Electric vehicles cheaper than combustion by 2027, study predicts

EV charging station [image credit: Nissan UK]

A prediction from Bloomberg. Only 5-6 years to wait to see if it comes true. If EVs and plug-in hybrids are going to be much cheaper by then, there’s even less incentive to buy one now. A looming shortage of battery materials could put a spanner in the works.
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Electric cars will be cheaper to build than fossil fuel vehicles across Europe within six years and could represent 100 percent of new sales by 2035, according to a study published Monday, says TechXplore.

Carmakers are shifting en masse to electric and hybrid models in order to bring average fleet emissions under a European Union limit of 95 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre, or face heavy penalties.

The study by Bloomberg New Energy Finance found that electric sedans and sport-utility vehicles will be as cheap to make as combustion vehicles from 2026.

Above-average Atlantic hurricane activity again expected in 2021

Typical influence of La Niña on Pacific and Atlantic seasonal hurricane activity. Map by NOAA Climate.gov, based on originals by Gerry Bell.

Prediction time as the 2021 season approaches. The expected impacts of El Niño and La Niña on hurricane seasons in both the Atlantic and Pacific ocean areas are discussed by NOAA here. Hurricane detection has improved over time, so what is considered ‘average’ now is unlikely to be the same as it used to be.
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The year 2020 saw the most active hurricane season on record and marked the fifth consecutive year for above-average activity, says Phys.org.

A University of Arizona-led hurricane forecasting team predicts another year of above-average hurricane activity over the Atlantic Ocean in 2021.

The team predicts 18 named storms, including eight hurricanes, throughout the 2021 North Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30.

In comparison, the 30-year average is 13 named storms and seven hurricanes annually.

Abrupt ice age climate changes behaved like cascading dominoes

Rinks Glacier, West Greenland [image credit: NSIDC]

Interesting, but as we’ve had a temperature rise of about 1.2ºC since 1880, according to one source at least, comparisons with much bigger historical increases in shorter timescales seem somewhat ambitious, to say the least.
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Throughout the last ice age, the climate changed repeatedly and rapidly during so-called Dansgaard-Oeschger events, where Greenland temperatures rose between 5 and 16 degrees Celsius in decades, says Phys.org.

When certain parts of the climate system changed, other parts of the climate system followed like a series of dominos toppling in succession.

This is the conclusion from an analysis of ice-core data by a group of researchers that included postdoc Emilie Capron and associate professor Sune Olander Rasmussen from the Section for the Physics of Ice, Climate and Earth at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, in Denmark.

This discovery, just published in the journal Nature Communications, is concerning because the extent of sea ice in the Arctic played an important part in these dramatic climate shifts of the past.

The Chance of Storms Just Doubled

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A prediction for the Talkshop to mull over.

Spaceweather.com

April 8, 2021: If you think you are safe from geomagnetic storms, think again. A new study just published in the journal Space Weather finds that powerful storms may be twice as likely as previously thought.

Jeffrey Love of the USGS, who authored the study, analyzed Earth’s strongest geomagnetic storms since the early 1900s. Previous studies looked back only to the 1950s. The extra data led to a surprise:

“A storm as intense as, say, the Québec Blackout of 1989 is predicted to occur, on average, about every four solar cycles. This is twice as often as estimated using only the traditional shorter dataset,” says Love.

Above: The data Love used in his extreme value analysis. Red and blue circles denote the two strongest storms in each solar cycle.

A study like this is part physics, part math, and part detective work.

Love has spent recent years digging deeply into…

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Summers in the UK could last almost six months by 2100, claim researchers

Fine summer weather [image credit: BBC]

H/T msn.com
That was the Daily Mail headline, but the research paper is not about the UK only. An obvious problem is that their data only runs up to 2011 (from 1952). The paper asserts: ‘We find that lengths and start dates of the four seasons have changed, and the changes will be amplified in the future’. Crystal ball-gazing climate alarmism can be so tedious and predictable.
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Unless measures are taken to curb climate change, summers in the UK and the rest of the northern hemisphere could last for six months come 2100, a study warned.

Researchers from China used historical climate data and modelling to determine how the seasons have shifted in the past, and will likely alter in the future, says the Daily Mail.

Ice Age Testing Reveals Challenges in Climate Model Sensitivity

Cloud formation [image credit:NASA]

‘Challenges’ is a polite way of putting it. Is the alleged human-caused climate problem really more of a human-caused climate models problem?
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Increased reflection of incoming sunlight by clouds led one current-generation climate model to predict unrealistically cold temperatures during the last ice age [Source: Geophysical Research Letters].

Key to the usefulness of climate models as tools for both scientists and policymakers is the models’ ability to connect changes in atmospheric greenhouse gas levels to corresponding shifts in temperature, says Eos.

Summer temperatures could rise faster in the UK than average global rates, researchers suggest

Bring it on. Average August temperature in London is 22C, and much of the UK is at cooler higher latitudes than London is. A long way to go to even get close to Mediterranean-style summers, and some ‘heat deaths’ could well be due to lack of air conditioning as much as the weather itself. Deaths from cold weather are more the issue in the UK. Researchers today like to assume that temperature trends go on forever in one direction, but forget the ‘experts’ were forecasting drastic global cooling back in the 1970s, after 30 years of lack of warming. A 40 year study period is short for claiming trends, hence words like ‘could’ and ‘projected’ to hedge their bets.
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The U.K. could be facing a future of extreme heatwaves according to a new study in which scientists mapped almost 40 years’ worth of trends to project what lies ahead, says Phys.org.

The study, published in Environmental Research Letters, draws on datasets from the Met Office’s U.K. Climate Projections, specifically UKCP18, which contains global climate model projections and simulations from around the world, as well as high resolution climate model projections on a local and regional scale for the U.K. and Europe.

Between 2016 and 2019 there were more than 3,400 excess deaths in England as a result of heatwaves.

2020 – what a year of climate alarmism tells us about green ideology

From: Ben Pile at Climate Resistance

Many climate alarmist’s failed predictions were centred around 2020. This video examines just ten, and argues that they were produced not by science, but by ideology.

This is proved by the fact that rather than suffering any consequences to their careers or public standing, fearmongering individuals and institutions enjoy continued and undeserved success.

The analysis of the ten predictions was produced by Steve Milloy and can be read at his website.
[Or via the Talkshop, here].

Ten climate predictions for 2020 that went horribly wrong

Arctic sea ice [image credit: Geoscience Daily]

H/T The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)

As ever, too much reliance on climate models is liable to lead to embarrassment and failure. But there’s always a supply of new or recycled scares to fall back on, preferably those with distant expiry dates to avoid loss of face.
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It seems climate armageddon has taken a permanent sabbatical, says PJ Media.

Long before Beto O’Rourke claimed the world only had 10 years left for humans to act against climate change, alarmists had spent decades predicting one doomsday scenario after another, each of which stubbornly failed to materialize.

Many of those doomsday predictions specifically mentioned the annus horribilus of 2020.

Wrong Again: 2020’s Failed Climate Doomsaying

Credit: nationalreview.com

We confidently predict more doom-laden claims, and more failures. Josh cartoon: GRETA THE DOOMSAYER here.
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2020 has been the wildest and most unpredictable year in the memory of most people.

But did the climate doom that was predicted to occur in or by 2020 materialize? — asks Steve Milloy @ JunkScience.com.

What follows are 10 predictions made for 2020 and what really happened.

As it turns out, climate doomsayers weren’t seeing so 20-20 when it came to 2020.

Link to JunkScience.com.

New sunspot cycle could be one of the strongest on record, says NCAR

Credit: cherishthescientist.net

‘Scientists use an extended, 22-year solar cycle to make the forecast’ is the sub-heading to the article. In other words the Hale cycle. At the end of last year The Talkshop detailed Plenty of predictions from a wide range of research groups, including our own, made in 2013. A possible (?) early indicator is that the ‘smoothed minimum’ of sunspots at the start of solar cycle 25 is given by Wikipedia as 1.8, the lowest recorded since cycle 7 (0.2) in 1823.
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In direct contradiction to the official forecast, a team of scientists led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is predicting that the Sunspot Cycle that started this fall could be one of the strongest since record-keeping began, says NCAR News.

In a new article published in Solar Physics, the research team predicts that Sunspot Cycle 25 will peak with a maximum sunspot number somewhere between approximately 210 and 260, which would put the new cycle in the company of the top few ever observed.

Met Office: Snowy UK winters could become thing of the past

UK winter weather forecast [image credit: BBC]

It’s nearly Christmas so maybe time to get the old chestnuts out, and this one is now 20 years old. Let’s see how it fares in the next 20.
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By the 2040s most of southern England may no longer get sub-zero days, new Met Office data suggests.

It is one of a series of projections about how UK’s climate could change, shared with BBC Panorama.

It suggests by the 2040s most of southern England could no longer see sub-zero days. By the 2060s only high ground and northern Scotland are still likely to experience such cold days.

UK: emission impossible?

Green dreamland

Futile obsession with the trace gas carbon dioxide looks likely to expose the UK government’s so-called climate policies as hopelessly unrealistic, soon enough. Net zero or not zero?
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The UK is on course to reduce its emissions by less than a fifth of what’s needed to meet interim climate change targets, according to data shared exclusively with Sky News.

The think tank Green Alliance says its analysis of current policies shows the longer-term goal of being net zero by 2050 is also in jeopardy.

The government is shortly expected to announce a ten point plan of action on climate change. But Green Alliance says even proposed policies including bringing forward the banning of sales of new petrol, diesel and hybrid cars wouldn’t be enough to get the government to even half of its interim reduction target.

Sales of petrol, diesel and hybrid cars are currently due to end in 2040 though the government is considering bringing that forward to 2035 and green groups want them withdrawn by 2030.

‘Unstoppable’ global warming claim withdrawn by Scientific Reports journal

Overblown warming claims, arising from climate modellers obsessing over trace gases, may be unstoppable but some measure of reality surfaces briefly here.
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A top scientific journal which claimed that global warming may already be unstoppable has been forced to issue a clarification after being accused of potentially causing “unnecessary despair”, says The GWPF.

Scientific Reports sought to publicise a study by Norwegian scientists with a doom-laden press release headlined: “Ending greenhouse gas emissions may not stop global warming.”

After being strongly criticised by leading British scientists, the journal issued a revised press release which admitted that the prediction was based on a particular computer model and said the results should be tested by “alternative models”.

La Niña underway in the tropical Pacific, says Australia’s BoM

Source: Bureau of Meteorology — ENSO Outlook [updated every 2 weeks]
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La Niña is a coupled ocean-atmosphere phenomenon that is the colder counterpart of El Niño, as part of the broader El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) climate pattern. – Wikipedia

New confirmation that climate models overstate atmospheric warming

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Quote re. the Canadian climate model…
The sticker should read: “WARNING! This model predicts atmospheric warming roughly 7 times larger than observed trends. Use of this model for anything other than entertainment purposes is not recommended.”

Climate Etc.

by Ross McKitrick

Two new peer-reviewed papers from independent teams confirm that climate models overstate atmospheric warming and the problem has gotten worse over time, not better.

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Modern Grand Solar Minimum will lead to terrestrial cooling – Valentina Zharkova

Sunspots [image credit: NASA]

But it should be a lot shorter than the famous Maunder Minimum, if the prediction in this editorial works out. There’s also a new paper, introduced here by the GWPF, which concludes:
“The fundamental oscillations of solar irradiance, in turn, may be linked to the oscillations of the baseline terrestrial temperature, independent of any terrestrial processes of radiative transfer and heating.”
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In this editorial I will demonstrate with newly discovered solar activity proxy-magnetic field that the Sun has entered into the modern Grand Solar Minimum (2020–2053) that will lead to a significant reduction of solar magnetic field and activity like during Maunder minimum leading to noticeable reduction of terrestrial temperature.

Sun is the main source of energy for all planets of the solar system. This energy is delivered to Earth in a form of solar radiation in different wavelengths, called total solar irradiance.

Variations of solar irradiance lead to heating of upper planetary atmosphere and complex processes of solar energy transport toward a planetary surface.

The signs of solar activity are seen in cyclic 11-year variations of a number of sunspots on the solar surface using averaged monthly sunspot numbers as a proxy of solar activity for the past 150 years.

Solar cycles were described by the action of solar dynamo mechanism in the solar interior generating magnetic ropes at the bottom of solar convective zone.

These magnetic ropes travel through the solar interior appearing on the solar surface, or photosphere, as sunspots indicating the footpoints where these magnetic ropes are embedded into the photosphere.

Continued here.
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Appendix 1: S-E distances from the ephemeris

Appendix 2: Solar irradiance variations based on the distance changes

Past evidence supports complete loss of Arctic sea ice by 2035, say researchers

Still waiting

Climate modellers have a fairly dismal record in trying to predict sea ice patterns in the Arctic, always erring on the side of too much warming. Will this research do anything to improve matters? They seem to be using Earth’s past climate as a guide, while asserting that human-caused carbon dioxide is the main problem today.
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A new study, published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change, supports predictions that the Arctic could be free of sea ice by 2035, reports Phys.org.

High temperatures in the Arctic during the last interglacial—the warm period around 127,000 years ago—have puzzled scientists for decades.

Now the UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre climate model has enabled an international team of researchers to compare Arctic sea ice conditions during the last interglacial with present day.

Their findings are important for improving predictions of future sea ice change.

Cascading Fallacies In Climate Risk Assessment

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Where are the limits of climate fantasy? New Zealand seems to be pushing them with this ‘assessment’.

PA Pundits - International

By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~

As a logician, I am always on the lookout for fallacies and there is no lack of them in climate change alarmist policies. New Zealand’s newly released climate risk assessment not only has multiple fallacies, they build on one another in a cascade.

This is not about New Zealand. The authors of the assessment make clear that theirs is a new approach which they hope will be used globally. So this is about the world, including America.

The massive report is titled “First national climate change risk assessment for New Zealand.” Under New Zealand’s climate law, these assessments are supposed to be done every five years and this is the first.

The scope is breathtaking. The idea is to identify all of the significant risks due to human caused climate change that will be present in 2050 and 2100. Moreover, these supposed risks are prioritized.

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Met Office: Creating a five-year window into future climate

Using computer models to make climate predictions? All we can say is: good luck with that.
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Providing annually-updated five-year climate predictions at global and continental scales is the focus of a new international science collaboration co-ordinated by the WMO and led by the UK’s Met Office.

For the first time, climate scientists have joined forces and resources to produce an annually-updated climate snapshot looking at the next five years.

Harnessing the best computer models from ten climate centres around the world, every year will produce a new climate prediction looking out to five years ahead.