Bering Land Bridge formed surprisingly late during last ice age, say researchers

Credit: alaskapublic.org

A researcher said: “Remarkably, the data suggest that the ice sheets can change in response to more than just global climate,” calling into question some long-held ideas. A professor connected to the study commented: “These findings appear to poke a hole in our current understanding of how past ice sheets interacted with the rest of the climate system, including the greenhouse effect.” Well, fancy that. The commentary notes that ‘global temperatures were relatively stable at the time of the fall in sea level, raising questions about the correlation between temperature, sea level and ice volume’. In short, the ice sheets grew faster than scientists had thought.
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Princeton scientists found that the Bering Land Bridge, the strip of land that once connected Asia to Alaska, emerged far later during the last ice age than previously thought, says Eurekalert. 

The unexpected findings shorten the window of time that humans could have first migrated from Asia to the Americas across the Bering Land Bridge. 

The findings also indicate that there may be a less direct relationship between climate and global ice volume than scientists had thought, casting into doubt some explanations for the chain of events that causes ice age cycles.

The study was published on December 27 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“This result came totally out of left field,” said Jesse Farmer, postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University and co-lead author on the study. “As it turns out, our research into sediments from the bottom of the Arctic Ocean told us not only about past climate change but also one of the great migrations in human history.”

Insight into ice age cycles

During the periodic ice ages over Earth’s history, global sea levels drop as more and more of Earth’s water becomes locked up in massive ice sheets.

At the end of each ice age, as temperatures increase, ice sheets melt and sea levels rise. These ice age cycles repeat throughout the last 3 million years of Earth’s history, but their causes have been hard to pin down.

By reconstructing the history of the Arctic Ocean over the last 50,000 years, the researchers revealed that the growth of the ice sheets — and the resulting drop in sea level — occurred surprisingly quickly and much later in the last glacial cycle than previous studies had suggested.

“One implication is that ice sheets can change more rapidly than previously thought,” Farmer said.

During the last ice age’s peak of the last ice age, known as the Last Glacial Maximum, the low sea levels exposed a vast land area that extended between Siberia and Alaska known as Beringia, which included the Bering Land Bridge. In its place today is a passage of water known as the Bering Strait, which connects the Pacific and Arctic Oceans.

Based on records of estimated global temperature and sea level, scientists thought the Bering Land Bridge emerged around 70,000 years ago, long before the Last Glacial Maximum.

But the new data show that sea levels became low enough for the land bridge to appear only 35,700 years ago. This finding was particularly surprising because global temperatures were relatively stable at the time of the fall in sea level, raising questions about the correlation between temperature, sea level and ice volume.

“Remarkably, the data suggest that the ice sheets can change in response to more than just global climate,” Farmer said. For example, the change in ice volume may have been the direct result of changes in the intensity of sunlight that struck the ice surface over the summer.

“These findings appear to poke a hole in our current understanding of how past ice sheets interacted with the rest of the climate system, including the greenhouse effect,” said Daniel Sigman, Dusenbury Professor of Geological and Geophysical Sciences at Princeton University and Farmer’s postdoctoral advisor.

“Our next goal is to extend this record further back in time to see if the same tendencies apply to other major ice sheet changes. The scientific community will be hungry for confirmation.”

Full article here.
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Study: The Bering Strait was flooded 10,000 years before the Last Glacial Maximum

UN Annual Joke Book: “Elimination Of Hydrocarbon Fuels Are The Path To Mass Distinction”

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A trillion here, a trillion there – and then they woke up…or not.

PA Pundits International

By Steve Goreham and Dr. Jay Lehr ~

It is really time for us all to stop taking any of the information broadcast out of the annual United Nations climate conferences called Conference Of The Parties seriously. The 27th such conference which convened in Egypt this month concluded with the following statement.

“The Conference of the Parties…Highlights that about USD 4 trillion per year needs to be invested in renewable energy up until 2030 to be able to reach net zero emissions by 2050.” That which would eliminate all life on earth that depends on carbon dioxide which is all life on earth.

It does not include reparations for loss and damage. That potentially much greater financial flow (as it is called in UN speak) is extra.

The precise nature of this called for transformation of the financial system is not specified but easy money seems a…

View original post 858 more words

UK Government Could Face Lawsuit If It Implements A Windfall Tax On Renewables

[image credit: beforeitsnews.com]

Looks a tad optimistic. Nobody forced wind farm developers to bump up their prices to match the massive increases in gas and electricity charges. Invoking ‘net zero’ seems a bit of a cheek when they’re blatantly chasing maximum profits.
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A Cheshire wind farm developer has threatened to sue the UK government over its plans to impose a ‘windfall tax’ on renewables companies, reports OilPrice.com.

Community Windpower – which owns 1.5 GW of UK wind generation capacity – has said it will take legal action to block the UK’s Electricity Generator Levy.

The temporary tax imposes a 45 percent levy on “exceptional receipts” of more than £10m generated by selling wholesale electricity at average prices exceeding £75 per MWh.

40-Year Study Finds Mysterious Patterns in Temperatures at Jupiter

Jupiter [image credit: NASA]

Unexpected patterns and teleconnections. Some new light is shed on the workings of the solar system’s largest planetary atmosphere.
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Scientists have completed the longest-ever study tracking temperatures in Jupiter’s upper troposphere, the layer of the atmosphere where the giant planet’s weather occurs and where its signature colorful striped clouds form, says Subaru Telescope.

The work, conducted over four decades by stitching together data from NASA spacecraft and ground-based telescope observations, found unexpected patterns in how temperatures of Jupiter’s belts and zones change over time.

The study is a major step toward a better understanding of what drives weather at our solar system’s largest planet and eventually being able to forecast it.

Jupiter’s troposphere has a lot in common with Earth’s: It’s where clouds form and storms churn. To understand this weather activity, scientists need to study certain properties, including wind, pressure, humidity, and temperature.

Pipedream: Drax’s £2billion plan to ‘capture’ carbon emissions and pump them under the North Sea

It’s a dream if they think it makes any difference to anything other than the company balance sheet, except the ‘upto 10,000 jobs’ they claim it will create and support. Do we hear the sound of yet more subsidies going down the climate plughole?
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Bosses at Drax Power Station says they are waiting to hear whether the government will greenlight plans for a £2billion hi-tech scheme to capture carbon emitted from its biomass burners and pump it under the North Sea to be stored, reports yahoo!.

They say the scheme could potentially capture 95 per cent of the carbon emitted from the power station’s two biomass burners at Selby – removing eight million tonnes of carbon a year, and supporting up to 10,000 jobs.

Drax plant director Bruce Heppenstall said the power station had already run two pilot projects to test out the ‘Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage’ (BECCS) technology.

It was, he said, a ‘game changing technology’ that leading climate scientists at the UN’s IPCC said could play a critical role in addressing the climate crisis.

Is NASA’s ‘Key Takeaway’ on Arctic summer sea ice minima obsolete?

Arctic sea ice [image credit: cbc.ca]

Recent data tell a somewhat different story to the one NASA want to put forward. The mean rate of change in September minima reduced to something akin to zero after 2007, maybe even a small (relative to the 1980 peak) rise.

‘Key Takeaway: Summer Arctic sea ice extent is shrinking by 12.6% per decade as a result of global warming’, says NASA.

But their own interactive ‘ANNUAL SEPTEMBER MINIMUM EXTENT’ graph (here) gives the game away. For example:

2007 minimum: 4.07 km. (lowest since 1979, at the time).
2021: 4.72 km.
2022: 4.67 km.

Only two of the last fifteen years (2012, 2020) were lower than 2007, the rest at least the same (2016) or upto 25% above.

Peak decline was from 1996-2007, about one solar cycle (SC 23). Those days seem to have gone, for now at least. The most recent decade did not show a decline anywhere near 12.6%, or even any net decline.

September minima for 2021 and 2022 were both noticeably higher than those of 2011 and 2012, for example.
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NASA: Arctic sea ice minimum ties for tenth lowest

NASA: Scientific Visualization Studio

US winter storm: ‘Historic’ weather event hits US as temperatures plunge as low as -45C

Credit: Sky News [click on image to enlarge]

A tough lead-up to Christmas for the US and Canada thanks to this Arctic blast, as the media are calling it. Colourful claims about the ‘rapidly warming Arctic’ may have been overdone.
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Tens of millions of Americans endured bone-chilling temperatures, blizzard conditions, power outages and cancelled Christmas plans as an extreme winter storm gripped much of the country, reports Sky News.

More than 200 million people – about 60% of the US population – were under some form of winter weather advisory or warning on Friday, the National Weather Service said, calling it a “historic winter storm”.

Temperatures across central states have plunged, with the mercury dipping to -50F (-45.6C) in Montana.

Net Zero — The Pursuit Of The Impossible

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The trouble is, the impossibility won’t stop the pursuit.

PA Pundits International

By Robert Lyman and Dr. Jay Lehr~

Prodded by the United Nations and numerous radical environmentalist organizations, many industrialized countries have declared that their policy goal is to phase out the use of fossil fuels (oil, natural gas and coal) and to replace them with all-electric energy systems powered by renewable energy. Unfortunately, most people in those countries do not understand the magnitude of the physical, economic and social changes that would be entailed in such a transition. Adding to the immensity of this challenge, many governments have declared that it must be achieved in almost all countries by 2050, just over 27 years from now. This is the so-called “decarbonization” or “net-zero” goal.

Many prominent experts have attempted to analyze from a macro-economic, or top-down perspective the costs of attaining the net-zero objective. Until recently, however, none had carried out a bottom-up analysis that sought…

View original post 2,089 more words

Researchers propose a chemical compound to increase oceanic CO2 sequestration

The ocean carbon cycle [credit: IAEA]

So-called climate schemes have a tendency to be horribly expensive, impractical and of debatable benefit. The 25% figure quoted in the article for natural ocean CO2 uptake is likely an underestimate anyway. Is this just another straw for emission-obsessed alarmists to clutch at?
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Enhancing the ocean’s ability to remove CO2 particles from the atmosphere will be crucial in the fight against climate change, according to a new research paper, says Phys.org.

At present, around 25% of all CO2 emitted to the air is absorbed by the oceans. When these molecules enter the water they cause acidification, having a negative impact on marine environments, particularly for shell forming organisms such as crabs and shellfish that rely on fragile eco-systems for survival.

But in a joint research paper published today (Dec. 21) in the journal, Joule, academics from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and the University of Hamburg, believe they have found a way to increase the amount of CO2 stored in the ocean without causing additional acidification.

UK will be scrambling for gas when the wind doesn’t blow, warns expert

LNG vessels [image credit: offshoreenergytoday.com]

Who knew? Just as night follows day, replacing on-demand power generation with intermittent sources can and does cause reliability and other issues of varying severity. Preferring imported gas to domestic sources was another avoidable mistake, leading to far more of the supposedly fearsome CO2 emissions than necessary. The climate excuse is wearing thin.
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The UK will be scrambling for highly expensive gas imports to meet its energy needs this winter to stave off blackouts whenever the wind doesn’t blow, warned a leading energy expert.

Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank, told City A.M. that the intermittent performance of domestic renewable power is proving costly for the West.

He argued the country lacks a reliable alternative base-load of power aside from highly expensive natural gas.

Met Office says 2023 set to be one of the hottest years ‘ever’

Of course the Met Office doesn’t have ‘forever’ data. The two main factors here seem to be the recovery from the Little Ice Age (not mentioned) and El Niño/La Niña effects, which are admitted to be a, if not the, dominant factor. Human-caused effects are asserted but evidence is lacking.
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2023 is set to be one of the world’s hottest years ever as the temperatures continue to rise, says the Bournemouth Daily Echo.

It comes as the Met Office has predicted that global temperatures will be at least 1C above pre-industrial levels.

They added that in 2023, the global average temperature will be around 1.2C above what they were before humans impacted climate change.

Man ‘facing £7,000 energy bill’ after switching to £25,000 government-backed ‘green’ heat pump

Domestic Air Source Heat Pump [image credit: UK Alternative Energy]

Who wants a lack-of-heat pump now?
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A man claims he is facing a £7,000 energy bill after replacing his heating system with a £25,000 Government-backed ‘green’ heat pump, says The Independent (via Yahoo News).

Officials are currently providing grants for up to £5,000 to home owners who remove a gas central heating and hot water system and replace it with a heat pump.

But the new system, backed by many in the green lobby, has apparently left many UK homeowners in the cold.

UK woodlands could store almost twice as much carbon as previously estimated

Credit: klimatetochskogen.nu

This underlines the reality, whatever the numbers are. Carbon capture is nature’s job.
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UK forests could store almost double the amount of carbon than previous calculations suggest, with consequences for our understanding of carbon stocks and humanity’s response to climate change, according to a new study involving UCL researchers.

For the study, published today in the journal Ecological Solutions and Evidence, the international team of scientists used a novel 3D scanning technique and analysis to assess the amount of aboveground biomass (AGB)—used to derive carbon storage—of 815 trees in a UK woodland, says Phys.org.

The team found that their results were 77% higher than previous estimates (410 t ha-1 of biomass vs. 232 t ha-1).

‘Unexpected’ space traveler defies theories about origin of solar system

Solar system cartoon [NASA]

The theorised Oort Cloud in the outer solar system seems not to consist entirely of what was theorised to be there. This is described by one researcher as ‘a complete game changer’.
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Researchers from Western have shown that a fireball that originated at the edge of the solar system was likely made of rock, not ice, challenging long-held beliefs about how the solar system was formed, says Phys.org.

Just at the edge of our solar system and halfway to the nearest stars is a collection of icy objects sailing through space, known as the Oort Cloud.

Passing stars sometimes nudge these icy travelers towards the sun, and we see them as comets with long tails.

Scientists have yet to observe any objects in the Oort Cloud directly, but everything detected so far coming from its direction has been made of ice.

NASA cancels climate change satellite to monitor greenhouse gases

Lift-off [image credit: NASA]

Collecting mountains of data on so-called greenhouse gases was not going to be cost-effective, says NASA. ‘Technical concerns’ played a part in the decision.
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All good things must come to an end, and in the case of NASA’s GeoCarb mission, some good things must end before they really begin, says Space.com.

NASA has canceled the GeoCarb mission, which was a collaboration with the University of Oklahoma and Lockheed Martin that intended to put a greenhouse gas–monitoring satellite into geostationary orbit.

GeoCarb would have measured levels of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane in the atmosphere about 4 million times per day. The mission was selected by NASA in 2016.

How Predictive Was NOAA’s Gloomy 2022 Hurricane Forecast? Not Very

Image credit: sanibelrealestateguide.com

Trying to use Atlantic hurricane patterns to promote climate alarm in the US and elsewhere was blown off course this year. Instead the predictive reputations of the experts of all shades of global warming opinion took a battering. Natural variation threw them off the scent somehow.
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While the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) held firm to its prediction of an above-normal hurricane season – despite zero hurricanes at the halfway mark – the 2022 season proved to be nothing out of the ordinary, says CNS News (via Climate Change Dispatch).

Hurricane season, which runs from June through November annually, turned out to be pretty average this year, NOAA’s end-of-season report reveals.

There were just two “major” hurricanes (categories 3-5), below the annual average of three and less than NOAA’s prediction that there would be 3-6.

Long-term Western precipitation trends are stable, says atmospheric scientist

California flood control channel [image credit: UC Berkeley]

Looking a lot further back than the satellite era can give a better perspective in weather trends. Nothing for alarmists to see here.
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Although the West has experienced major ups and downs in its precipitation patterns from year to year, over the past 130 years regions that provide the major source for spring and summer runoff have not shown a long-term pattern that indicates a permanent decline in precipitation, according to research by Dr. John Christy, a distinguished professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Earth Science at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH).

The results of Dr. Christy’s construction and analysis of the longest, regional-scale time series of snowfall accumulations for Washington, Oregon and California from 1890–2020 are in a paper in the December 2022 issue of the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Hydrometeorology, says Phys.org.

As part of a joint project between UAH and the Department of Energy, Dr. Christy examined archived snowfall data dating back to 1890 from over 700 stations located in the three states.

Energy Grid Changes Leave California And The Midwest Vulnerable To Blackouts

Windfarm in the California desert

They plan to keep increasing electricity demand by (for example) mandating EVs, while reducing reliable supply in pursuit of climate obsessions. How long can US States go on ignoring the obvious?
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California and parts of the Midwest are at a high risk of electricity shortages in the coming years amid the transformation of their grid from one reliant on fossil fuels to one reliant on other sources of energy such as wind and solar, says OilPrice.com.

The warning comes from the latest annual assessment of the grid by the North American Reliability Corporation, as cited by CNBC.

According to the assessment, the Midwest and Ontario in Canada risk power shortages because they are retiring more generation capacity than they are adding.

21st century warming trend change may not be due to greenhouse gasses, leading climate scientists say – Net Zero Watch

It’s ‘study suggests’ time again. NZW: They say (p 4283) it’s a credible hypothesis that global temperature trend changes since 2000 could be “arising largely from internal variability.”
— These results definitely won’t please the climate obsessive tendency.
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A new study by a team of leading climate scientists suggests that the effect of carbon dioxide this century might be small when compared to natural climate variability, says Net Zero Watch.

Global surface temperature is, and always has been, the key climate parameter.

Whatever is happening to the Earth’s climate balance, it must, sooner or later, be reflected in the global annual average temperature, and not just in regional variations.

But therein lies what is to some an inconvenience, as the changes in the global temperature this century is open to differing interpretations including the suggestion that increases in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are not needed to explain the changes we have seen in the last 20 years or so.

It’s a conclusion that many would dismiss as coming from climate “sceptics,” or downright deniers. But what if it’s the view of scientists from two of the world’s leading institutes researching climate change; the University of Oxford and the US National Center for Atmospheric Research. Then it must be taken seriously and not dismissed offhand.

It is important research because it is the trend in the increase of global temperature caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions that is most important variable for policymakers considering the scale and timescale of action in the coming decades.

However, this vital parameter is uncertain because recent decades have shown that we are living through a period of considerable natural climate variability.

Full article here.

Eco activists fail to glue themselves to road due to cold weather

Munich street [image credit: muenchen.de]

The Daily Mail headlines it: ‘Eco-mob’s global warming protest fails…because it is too COLD!’ — Climate obsession can do strange things to some people. Does the phrase ‘sub-zero temperatures’ mean anything to them?
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The orders were simple: Run out onto the road, glue yourself to the tarmac and stop drivers from getting through, says the Daily Mail.

But for two climate activists in Germany, that plan didn’t work out quite as they’d hoped because sub-zero temperatures stopped the glue from working properly in an embarrassing lack of foresight.

The ‘Last Generation’ activists, who were protesting against global warming, desperately poured a bucket of glue over each other before sitting stone-faced in the middle of the road in Munich this morning.

But the freezing temperature scuppered their plans and instead of being stuck to the road, the pair of protesters sat glumly amongst a pool of glue mixed with snow.