Enceladus, Previous Speedster – AAS Nova

Three of Saturn’s moons — Tethys, Enceladus and Mimas — as seen from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft [image credit: NASA/JPL]

Enceladus is in a 2:1 resonance with a moon named Dione, but Tethys – another major moon of Saturn – orbits between them and is in a 1:2 resonance with Mimas, whose orbit lies inside that of Enceladus. So the order of proximity to the planet is Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione. The study looks at how the Enceladus-Dione part of this unusual set-up could have come into being. Talking of speed, all four moons orbit their very large planet in less than three days (Mimas in less than one day).
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Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons, is currently being tugged around and heated up by another moon named Dione, says AAS Nova.

How the two ended up in this arrangement is a mystery, since to get there, Enceladus must have avoided getting caught up in a resonance with another moon named Tethys.

A recent article offers a possible explanation: Enceladus may have blitzed over to its current position in a short-lived burst of speed.

Dynamic Moons
We typically imagine that moons circle their host planets with clockwork regularity, meaning that they precisely trace out the same path at the same speed for all time. However, true reality cannot be described by a system composed of rigid gears.

UK government drops support for controversial deep sea mining as it backs temporary pause

Seabed mining

The report explains that the driver for a supposedly ‘greener energy future’ faces an expected global shortage of ‘critical’ raw materials. The problem of course is that just like so-called fossil fuels all these minerals have to be extracted from somewhere, so somebody is inevitably not going to like it. Plus they won’t be relying on renewable power to do the work.
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The UK has for the first time come out in support of a pause in highly controversial mining of the deep sea bed, having previously supported it, reports Sky News.

On Monday, the government added its name to a group of countries seeking a moratorium on new licences to exploit minerals such as lithium, copper and cobalt – vital for green energy – from the deep sea.

The environment department said the precautionary pause is designed to protect the world’s ocean from such projects, which involve heavy machinery scraping deposits from the world’s largest habitat, until more evidence on the impact is available.

Auto execs are coming clean: EVs aren’t working

Not the latest model

Is the niche EV market running out of niches to fill? Supposedly saving the climate, or whatever the latest slogan may be, looks like a dud selling point with the majority of private transport buyers now the novelty has worn off. Where that leaves the ‘net zero’ mandates of various governments, aimed at squeezing other vehicle types out of the marketplace altogether in the next decade or so, is an open question.
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With signs of growing inventory and slowing sales, auto industry executives admitted this week that their ambitious electric vehicle plans are in jeopardy, at least in the near term, says Climate Depot.

Several C-Suite leaders at some of the biggest carmakers voiced fresh unease about the electric car market’s growth as concerns over the viability of these vehicles put their multi-billion-dollar electrification strategies at risk.

Among those hand-wringing is GM’s Mary Barra, historically one of the automotive industry’s most bullish CEOs on the future of electric vehicles.

GM has been an early-mover in the electric car market, selling the Chevrolet Bolt for seven years and making bold claims about a fully electric future for the company long before its competitors got on board.

But this week on GM’s third-quarter earnings call, Barra and GM struck a more sober tone. The company announced with its quarterly results that it’s abandoning its targets to build 100,000 EVs in the second half of this year and another 400,000 by the first six months of 2024. GM doesn’t know when it will hit those targets.

“As we get further into the transformation to EV, it’s a bit bumpy,” she said.

While GM’s about-face was somewhat of a surprise to investors, the Detroit car company is not alone in this new view of the EV future. Even Tesla’s Elon Musk warned on a recent earnings call that economic concerns would lead to waning vehicle demand, even for the long-time EV market leader.

Meanwhile, Mercedes-Benz — which is having to discount its EVs by several thousand dollars just to get them in customers’ hands — isn’t mincing words about the state of the EV market.

“This is a pretty brutal space,” CFO Harald Wilhelm said on an analyst call. “I can hardly imagine the current status quo is fully sustainable for everybody.”

EVs are getting harder to sell

But Mercedes isn’t the only one; almost all current EV product is going for under sticker price these days, and on top of that, some EVs are seeing manufacturer’s incentives of nearly 10%.

That’s as inventory builds up at dealerships, much to the chagrin of dealers. While car buyers are in luck if they’re looking for a deal on a plug-in vehicle, executives are finding even significant markdowns and discounts aren’t enough.

These cars are taking dealers longer to sell compared with their gas counterparts as the next wave of buyers focus on cost, infrastructure challenges, and lifestyle barriers to adopting.

Full article here.

Energy “transition” to be much more expensive

The cost deceptions of wind power lobbyists can’t be maintained any longer, as the UK government has closed off their favourite loophole. As this Net Zero Watch press release headlines it: ‘Wind industry confirms Great Green Lie’.
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Campaign group Net Zero Watch says that the wind industry has effectively admitted that it has been deceiving the British public over the cost of the energy “transition”.

RWE Renewables has just told the Government that it needs its subsidy “strike price” to rise by 70% if any more wind farms are to be built.

Net Zero Watch director Andrew Montford said:

Rishi Sunak has said that there has been a long-term deception of the British public. RWE’s demand for more subsidy confirms it. The Green Blob has been lying about renewables costs for years. The truth is that wind power is expensive, and becoming more so. The energy “transition” is a transition to poverty, but few in Westminster seem to have the guts to say so.”

Full press release here.

Fossil fuels are back: Shell takes axe to its ‘Low Carbon’ division

High demand for a profitable product is a winning formula for commercial success and oil companies aren’t going to be slow to cash in on current prices, no matter what climate obsessives or politicians may say or think. Hydrogen-related roles get squeezed due to slack market interest. Meanwhile renewables firms seek ever larger handouts.
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Shell has taken another axe to its once lofty decarbonization plans, as the U.K. oil giant’s pivot back to fossil fuels picks up steam, says Climate Change Dispatch.

The group plans to cut at least 15% of staff working in its ‘low-carbon solutions division’ [sic] while scaling back its hydrogen business, Reuters first reported Wednesday.

The move will see 200 jobs go in 2024, with another 130 placed under review by the company, according to a statement from Shell.

The division specializes in solutions to decarbonize the transport and industry sector but is separate from its renewables business.

The Mystery of Orange Auroras – Explained?

The Mystery of Orange Auroras (Updated)

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Alignment with the Earth’s magnetic field is shown here.

Do human greenhouse gas emissions cause significant climate change? Two new papers have serious doubts

Climate hype

The Manhattan Contrarian takes a look at some recently published research. The author of the article says ‘Data appears to refute, and certainly does not prove the endlessly repeated claims of impending climate doom from CO2 emissions’. (First part of article omitted below. See links provided for more about the studies and further discussion).
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The climate science community calls its system for establishing causation “detection and attribution” studies, says Francis Menton (via Climate Change Dispatch).

The basic idea is to come up with a model (i.e., a hypothesis) that predicts global warming based on increased greenhouse gases, and then collect data that show a very close match between what the model predicted and the data.

Correlation with the model’s predictions is the claimed proof of causation. There are hundreds of such studies in the climate literature.

Strange anomaly in sun’s solar cycle discovered in centuries-old texts from Korea

Perhaps we should be looking out for an anomalously short solar cycle to provide support for predictions of an approaching return to
cooler planetary conditions? The aurora-based result doesn’t appear in the 2021 tree ring study reported here, which goes back as far as AD 969.
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The sun’s solar cycles were once around three years shorter than they are today, a new analysis of centuries-old Korean chronicles reveals.

This previously unknown anomaly occurred during a mysterious solar epoch known as the “Maunder Minimum,” more than 300 years ago, says LiveScience.

The sun is constantly in a state of flux. Our home star cycles through periods of increased activity, known as solar maximum, when solar storms become more frequent and powerful, as well as spells of reduced activity, known as solar minimum, when solar storms almost completely disappear.

Britain ‘will need gas to avoid blackouts for decades’

The story here refers to Britain’s ‘gas addiction’, but a renewables addiction will be far more problematic. At present gas power stations are being made ever more uneconomic by government net zero policies, but low wind days and hours are a given. Energy intensive carbon capture plans will only make matters worse.
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The man running Britain’s gas network has said the country will need fossil fuels to prevent blackouts for decades to come despite calls for the Government to begin shutting off the pipes. — The Telegraph reporting.

Jon Butterworth, chief executive of National Gas, said a growing reliance on intermittent power sources such as wind and solar meant Britain would be increasingly reliant on gas to make up for shortfalls when renewable energy sources are not generating power.

Mr Butterworth said: “In 2022, the wind didn’t blow enough or at all for 262 days. And in those 262 days, we would have had rolling blackouts, or a full blackout across the UK if it wasn’t for gas.”

Electric cars risk becoming uninsurable

BMW i3 electric car plus battery pack [image credit: carmagazine.co.uk]

Over-sensitive and unpredictable lithium-based batteries continue to be a headache, for various reasons. Is the EV industry really ready for prime time, as government ‘net zero’ mandates take hold?
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Electric cars risk becoming effectively uninsurable as analysts struggle to put a price on battery repairs, the researcher for the car insurance industry has said. — The Telegraph reporting.

Jonathan Hewett, chief executive of Thatcham Research, the motor insurers’ automotive research centre, said a lack of “insight and understanding” about the cost of repairing damaged electric car batteries was pushing up premiums and resulting in some providers declining to provide cover altogether.

Electric cars can be particularly expensive to repair, costing around a quarter more to fix on average than a petrol or diesel vehicle.

Experts have previously warned electric vehicles are being written off after minor bumps because of the cost and complexity of fixing their batteries.

UK smart meter upgrade fiasco

Smart or not?

Introduction of predictably obsolete technology gets rubbished by the UK’s ‘Queen of the Select Committees‘. What a waste of money.
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Billpayers will be forced to foot the cost of upgrading seven million smart meters which will become obsolete in less than 10 years, the spending watchdog has warned. — The Telegraph reporting.

In a damning report highlighting a number of failures in the smart meter roll out, the Public Accounts Committee said seven million smart meters would need to be replaced before the 2G and 3G networks they use are switched off in 2033.

It warned that the financial burden of replacing the redundant smart meter hubs will be ultimately borne by energy bill payers and could be “very significant”, exceeding previous estimates.

The report went on to say that demand for the smart devices, designed to help consumers monitor their energy use and cut bills, had dried up.

Greenpeace loses legal challenge to UK’s new North Sea oil and gas licenses

North Sea gas rig [image credit: safety4sea.com]

Trying to subvert democracy with ‘climate lawfare’ fails again.
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LONDON (Reuters)– Britain’s decision to authorise new licences for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea was lawful, London’s High Court ruled on Thursday, dismissing a legal challenge by Greenpeace, reports Yahoo News.

The environmental campaign group had argued Britain’s failure to assess the greenhouse gases produced by consuming oil and gas – so-called end-use or downstream emissions – rendered its offshore energy plan unlawful.

But lawyers representing Britain’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said at a hearing in July that ministers were not required to assess end-use emissions, though they nonetheless considered them.

Judge David Holgate rejected Greenpeace’s case in a written ruling on Thursday.

Full report here.

Carbon dioxide ‘pollution’ nonsense reaches record high

Photosynthesis [image credit: Nefronus @ Wikipedia]

Funny how plants, trees, vegetation etc. rely on ‘pollution’ for photosynthesis, according to so-called climate science. Meanwhile the costly renewables craze mandated by politicians can’t even keep pace with the inexorable global rise in demand for coal, oil and gas.
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Global emissions of planet-heating carbon dioxide [Talkshop comment – a tiny 0.04% of the atmosphere] are expected to rise around one percent to reach a new all-time high in 2023, the climate scientist behind the preliminary research said Tuesday.

Scientists say carbon pollution will need to be cut almost in half this decade to meet the world’s targets of limiting global warming and avoiding catastrophic climate impacts, parrots Phys.org.

Global CO2 emissions should be falling by around five percent this year, said Glen Peters, research director at the CICERO climate research institute in Norway.

Instead they have continued to rise, according to his research, with current expectations that the year will see emissions up between 0.5 percent and 1.5 percent.

The BBC’s “due impartiality” hypocrisy – Net Zero Watch

Who if anyone does the BBC consider itself accountable to, or is it just a law unto itself these days?
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“Due impartiality” means one thing when it’s terrorists, and another when it’s critics of Net Zero, says Andrew Montford @ Net Zero Watch.

The BBC is currently taking a lot of flak for its refusal to refer to Hamas as “terrorists”. Its editorial guidelines, say that that journalists need to mindful of the need for “due accuracy and impartiality”, but say that the t-word is “a barrier to understanding”.

This is a strange position to take. As many people have observed, Hamas is, in law, a proscribed terrorist organisation, so one would have thought that any journalist who was interested in accuracy would need to refer to them as, well, terrorists.

Norwegian archaeologists are salvaging priceless artifacts from melting glaciers—why were they found there?

Innlandet county, Norway [credit: NordNordWest @ Wikipedia]

An earlier article, featured here at the Talkshop said ‘artifacts have come to light thanks to a warming climate, proving that a mountain pass served as an important trade network’. We’re told ‘The pass was in use between the years 300 and 1500 AD, and most active around the year 1000. Its use declined with the Little Ice Age, around 1300, and the Black Death, around 1400.’ All of which suggests it was a popular route when conditions were warm enough. Of course any warmth back then that was similar to today can’t be ascribed to the non-natural causes claimed by climate alarmists as the only explanation for the current conditions. But they don’t address that issue.
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There is surely little upside to the environmental changes posed by global warming [Talkshop comment – standard doomster-speak], but nevertheless, a group of Norwegian archaeologists is seizing the opportunities presented by the country’s rapidly melting glaciers, says Artnet News.

That group is Glacier Archaeology Program—snappy internet alias: Secrets of the Ice—and since receiving permanent government funding in 2011 it has been responsible for 90 percent of Norway’s glacial finds.

Granted, the group’s success is partly tied to the topography of Innlandet. The county boasts many of Norway’s highest peaks, and the team has pursued salvaging artefacts from remote locations in a comprehensive and systematic manner. To date, it has made 4,000 finds across 66 sites.

Powering AI could use as much electricity as a small country

Image credit: technologyhill.com

The definition of a ‘small’ country could change to ‘not so small’ quite quickly. When so-called net zero climate policies are threatening to make electricity supplies more restricted and unreliable, the added effect of AI demand could become significant. This is on top of the issue with data centres – the BBC recently reported that Data centres use almost a fifth of Irish electricity.
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Artificial intelligence (AI) comes with promises of helping coders code faster, drivers drive safer, and making daily tasks less time-consuming, says TechXplore.

But in a commentary published October 10 in the journal Joule, the founder of Digiconomist demonstrates that the tool, when adopted widely, could have a large energy footprint, which in the future may exceed the power demands of some countries.

“Looking at the growing demand for AI service, it’s very likely that energy consumption related to AI will significantly increase in the coming years,” says author Alex de Vries, a Ph.D. candidate at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Net Zero Watch calls for a clearout at the Climate Change Committee

Net Zero Watch expresses the mood of many observers who are fed up with the antics of the Climate Change Committee, who talk up pie-in-the-sky ‘Net Zero’ targets while sidestepping vital issues like their cost, feasibility and effectiveness (or lack thereof).
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London, 13 October – Campaign group Net Zero Watch has called for a management clearout at the Climate Change Committee (CCC), accusing it of ‘shameless’ deceit over the costs of Net Zero.

The CCC yesterday criticised the Prime Minister’s delay of a few Net Zero plans, claiming that energy bills would be driven upwards as a result. But Net Zero Watch director Andrew Montford points out that the CCC is being highly misleading with their claims.

“If your landlord is forced to put in expensive insulation measures in your flat, you might end up with lower heating bills. But you will certainly end up with higher rent bills, and you could even find yourself out of a home”.

Mr Montford points out that such duplicity is characteristic of the CCC’s behaviour.

US oil production hits all-time high, conflicting with efforts to cut ‘heat-trapping pollution’ (aka vital trace gas)

Another media trip to climate cloud cuckoo land, as they insist on cutting supply of oil as demand increases, without viable alternatives in place, to feed their unrealistic climate obsessions and tired beliefs. But it’s just not happening.
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United States domestic oil production has hit an all-time high last week, contrasting with efforts to slice heat-trapping carbon emissions [Talkshop comment – no ‘heat-trap’ evidence offered] by the Biden administration and world leaders, says AP News.

And it conflicts with oft-repeated Republican talking points of a Biden “war on American energy.”

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration reported that American oil production in the first week of October hit 13.2 million barrels per day, passing the previous record set in 2020 by 100,000 barrels.

Weekly domestic oil production has doubled from the first week in October 2012 to now.

Energy leaflet: ‘Preparing for a power cut’

The UK electricity network is clearly not what it used to be. Can it be any coincidence that as coal power disappears thanks to ‘net zero’ type climate obsessions, leaflets like this start arriving on the domestic mat like this one today?

SP Energy (aka Scottish Power) covers parts of southern Scotland, North West England and North Wales. If other energy providers are doing the same type of leafletting or similar (emails etc.), let us know.

One section is about ‘Storms and Severe Weather’ but the one about ‘Preparing you for extreme events’ gets to the heart of the matter: ‘the possible but unlikely scenario of an energy shortage due to the current energy landscape’. They can’t even bring themselves to say electricity (see leaflet title)!

The Nuclear Microreactor Race Is Heating Up

Image credit: turbosquid.com

The supposed climate/emissions angle is useful to the makers, although the article points out that ‘some experts and activists contend that the world can radically scale back hydrocarbons without using more nuclear power’. Of course not being intermittent and weather dependent is a selling point for electricity generation devices these days, for example in EV charging away from home.
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During a wide-ranging interview with The Epoch Times, the leadership of Nano Nuclear Energy Inc. predicted they would win the race to commercialize a reactor small enough to fit in a shipping container, says ZeroHedge (via OilPrice.com).

“By 2030, we’re pretty convinced we’ll be the first company to sell microreactors,” said Nano Nuclear CEO James Walker, a nuclear physicist who previously led the development of the Rolls-Royce Nuclear Chemical Plant.

Nuclear microreactors are meant to be nimble, mobile sources of heat or up to 20 megawatts of electricity.