Met Office warns of a ‘Mad Max’ future in Climate Doomsday report

Credit: nationalreview.com

Hilarious – somebody must have been watching too many Hollywood fantasy movies. But why on earth is the Met Office paying for such juvenile nonsense?
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It is a bleak forecast even by the Met Office’s standards – the complete collapse of society leaving armed militias and criminal gangs to roam the land unchallenged, says the Daily Mail (via Climate Change Dispatch).

That is one of the doomsday scenarios set out in a report commissioned by the UK’s weather service to model the potential consequences of climate change.

The extraordinary report, called Shared Socioeconomic Pathways and developed for the Government-funded UK Climate Resilience Programme, sets out supposedly ‘plausible futures’ as a result of global warming.

One of those scenarios described by the authors is a surge in ‘Right-wing populism’, resulting in the collapse of ‘political and governance systems.’

Study looks at Antarctic sea ice changes since the early 20th century, increases since 1979

Antarctica

The article says ‘The satellite measurements start in 1979’, but the USGS Landsat satellite project has been ‘imaging the Earth since 1972’. The researchers say in the abstract of their paper: ‘In stark contrast to the Arctic, there have been statistically significant positive trends in total Antarctic sea ice extent since 1979. However, the short and highly variable nature of observed Antarctic sea ice extent limits the ability to fully understand the historical context of these recent changes.’ The UK Met Office reported in October 2021: ‘Antarctic sea ice reached a maximum extent (to date) of 18.75 million sq km on 1st September 2021 (Figure 7), which is very close to the 1981-2010 average maximum extent of 18.70 million sq km.’
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A study led by Ohio University researchers shows that the increase of sea ice surrounding Antarctica since 1979 is a unique feature of Antarctic climate since 1905—an observation that paints a dramatic first-ever picture for weather and climate implications on the world’s southernmost continent, says Phys.org.

Dr. Ryan Fogt’s study, published today in Nature Climate Change, is the first to detail sea ice extent surrounding the entire continent though all four seasons over the last century.

Weather, especially winds and temperatures, contribute to sea ice changes. Fogt is professor of Geography in OHIO’s College of Arts and Sciences.

Guardian: solve the UK energy crisis for the long term – store more power

Image credit: thecount.com

‘Four storage solutions to help Britain keep the lights on deep into the future’ says the paper’s sub-heading. But given the puny nature of their suggestions, that looks to be about all they could hope to do. What about actual reliable power for heating, transport, industry, commerce, hospitals, shops, services etc.?
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Soaring energy bills rooted in a global gas supply crunch have focused minds on the age-old problem: how can we better store power? says The Guardian.

Attention has turned to the closure of the Rough gas storage facility in the North Sea in 2017, which left the UK with only enough storage to meet the demand of four to five winter days.

But while gas is being phased out, Britain’s growing reliance on renewables, such as offshore wind and solar, does not solve the problem of intermittency – what happens when the wind does not blow or the sun does not shine.

The key to securing enough affordable, low-carbon energy is more storage to make the most of the renewable energy available. A storage boom has been forecast over the coming decade as governments race to meet their climate targets.
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Their four suggestions:
— ‘Gravity’ storage
— Concentrated solar power storage [see below]
— Green hydrogen
— ‘Cryogenic’ batteries

Full article here.
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If anyone finds any or all of these a convincing and/or ‘affordable’ alternative to existing fuels as a storage medium, please explain why.

UPDATE 10/1/22, 7PM (UK)
The Concentrated solar power storage project cited by the Guardian (Crescent Dunes) as an example to follow has already been wound up!

U.S. District Court Judge Jennifer A. Dorsey:
‘As a result of alleged misfeasance, nonfeasance, and malfeasance, the project failed, and the plant is now nonoperational.’
[Report dated December 09, 2021]

Energy Anguish Hits Britain

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Don’t we know it. The pain will appear big-time when the energy price cap gets revised massively upwards from April. Piling on green levies adds insult to injury for bill payers.

PA Pundits - International

By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~

We are just weeks into winter and already an energy crisis is starting to burn in Britain. Part of this anguish is directed at climate policy, especially net zero.

The Brits are way ahead of the US when it comes to threatening people with direct hits, so this is no surprise. We have high natural gas prices, but they are being told they will have to pay huge sums to insulate and convert their gas heated homes to electric heat pumps. We have high gasoline prices while they are threatened with outlawing new fuel-fired cars. The stupidly green government has even suggested that personal car ownership might be ended. No wonder the Brits are running hot.

One aspect of this green shock is that supposedly conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson was elected largely because of his role in Brexit. That he was a roaring green…

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Ned Nikolov: Dispelling the Milankovitch Myth

Ned Nikolov, Ph.D.
Dec 30, 2021

There has been a long-standing belief in Paleoclimatology that orbital variations (a.k.a. Milankovitch cycles) have been responsible for the initiation and/or duration of glacial cycles (Ice Ages) over the past 800 Ky. Milankovitch cycles are often referred to as a pacemaker of the Ice Ages. This myth dates back to 1970s, when sediment cores revealed a weak correlation in the frequency domain between Earth’s 41-ky obliquity (axial-tilt) cycle and the periodicity of Ice Ages during the early Pleistocene (Quaternary). However, in the late Pleistocene, the frequency of glacial cycles better match the Earth’s 100-ky eccentricity cycle, which further fueled the confusion. Yet, no one has been able to demonstrate a meaningful relationship between glacial cycles and any of the Earth’s 3 orbital parameters obliquity, eccentricity and precession or combination thereof on a linear time scale. A physical causation requires a strong correlation between parameters in the time domain, not the frequency domain!

Twenty Six UN Climate Conferences – Theater Of The Absurd Part One

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The COP-ites continually ignore the fact that most so-called greenhouse gas is water vapour, instead attributing ludicrous climate powers to the trace gas carbon dioxide which is essential to plants, vegetation, trees etc.

PA Pundits - International

By Dr. Jay Lehr and Robert Lyman~

Over the next three weeks we will convince you of the absurdity of the meetings to discuss destroying the world’s economy to address allegedly human-caused climate change fraud. To begin, it remains important for our readers to understand the reality behind the pronouncements from the media for the months before and after these pompous, self- important congregations of the deluded.

The 26^th Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 26) concluded in Glasgow, Scotland on November 12 2021. The conclusion was accompanied by a virtual avalanche of announcements and claims by the United Nations, various other international organizations and environmentalist groups about how much “progress” had been made. It is important to have a more accurate assessment of exactly what was agreed by whom and what was merely part of an extremely elaborate political and…

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Reply to Eschenbach’s Meander Through Sun and Wind

Over at WUWT, Willis has been up to his usual trick of mangling data in a vain attempt to discredit scientists who find strong links between the Sun’s variation and Earth’s weather and climatic patterns. This time it’s Le Mouel et al who get the treatment in his ‘analysis’ of their 2010 paper “Solar forcing of the semi‐annual variation of length‐of‐day”

As usual, Willis gets things upside down and then sets up a straw-man argument. He asks: “So … is there a correlation between sunspots and zonal wind speeds?” The answer to which is no, and the paper’s authors never claimed there was. However, as Fig 1 of Le Mouel et al’s paper shows, there is a strong anti-correlation between solar variation and the semi-annual variation of Length of Day (LOD) which is itself well correlated with changes in zonal wind speeds. For obvious reasons, Willis doesn’t show his readers Fig 1, reproduced here for your academic study.

Figure 1. Long‐term variations in the amplitude a of the semiannual oscillation in lod (in blue). A 4‐yr centered sliding
window is used. (a) Comparison of the semiannual amplitude of lod with the sunspot number WN (red); WN is both
reversed in sign and offset by one year (see text). (b) Comparison of the detrended semiannual amplitude of lod (blue) with
the sunspot number WN (red); WN is reversed in sign and offset by one year. (c) Comparison of the semiannual amplitude
of lod (blue) with galactic cosmic ray flux GCR (red); GCR is neither reversed in sign nor offset (see text).

UK floats ‘climate compatibility’ test for new oil and gas drilling

Having put the climate millstone round its neck, the UK government tries to avoid totally sabotaging a productive industry, partly by pointing to its net importer status.
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The UK government says new oil and gas licensing can fit with its climate commitments. Campaigners, citing the International Energy Agency, disagree says Climate Home News.

The UK government has launched a consultation on “climate compatibility” tests for new rounds of North Sea oil and gas drilling licences, ignoring calls to keep fossil fuels in the ground.

The EU must give green light to nuclear and gas or face disaster – Net Zero Watch

Sawing off the branch of the tree you’re sitting on seems an unlikely sort of energy policy. However, it’s now the approach being pursued in much of Europe and elsewhere due to an obsession with the output of failing climate models.
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London, 22 December – Net Zero Watch has warned EU leaders to reject last ditch attempts by campaigners to prevent the EU’s planned green taxonomy for gas and nuclear energy or face a political and economic disaster.

Despite Europe facing its worst energy crisis since the Second World War, campaigners are trying to prevent the EU from easing and encouraging the investment in desperately needed new natural gas and nuclear power plants and infrastructure, says Net Zero Watch.

Both low-carbon energy sources are included in the EU Commission’s proposed “taxonomy for sustainable activities” which is reported to be tabled at the end of the year.

Calls for ‘reasoned debate’ over UK oil and gas future

North Sea oil platform [image credit: matchtech.com]

Getting a reasoned debate out of ‘net-zero’ obsessed political leaders is going to be a tall order, when their entire energy policy is based on extreme climate dogma and decrees of what they intend to do, having taken the ‘advice’ (orders?) of the Climate Change Committee. Asking for energy plans that make sense seems unlikely to strike a chord with those in power.
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Business leaders have written a joint open letter to party leaders calling for a “reasoned debate” over the future of oil and gas in the UK, reports BBC News.

The call comes after plans for the controversial Cambo Oil field off Shetland were put on hold.

The letter says any statements calling for an end to new exploration have shaken investor confidence, placing tens of thousands of jobs at risk.

It warns politicians against creating a “hostile investment environment”.

Claim: Researchers uncover the surprising cause of the Little Ice Age

A portion of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation [image credit: R. Curry, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution @ Wikipedia]

This article starts off confident that the researchers are right – ‘we now know’ etc. – but later retreats and says ‘the cooling appears to have’ etc. But as the Little Ice Age is an interesting topic it’s worth a look.
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New research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst provides a novel answer to one of the persistent questions in historical climatology, environmental history and the earth sciences: what caused the Little Ice Age?

The answer, we now know, is a paradox: warming, says Phys.org.

The Little Ice Age was one of the coldest periods of the past 10,000 years, a period of cooling that was particularly pronounced in the North Atlantic region.

This cold spell, whose precise timeline scholars debate, but which seems to have set in around 600 years ago, was responsible for crop failures, famines and pandemics throughout Europe, resulting in misery and death for millions.

Russia vetoes UN resolution highlighting climate change as security threat

A session of the UN General Assembly

A setback for climate obsessives in thrall to climate modellers. India also voted no, and China abstained.
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Russia on Monday vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution that would have classified climate change as a threat to international peace and security, reports Yahoo News.

The vote crushed a longtime effort to make global warming a more prominent issue within the U.N. body, according to The Associated Press.

Some 113 of the U.N.’s 193 member countries supported the resolution, including 12 of the 15 members of the council, the AP reported.

The resolution had said that climate issues could present “a key risk to global peace, security and stability.”

Council’s Climate Change Director ‘to be paid more than the Energy Minister’

Money down the drain?
[image credit: thisismoney.co.uk]

Attempting to save the world, or this bit of it anyway,
from ‘climate change’ is a lucrative game.
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A North East London council is actively searching to find a new director to lead its climate change work offering a salary that is reportedly larger than that of Energy Minister Greg Hands.

The role of Director of Climate Emergency and Behavioural Change at Waltham Forest Council will be paid £109,000 a year, reports Energy Live News.

That is £5,000 more than the Energy and Climate Change Minister Greg Hands, according to the Daily Mail.

Climate cycles create California precipitation uncertainty

Golden Gate Bridge from Fort Point, San Francisco

Inserting unnecessary theories into climate models, in order to invent ways of blaming human activities for the weather, seems to be making life more difficult for the modellers in terms of accuracy of results. Natural variation is getting in the way.
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Over the past 40 years, winters in California have become drier, says Phys.org.

This is a problem for the region’s agricultural operations, as farmers rely on winter precipitation to irrigate their crops.

Determining if California will continue getting drier, or if the trend will reverse, has implications for its millions of residents.

But so far, climate models that account for changes in greenhouse gases and other human activities have had trouble reproducing California’s observed drying trends.

Panel: Consider tinkering with oceans to suck up more carbon – but first, give us a $1 billion+ to research it

Cumulus clouds over the Atlantic Ocean [image credit: Tiago Fioreze @ Wikipedia]

That’s their opening offer anyway, according to Phys.org. Another attempt to cash in on the ‘something must be done’ propaganda of climate alarmism that demonises the essential trace gas carbon dioxide. Usual unproven ‘heat trapping’ claims presented as fact here.
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The United States should research how to tinker with the oceans—even zapping them with electricity—to get them to suck more carbon dioxide out of the air to fight climate change, the National Academy of Sciences recommends.

The panel outlines six ways that could help oceans remove more heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The scientists said the most promising possibilities include making the seas less acidic with minerals or jolts of electricity, adding phosphorous or nitrogen to spur plankton growth and creating massive seaweed farms.

Too dry, too hot, or too wet: Increasing weather persistence in European summer , say researchers

Omega blocking highs can remain in place for several days or even weeks [image credit: UK Met Office]

No prizes for guessing how this story ends: it’s your fault, or so the researchers want us to believe. Human-caused emissions of trace gases are supposed to have made weather systems more prone to being stationary for longer, reports Phys.org. But where’s the mechanism that points to humans, we may ask. Blocked weather itself is a long-known and well understood phenomenon.
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“In our study, we show that persistent weather conditions have an increasing similarity in summer over the North Atlantic, Europe and Siberia, favoring more pronounced extreme weather events. In Europe alone, about 70% of the land area is already affected by more persistent weather situations,” says Peter Hoffmann from the Potsdam-Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), lead author of the study published in Nature’s Scientific Reports.

“This means that people, especially in densely populated Europe, will likely experience more and also stronger and more dangerous weather events.”

Quest begins to drill Antarctica’s oldest ice – again

Ice core sample [image credit: Discovering Antarctica]

Previous studies indicated temperature change preceded CO2 change, but the BBC says they occurred ‘in parallel’ or ‘in lockstep’, obscuring the key role of insolation while waffling about supposedly ‘heat trapping’ gases.
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Efforts are about to get under way to drill a core of ice in Antarctica that contains a record of Earth’s climate stretching back 1.5 million years, says BBC News.

A European team will set up its equipment at one of the highest locations on the White Continent, for an operation likely to take four years.

The project aims to recover a near-3km-long cylinder of frozen material.

Scientists hope this ice can help them explain why Earth’s ice ages flipped in frequency in the deep past.

Zero Global Warming This Century

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The next few years with expected lower than ‘normal’ solar cycle activity should be illuminating, one way or another.

Science Matters

The post below updates the UAH record of air temperatures over land and ocean.  But as an overview consider how recent rapid cooling has now completely overcome the warming from the last 3 El Ninos (1998, 2010 and 2016).  The UAH record shows that the effects of the last one were gone as of April and now again in November, 2021 (UAH baseline is now 1991-2020).

For reference I added an overlay of CO2 annual concentrations as measured at Moana Loa.  While temperatures fluctuated up and down ending flat, CO2 went up steadily by ~55 ppm, a 15% increase.

Furthermore, going back to previous warmings prior to the satellite record shows that the entire rise of 0.8C since 1947 is due to oceanic, not human activity.

The animation is an update of a previous analysis from Dr. Murry Salby.  These graphs use Hadcrut4 and include the 2016 El Nino warming…

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Recent European droughts are not unprecedented, new study finds – Net Zero Watch

Drought in Europe

Climate attribution i.e. supposed detection of human-caused factors, is in the eye of the beholder. This article concludes: ‘At the recent GWPF annual lecture Professor Steven Koonin of New York University said climate attribution studies were the scientific equivalent of being told you had won the lottery, after you had won the lottery.’
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A new study concludes that when placed into a long-term context recent drought events in Europe are within the range of natural variability and are not unprecedented over the last millennium, says Net Zero Watch.

The 2003 European heatwave and drought has a special place in the history of the study of our changing climate.

It was the first event that scientists attributed to human-induced climate change.

A paper by Stott et al published in Nature concluded, “Human influence has at least doubled the risk of a regional heatwave like the European Summer of 2003.”

This was later strengthened and the event was said to be directly caused by humans.

Arctic rainfall predicted to increase faster than expected, say modellers

Arctic sea ice [image credit: cbc.ca]

More than a whiff of climate alarmism here. Modelling of the future is billed as research, and so-called climate policies are advocated.
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The amount of rainfall in the Arctic may increase at a faster rate than previously thought, according to a modelling study published in Nature Communications.

The research suggests that total rainfall will supersede snowfall in the Arctic decades earlier than previously thought, and could have various climatic, ecosystem and socio-economic impacts, says Nature Asia.

The Arctic is known to be warming faster than most other parts of the world, leading to substantial environmental changes in this region.