Desert dusts convert coral reefs into carbon storage

Australian coral [image credit: heraldsun.com.au]

Professor: “this study actually contributes to more accurate accounting of carbon around the globe.” Nature’s carbon cycle continues to surprise researchers.
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An international study comparing data from Heron Reef and the Middle East’s Gulf of Aqaba has disproved the long-held theory that coral reefs only have the capacity to emit CO2, reports Phys.org.

The first-of-its-kind discovery is the result of an international study led by The University of Queensland which found that dust blown in from nearby deserts can convert coral reefs into CO2 sinks.

Professor Hamish McGowan from UQ’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences said the discovery was made after researchers observed a correlation between influxes of CO2 and periods of increased dust concentrations in the atmosphere around the reefs.

“We were surprised at how significant a role dust accumulation played in switching coral reefs from a CO2 source to a CO2 sink,” Professor McGowan said.

“This process was previously thought to be impossible, but our research proves otherwise.

“We found that the build-up of dust in the traditionally low-nutrient and low-chlorophyll waters of the Gulf of Aqaba actually fertilizes and improves coral-growing conditions and photosynthesis in reef ecosystems.”

Professor McGowan said the results will allow for the development of more accurate carbon budgets for the world’s oceans.

“The process we have identified in this study actually contributes to more accurate accounting of carbon around the globe,” Professor McGowan said.

“This informs predictions of the impact of atmospheric carbon on climate and climate sensitive ecosystems such as coral reefs.”
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The research establishes the causal controls on reef water temperatures, as opposed to previous predictions which were more focused on the correlation of global warming and coral bleaching.

Professor Lensky said these findings will allow researchers to correctly attribute the cause of, for example, extreme high water temperature events that result in coral bleaching.

“Our research, which included analysis of data collected at Heron Reef on the Great Barrier Reef, has confirmed the crucial role of local meteorology and the prevailing weather patterns in determining reef water temperatures,” Professor Lensky said.

Full report here.
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Earlier research: Dust in Earth system can affect oceans, carbon cycle, temperatures, and health (2010) – ScienceDaily

2050: The never-ending nightmare of Net Zero

Classifying this as humour may not be appropriate, but we live in hope.
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IT IS the year 2050 and Britain, relentlessly driven by the governing Labour-Green coalition, has achieved Net Zero, imagines David Wright @ TCW (The Conservative Woman).

The nation is quite unrecognisable from the comfortable, well-fed country it was in the early part of the 21st century.

Massive wind turbines cover the landscape; the old ones built 25 years ago now knocked down and lying next to the new ones because it was uneconomic to remove them.

The whole country is covered in a dense spider’s web of power lines from the multitude of wind and solar farms miles from where the power is needed.

China’s North Pole – where record low temperatures plunge to -53C

Beiji Village in Mohe, China’s northernmost city [image credit : china.org.cn]

The reporter here says it’s ‘so cold it feels uncomfortable in your lungs’ then goes on to speculate on possible/imagined links to global warming aka climate change. ‘Research suggests’…etc. The freezing cold air coming south from Siberia gets billed as an ‘extreme weather event’.
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Mohe is known as China’s North Pole for a good reason, says Sky News.

It is the country’s most northern city and is a very, very cold place.

It’s difficult to describe what temperatures this low feel like.

On Sunday it hit -53C, a new low for the coldest temperature recorded in the country since modern monitoring began.

The National Meteorological Centre confirmed the previous record of -52.3C, set in 1969, had been beaten.

Electric Cars: Square Peg, Round Hole

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Who wants to pay a lot more for a less useful product that loses its value much faster than what it’s supposed to be replacing – in order to achieve what?

PA Pundits International

By Duggan Flanakin ~

The big story of 2023 just might be the clash between those who have imposed electric vehicle mandates and those for whom an electric vehicle is not on their shopping list.

The federal government, many state governments, and much of the automobile industry – and their counterparts worldwide – have decreed that the world abandon the internal combustion engine in favor of the (often-coal-fired) electric vehicle.

Mandates for banning new sales of conventional vehicles are as plentiful as schemes to disallow further production of “evil” fossil fuels that brought a total transformation of the world economy in little more than a century. Moreover, most automakers have pledged to end production of conventional vehicles within the next few years.

While sales of EVs “boomed” last year, the 6 million EVs still comprise less than half a percent of the world’s 1.4 billion vehicles. Yet Bloomberg…

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Science Writer Warns Ozone Hole Recovery Claims Likely Premature, Too Optimistic

Credit: earthhow.com

Is there a role for natural climate variation here, and if so, what is going on?
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Claims by a UN-backed expert panel that the ozone layer is healing and headed to full recovery may be premature and overly optimistic, Net Zero Watch’s Science Editor Dr. David Whitehouse has warned.

Any internet search will find hundreds of news stories announcing that the ozone hole over the Antarctic is slowly filling and that by about the middle of this century mankind’s vandalism of this natural atmospheric layer will have been remedied, says Benny Peiser via Climate Change Dispatch.

The ozone hole has become an icon of anthropogenic interference in the natural world — and a hopeful signpost that there is a way back. But is the ozone hole healing? Not by as much as many headlines suggest, it would appear.

In Unexpected Swing, Germany’s Public Now Favors Nuclear Power

Isar nuclear power site, Bavaria

Replacing what worked with what sounded good is finally running up against reality. The days of indulging in fantasy energy futures are fading. There’s so-called climate policy, and then there’s the need to survive the winters and keep the lights on. Back to the future.
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Russia’s war in Ukraine is forcing a rethink of energy security not only in Germany but also by the entire continent, and nuclear power is one of the winners, says OilPrice.com.

For decades, Germany has maintained a love-hate relationship with nuclear power. Currently, Germany has three existing nuclear reactors that produce ~6% of the country’s power supply, a far cry from the 1990s when 19 nuclear power plants produced about a third of the country’s electricity supply.

The genesis of the current state of affairs can be traced back to 1998 when a new center-left government consisting of the Greens party and Social Democrats started demanding that the country moves away from nuclear power, a long-held objective of the Greens.

Earth’s inner core rotating slower than surface, study suggests

Some uncertainties with this topic. Researchers here propose a 70-year cycle, but other theories say 20-30 years, or even no cycle at all.
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Earth’s inner core, a hot iron ball the size of Pluto, has stopped spinning faster than the planet’s surface and might now be rotating slower than it, research suggested on Monday.

Roughly 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) below the surface we live on, this “planet within the planet” can spin independently because it floats in the liquid metal outer core, says Phys.org.

Exactly how the inner core rotates has been a matter of debate between scientists—and the latest research is expected to prove controversial.

Researchers propose compulsory climate change teaching in core law curriculum

[image credit: latinoamericarenovable.com]

Sounds vaguely sinister — where does education end and indoctrination start? No prizes for guessing which climate theories would get to be ‘taught’.
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Academics from Durham University are urging that climate change education should be made compulsory across the core law curriculum, says Eurekalert.

The researchers evaluated students’ engagement and their broader views concerning climate change education by integrating climate change and environmental law into the core curriculum at the University of Exeter, a Russell Group University.

The results showed that law students want to study climate law and the climate context of law as part of their core curriculum.

Students also said that climate change education should be compulsory and taught across the programme.

N. Hemisphere Temps Set To Fall Over Next 25 Years, Say Top Intl. Scientists

Too much hot air

Predictions like this may or may not come true. Warmists may have to wheel out their standard ‘natural cooling masking human-caused warming’ excuse again.
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Whisper it quietly – and don’t tell Al ‘Boiling Oceans’ Gore – but the Northern Hemisphere may be entering a temperature cooling phase until the 2050s with a decline up to 0.3°C.

By extension, the rest of the globe will also be cooled, says Chris Morrison (via Climate Change Dispatch).

These sensational findings, ignored by the mainstream media, were released last year and are the work of six top international scientists led by Nour-Eddine Omrani of the Norwegian Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research.

A seismic climate connection?

As a starting point to the discussion, a graph is shown with a correlation between seismic activity and temperature over the last 40+ years. The author’s closing comment: ‘So the oceans are “boiling” and apparently Al Gore has a magic co2 fairy that is doing it.’
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I will be brief ( relatively), says meteorologist Joe Bastardi @ CFACT.

In a paper coming out, “Increased Mid-Ocean Seismic Activity: Fact or Artifact?” Dr. Arthur Viterito has confirmed my suspicions that geothermal input from the increased seismic activity is a leading cause of the warming, if not the almost total cause.

As much as the co2 crowd keeps pointing to the rise in temperature and increased emissions they ignore the fact that the air temperatures go virtually nowhere without the oceanic warming and the input of WV in the air.

The oceans are not warming via co2 feedback. Arguments about co2’s effect on the air ignore the oceanic warming.

So what is warming the ocean? Dr Viterito supplies the smoking gun to my suspicions.

Continued here.
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Al Gore WEF Meltdown: ‘Boiling the Oceans,’ ‘Rain Bombs,’ a Billion ‘Climate Refugees’ — Breitbart News

Rain stopped York council’s £500k electric bin lorries working

Risky business [image credit: safetysource.co.nz]

York is a notoriously flood-prone place and these wagons under-performed in a big way, restricting themselves to cricketing weather. The costly attempt to help save the planet by adopting net-zero climate dogma thus faltered. The ‘wrong type of weather’ excuse used to refer to UK trains, but now it’s moved on.
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Two electric bin lorries bought by City of York Council in a bid to cut carbon emissions were unable to operate when it rained, it has emerged.

Rain caused the wagons to be taken off the city’s roads for up to 26 days a month several times last year, reports BBC News.

The vehicles stopped working for a combined total of 481 days between January 2021 and November 2022.

The council bought the vehicles in 2020 as part of its drive to achieve net zero emissions by 2030.

Andrew Neil accuses Keir Starmer of posing as Greta Thunberg over North Sea opposition

North Sea oil platform [image credit: matchtech.com]

Another victim of ‘net zero’ numptythink? Whether it’s gas, oil or coal, it’s always better to import fuel than use your own according to climate obsessives.
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Veteran Scots broadcaster Andrew Neil has blasted Sir Keir Starmer over his opposition to new North Sea oil and gas as he accused him of posing as “the British Greta Thunberg”, reports the Scottish Daily Express.

The UK Labour leader came under fire after he told a panel at the World Economic Forum that if he became Prime Minister he would block any new explorations in the north-east of Scotland.

He joined the SNP and the Scottish Greens in agreeing that the oil and gas industry needs to be shuttered in a bid for the country to achieve its net zero goals.

However, this would leave thousands of workers in the north-east jobless, with Rishi Sunak confirming that he is aiming to protect their livelihoods.

Where’s The Electricity?

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Electricity: before you can use it you have to generate it, and the worldwide demand only ever goes up.
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PA Pundits International

By Ronald Stein ~

One of the best-known quotes was “where’s the beef?“ from Clara Peller who was a manicurist and American character actress who, at the age of 81, starred in the 1984  advertising campaign for the Wendy’s fast food restaurant chain.

Today, the huge dark cloud over EV projected sales, is the availability of electricity to charge batteries which leads us to the quote for the foreseeable future, Where’s the electricity?

The Elephant in the EV sales room that no one wants to talk about is the limited amount of electricity available to charge the EV batteries.

The global fleet of road vehicles in 2022 numbered about 1.446 billion, that’s with a “B”.

Of this huge global fleet, only 12 million were electric vehicles (EV) in 2021. Thus, less than one percent of the worldwide road vehicle fleet were EVs, and more than 99-percent…

View original post 548 more words

Scientists offer a new explanation for a mystery surrounding Jupiter’s two massive asteroid swarms

The lead researcher spoke of “a new and natural explanation for the unbiased observation, that the L4 asteroids are about 1.6 times more than the asteroids in the L5 swarm.” In other words, a ratio of 8:5. In 2018 another team, studying Jupiter’s poles, ‘found an octagon-shaped grouping over the north pole, with eight cyclones surrounding one in the middle, and a pentagon-shaped batch over the south pole. Each cyclone measures several thousand miles (kilometers) across.’ Again, a ratio of 8:5.
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An international team of scientists, including NYU Abu Dhabi researcher Nikolaos Georgakarakos and others from the U.S., Japan, and China, led by Jian Li from Nanjing University, has developed new insights that may explain the numerical asymmetry of the L4 and L5 Jupiter Trojan swarms, two clusters containing more than 10,000 asteroids that move along Jupiter’s orbital path around the sun.

For decades, scientists have known that there are significantly more asteroids in the L4 swarm than the L5 swarm, but have not fully understood the reason for this asymmetry, says Phys.org.

In the current configuration of the solar system, the two swarms show almost identical dynamical stability and survivability properties, which has led scientists to believe that the differences came about during earlier times of our solar system’s life.

Collision risk and habitat loss: wind turbines in forests impair threatened bat species

German forest with wind turbines

The research team ‘concludes that wind power development in forests must be avoided’, if at all possible. Not what climate obsessives want to hear, but hardly surprising news. More scientific evidence of what was already known.
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More than 30,000 turbines have already been installed on the German mainland so far, and the industry is currently scrambling to locate increasingly rare suitable sites.

Thus, forests are coming into focus as potential sites, says Berlin’s FVB research institute.

A scientific team from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) now demonstrated in a new paper published in the scientific journal “Current Biology” that wind turbines in forests impair endangered bat species: Common noctules (Nyctalus noctula), a species with a high risk of colliding with rotor blades, are attracted to forest wind turbines if these are located near their roosts.

Far from roosts, common noctules avoid the turbines, essentially resulting in a loss of foraging space and thus habitat for this species.

Climate change fan New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern resigns

Headlines like Ardern says climate crisis is ‘life or death’ tell their own story. New Zealand farmers are unlikely to be disappointed by the decision.
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Shocking the world, New Zealand’s far-left prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, today announced her intention to resign from the nation’s top political position, reports LifeSiteNews.

At the New Zealand Labour Party’s annual caucus on Thursday, Ardern surprised the island nation when she announced she “no longer had enough in the tank” to continue on as prime minister.

“I am human, politicians are human. We give all that we can for as long as we can. And then it’s time. And for me, it’s time,” stated Ardern, who clarified that her tenure as prime minister will officially come to an end on February 7 at the latest.

Safety and air pollution concerns over UK hydrogen village

Eco house with hydrogen heating technology. [Image credit: emergingrisks.co.uk]

Not what the promoters of ‘clean’ energy wanted to hear. Reports of unwelcome emissions have been noted. The guinea pigs are getting nervous, not without reason.
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Residents in Redcar on Teesside have raised concerns over the safety of a pilot project designed to replace home gas supplies with hydrogen, says Energy Live News.

Gas distributor for the North East and parts of Cumbria and Yorkshire, Northern Gas Networks had previously submitted a proposal to the government and Ofgem for a hydrogen-powered area.

If the proposal is given the go-ahead, the gas company would need to replace all home and business gas appliances, including boilers, fires and cookers with new hydrogen systems.

According to the BBC, Steve Rudd, a resident in Redcar, said hydrogen was “inherently unsafe” – it has also been reported that other residents are worried about hydrogen’s more harmful emissions.

Calif. Storms Mark Wettest Three Weeks In Bay Area Since Lincoln’s Presidency

Golden Gate Bridge from Fort Point, San Francisco

Such is the natural variability of weather and climate. So it’s all happened before, only worse back then before mass industrialisation and greenhouse gas theories.
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San Francisco has experienced the wettest three-week period since Abraham Lincoln was president during the Great Flood of 1862, says Breitbart News (via Climate Change Dispatch).

The San Jose Mercury News reported Tuesday:

New rainfall totals show that no person alive has ever experienced a three-week period as wet as the past three weeks were in the Bay Area. The last time it happened, Abraham Lincoln was president.

Britishvolt: UK battery start-up collapses in blow to ‘net zero’ policy

This calls into question the whole economics of the UK’s climate-obsessive push for a ‘net zero’ economy. A general lack of enthusiasm for such a project is apparent, maybe due to weak EV sales. Where was the cash supposed to come from?
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UK battery start-up Britishvolt has collapsed into administration, with the majority of its 300 staff made redundant with immediate effect, reports BBC News.

Employees were told the news at an all-staff meeting on Tuesday morning.

The firm had planned to build a giant factory to make electric car batteries in Northumberland and was part of a long-term vision to boost UK manufacturing.

But its board is believed to have decided on Monday that there were no viable bids to keep the company afloat.

In Davos, fuel-powered ‘activists’ warn against climate inaction and greenwashing

Davos

Best daytime temperature forecast for Davos in the next week is -3°C, overnight lows down to -16°C. Get back to us when so-called climate activists don’t use fuel-powered transport and heating, and all the rest of it, anymore.
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As oil and gas executives rub shoulders with government leaders in Davos this week, activists have raised concerns about the risk of greenwashing and further delays in climate action, says Euractiv.

More than 50 heads of states, international organisations and business leaders are meeting in the Swiss Alpine resort of Davos this week for the 2023 meeting of the World Economic Forum.

The theme of this year’s conference is “Cooperation in a fragmented world”, a reference to the multiple crises and geopolitical tensions currently shaking the globe as Russia’s war in Ukraine enters its second year.

Discussions on the programme are heavily linked to climate change, but activists fear greenwashing will take centre stage as CEOs of oil and gas companies rub shoulders with global leaders.