Study: ‘Early aerial expedition photos reveal 85 years of glacier growth and stability in East Antarctica’

That’s the title of the study, looking at an area that ‘covers approximately 2000 kilometers of coastline and contains as much ice as the entire Greenland Ice Sheet.’ This article shouldn’t be relied on entirely due to obvious alarmist biases, so maybe better to read at least the abstract of the study for a clearer picture. For example [quote from the Discussion]: ‘This positive accumulation trend and positive mass balance is anticipated to persist as snowfall is expected to increase over the entire EAIS in the next century.’
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A whaler’s forgotten aerial photos from 1937 have given researchers at the University of Copenhagen the most detailed picture of the ice evolution in East Antarctica to date, says EurekAlert.

The results show that the ice has remained stable and even grown slightly over almost a century, though scientists observe early signs of weakening [Talkshop comment – a somewhat loose interpretation of the actual study].

The research offers new insights that enhance predictions of ice changes and sea level rise [Talkshop comment – climatist waffle, see the study].
. . .
Using hundreds of old aerial photographs dating back to 1937, combined with modern computer technology, the researchers have tracked the evolution of glaciers in East Antarctica. The area covers approximately 2000 kilometers of coastline and contains as much ice as the entire Greenland Ice Sheet.

By comparing the historical aerial photos with modern satellite data, the researchers have been able to determine whether the glaciers have retreated or advanced and whether they have thickened or thinned.

The study reveals that the ice has not only remained stable but grown slightly over the last 85 years, partly due to increasing snowfall.

“We constantly hear about climate change and new melt records, so it’s refreshing to observe an area of glaciers that has remained stable for almost a century,” says PhD student Mads Dømgaard, the study’s first author.

Full article here.
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Study: Early aerial expedition photos reveal 85 years of glacier growth and stability in East Antarctica (May 2024)

Study: Reduced sulphur content in shipping fuel caused ‘nearly 80%’ of recent atmospheric warming

Due to a 2020 shipping regulation…’The net planetary heat uptake has increased by 0.25 Wm−2 since 2020, making the 0.2 Wm−2 due to IMO2020 nearly 80% of the total increase.’ The study also says: ‘The 2023 record warmth is within the ranges of our expected trajectory. The magnitude of IMO2020 induced warming means that the observed strong warming in 2023 will be a new norm in the 2020 s.’ — Two general comments to make here: (1) cloud physics is admitted to be not well understood, and (2) could night-time clear(er) skies mean (more) cooling, in theory at least?
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An 80% reduction in sulphur dioxide shipping emissions observed in early 2020 could be associated with substantial atmospheric warming over some ocean regions, according to a modelling study published in Communications Earth & Environment.

The sudden decline in emissions was a result of the introduction of the International Maritime Organization’s 2020 regulation (IMO 2020), which reduced the maximum sulphur content allowed in shipping fuel from 3.5% to 0.5% to help reduce air pollution, says EurekAlert.

Fuel oil used for large ships has a significantly higher percentage content of sulphur than fuels used in other vehicles. Burning this fuel produces sulphur dioxide, which reacts with water vapour in the atmosphere to produce sulphate aerosols.

These aerosols cool the Earth’s surface in two ways: by directly reflecting sunlight back to space [Talkshop comment – daytime effect only]; and by affecting cloud cover.

Europe’s missing climate marches – replaced by tractor convoys?

Climate alarmists complain their manufactured hysteria pot is cooling down, as protest focus has switched to other issues and/or boredom set in as the novelty wore off. Instead the victims of dogmatic net zero diktats, such as farmers, drive onto the streets of EU capitals to air their grievances. Is a return to political reality anywhere in sight?
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Ahead of the 2019 European Parliament elections, Europe was rocked by massive climate marches, says Euractiv.

But as the 2024 elections approach, the streets remain silent.

As a series of climate marches swept across Europe in spring 2019, Brussels was no exception. At the movement’s peak, 70,000 people massed in the EU quarter to loudly demand greater climate action.

Millions more trees isn’t the climate fix New Zealand thought

Expert view: as the CO2 absorption efficiency of trees declines over time “you’re going to have to keep planting more and more forests. That isn’t actually solving the problem.” Nature’s own carbon cycle isn’t easily manipulated.
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Of all the solutions for a warming world, “plant more trees” seems pretty obvious, says Bloomberg News (via Phys.org).

But in New Zealand, which tested that premise by linking incentives for forestry development with its emissions trading scheme, the results have been more controversial and less effective than climate advocates hoped.

Now, after four years of frenetic planting, a prominent government watchdog has joined international agencies, industry groups and environmental advocates in calling for a radical overhaul, one that threatens a reversal of fortunes for investors in the recent forestry boom.

NASA’s Cutting-Edge Missions To Crack Earth’s Climate Code – ‘prioritizing greenhouse gases’

What happened to the settled science? Of course the spin will be that only refinements are needed, which call for more data, but that suggests a measure of uncertainty that isn’t supposed to exist. Climate theory can be something of a shapeshifter when results aren’t as per alarmist forecast.
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NASA’s Earth System Explorers Program selected four proposals to study greenhouse gases, the ozone layer, ocean currents, and ice changes, says NASA/JPL (via SciTechDaily).

Each will get $5 million for a one-year study before NASA picks two for future launches.

Four proposals have been selected by NASA for concept studies of missions to help us better understand Earth science key focus areas for the benefit of all, including greenhouse gases, the ozone layer, ocean surface currents, and changes in ice and glaciers around the world.

NASA launches ‘ground-breaking’ climate change satellite

It turns out that ‘Until now the models that climate change scientists used to gauge heat loss were based on theories rather than real observations’. In other words, little or no data from the polar regions, so claims of Earth ‘overheating’ are lacking vital information. SciTech Daily says: ‘The PREFIRE CubeSats use advances in spectrometry to measure processes associated with ice melt and formation, snow melt and accumulation, and changes in cloud cover.’
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A tiny NASA satellite was launched Saturday from New Zealand with the mission of improving climate change prediction by measuring heat escaping from Earth’s poles for the first time, says Phys.org.

“This new information—and we’ve never had it before—will improve our ability to model what’s happening in the poles, what’s happening in climate,” NASA’s earth sciences research director Karen St. Germain told a recent news conference.

The satellite, which is the size of a shoe box, was launched by an Electron rocket, built by a company called Rocket Lab, which lifted off from Mahia in the north of New Zealand. The overall mission is called PREFIRE.

Landmark case crumbles: Swiss parliamentary committee rejects European climate ruling

Back to the drawing board for the climate miserablists and their litigious Swiss grannies, who had claimed a so-called ‘landmark’ victory after arguing their country wasn’t cold enough for their liking due to lack of government action, or something. The report notes that ‘the government had proposed stronger measures…but Swiss voters rejected them in a 2021 referendum’.
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GENEVA, May 21 (Reuters) – A Swiss parliamentary committee on Tuesday rejected a ruling by a top European court that said Switzerland had violated the human rights of its citizens by not doing enough to prevent climate change.

In April, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg found in favor of a group of elderly Swiss women who took their government to court over its record on tackling global warming.

The decision, which was expected to embolden more people to bring climate cases against governments, indicated Switzerland had a legal duty to take greater action on reducing emissions.

NOAA’s ‘record-breaking’ hurricane season forecast – heard it before?

The ‘average’ 2022 season was supposed to be a big one but not much happened until near the end of it. Any hurricane season prediction could turn out to be better than guesswork of course, but the current skill level of forecasters is debatable, perhaps coloured by alarmist expectations in some cases. Last week a Forbes article had the title: Climate Change, Though Quite Real, Isn’t Spawning More Hurricanes. (‘Quite real’ is an amusingly weak endorsement, one of the I-suppose-I-should-say-that variety as a nod to alarmist theory). Forbes: ‘are we seeing an ominous upward historical trend in the hazard posed by major Atlantic hurricanes? No.’
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More than two dozen hurricanes could be on their way this year, thanks to climate change [Talkshop comment – of course!] and La Niña, experts have forecast.

Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have made their highest-ever May forecast for an Atlantic hurricane season: 17 to 25 named storms, says LiveScience.

According to the forecast, 13 of these storms will be hurricanes, with winds of 74 mph (119 km/h) or higher, and four to seven will be major hurricanes, with winds of 111 mph (179 km/h) or higher.

Global AI Data Centers Will Consume Huge Amounts of Fresh Water — JPMorgan report

Modern technology is once again in the dock as a resource monster, going totally against the grain for net-zero obsessed climate worriers who look to choke off energy demand at every turn. Data centre issues over local water and power supplies have been widely reported e.g. here at the Talkshop, and here.
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Summary:
— While energy consumption of data centers steal the headlines, the water-intensive nature of their operations is overlooked.

— Bluefield research: water consumption by global data centers (including on-site cooling and off-site power generation) has grown 6% annually from 2017 to 2022.

— Immense water demand from data centers in areas where water resources are scarce could spark “increased competition can strain water availability, even causing data center closures.”
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Wall Street banks are in a frenzy over “The Next AI Trade,” piling into the ‘Powering up America’ investment themes, whether that’s power grid companies, commodities, such as copper, gold, silver, and uranium, and artificial intelligence chipmakers, to accommodate the explosion of generative artificial intelligence data centers anticipated nationwide through the end of the decade and beyond, says ZeroHedge (via OilPrice.com).

Lunar-driven Barents Sea climate — The Climate Clock

Professor Harald Yndestad writes (here): ‘The Kola-section data analysis revealed, for the first time, that Arctic climate variations are controlled by the earth’s rotation and the moon’. He refers to ‘the riddle of a 6-year cycle in the cod population’ and comments: ‘My estimates reveal we are at a turning point and moving into a colder period and more ice extent.’ The 6-year cycle reminded me of a Talkshop post featuring a paper by astronomer Willy de Rop, in which he wrote, with illustrations: ‘We will now consider how often such a situation of maximum tides will occur. The perigee moves 0.164 358 002 0 a day relative to the node, corresponding to 360° in a period p 2 190.340565 days. If at the same time this moment of maximum influence coincides with the moment at which the Earth is in the perihelion of its orbit, the tides will reach an absolute maximum. So, when the perigee of the Moon’s orbit coincides with the ascending node, then this situation repeats after 2190.340565 days. This period p corresponds to 5.996 667 350 anomalistic years, thus nearly an entire number of anomalistic years.’ In other words, almost six years. It’s the beat period of the (lunar) anomalistic and tropical months, also of the full moon cycle and draconic year. Whether this plays a part in the cod discussion is an open question.
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In nature, nothing acts alone, writes Prof. Harald Yndestad. Therefore, something outside the cod stock, causes recruitment in periods of 6 years.

The source may be a 6-year temperature cycle in the Barents Sea. If the temperature in the Barents Sea has a period of 6 years, it must also have a source outside the Barents Sea. This means that there must be a first cause. A cause of causes, for temperature variations in the Barents Sea.

So, what is periodic in nature? Could the source be the tides or in the earth’s rotation? I contacted an astrophysicist.

Electric cars ‘twice as lethal for pedestrians as petrol or diesel’ – UK study

It seems electric cars just aren’t loud enough for public safety, compared to combustion-engined models. Predictably, EV drivers must expect later pedestrian reaction to their approach.
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Electric cars kill pedestrians at double the rate of petrol or diesel vehicles, a study in a BMJ journal has found.

Experts said that electric or hybrid cars were twice as likely to be involved in a road accident with a bystander than a petrol or diesel car over the same distance, reports The Telegraph.

The researchers suggested the vehicles’ quieter engines were a significant factor in higher fatality rates and called on the Government to mitigate the risks as it phases out petrol and diesel cars in pursuit of net zero.

Satellite mission to ‘unravel’ how clouds impact future climate change?

Let’s hope this is not going to be used as another excuse to pretend alarmist predictions from climate models have improved, just because some extra data is being fed in.
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A brand new satellite that will revolutionize our understanding of the role clouds and aerosol particles play in climate change is set to launch after more than 30 years of planning, says the University of Reading (via Phys.org).

The EarthCARE satellite is the brainchild of the University of Reading’s Professor Anthony Illingworth. Conceived in 1993, the project was adopted by the European Space Agency (ESA) in 2004.

The satellite is set to blast off from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base on board one of Elon Musk’s SpaceX rockets, scheduled for launch no earlier than Tuesday 28 May 2024.

The mission is a testament to the power of U.K. and international collaboration and the importance of long-term, dedicated research. The satellite, equipped with four cutting-edge instruments, will provide unprecedented insights into the complex interactions between clouds, aerosols, and Earth’s climate.

This data will be invaluable in shaping our understanding of climate change and informing future climate adaptation and mitigation policies.

Professor Anthony Illingworth, Professor of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Reading, said, “When we first started dreaming up this project, I never imagined I would be flying out to the United States to watch our satellite launch 30 years later.

“It’s been a long and challenging journey with an amazing team of dedicated scientists and engineers from the U.K. and abroad. Together, we’ve created something truly remarkable that will change the way we understand our planet.

“The data we gather from EarthCARE will be invaluable in helping us observe the precise mechanisms involved in how clouds and dust reflect and absorb heat. This will make our predictions for the future of our climate even more precise, meaning we can make more informed decisions about how to mitigate and adapt to the challenges posed by a warming world.

“The extraordinary data we receive will help us create a more sustainable future for our planet. It’s a humbling and thrilling experience to be part of something so significant.”
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Currently, climate models do not agree on how effective clouds and aerosols are at influencing the impact of global warming. For example, if there were fewer cloudy days in the future, less energy from the sun would be reflected back into space, which would increase the rate of climate warming.

EarthCARE’s new observations will help scientists to develop more precise climate models, which will significantly improve climate predictions and lead to more informed policy decisions.

Full article here.

“May 10th was definitely a Great Storm”

South Pacific Auroras Confirm May 10th Was a Great Storm

China develops revolutionary electric car battery that can charge in 10 minutes

If true, the rest of the EV scene looks obsolete already. Will other countries find themselves rolling out the red carpet for Chinese cars as their own motor industries struggle to survive?
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China has developed a revolutionary car battery that can charge in just 10 minutes and power a car for hundreds of miles before it needs to be plugged in, reports The Telegraph.

A report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) has hailed “remarkable” developments in chemistry that have allowed China to develop new batteries that pack far more energy than existing technologies.

The IEA highlighted EV batteries capable of travelling 250 miles without a recharge. Newer versions announced since the report was written can manage 600 miles.

Russia finds vast oil and gas reserves in British Antarctic territory – what happens next?

Report: ‘Junior minister David Rutley last week told the EAC that his department had decided to trust Russian assurances it was just conducting scientific research.’ However, ‘reserves 10 times the North Sea’s output’ could be tempting – but not to most UK politicians, who prefer to import anyone else’s oil and gas in order to pose as climate friendly or something, while the government loses another court battle over its self-imposed net zero targets.
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Russia has found vast oil and gas reserves in the Antarctic, much of it in areas claimed by the UK, reports The Telegraph.

The surveys are a prelude to bringing in drilling rigs to exploit the pristine region for fossil fuels, MPs have warned.

Reserves totalling 511bn barrels of oil – about 10 times the North Sea’s entire 50-year output – have been reported to Moscow by Russian research ships, according to evidence given to the Commons Environment Audit Committee (EAC) last week.

Blow for climate worriers as banks consider renewable energy to be a riskier investment than fossil fuels

The article here takes the climate alarm view, as usual with this source, and concludes that ‘risk assessments used by lenders are a boon for the oil and gas industry’. Oh dear! Maybe the fact that oil and gas are still in huge demand and tend to generate large profits, while renewables are expensive and require large subsidies, has something to do with it?
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The financial sector is among the world’s most heavily regulated industries – and for good reason, says The Conversation.

Financial rules, which force banks to hold capital in reserve when making riskier investments, are designed to prevent financial crises. Other financial regulations, such as accounting rules, aim to provide investors with a credible valuation of their financial assets.

However, new research I conducted with my colleagues shows that some of these rules may have unintended consequences for the low-carbon transition.

Battle of the skies as airlines fight over impact of contrails on the climate

This report summary says ‘Vapour trails conundrum resurfaces’. Cloud formation plays an uncertain part in the debate, for example. An experiment using AI found that real time route selection could play a part in reducing the supposed ’emissions’ problem. Proposed financial penalties for airlines are inevitably resisted, but they’re up against net zero climate obsession.
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Airlines are usually rather good at presenting a united face to the world, particularly when it comes to lobbying global policymakers, says The Telegraph.

But a recent move by the EU to clampdown on so-called contrails, the vapour that spews from an aircraft’s jet engines in a thin cloud-like formation, has set carriers at each other’s throats.

The International Air Transport Association (Iata), which counts most of the world’s flag-carriers among its members, has lobbied Brussels to limit the mandatory monitoring of contrails to only flights within the bloc, in an effort to ease the burden of data collection.

But it has stoked the ire of low-cost operators including EasyJet and Ryanair.

Historic aurora show

As the sun nears its peak in cycle 25, giant sunspots drive a major burst of auroral activity. “We have a very rare event on our hand,” Shawn Dahl, Service Coordinator of NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Group, told reporters on Friday (May 10) just hours before the northern lights spectacle began.
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Many people around the world have just seen auroras for the first time in their lives. This includes residents of the Florida Keys, says Spaceweather.com.
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Seeing auroras in the Florida Keys is extraordinary, but the light show didn’t stop there. Sky watchers saw the sky turn red across the Carribean.
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“The last events on record when auroras were seen from Puerto Rico were in 1859 and 1921, so tonight was an historic event”, says Eddie Irizarry from the Sociedad de Astronomia del Caribe (Astronomical Society of the Caribbean).

Auroras also appeared in Mexico.

Source including aurora images here.
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Image: Auroral activity seen from North Wales (UK), 10 May 2024 [credit: M.Robinson]

UK wind power constraint payments cost £920 million in 2023 – and rising

Analysts from an energy storage specialist say £920 million annual cost of ‘curtailment’ could be cut 80% by using existing technologies like battery storage more effectively. But that would obviously require a lot of expensive batteries, and gas power stations could easily do the job on a much more extensive scale. Such is the state of the UK electricity grid thanks to net zero climate obsessions and intermittent wind power dotted all over the place, especially in areas remote from population centres – i.e. the opposite of where that power is most needed.
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Grid capacity constraints added nearly £1 billion of ‘curtailment’ costs to electricity bills for homes and businesses in 2023 as abundant energy from wind farms was unable to be transmitted to areas of demand, says Field Energy.

The majority of this cost was down to a single pinch point in the UK’s electricity grid on the Scottish/English border called the B6 boundary.

Analysis by energy storage developer and operator Field estimates this boundary alone could cause up to £2.2 billion of curtailment costs by 2030 as the UK’s curtailment problem escalates. Overall UK curtailment costs could reach £3.5 billion by that date.

Power-hungry AI problem for climate policymakers

How AI Is Outsmarting Green Energy, Zero Carbon Fantasies

– – – Closing thermal power stations, and insisting on renewables instead in the name of climate obsessions, leads to reductions in reliable electricity supply. But the rise of data centres and AI increases the need for that reliable supply. Somebody has to lose out.