New study reports that Greenland is a methane sink rather than a source

Greenland settlement [image credit: climatechangepost.com]

A large dent goes in to thawing permafrost scares, as another ‘ticking time bomb’ based on greenhouse gas theories turns out to be a dud. As for carbon dioxide, the professor leading the study commented: “…the ice-free parts of Greenland have only been without ice since the last ice age, meaning that they never stored much carbon”. Climate models will have to be revised.
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Researchers at the University of Copenhagen have concluded that the methane uptake in dry landscapes exceeds methane emissions from wet areas across the ice-free part of Greenland.

The results of the new study contribute important knowledge to climate models, says Phys.org.

The researchers are now investigating whether the same finding applies to other polar regions.

Solar protons rain down on Earth via the Parker spiral

Solar Protons Are Raining Down on Earth

Sometimes known as a Solar particle event:
These particles can penetrate the Earth’s magnetic field and cause partial ionization of the ionosphere. Energetic protons are a significant radiation hazard to spacecraft and astronauts.

French farmers express net zero nausea as ‘siege of Paris’ begins

The tractors are out in force. Wrestling with onerous climate regulations, squeezed by supermarkets and pressured to give up land, many farmers have had more than enough, and not only in France.
Update: Farmergeddon! – (Daily Mail)
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Why the farmers don’t like the EU’s environmental policies – BBC News.

At the heart of the European Green Deal, which sets out how to make Europe climate-neutral by 2050, is a scheme called the Farm to Fork Strategy.

The approach aims to:

— Halve pesticide use by 2030
— Reduce fertiliser use
— Devote at least 10% of agricultural areas to non-agricultural uses (for example by turning it into fallow land, planting non-productive trees or creating ponds)
— Ensure 25% of the total EU agricultural land is used for organic farming
by 2030

These targets are seen by many farmers as unrealistic and expensive.

The Green Deal itself also includes legislation aimed at reducing emissions.

Agriculture accounts for around 11% of the EU’s total greenhouse gas emissions, so farmers will be very affected by efforts to reduce emissions.

Already in 2019, protests erupted in the Netherlands over proposals to dramatically reduce livestock farming in order to lower emissions.
. . .
‘Just impossible’ to be a farmer in France

There’s a line of tractors behind me which is blocking one of the main motorways into Paris, near Charles de Gaulle airport.

We were driving along with one man who is here with his son-in-law, who has been driving a tractor. His son-in-law has a horse stables not too far from here.

He says things are just impossible for farmers here in France, and that it’s very hard for them to compete with other countries in the European Union, which he says have lower standards.

On top of that, he was complaining about the low cost of food being sold and the challenge that the green agenda is posing for production.

Full report here.

Two global temperature graphs – spot the difference

We’ve done it already. The sloping green line in each graph, or ‘Manhattan’, has been added by the Talkshop. Of course it’s the same data, but the presentation is noticeably different. In the first one from The Conversation the green slope line is at 45° to the horizontal, and in the second one from NOAA (the creator of the graph) the same line is a more modest, although still quite steep, 35°. Is someone trying too hard to impress?
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Graph 1

Source: The Conversation
https://theconversation.com/ice-storms-january-downpours-heavy-snow-no-snow-diagnosing-warming-winter-syndrome-221956

Graph 2

Source: NOAA
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/monthly-report/global/202313

Finance problem for Labour’s ‘green power by 2030’ pledge

Cost won’t be the only problem, as weather dependency increases with the percentage of renewables in the electricity generation system, alongside the reduction of thermal power plants. Ploughing on with ‘net zero’ type policies in the face of all the costs and risks seems to have broad appeal in UK political circles.
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Ed Balls has predicted that Sir Keir Starmer will ditch Labour’s flagship £28 billion green pledge, says The Telegraph.

The former Labour shadow chancellor said that the party will need to make a “big U-turn” on the figure to shut down the Tory attack line that Labour will be irresponsible with Britain’s finances.

Sir Keir initially pledged to borrow £28 billion annually to fund green projects from year one if the party were to win power, but has repeatedly watered down that commitment over recent months.

More climate squabbling: Governments fail to set a timeline for the IPCC reports

Yet another climate conference

Another round of climate obsessives versus energy realists, as ‘Saudi, India and China led opposition against a proposal to link the IPCC’s assessment cycle with the global stocktake’. Supposed climate issues continue to be a drain on government time and resources, with attendees racking up loads of the dreaded ’emissions’ between them just to get to the latest of the endless series of venues.
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Governments have failed to agree on a timeline for the delivery of highly influential scientific reports assessing the state of climate change by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), says Climate Home News.

That is after Saudi Arabia, India and China opposed attempts to ensure the scientific body would provide its assessment in time for the next global stocktake, the UN’s scorecard of collective climate action, due in 2028, according to sources present at the IPCC talks in Istanbul, Turkiye, last week.

Following “fraught” discussions that ran all night Friday, governments postponed a final decision on the timeline until the next meeting scheduled in the summer.

Researchers probe a conundrum: If the world is warming, why are our winters getting colder?

Gulf Stream flows

Some recent cold weather events are puzzling to global warming researchers, in terms of climate model expectations. Especially so for the ‘Center for Irreversible Climate Change’ in South Korea. Temporary natural variation seems to be the conclusion. What else could they say without casting doubt on human-caused warming theories?
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If the world is warming, why are our winters getting colder?

Indeed, East Asia and North America have experienced frequent extreme weather events since the 2000s that defy average climate change projections, says Phys.org.

Many experts have blamed Arctic warming and a weakening jet stream due to declining Arctic sea ice, but climate model experiments have not adequately demonstrated their validity.

The massive power outage in Texas in February 2021 was caused by an unusual cold snap, and climate models are needed to accurately predict the risk of extreme weather events in order to prevent massive socioeconomic damage.

Net zero setback: UK decommissioned onshore gas field fails hydrogen storage safety check – ‘numerous barriers’

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

Sounds like game over for that site. Back to the drawing board for the climate obsessed UK government.
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A study exploring the potential of a decommissioned gas field in Scotland as a major hydrogen store has highlighted concerns over potential leaks and recommended that it shouldn’t be used, says the University of Aberdeen (via Phys.org).

Research led by Professor John Underhill at the University of Aberdeen and Malcolm Butler at the UK Onshore Geophysical Library (UKOGL) concluded that the Cousland gas field in Midlothian fails to meet the criteria for safe subsurface storage.

The site near Dalkeith in Midlothian, which was decommissioned in the 1960s, has been highlighted by other academic studies as a potential contender for large-scale hydrogen storage to help meet national net zero ambitions.

French ‘rubbing their hands’ as Britain forced to import £1.5bn of electricity

Another expensive and wasteful result of ‘net zero’ climate obsession in government, as the much vaunted renewables policy continues to prove fatally flawed, no matter how much is spent on it. One obvious problem with wind power is that the times of peak electricity demand and the times of optimal wind conditions rarely coincide. In other words, variable weather, not properly factored in by policymakers. Relying on averages won’t work either.
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Britain imported a record amount of electricity from Europe last year as solar and wind farms struggled to generate sufficient energy in the wake of coal and nuclear power plant closures, says The Telegraph.

The UK forked out £3.5bn on electricity from France, Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands last year, accounting for 12pc of net supply, according to research from London Stock Exchange (LSEG) Power Research.

According to official data, France accounted for around £1.5bn of power sold to the UK in the year to November 2023 while Norway earned around £500m.

EV drivers urged to preheat batteries amid cold weather (aka winter)

Not the latest model

EV owners might want to consider the risks of putting a heat source near a lithium battery. If that goes wrong, it can really go wrong. But if they don’t or can’t preheat their battery in cold conditions, e.g. it’s parked in the street, they can look forward to a significant range reduction, made worse by using the car heater.
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In the wake of the coldest night of the winter in the UK, Edmund King, President of the AA, has issued guidance to electric vehicle (EV) owners, emphasising the importance of preheating their cars and charging overnight, reports Energy Live News.

As the nation grapples with snow and ice that led to the closure of numerous schools, Mr King warns that colder temperatures can adversely affect EV batteries, leading to longer charging times and reduced efficiency.

The AA noted that electric cars may experience a reduction in range ranging from 10% to 20% in colder temperatures.

This is attributed to the diminished efficiency of the lithium-ion battery, exacerbated by drivers activating features like heating.

This advice comes as electric vehicle users in the US, particularly in Chicago, have faced difficulties due to freezing temperatures, with reports of Tesla owners abandoning their vehicles.

Full report here.

Oldie but Goldie: Climategate: how the conspirators gagged on their deceptions

Andrew Bolt Herald Sun Dec 6 2009

I’ve wondered whether Climategate scientist Tom Wigley, an Australian, finally choked on all the fraud, fiddling and coverups he was witnessing from fellow members of his Climategate cabal. Steven Hayward points out that many other Climategate scientists privately had trouble swallowing the practices of their colleagues:

In 1998 three scientists from American universities–Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes–unveiled in Nature magazine what was regarded as a signal breakthrough in paleoclimatology–the now notorious “hockey stick” temperature reconstruction (picture a flat “handle” extending from the year 1000 to roughly 1900, and a sharply upsloping “blade” from 1900 to 2000). Their paper purported to prove that current global temperatures are the highest in the last thousand years by a large margin–far outside the range of natural variability. The medieval warm period (MWP) and the little ice (LIA) age both disappeared.

Dose of engineering reality needed to counter climate obsessions

Using ‘Green Energy’ To Wreck Our Way Of Life

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Talkshop comment:
Playing the expensive renewable energy game isn’t an option for the majority of ‘non-wealthy’ countries anyway, regardless of promoters of climate alarm. China for example forges ahead with dozens of new coal mines every year to help keep its growing economy functioning, while countries like Britain attempt to survive without any. Somebody has it wrong and it’s not going to be China.

Send more funds: Earth system models are missing key piece of future climate puzzle, researchers say

Alaskan permafrost: [image credit: insideclimatenews.org]

The ’emissions’ obsessives of climate research seek greater financing for the endless quest for evidence that might support their theories. The subject here is permafrost, but it also reads like an admission that climate is more complicated than current models can cope with, for a number of reasons.
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The way science is funded is hampering Earth system models, and may be skewing important climate predictions, according to a new comment published in Nature Climate Change by Woodwell Climate Research Center and an international team of model experts, says Phys.org.

Emissions from thawing permafrost, frozen ground in the North that contains twice as much carbon as the atmosphere does and is thawing due to human-caused climate warming [Talkshop comment – the usual empty assertion], are one of the largest uncertainties in future climate projections.

But accurate representation of permafrost dynamics is missing from the major models that project future carbon emissions.

Chancellor Hunt ‘bitterly disappointed’ after gas drilling approved in his constituency

Climate obsession can warp the mind if this case is anything to go by. Government policy is to find more UK gas but one of its top ministers opposes the idea in his own constituency.
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Chancellor Jeremy Hunt says he is “bitterly disappointed” after a Court of Appeal ruling gave the green light to a gas drilling project in his Surrey constituency, reports Sky News.

The site in Dunsfold, which energy company UK Oil and Gas (UKOG) wants to explore, has been the source of a protracted legal battle.

The application was approved by the government in June 2022, despite it being refused by the local Conservative council and opposition from Mr Hunt when he was a backbench MP.

2023’s record heat partly driven by ‘mystery’ process: NASA scientist

It’s warming, but not as they thought they knew it. ‘Everybody has lots of ideas, but it doesn’t quite add up.’ Aerosols, undersea volcano, El Niño, ‘new processes’ – the list of suspects goes on, but nothing convincing so far. Settled science has been unsettled, but persists with its usual assertions blaming humans anyway.
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It’s no secret human activity is warming the planet, driving more frequent and intense extreme weather events and transforming ecosystems at an extraordinary rate, claims Phys.org.

But the record-shattering temperatures of 2023 have nonetheless alarmed scientists, and hint at some “mysterious” new processes that may be under way, NASA’s top climatologist Gavin Schmidt tells AFP.

US: Winter storm brings ‘life-threatening’ cold

Instead of imagining dire global warming, many US citizens can step outside for a sharp dose of a different reality. “EVERY state in the US has an active NWS watch, warning, or advisory”. One to remember when summer heatwaves come around and UN-led warmist miserablism fires up again.
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The mercury was plummeting across the US Midwest on Saturday as a biting winter storm left hundreds of thousands without power and threatened to disrupt the first key event in the 2024 presidential election campaign, says DW.com.

Over a quarter of a million people in Michigan and Wisconsin were left without power as freezing temperatures spread across the region, according to the PowerOutage.US website.

Winds and heavy snow also grounded planes at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport with some 7,600 flights delayed across the country.

Polar vortex wobbled ‘like a top’ in December

The Polar Vortex Wobbled in December

Unusual but not unheard of.
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‘Since the December outbreak of PSCs [polar stratospheric clouds], which ended around Christmas, the polar stratosphere has warmed more than 30 degrees Celsius.’

Electric double-decker bus erupts into flames in Wimbledon during rush hour

London hybrid double-decker [image credit: buses world news]

Scary. Best wear running shoes when using vehicles powered wholly or partly by lithium batteries (full details not yet reported). — Update: the bus manufacturer is Switch.
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A bus has dramatically caught fire on Wimbledon high street this morning, with residents reporting a loud bang and thick smoke.

Videos and photos showed clouds of smoke billowing from a red double-decker bus on Wimbledon Hill Road and Alwyne Road. ‘We heard a huge bang. We were terrified’ Max Pashley, a local resident, told City AM.

There have been no reported injuries, according to the Met, while road closures and cordons are expected to remain in place for some time. “We thank the local community for their patience and cooperation as emergency services work at the scene,” a spokesperson said.

Aircraft observations show northern tropical Africa is not the large source of CO2 that satellite data ‘suggested’

This must put a dent in the credibility of at least some supposedly climate-related satellite data. On the positive side, a significant chunk of the alleged global carbon dioxide problem disappears, as the carbon cycle of a large region turns out to be self-balancing. The CO2 struck off, so to speak, is ‘equivalent to about 10% of annual emissions from the burning of fossil fuels’.
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The forests and grasslands of northern tropical Africa take in about as much carbon dioxide in the wet season as they release in the dry season, according to a new study based on observations from aircraft.

The findings contradict earlier research that relied on satellite data and found that these ecosystems may be adding significantly more carbon to the atmosphere than they absorb over the course of a year, says Phys.org.

The research, published in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles, highlights the difficulty of measuring carbon dioxide from space and the need for more frequent and robust observations from both the air and ground.

Mind the Gaps: How the UN Climate Plan Fails to Follow the Science

Image credit: livescience.com

That old nebulous concept is invoked again: ‘the science’. It aims to sound like infallible authority, but that’s not what real science is. Talk of “uncharted territory” reminds us that most of Earth’s climate history also falls into that category. Made-up temperature limits based on the use of global averaging have little meaning in reality, as some politicians appear to have noticed.
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Climate negotiators meeting in Dubai last month pledged to chart a course for stabilizing the climate system using good science, says Fred Pearce at Yale Environment360.

But many scientists say these promises are at best ill-defined and at worst a travesty of good science — vague and full of loopholes.

The U.N. climate conference in Dubai agreed on an action plan for two key objectives: to keep the world on track to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F), and to stay below this threshold by achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Negotiators pledged that both objectives would be pursued “in keeping with the science.”

But neither of the objectives have agreed definitions that would allow a judgment on whether they have been achieved.