from a dusty galaxy 2.4 billion light years away’ – sounds like an old sci-fi movie!

Spaceweather.com

Oct. 17, 2022: Astronomers have never seen anything quite like it. On Oct. 9, 2022, Earth-orbiting satellites detected the strongest gamma-ray burst (GRB) in modern history: GRB221009A. How strong was it? It caused electrical currents to flow through the surface of our planet. Dr. Andrew Klekociuk in Tasmania recorded the effect using an Earth Probe Antenna:

Note: Data from STIX have been flipped (increasing counts go down) to ease comparison of the two waveforms. NWC is a VLF transmitter in Australia.

The blue curve is a signal from Klekociuk’s antenna, which was sensing VLF (very low frequency) currents in the soil at the time of the blast. The orange curve shows the gamma-ray burst recorded by the high-energy STIX telescope on Europe’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft, one of many spacecraft that detected the event. The waveforms are a nearly perfect match.

“I am a climate scientist at the…

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Small sulfate aerosol may have masked effects of climate change in 1970s, say researchers

These researchers seem to have forgotten about the dominant role of water vapour when referring to so-called greenhouse gases – which is odd considering the topic of their study. Are they still promoting an excuse for 1970s cooling?
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Small sulfate particles of diameters 0.4 µm or less from anthropogenic sources could have had a cooling effect on the climate in the 1970s, by triggering cloud formation and reflection radiation, says Hokkaido University (via Phys.org).

Global warming and climate change are one of the most pressing issues of this century.

It is well known that carbon dioxide is the most common greenhouse gas [Talkshop comment – no it isn’t, that’s water vapour by far], but what is less known is that a few anthropogenic aerosols retard the effects of greenhouse gases.

One such chemical is sulfate, which is more infamous for its role in acid rain.

Wild Proposal to Use Glass to Save The Arctic Could Backfire, Scientists Warn

Arctic sea ice [image credit: Geoscience Daily]

One less wild proposal for climate obsessives to bother their heads with. Arctic summer sea ice levels clearly stabilised in recent years anyway.
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Researchers have rebuffed a wild idea to use tiny, hollow glass beads to halt sea ice loss, finding that a coating of microspheres would actually accelerate ice melt instead of slowing it, says ScienceAlert.

In 2018, a study proposed spraying layers of glass powder, in the form of hollow glass spheres about the thickness of a human hair, over Arctic sea ice to brighten its surface.

This, the study authors said, would enhance the amount of sunlight reflected in a part of the world that is seeing some of the worst effects of climate change, lowering the surface temperature and giving sea ice a chance to recover.

COP27 – Hopeless Hopeful Money Will Dominate The Discussion

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The most industrialised countries should pay the bills for everybody else’s bad weather, forever? Not going to happen of course.

PA Pundits International

By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~

The UN’s annual climate change global negotiating festival — in this case COP27 in Egypt — is less than a month away. This one could be a real hoot to watch because there is only one big issue left on the table and that is MONEY.

Lots of money, many trillions by the wishes, all flowing from the developed world to the “developing” world. (Since the so-called developing world still includes the super economy of China the word has lost all meaning.)

The money hopes are spectacular but also hopeless, hence the show. How this immense absurdity will emerge during the lucky 13 days of negotiations between the rich countries and the we-want-your-riches countries should be fun to watch.

Here is a simple scorecard so you can follow the action. First and foremost the code word is “finance”. This is not foreign aid and you…

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Swiss professor: “We still haven’t come up with the perfect energy storage solution.”

[image credit: latinoamericarenovable.com]

They’ve had coal, gas and oil filling that requirement for many decades. But now they scratch their heads and look for viable alternatives, with nothing of note to show for their effort. Climate obsessions like the ‘net zero’ illusion can do strange things to people’s ability to think rationally. Throwing away something vital without a suitable replacement is asking for trouble.
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If the transition to renewables is to succeed, we will need a viable means of storing surplus heat and electricity, says TechXplore.

Globe spoke to experts from ETH Zurich about the promising technologies that could help us reach net zero.

Switzerland aims to transition to a net-zero energy system by 2050. To meet this goal, it will need to replace fossil fuels with renewables.

Researchers studying climate futures shouldn’t jump to extremes, say scientists

Earth and climate – an ongoing controversy

Hollywood-style climate scenarios may entertain some but the science content is suspect, judging by their failure to materialise. Excessive alarmism is self-defeating in the end as more of the public switches off.
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We’ve seen it splashed across news headlines: future sea-level rise that could consume the state of Florida, predicted global temperature spikes of 9 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100—threats of catastrophic climate scenarios leading to societal collapse, says Eurekalert.

But now, a University of Colorado Boulder-led team is pushing for climate scientists to put the more likely and plausible middle-range scenarios to the research forefront, instead of solely the worst-case futures.

“We shouldn’t overstate or understate our climate future,” said Matt Burgess, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) fellow, assistant professor at CU Boulder and lead on a letter published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).