Pyrenean caves reveal a warmer past – Net Zero Watch

Pyrenees view

The finding that ‘the temperature increase [since 1950] is most notable in the past 2500 years’ fits with the recent research of Prof. Harald Yndestad (as we featured here). Natural climate variation never went away.
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The world’s high mountain regions are particularly sensitive to climate change, says Dr David Whitehouse @ Net Zero Watch.

Straddling the border between France and Spain the Pyrenees occupy a crucial position in southern Europe, influenced by both Mediterranean and Atlantic climates.

New research published in the journal ‘Climate of the Past,’ investigating climate proxy data based on stalagmites is revealing that past climates were warmer than our own.

Yndestad: A Cold Climate Period is coming

Prof. Harald Yndestad explains the research and calculations behind his ideas, and how he not only came to question IPCC-type predictions of large temperature rises in the next decades, but arrived at his own.
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Climate data series reveals we are moving into a new serious cold climate period.

1. Solar irradiation from the sun has a computed maximum in 2017 and deep minimum in 2050.
2. Solar forced climate variation has a computed 500-year maximum in 2025, and a 1000-year deep minimum in 2070AD.

Read more here.

Fact Check: Is This the Hottest Summer on Earth? – in short, far from it

Earth and climate – an ongoing controversy

Cherrypicking media alarmists select a short time window and go from there. But compared to most of Earth’s history, temperatures in 2023 are unusually cold. Modern warming is by no means unique – other similar periods in recent millennia, and sometimes much longer ones in the more distant past, are known to have occurred.
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Claim: “This summer is on track to be the hottest recorded on Earth.”

An article in Barron’s about rising food prices made the claim on Wednesday morning, says Breitbart.

CNN’s headline proclaimed: “The world has just experienced the hottest summer on record – by a significant margin.”

You can find similarly alarming headlines from CBS News, the Guardian, and the Associated Press.

Verdict: Misleading. Compared with most of the earth’s history, this summer is unusually cold.

Blow for UK ‘net zero’ plans as zero firms bid for offshore wind contracts

Hornsea wind project

Much hand-wringing by the climate obsession lobby, but there it is – zero interest in bidding for government offshore wind business, as expected. The government seems to have two choices for more part-time offshore wind – give up or pay up. If it pays up, the already dubious claims of cheapness are toast.
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The government’s green energy plans have been dealt a blow after firms snubbed an auction for contracts to run new offshore wind sites, says Sky News.

There were successful bids for onshore wind, solar, tidal and geothermal projects to supply the grid with electricity.

However, there were none for offshore turbines, which provide the backbone of the UK’s renewables system.

Insiders had warned the process had struggled to attract bidders because the government has set the maximum price generators can receive as too low, failing to reflect the rising costs of manufacturing and installing turbines.

EU reality check – waking up from hydrogen daydreams

Credit: Scottish Power

Hydrogen is no more the wonder gas than CO2 is the opposite. Apart from being very expensive to produce using so-called ‘green’ methods, it’s running into various obstacles elsewhere, such as absence of infrastructure.
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Europe’s time spent sleepwalking to the tune of hydrogen lobbyists – draining funds and political capital for far too long – appears to be coming to an end as leaders come face-to-face with physical realities, says The Brief @ Euractiv.

This week, I attended a business leadership conference hosted by the German Chamber of Commerce in Berlin. Attendees, all serious businesspeople, were asked which technology is the key net-zero technology. The number one answer? Hydrogen.

Europe’s fascination with hydrogen has become more like an addiction and a costly one, too.

The European Commission estimates that to produce, transport and consume 10 million tonnes of renewable hydrogen domestically, investment worth up to €471 billion will be necessary.

Study attributes Tibetan Empire collapse in 9th century to climate change

Historical reconstruction of the Tibetan Empire’s extent among surrounding empires at its peak ca. 800 CE [Credit: Chen et al. 2023]

The ‘abrupt’ climate change found by the researchers looks like a prelude to the Medieval Warm Period. Even without examining any technical details it’s clear from the data that the climate of the region did change. Interestingly, the aftermath of the period of change looks a lot like the Medieval Warm Period (see here, under ‘severe dry and warm’), which Wikipedia thinks ‘was a time of warm climate in the North Atlantic region that lasted from c. 950 to c. 1250’. The North Atlantic and Tibet are far apart, obviously.
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The Tibetan Empire was the world’s highest elevation empire, sitting over 4,000m above sea level, and thrived during 618 to 877 CE, says Phys.org.

Home to an estimated 10 million people, it spanned approximately 4.6 million km² across East and Central Asia, extending into northern India.

Considering the hostile conditions for populations to expand, including hypoxia where oxygen concentrations are 40% lower than at sea level, it is incredible that the empire flourished.

However, its collapse in the 9th century is not fully understood, with new research published in Quaternary Science Reviews aiming to untangle the role climate may have played in the end of a great civilization.

EU climate monitor: 2023 likely to be hottest year on record (it’s only September)

Welcome to another round of overheated climate psychobabble, no doubt designed to stir up the masses. Empirical evidence of human causation of the modern warm period is, as ever, still noticeably absent but no shortage of claims.
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2023 is likely to be the hottest year in human history, and global temperatures during the Northern Hemisphere summer were the warmest on record, the EU climate monitor said on Wednesday.

Heat waves, droughts and wildfires struck Asia, Africa, Europe and North America over the last three months, with dramatic impact on economies, ecosystems and human health, says AFP (via Phys.org).

The average global temperature in June, July and August was 16.77 degrees Celsius (62.19 degrees Fahrenheit), surpassing the previous 2019 record of 16.48C by a wide margin, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said in a report.

“The three months that we’ve just had are the warmest in approximately 120,000 years, so effectively human history,” C3S deputy director Samantha Burgess told AFP. [Talkshop comment – show us the data].

Experts (?) warn ‘green growth’ in high income countries is not happening, call for ‘post-growth’ climate policies

CO2 is not pollution

More climate gobbledygook from miserablists who want to impose their obsessive and negative ideas on everyone else, by insisting that tiny amounts of the essential trace gas CO2 are an enormous problem leading the world to their imaginary catastrophe.
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The emission reductions in the 11 high-income countries that have “decoupled” CO2 emissions from Gross Domestic Product (GDP) fall far short of the reductions that are necessary to limit global warming to 1.5°C or even just to “well below 2°C” and comply with international fairness principles, as required by the Paris Agreement, according to a paper published in The Lancet Planetary Health journal.

Politicians and media have been celebrating recent decoupling achievements of high-income countries as “green growth” — claiming this could reconcile economic growth with climate targets, says Phys.org.

To investigate this claim, the new study compared carbon emission reductions in these countries with the reductions required under the Paris Agreement.

“There is nothing green about economic growth in high-income countries,” says lead author of the study, Jefim Vogel, from the Sustainability Research Institute at the University of Leeds, UK.

Sunak defies net zero ban on new airports

Heathrow airport [image credit: airport-world.com]

One in the eye for the negativity of the Climate Change Committee and its ‘advice’, i.e. demand, to throttle back the entire aviation industry (Dutch-style) in pursuit of futile climate dogma and meaningless targets.
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Rishi Sunak will face down the Government’s climate advisers over demands for ministers to halt the expansion of airports, The Telegraph can disclose.

In one of the most significant moves yet of the Prime Minister’s shift to approaching net zero in a “proportionate and pragmatic” way, the Government will reject the Climate Change Committee’s (CCC) formal advice that all airport expansions must be halted.

The move comes days after Mr Sunak appointed Claire Coutinho, one of his closest political allies, as Net Zero Secretary, amid a growing backlash among Tory MPs over the Government’s climate policies and the cost they are adding to consumer bills.

New research looks at ‘stalled trend in Arctic Ocean sea ice loss since 2007’

Arctic sea ice [image credit: cbc.ca]

Not the often-quoted ‘rapid decline’ any more then. But what’s behind the stalled trend? The researchers point to a climate cycle known as the Arctic dipole, first proposed in 2006, which ‘reverses itself’, and should (they say) be about to do so again. Are declining solar cycles accompanied by greatly reduced geomagnetic activity (see here) in the same recent years another factor, or just coincidental?
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New research by an international team of scientists explains what’s behind a stalled trend in Arctic Ocean sea ice loss since 2007, says Phys.org.

The findings indicate that stronger declines in sea ice will occur when an atmospheric feature known as the Arctic dipole reverses itself in its recurring cycle.

The many environmental responses to the Arctic dipole are described in a paper published online today in the journal Science. This analysis helps explain how North Atlantic water influences Arctic Ocean climate.

Scientists call it Atlantification.

London’s electric nightmare as batteries ignite

Attending an e-bike fire in London

‘Cheap’ lithium batteries and DIY amateurs prove to be a risky pairing, as more people try to keep their travel costs down by any available means. Unsupervised charging not advisable.
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A sharp increase in e-bike and e-scooter fires has raised significant safety concerns in London, as firefighters grapple with more incidents in 2023 than during the entirety of the previous year, says Energy Live News.

As of the end of August, the London Fire Brigade reported battling 104 e-bike fires and 19 e-scooter fires, surpassing the 116 total incidents recorded in 2022.

Three individuals have lost their lives this year in fires believed to be caused by lithium battery failures, with an additional 51 people suffering injuries.