Corey S. Powell: The next 10 years will be a remarkable era of space exploration

In 2025, the Japanese-European BepiColombo probe will carry out the most detailed exploration of Mercury. (Here you see it examining its own antenna, preparing for the mission ahead.) https://t.co/4pomSLfyok pic.twitter.com/Z3wf6iwg9b

— Corey S. Powell (@coreyspowell) March 17, 2020

Climatologist’s Cloud Confusion Continues: Catastrophists Claims Completely Confounded.

For decades we’ve been told that net cloud radiative forcing is positive. This means that the the amount by which clouds cool the surface, by reflecting solar radiation back to space, is outweighed by the amount that clouds warm the surface, by re-radiating surface emitted IR back towards the ground. So cloud increase equals warmer surface See e.g IPCC AR5 on the subject:

‘Melting Greenland’ likely to add up to half an inch to global sea levels by 2098

image credit https://visitgreenland.com/

Mike Waite left the following comment over at Paul Homewood’s excellent not a lot of people know that blog yesterday:

There is an interesting paper by MacGuth et al (2013) which supports you :

From their summary:

-“We calculate the future sea-level rise contribution from the surface mass balance of all of

Greenland’s glaciers and ice caps (GICs, ca. 90 000 km2) using a simplified energy balance

model which is driven by three future climate scenarios from the regional climate models

HIRHAM5, RACMO2 and MAR. Glacier extent and surface elevation are modified during the

mass balance model runs according to a glacier retreat parameterization. Mass balance and glacier surface change are both calculated on a 250 m resolution digital elevation model yielding a high level of detail and ensuring that important feedback mechanisms are

considered. The mass loss of all GICs by 2098 is calculated to be

2016 +/- 129 Gt (HIRHAM5 forcing),

2584 +/-109 Gt (RACMO2)

and 3907+/- 108 Gt (MAR). This corresponds to a total contribution to sea-level rise of

5:8 +/- 0:4,

7:4 +/- 0:3

and 11:2 +/- 0:3 mm, respectively. “-

The future sea-level rise contribution of Greenland’s glaciers and ice caps

H Machguth1,2, P Rastner1, T Bolch1,3, N M¨olg1, L Sandberg Sørensen4,

G Aðalgeirsdottir5, J H van Angelen6, M R van den Broeke6 and

X Fettweis7

Online at stacks.iop.org/ERL/8/025005

Even if subsequent calculations modified these figures they are unlikely to be an order of magnitude higher and the sea level rise to 2098 calculated here is at most 11mm (not cm or feet or metres).

Can’t someone take these activists, sit them in a quet room and just read the literature to them since they seem incapable of such study themselves.

MET-Office wants your money for a new supercomputer, but has given up decadal forecasting

Well this is a disappointment.

After the fiasco in 2018 when I revealed the data-shifting technique the MET-Office were using to never be wrong about their ‘decadal’ forecast, and the late update in 2019 , the MET-O have now disappeared the ‘decadal’ forecast altogether. This after they promised to update it in January 2020.

EDIT: The forecast has been found! See comments below.

Arctic sea ice much more resilient than thought

Still waiting

More so than the climate alarm movement thought, anyway. Hence all the failed predictions of disappearing summer sea ice in the Arctic, and erroneous claims of ‘rapid melting’ that no longer hold water 😎
Observations show a ‘sideways trend’ in Arctic sea ice volume since around 2010, which perhaps not by chance follows a significant downturn in solar cycle intensity.
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In recent years the Arctic sea ice has shown great resiliency and is currently at higher levels for this time of year when compared to all but two years going back to 2005, says meteorologist Paul Dorian of Perspecta Inc. (via The GWPF).

Overview

Sea ice covers about 7% of the Earth’s surface and about 12% of the world’s oceans and forms mainly in the Earth’s polar regions.

Multiple resonances of the eight planet system of Kepler-90, part 2

Kepler-90 Planets Orbit Close to Their Star [credit: NASA/AMES]

In part 1 we looked at the inner four planets: b,c,i and d. Here in part 2 we’ll look at the outer four: e,f,g and h – with a dash of d included.

The largest planet in the system is h, the outermost of the eight so far found, and it’s about the same size as Jupiter. It’s ‘an exoplanet orbiting within the habitable zone of the early G-type main sequence star Kepler-90’, says Wikipedia. However, ‘it is a gas giant with no solid surface’, so probably no aliens lurking there.

It wasn’t that easy to find synodic patterns of interest, but here we have two examples, both involving planet h.

Australian Bushfires Much Worse In 1974/5

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Note to climate doomers: weather can, and does, vary without assistance from humans.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

An important and, as usual, forensic contribution from Roy Spencer:

Summary Points

1) Global wildfire activity has decreased in recent decades, making any localized increase (or decrease) in wildfire activity difficult to attribute to ‘global climate change’.

2) Like California, Australia is prone to bushfires every year during the dry season. Ample fuel and dry weather exists for devastating fires each year, even without excessive heat or drought, as illustrated by the record number of hectares burned (over 100 million) during 1974-75 when above-average precipitation and below-average temperatures existed.

3) Australian average temperatures in 2019 were well above what global warming theory can explain, illustrating the importance of natural year-to-year variability in weather patterns (e.g. drought and excessively high temperatures).

4) Australia precipitation was at a record low in 2019, but climate models predict no long-term trend in Australia precipitation, while the observed trend has been upward…

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Multiple resonances of the eight planet system of Kepler-90, part 1

Golden rectangle: Fibonacci spiral

Unusually, the eight planets in the Kepler-90 system were found using machine learning. “It’s very possible that Kepler-90 has even more planets that we don’t know about yet,” NASA astronomer Andrew Vanderburg said.
– – –
From Wikipedia’s Near resonances section on exoplanet Kepler-90:

“Kepler-90’s eight known planets all have periods that are close to being in integer ratio relationships with other planets’ periods; that is, they are close to being in orbital resonance.

The period ratios b:c, c:i and i:d are close to 4:5, 3:5 and 1:4, respectively (4: 4.977, 3: 4.97 and 1: 4.13) and d, e, f, g and h are close to a 2:3:4:7:11 period ratio (2: 3.078: 4.182: 7.051: 11.102; also 7: 11.021).

f, g and h are also close to a 3:5:8 period ratio (3: 5.058: 7.964). Relevant to systems like this and that of Kepler-36, calculations suggest that the presence of an outer gas giant planet facilitates the formation of closely packed resonances among inner super-Earths.”
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Let’s look at it another way i.e. at the synodic periods rather than the orbit ratios, as these tend to deliver more clear-cut results, starting with a model for the first four planets: b,c,i and d, which we’ll call the inner planets. Their orbits of the star are in a range of 7-60 days.

The UK blackout of 9 August 2019 is unlikely to be the last one

This GWPF report paints an uncomfortable picture of increasing instability in the UK electricity supply system, as ever more renewables are injected into it while older but more predictable thermal power plants are retired. The author says bluntly that until recently customers ‘could rely on the system. That is not the case today.’ Come the power cut, you’re on your own.

It has been widely claimed that Distributed (or embedded) Generation, such as solar and wind connected to the low voltage distribution network, reinforces electricity system stability.

The final reports into the widespread blackout of the 9th of August last year by the UK electricity regulator, Ofgem, and the British government’s Energy Emergency Executive Committee, E3C show that this is not the case.

Distributed Generation is now under the spotlight as a leading cause of the severity of the 9 August blackout, and as a hazard increasing future risks to security of supply.

Quantization of Planetary Systems and its Dependency on Stellar Rotation

Solar system planets [image credit: BBC]

Well this looks interesting. Jean paul Zoghbi has discovered half integer relationships between star rotation rates and their planetary system’s angular momenta. The paper is here

Abstract With the discovery of now more than 500 exoplanets, we present a statistical analysis of the planetary orbital periods and their relationship to the rotation periods of their parent stars. We test whether the structural variables of planetary orbits, i.e. planetary angular momentum and orbital period, are `quantized’ in integer or half-integer multiples of the parent star’s rotation period. The Solar System is first shown to exhibit quantized planetary orbits that correlate with the Sun’s rotation period.

Extending El Niño event predictions to a year

The El Niño of 1997-8

Let’s see how this theory works out in practice.

A group of researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Beijing Normal University and Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen has found a way to predict El Niño events up to a year before they occur, says Phys.org.

In their paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes their complexity-based approach to better predicting the seemingly random weather events.

El Niño is a weather event in which the water surface temperatures in some western parts of the Pacific grow warmer than normal and then seep eastward.

Scientists are eager to learn more about such events because they can contribute to excess rainfall in some parts of the world and drought conditions in others.

Study Shows Electric Cars Become Practically Useless In Cold Weather

Teslas in Norway [image credit: Norsk Elbilforening (Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association)]

EVs are looking like yet another ‘save the planet’ fiasco in the making. Some of the points made here were already known, but these studies reinforce them. As many EVs on the road are still relatively new, the full extent of any problems may not yet be clear. With the help of large subsidies and other incentives they sell well in Norway despite the cold winters there.

According to recent studies, cold temperatures significantly reduce the performance of electric cars, especially when it comes to battery life.

One study by AAA suggested that cold temperatures can reduce the range of the batteries in most electric cars by over 40 percent, reports Anonymous News.

It was also noted that the performance can be even worse when the interior heaters are used.

Resonances of the first (pulsar) exoplanetary system ever found

Poster from the NASA Exoplanets Exploration Program’s Exoplanet Travel Bureau [credit: NASA/JPL-CalTech]

Before we start – ‘Pulsar planets are planets that are found orbiting pulsars, or rapidly rotating neutron stars.’

Wikipedia tells us:
‘PSR B1257+12, previously designated PSR 1257+12, […] is a pulsar located 2,300 light-years from the Sun in the constellation of Virgo. It is also named Lich, after a powerful, fictional undead creature of the same name.

The pulsar has a planetary system with three known planets, named “Draugr” (PSR B1257+12 b or PSR B1257+12 A), “Poltergeist” (PSR B1257+12 c, or PSR B1257+12 B) and “Phobetor” (PSR B1257+12 d, or PSR B1257+12 C), respectively.

They were both the first extrasolar planets and the first pulsar planets to be discovered; B and C in 1992 and A in 1994.

A is the lowest-mass planet yet discovered by any observational technique, with somewhat less than twice the mass of Earth’s moon.’

Stardust in the Antarctic snow: Iron-60 discovery in the Antarctic provides information on the environment of solar system

Image credit: extremetech.com

A 2016 article in Astronomy Now reported:
“Scientists found radioactive iron-60 in sediment and crust samples taken from the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

The iron-60 was concentrated in a period between 3.2 and 1.7 million years ago, which is relatively recent in astronomical terms, said research leader Dr. Anton Wallner from The Australian National University (ANU).

“We were very surprised that there was debris clearly spread across 1.5 million years,” said Dr. Wallner, a nuclear physicist in the ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering. “It suggests there were a series of supernovae, one after another.

“It’s an interesting coincidence that they correspond with when the Earth cooled and moved from the Pliocene into the Pleistocene period.” [bold added]

In August this year a new find was reported…
– – –
The rare isotope iron-60 is created in massive stellar explosions, says ScienceDaily. Only a very small amount of this isotope reaches the earth from distant stars.

COLD WATER? The Oceans and Climate Change – Dr David Whitehouse

The full GWPF paper is here. Needless to say, it offers little comfort to ‘man-made warming’ climate dogmatists. The author concludes that what is happening to the oceans today is not unusual, in historical terms.

Executive summary

• The study of ocean heat content (OHC) is a subject struggling with inadequate data, but exposed in a public forum.

• Only since the introduction of data from the Argo array have there been convincing estimates of errors. The inhomogeneity of different data sets is a major problem.

• There is no real understanding of the difference between random and systematic errors in OHC data.

• Changes in OHC are at the limits of our ability to measure, and made with much uncertainty and many unknowns.

Tallbloke talking about climate and energy on PlusNews live TV

Yesterday I got the opportunity to have a relaxed climate conversation with Stephen Place, who presents the ‘Talking Yorkshire’ programme on PlusNews TV, a community based channel going out on 15 live platforms worldwide, youtube and on facebook. Make a pot of coffee and check it out.

Pielke Jr.: Net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050 requires a new nuclear power plant every day

Ringhals nuclear power site, Sweden [image credit: Vattenfall]

Or, theoretically at least, an equivalent amount of power from other so-called ‘green’ sources, requiring vastly greater amounts of non-renewable mined materials than are currently available – assuming they even exist on such large scales. Not to mention all the other practical difficulties of such dodgy ideas.

What makes achieving Net Zero by 2050 impossible is a failure to accurately understand the scale of the challenge and the absence of policy proposals that match that scale, says Roger Pielke Jr. @ Forbes (via The GWPF).

More than a decade ago, Gwyn Prins and Steve Rayner characterized climate policy as an “auction of promises” in which politicians “vied to outbid each other with proposed emissions targets that were simply not achievable.”

For instance, among Democrats competing for the presidency in 2020, several, including Joe Biden, have committed to achieving net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. Candidate Andrew Yang bid 2049, and Cory Booker topped that by offering 2045. Bernie Sanders has offered a 71% reduction by 2030.

One reason that we see this “auction of promises” is that the targets and timetables for emissions reductions are easy to state but difficult to comprehend.

Geochemists measure new composition of Earth’s mantle

The grand cliffs of the island of São Jorge, formed by fissural volcanism. [Credit: Azores @ Wikipedia]

New research suggests that ‘the composition of Earth’s entire mantle may differ from current thinking’. More work for theorists beckons.

What is the chemical composition of the Earth’s interior?

Because it is impossible to drill more than about ten kilometres deep into the Earth, volcanic rocks formed by melting Earth’s deep interior often provide such information, says Phys.org.

Geochemists at the Universities of Münster (Germany) and Amsterdam (Netherlands) have investigated the volcanic rocks that build up the Portuguese island group of the Azores.

Their goal: gather new information about the compositional evolution of the Earth’s mantle, which is the layer roughly between 30 and 2,900 kilometres deep inside the Earth.

National Grid’s Preliminary Report On Blackout

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Thanks to Paul Homewood for the initial analysis. Note that module 1 of Hornsea wind farm operated normally throughout, even though modules 2 and 3 cut out.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

https://www.nationalgrideso.com/information-about-great-britains-energy-system-and-electricity-system-operator-eso

Key points:

• Lightning was the original cause, even though such strikes are perfectly common, and do not usually result in such catastrophic blackouts
• Hornsea wind farm tripped first, contrary to original reports.
• They still don’t seem to know exactly why either Hornsea or Little Barford tripped, though it was obviously due to the lightning.
• Along with the loss of 500MW of small embedded generation (wind and solar), the total loss was about 1878MW
• National Grid has 1000MW of automatic back up power available, incl 472MW of battery storage. Clearly this was not enough.
• Following the lightning strike, the grid’s protection systems worked properly

Certain aspects don’t seem to have been highlighted:

• When Hornsea wind farm is fully operational in the next year or so, it will have capacity of 1200MW. In addition, Hornsea Project 2, due on line in 2024, will have an additional 1386MW capacity…

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TESS discovers habitable zone planet in GJ 357 system

Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith

Following the report we analyse the orbital data for evidence of resonances.

A planet discovered by NASA’s TESS has pointed the way to additional worlds orbiting the same star, one of which is located in the star’s habitable zone, reports SciTechDaily.

If made of rock, this planet may be around twice Earth’s size.

The new worlds orbit a star named GJ 357, an M-type dwarf about one-third the Sun’s mass and size and about 40% cooler that our star. The system is located 31 light-years away in the constellation Hydra.

In February, TESS cameras caught the star dimming slightly every 3.9 days, revealing the presence of a transiting exoplanet — a world beyond our solar system — that passes across the face of its star during every orbit and briefly dims the star’s light.