New study: The Sun and volcanoes caused the pause

Has the media been trying to bury bad news here? Embarrassingly bad news for its enthusiasm for supposed man-made global warming, that is.

Last week a team of researchers from the UK Met Office, the University of East Anglia, the University of Gothenburg, the University of Southern Queensland and the Sorbonne published in the journal Science Advances an interesting paper showing that the recent much debated and researched 21st century “slowdown” in global surface temperatures was real and could be explained by reduced solar activity and increased volcanic counteracting climate forcing from greenhouse gases.

It achieved almost no media coverage despite being published in a high profile journal, writes Dr David Whitehouse @ The GWPF.

Germany pours cold water over EU’s green energy ambitions

‘The donkey goes on to the ice until it breaks’ – German proverb [image credit: evwind.es]

A few political home truths get attacked by climate obsessives, but will voters see to it that some semblance of reality takes over from unrealistic ideologically motivated targets?
H/T The GWPF

Voters across Europe have lost faith in politics partly because of “unachievable targets” on renewable energy, said German Energy Minister Peter Altmaier, rejecting calls from a group of other EU countries to boost the share of renewables to 33-35% of the bloc’s energy mix by 2030.

Altmaier made the comments during an on-the-record exchange between the 28 EU energy ministers, who are gathered in Luxembourg today (11 June) for a meeting of the Energy Council.

Charles Moore: Trump has broken the spell of climate change mania

Climate crisis? [credit: BBC]

Not before time. Global temperatures haven’t been co-operating much with negative climate obsessions either.
H/T Daily Telegraph @ The GWPF.

Since Mr Trump walked out of the Paris agreement one year ago, it has been fascinating to watch the decline of media interest in “saving the planet”.

Donald Trump imposed punitive tariffs on steel imports exactly a year after he announced that the US would withdraw from the Paris climate change agreement. The two decisions are unrelated, except that both reflect the character of his presidency.

UK’s clean car goal ‘not ambitious enough’, says professor

Credit: carsdirect.com

One of the sub-headings to this BBC News story is ‘Push and go faster’. That really would be a fuel saver if it worked 😉

The government’s ambition to clean up motor vehicles by 2040 is not ambitious enough, a leading energy expert says.

Professor Jim Watson, head of the prestigious UK Energy Research Centre, said the target should be at least five years earlier, as in Scotland.

Green Europe may be on the verge of blackouts

We’re supposed to believe that coal-hungry Germany and forest-clearing biomass-burning Britain are impressively ‘green’. Their obsessive renewables bias has made new gas-fired power stations hard to justify for energy firms.
H/T The GWPF

Europe is facing power generation capacity shortages and may even risk blackouts without additional use of natural gas, one of the continent’s biggest producers of the fuel said.

“A severe shortage” in generation capacity is expected in the U.K., Germany, and Belgium, Tor Martin Anfinnsen, senior vice president for marketing and trading at Statoil ASA, said in an interview at a conference in Amsterdam on Tuesday.

There Is No Unprecedented Global Modern Warming

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A lay person’s view of the global warming furore. When we hear ‘unprecedented’ it usually turns out to mean ‘since about 1979’, which obviously leaves out most of Earth’s history.

American Elephants

You have heard the wailing and screaming about President Trump’s exit from the Paris Climate Accords, but do you understand that the agreement, never ratified by the U.S. government (NOT a treaty) accomplished nothing at all to modify or change the climate. The climate of the earth has been changing mildly for millions of years, and there is no unprecedented Global-Scale modern warming. The “Accords” were designed to transfer large amounts of wealth from the rich nations to the poor nations, ostensibly to allow them to save themselves from that non-existent unprecedented warming.

There are two kinds of climate science that we are dealing with. One is based on satellite measurements and thermometer readings and recorded history. The other is based on computer programs, based, I believe on computer programs that were designed to forecast what the financial markets were going to do. They took what they knew about the…

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New subsidies for ageing European wind farms, or death spiral?

German wind farm

Good luck dismantling and trying to recycle redundant end-of-life wind turbines and their massive concrete bases.

New academic research on whether to repower or extend the lifetime of an obsolescent wind farm in Europe reveals that without new subsidies for repowered sites, low cost lifetime extensions focused on maximising return before decommissioning are more probable, with a potential to affect about half the wind turbine fleet in Germany, Spain and Denmark.

In the absence of new subsidies, we could be looking at the beginning of the end for the wind industry in Europe, says The GWPF’s energy editor.

Alan Carlin: Both sides ignore the major finding of recent climate research

Image credit: livescience.com

The author poses what he calls the ‘major question’: why does CO2 have no significant effect on temperatures in the real world?
(See also this Press Release).

The major development in climate science in the last year or two is something almost no one talks about, says Alan Carlin – strong evidence that changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have no significant effect on global temperatures in the real world over recent decades.

The studies involved conclude that the minor increases in global temperatures during this period can be entirely explained using natural factors.

Alan Carlin: Why Pruitt’s decision to end EPA “Secret Science” is so important

Who needs secrecy when public bodies are making important decisions that directly affect people – except for things like personal data, national security etc.? Censorship arouses suspicion, so showing evidence does matter.

This week EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt banned the use of “secret science” in EPA regulatory decision making. The Washington Post immediately cried foul, of course, by arguing that this would mean that important evidence would be ignored.

I argue, on the contrary, that it is very important that only evidence that is confirmed by the scientific method should ever be used.

Lawmaker torches Macron on Paris deal

Factory in China [image credit: Wikipedia]

As the Senator says of the Paris climate agreement: ‘It has no teeth’. But if it did have teeth there would surely be far more resistance to signing it.

Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy noted one obvious problem Thursday with French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent clarion call for the U.S. to stay connected to the Paris Climate agreement, reports The Daily Caller.

Exempting China and India from abiding to the non-binding deal is one of the main reasons why greenhouse gas emission are pitching upward, Cassidy said in an interview with Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade.

Environmental rules in the U.S. are causing companies to shift production to countries not tethered to the accord’s strict provisions.

No ‘Comparison’ Between Part-time Wind Power & Full-time Fossil Fuel

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Promoting public awareness of the high cost and lack of reliability of weather-dependent power generation is important. Once fortunes have been spent and national grid systems are creaking under the strain of on-off power, it’s much harder to change course.

STOP THESE THINGS

Renewables rent seekers keep telling us how cheap wind and solar are, compared to those ‘evil’ fossil fuels, coal and gas.

But ‘price’ and ‘value’ are not the same animals. What we pay for something, and what it’s worth depends entirely upon what we get. And, in relation to the consumption of electricity, whether or not we get it, at all.

Wind power might be ‘free’, but try purchasing it, at any price, when the wind stops blowing.

Comparing weather dependent wind generation with sources available, around-the-clock, irrespective of the weather, is a game played by intellectual pygmies. There is, of course, no comparison.

So when you’re faced with a pile of numbers said to show how wind stacks up against the big boys, the obvious retort is, ‘when’? When I need it, or when the wind is just right?

Donn Dears picks up that thread quite neatly in this…

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Climate-industrial complex wasting £100 billion and shutting down debate – warns Lilley

Credit: Fenbeagle

H/T The GWPF

Former Trade and Industry Minister, Peter Lilley warns that vested interests in the renewables industry, politicians of all parties, the bureaucracy and academia have together largely suppressed debate about their reckless waste of public money exposed by the government’s own Review of the Cost of Energy by Dieter Helm.

In a paper published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Peter Lilley highlights Professor Dieter Helm’s devastating critique, outlined in the Cost of Energy Review which was commissioned by the government.

“Helm shows that the Climate Change Act objective of cutting emissions of carbon dioxide could have been met for a fraction of the £100 billion so far committed, which has already raised the cost of energy by 20%.”

Britain’s energy market is under the spotlight – for all the wrong reasons

Carrington gas power station, Greater Manchester

Britain badly needs new power stations but current national policy is working against that, argues an industry insider. Instead we have a ‘sticking plaster’ strategy.

Great Britain’s energy market, once the envy of free-marketeers after Margaret Thatcher ended decades of nationalisation in the 1980s, is once again under the spotlight – for all the wrong reasons, says businessman Peter Hughes at PEI.

The current Prime Minister Theresa May is fond of referring to the UK’s “broken energy market”. While she may use the phrase to justify a cap on consumer energy bills, she could just as easily apply it to the failure of successive governments to encourage the building of new power plants.

As old coal and aged gas and nuclear power plants head towards decommissioning, the UK faces the possibility of a shortfall in its future electricity supply that cannot be plugged by intermittent renewables alone.

Nils-Axel Mörner: These researchers have a political agenda

Fiji beach [image credit: travelonline.com]

H/T The GWPF

The oceanographer Nils-Axel Mörner challenges the IPCC and warnings about sinking islands, in a recent interview.

Mr. Mörner, you have recently visited the Fiji islands in South Pacific several times in order to research changes on the coasts and sea levels. Why Fiji?

Nils-Axel Mörner: I knew there would be a science conference in New York in June 2017 that focused on sea level changes in Fiji. In addition, it was known that the island nation would chair the 23rd World Climate Conference, which took place last November in Bonn. Thus, Fiji moved into the focus of interest. It was said that the rising sea level had done a lot of damage there. I wanted to check with my own eyes if that is true.

Matt Ridley: Britain needs to embrace the shale revolution

Shale gas drilling site [image credit: BBC]

Current forecasts say gas will be providing 7 times more energy worldwide than all renewables by 2040. Why import it when it’s in the ground?
H/T The GWPF

Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing are the biggest energy breakthrough of the century, writes Matt Ridley in The Times.

Gas will start flowing from Cuadrilla’s two shale exploration wells in Lancashire this year. Preliminary analysis of the site is “very encouraging”, bearing out the British Geological Survey’s analysis that the Bowland Shale beneath northern England holds one of the richest gas resources known: a huge store of energy at a cost well below that of renewables and nuclear.

Matt Ridley: The mysterious cycles of ice ages

US winter storm 2018 [image credit: NASA]

A sort of review of leading ice age theories. A paper by Ralph Ellis that was featured at the Talkshop gets a mention. A point not mentioned: the carbon cycle dictates that cooling leads to the oceans absorbing more CO2, while warming leads to more outgassing of it to the atmosphere.

Record cold in America has brought temperatures as low as minus 44C in North Dakota, frozen sharks in Massachusetts and iguanas falling from trees in Florida, writes Matt Ridley.

Al Gore blames global warming, citing one scientist to the effect that this is “exactly what we should expect from the climate crisis”. Others beg to differ: Kevin Trenberth, of America’s National Centre for Atmospheric Research, insists that “winter storms are a manifestation of winter, not climate change”.

Forty-five years ago a run of cold winters caused a “global cooling” scare.

Benny Peiser and Matt Ridley: Bad weather is no reason for climate alarm

Credit: planetsave.com

H/T The GWPF

Trump was more likely winding up the over-zealous climate alarmists, rather than being confused about anything.

Two weeks ago, President Donald Trump greeted the cold snap that was gripping much of the U.S. by tweeting, “Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming.” He was criticized for confusing weather with climate.

But he’s hardly alone in making this mistake say Peiser and Ridley, as we have seen in coverage of the most destructive weather-related events of 2017.

The past year was filled with bad weather news, much of it tragic, with whole communities even now still struggling to recover.

England’s soggy historical place names could predict the climate…

What’s in a place name?

Anglo-Saxon England was unusually warm and stormy. Place names coined then could hold clues to how the weather will get wetter and wilder as the climate changes, says Sott.net. Assuming the weather does do that, of course. The author asks: “Is it a surprise that places with watery names are more prone to flooding?”

It’s blowy on the B4380 to Buildwas, writes Richard Webb in the New Scientist. A keen wind whipping across the floodplain from Shrewsbury flaps a misarranged saddle bag strap against my back wheel.

As I cross the river Severn at Atcham, and bend right down the back road past Wroxeter, a black cloud delivers the first dribbles of rain.

England’s place names are a treasure trove of hidden history – if only we could find the key.

The Sun is cooling faster than anyone suspected

Quiet sun [image credit: NASA]

This is an opinion piece, a sort of alarmism-in-reverse, and no-one can be sure that any given weather or climate forecast will prove to be accurate or even on the right lines, but the arguments are here to consider. Numerous climate researchers do expect the solar slowdown to push average temperatures lower for at least a decade or two. Others think 0.04% carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will counter all that.

The danger from the Global Warming crowd is that they are misleading the entire world and preventing us from what is dangerously unfolding that sparks the rapid decline in civilization – GLOBAL COOLING, says Martin Armstrong at Armstrong Economics.

I previously warned that this is not my opinion, but simply our computer. If it were really conscious it would be running to store to buy heating pads. This year will be much colder  for Europe than the last three. It will also be cold in the USA.

We are in a global cooling period and all the data we have in our computer system warns that the earth is turning cold not warm.

Delingpole: Christmas is here, everyone! EPA officials are ‘Leaving in droves’

JD has started celebrating already.

EPA officials are “leaving in droves”, reports the New York Times. Marvellous news to ease us into the festive Christmas spirit, eh readers?

Why, it’s like the final scene in A Christmas Carol where Scrooge repents of all his miserliness, his nephew Fred gets a big fat turkey, Bob Cratchit gets a pay rise and Tiny Tim declares “God bless us, every one!”

Not, of course, that this is quite the way the New York Times sees it.