Hurricane Risk Is Real For Offshore Wind

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Climate alarmists touting greater intensity and/or frequency of strong hurricanes, while advocating endless renewables, ought to take note of this.

PA Pundits - International

By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~

My regular readers know that I have been fussing about the threat of hurricanes destroying proposed Atlantic coast offshore wind arrays. The issue arises because the offshore wind industry is based in Europe, which does not get hurricanes. My focus has been Dominion’s massive project off Virginia, but the whole East Coast is hurricane alley.

Now I have found some research that actually quantifies the threat and it is very real. It looks like wind generators will have to be redesigned specifically to withstand hurricanes. In fact that work is underway. In the meantime we should not be building conventional offshore wind towers.

The 2017 press release is succinctly titled “Offshore wind turbines vulnerable to Category 5 hurricane gusts”. The PR says this: “The study, which was conducted in collaboration with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s

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Clouds played an important role in the history of climate, say researchers

Cumuliform cloudscape over Swifts Creek, Australia
[image credit: Wikipedia]

Looking into the past and future of climatic conditions on computer models can give somewhat cloudy results, at least partly because “there’s considerable uncertainty about the simulation of clouds in global climate models”.
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Were Earth’s oceans completely covered by ice during the Cryogenian period, about 700 million years ago, or was there an ice-free belt of open water around the equator where sponges and other forms of life could survive?

Using global climate models, a team of researchers from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the University of Vienna has shown that a climate allowing a waterbelt is unlikely and thus cannot reliably explain the survival of life during the Cryogenian, says Phys.org.

The reason is the uncertain impact of clouds on the epoch’s climate.

A cloudless future? The mystery at the heart of climate forecasts

Cloud guesswork is hindering climate models, therefore relying heavily on their outputs to decide policies must be risky. A professor commented that we may “need a Manhattan Project level of new federal funding and interagency coordination to actually solve this problem.” This can’t be brushed aside as a minor issue.
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We hear a lot about how climate change will change the land, sea, and ice says Eurekalert.

But how will it affect clouds?

“Low clouds could dry up and shrink like the ice sheets,” says Michael Pritchard, professor of Earth System science at UC Irvine. “Or they could thicken and become more reflective.”

These two scenarios would result in very different future climates. And that, Pritchard says, is part of the problem.

Active Hurricane Season Expected in the Atlantic Ocean

Image credit: sanibelrealestateguide.com

Unusually, this is the third year in a row under La Niña.
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La Niña conditions and warm ocean temperatures have set the stage for another busy tropical storm year, says Eos.

If forecasts are correct, this season will mark the seventh consecutive above-normal hurricane season for the Atlantic.

NOAA forecasts out today predict a 65% chance of an above-average season, a 25% chance of a normal season, and a 10% chance of a below-normal season. The ranges account for uncertainty in the data and models of NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.

Powering Down: Wind & Solar ‘Transition’ Mean End of Reliable & Affordable Power

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The affordable part’s already on the way out, or gone for some.

STOP THESE THINGS

Once upon a time, governments strived to ensure their citizens had access to reliable and affordable electricity. That was then. This is now.

A cabal of wind and solar rent-seekers and their political enablers are determined to control every aspect of your daily life, by preventing you from having electricity, as and when you need it.

If you think that the Great Green Reset is not a work in progress, we suggest you read on.

Examining California’s Renewable Energy Plan
California Globe
Edward Ring
8 March 2022

If you live in California, by now you’ve probably seen the ads, either on prime time television or online, exhorting you to “Power Down 4 to 9PM.” These ads are produced by “Energy Upgrade California,” paid for by “investor-owned energy utility customers under the auspices of the California Public Utilities Commission and the California Energy Commission.”

According to the mission of Energy Upgrade…

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Researchers reveal variations in Arctic amplification effect during past millennium

Arctic sea ice [image credit: cbc.ca]

The researchers find ‘a significantly declining AA effect on the millennial time scale’ — but then attempt to link that to anthropogenic forcing in recent times, according to the article at least. That seems illogical if the argument is that humans are playing a part. In any case if the effect has been shown to occur over at least a millennium, that in itself casts doubt on claims that humans must be the prime (or any) cause of the most recent observed changes.
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The recent amplified warming in the Arctic during the last decades has received much attention, says Phys.org.

But how Arctic amplification (AA) has varied on longer time scales and what drives these variations remain unclear.

Recently, a study has provided a new perspective on the AA effect during the past millennium based on the best available paleoclimate data and novel data assimilation methods.

Estimates of the carbon cycle—vital to predicting climate change—are incorrect, researchers show

The numbers don’t add up – another problem for climate models, and for supposedly ‘well-established’ science, as one researcher describes it. Existing predictions must once again be called into question.
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Virginia Tech researchers, in collaboration with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, have discovered that key parts of the global carbon cycle used to track movement of carbon dioxide in the environment are not correct, which could significantly alter conventional carbon cycle models, says Phys.org.

The estimate of how much carbon dioxide plants pull from the atmosphere is critical to accurately monitor and predict the amount of climate-changing gasses in the atmosphere.

This finding has the potential to change predictions for climate change, though it is unclear at this juncture if the mismatch will result in more or less carbon dioxide being accounted for in the environment.

Nicola Scafetta: Advanced Testing of Low, Medium, and High ECS CMIP6 GCM Simulations Versus ERA5-T2m

In this new research paper the leading climate models turn out to be either too inaccurate (higher sensitivity) or unalarming (lower sensitivity).
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Plain Language Summary

The last-generation Coupled Model Intercomparison Projects (CMIP6) global circulation models (GCMs) are used by scientists and policymakers to interpret past and future climatic changes and to determine appropriate (adaptation or mitigation) policies to optimally address scenario-related climate-change hazards. However, these models are affected by large uncertainties. For example, their equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) varies from 1.83°C to 5.67°C, which makes their 21st-century predicted warming levels very uncertain. This issue is here addressed by testing the GCMs’ global and local performance in predicting the 1980–2021 warming rates against the ERA5-T2m records and by grouping them into three equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) classes (low-ECS, 1.80–3.00°C; medium-ECS, 3.01–4.50°C; high-ECS, 4.51–6.00°C). We found that: (a) all models with ECS > 3.0°C overestimate the observed global surface warming; (b) Student t-tests show model failure over 60% (low-ECS) to 81% (high-ECS) of the Earth’s surface. Thus, the high and medium-ECS GCMs do not appear to be consistent with the observations and should not be used for implementing policies based on their scenario forecasts. The low-ECS GCMs perform better, although not optimally; however, they are also found unalarming because for the next decades they predict moderate warming: ΔTpreindustrial→2050 ≲ 2°C.

Lithium price surge ‘jeopardizes energy transition efforts’

BMW i3 electric car plus battery pack [image credit: carmagazine.co.uk]

Unlucky. It’s not just lithium either. Nickel prices are going crazy as supply problems loom. The notion of EVs competing on price with fuel burners any time soon is receding fast, if not dead in the water.
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Soaring lithium prices are threatening energy transition efforts as EV battery makers will be forced to hike the prices for their products by as much as 25 percent, Morgan Stanley has warned.

Over the past 12 months, the bank said, as quoted by Bloomberg, the price of lithium carbonate, which is a key ingredient in electric vehicle batteries, has jumped five times.

This may force EV manufacturers to hike prices by up to 15 percent, hurting demand, reports OilPrice.com.

The news comes at a bad time for EVs. Rising retail fuel prices in some parts of the world, such as the United States, are driving higher EV demand, but carmakers are already finding it hard to satisfy it amid persistent supply chain problems and the rising prices of most raw materials.

EV Race Ignores Russian, Chinese Mineral Speed Traps

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Beep beep! Trouble ahead for mineral-hungry EV producers, especially in countries that don’t want mining on their soil.

PA Pundits - International

By Larry Bell ~

Billboard size speed limit signs and flashing police radar scanning dashboard warnings be damned!

U.S. and European electric vehicle (EV) companies are racing to cash in on markets driven by dependence upon government subsidies which, in turn, rely on scarce and costly materials needed for batteries controlled by foreign adversaries.

Mining required for those EV batteries will soon dominate the world production of many critical minerals, and already accounts for about 40% and 25%, respectively, of all global lithium and cobalt.

Take nickel, for example, of which Russia produces about 7% of the global supply and 20% of the world’s class 1 (98% pure quality) used both for advanced electric vehicle batteries and stainless steel production.

In March, after prices soared 66% to more than $100,000 a metric ton, the London Metal Exchange suspended nickel trading after a three-month contract price more than doubled.

Prompted…

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Met Office study discusses invisible Gulf Stream climate signal?

The signal that wasn’t found could be ‘masked’, researchers suggest. They expected ‘ongoing climate change’ to do something, but maybe it just wasn’t there? Cue more research.
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A new Met Office-led study – reviewing evidence from previous scientific papers and climate models – reveals natural patterns of weakening and strengthening of ocean currents which influence the UK’s weather and climate.

In the North Atlantic lies one of the world’s largest climate mechanisms: a system of currents transporting relatively warm water from the tropics to the poles, with return currents at depth transporting colder, denser water further south.

The transport of heat to the North Atlantic keeps the UK’s climate warmer than other locations at our latitude, says the Met Office.

Ancient El Niños reveal limits to future climate projections

Unravelling the assumptions and the strange cause/effect logic suggested by the article is a challenge here. They say they’re looking for “clues on how sensitive El Niño is to changes in climate”, but “if there’s another big El Niño, it’s going to be very hard to attribute it to a warming climate or to El Niño’s own internal variations.”
Why invent such a conundrum at all?
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The climate pattern El Niño varies over time to such a degree that scientists will have difficulty detecting signs that it is getting stronger with global warming, says Phys.org.

That’s the conclusion of a study led by scientists at The University of Texas at Austin that analyzed 9,000 years of Earth’s history.

The scientists drew on climate data contained within ancient corals and used one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers to conduct their research.

Giant impact crater in Greenland occurred a few million years after dinosaurs went extinct

Credit: Uwe Dedering @ Wikipedia

Another crater controversy ends as two different dating methods produced the same result.
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Danish and Swedish researchers have dated the enormous Hiawatha impact crater, a 31 km-wide asteroid crater buried under a kilometer of Greenlandic ice, says the University of Copenhagen.

The dating ends speculation that the asteroid impacted after the appearance of humans and opens up a new understanding of Earth’s evolution in the post-dinosaur era.

Ever since 2015, when researchers at the University of Copenhagen’s GLOBE Institute discovered the Hiawatha impact crater in northwestern Greenland, uncertainty about the crater’s age has been the subject of considerable speculation.

Could the asteroid have slammed into Earth as recently as 13,000 years ago, when humans had long populated the planet? Could its impact have catalyzed a nearly 1,000-year period of global cooling known as the Younger Dryas?

Snow depth trends revealed from CMIP6 models conflict with observations

Erie, Pennsylvania [image credit: UK Met Office]

Another modelling problem to add to the list: ‘The models reproduced decreasing snow depth trends that contradicted the observations’. Will any of this get a mention in next week’s new IPCC report?
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Seasonal snow cover plays an important role in the interactions between ground and atmosphere, including energy and hydrological fluxes, thus influencing climatological and hydrological processes, says Phys.org.

Researchers from the Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Lanzhou University evaluated the simulated snow depth from 22 CMIP6 models across high-latitude regions of the Northern Hemisphere over the period 1955–2014 by using a high-quality in situ observational dataset.

Related results were published in the Journal of Climate.

Emails Cast Further Light on the Plot to Re-educate Boris About Climate Change

Caution – alarmist brainwashers at work. Never mind the ‘unrealistic’ climate models.
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Thirty-eight emails released under a recent FOI request provide an interesting insight into the way Government science advisers plotted to change Boris Johnson’s mind over the causes of climate change, ahead of a Cabinet Office presentation, says The Daily Sceptic.

The event on January 28th 2020 was led by the Government’s Chief Scientific Officer Sir Patrick Vallance and presented, using 11 slides, by the Chief Scientist of the Met Office, Professor Stephen Belcher.

According to Belcher, the stated goal of the presentation was to “stabilise climate which requires net zero emissions”.

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!

La Palma volcanic eruption officially ended on Christmas Day

After flaring for 85 days and 8 hours, La Palma’s longest eruption on record has finally ceased activity.
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Authorities on one of Spain’s Canary Islands declared a volcanic eruption that started in September officially finished Saturday following 10 days of no lava flows, seismic activity or significant sulfur dioxide emissions, reports Phys.org.

But the emergency in La Palma, the most northwest island in the Atlantic Ocean archipelago, is not over due to the widespread damage the eruption caused, the director of the Canaries’ volcanic emergency committee said in announcing the much-anticipated milestone.

Why the southern US is prone to December tornadoes

La Niña, such as the one now occurring, is considered to be conducive to wind shear, a known factor in tornado conditions – as mentioned below.
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On the night of Dec. 10–11, 2021, an outbreak of powerful tornadoes tore through parts of Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee and Illinois, killing dozens of people and leaving wreckage over hundreds of miles, says The Conversation (via Phys.org).

Hazard climatologists Alisa Hass and Kelsey Ellis explain the conditions that generated this event—including what may be the first “quad-state tornado” in the U.S.—and why the Southeast is vulnerable to these disasters year-round, especially at night.

What factors came together to cause such a huge outbreak?

On Dec. 10, a powerful storm system approached the central U.S. from the west. While the system brought heavy snow and slick conditions to the colder West and northern Midwest, the South was enjoying near-record breaking warmth, courtesy of warm, moist air flowing north from the Gulf of Mexico.

The storm system ushered in cold, dense air to the region, which interacted with the warm air, creating unstable atmospheric conditions.

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.

Research aircraft reveal a surprisingly strong Southern Ocean carbon sink

The ocean carbon cycle [credit: IAEA]

Having much better information about how nature’s carbon cycle is working, before attempting to apply random expensive schemes of uncertain impact to try and alter it, would surely be a sound approach, as the researchers suggest. Surprises might not be welcome ones.
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The Southern Ocean is a significant carbon sink says Phys.org, absorbing a large amount of the excess carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere by human activities, according to a new study led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

The findings provide clarity about the role the icy waters surrounding Antarctica play in buffering the impact of increasing greenhouse gas emissions, after research published in recent years suggested the Southern Ocean might be less of a sink than previously thought.