Temperatures are rising, but soil is getting wetter, confounding climate theorists

One overlooked factor was the CO2 fertilization effect in plant photosynthesis. The researchers found that “it’s virtually impossible to predict soil moisture in the coming decades”, contrary to some alarmist notions about future droughts.
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Soil moisture can determine how quickly a wildfire spreads, how fast a hill turns into a mudslide and, perhaps most importantly, how productive our food systems are, says Eurekalert.

As temperatures rise due to human-caused climate change [Talkshop comment – evidence-free assertion of cause], some researchers are concerned that soils will dry.

However, between 2011 to 2020, soil moisture increased across 57% of the United States during summer, the warmest time of year.

Why did soil get wetter even as the planet got hotter?

Satellite traffic jams ahead?

Will Satellite Megaconstellations Weaken Earth’s Magnetic Field?

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Researcher: “We absolutely cannot dump endless amounts of conductive dust into the magnetosphere and not expect some kind of impact. Multidisciplinary studies of this pollution are urgently needed.”

Study: Potential Perturbation of the Ionosphere by Megaconstellations and Corresponding
Artificial Re-entry Plasma Dust

Researchers probe a conundrum: If the world is warming, why are our winters getting colder?

Gulf Stream flows

Some recent cold weather events are puzzling to global warming researchers, in terms of climate model expectations. Especially so for the ‘Center for Irreversible Climate Change’ in South Korea. Temporary natural variation seems to be the conclusion. What else could they say without casting doubt on human-caused warming theories?
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If the world is warming, why are our winters getting colder?

Indeed, East Asia and North America have experienced frequent extreme weather events since the 2000s that defy average climate change projections, says Phys.org.

Many experts have blamed Arctic warming and a weakening jet stream due to declining Arctic sea ice, but climate model experiments have not adequately demonstrated their validity.

The massive power outage in Texas in February 2021 was caused by an unusual cold snap, and climate models are needed to accurately predict the risk of extreme weather events in order to prevent massive socioeconomic damage.

Oldie but Goldie: Climategate: how the conspirators gagged on their deceptions

Andrew Bolt Herald Sun Dec 6 2009

I’ve wondered whether Climategate scientist Tom Wigley, an Australian, finally choked on all the fraud, fiddling and coverups he was witnessing from fellow members of his Climategate cabal. Steven Hayward points out that many other Climategate scientists privately had trouble swallowing the practices of their colleagues:

In 1998 three scientists from American universities–Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes–unveiled in Nature magazine what was regarded as a signal breakthrough in paleoclimatology–the now notorious “hockey stick” temperature reconstruction (picture a flat “handle” extending from the year 1000 to roughly 1900, and a sharply upsloping “blade” from 1900 to 2000). Their paper purported to prove that current global temperatures are the highest in the last thousand years by a large margin–far outside the range of natural variability. The medieval warm period (MWP) and the little ice (LIA) age both disappeared.

The EU Is Willing to Go To War Over Lithium?

By Phil Butler
New Eastern Outlook

January 3, 2024

The riddle of unhinged EU support for the Zelensky regime in Kyiv is now solved. Anyone inclined can unravel why the Germans, in particular, backstabbed Russia in the Minsk peace boondoggle. Lithium.

Energy Monitor’s parent company, GlobalData, recently released a report showing that Europe’s biggest lithium reserves lie in the Donbass region of Russia. The former Ukrainian Shevchenkivske field in the Donetsk region and the Kruta Balka block in the Zaporizhzhia region are now part of Russia. These reserves add tremendously to Russia’s humongous Lithium deposits (now 1.5M metric tons) and solidify the country’s top ten position globally. If we consider other BRICS nations’ reserves, including China (2M metric tons), EU industry is at a leverage point.

Claim: the James Webb telescope ‘threatens to break cosmology as we know it’

Ye Olde Universe
[image credit: Hubble / Wikipedia]

Or did it just confirm the unhappy status of the ‘dark energy’ seekers, long after Nobel prizes were handed out for its ‘discovery’? Quote: ‘despite much searching, astronomers have no clue what dark matter or dark energy are.’ A Nobel for having no clue – where’s the physics?
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For decades, measurements of the universe’s expansion have suggested a disparity known as the Hubble tension, which threatens to break cosmology as we know it. Can it be fixed? asks Live Science.

Now, on the eve of its second anniversary, a new finding by the James Webb Space Telescope has only entrenched the mystery.

Something is awry in our expanding cosmos.

Geminids mystery

The Geminids are Still a Mystery

– – – “Our work has upended years of belief about 3200 Phaethon, the source of the Geminids,” says co-author Karl Battams of the Naval Research Lab. “It’s not what we thought it was.”

Climate confusion: Differing Net Zero definitions must ‘mesh’ say Met Office scientists

[image credit: latinoamericarenovable.com]

Another trip to cloud cuckoo land. How do they plan to accurately measure all the so-called emissions and get all parties to agree with the results anyway? Time to return to reality and stop wasting time and effort on non-existent supposed remedies.
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A new paper published in Nature has highlighted a fundamental mismatch in the way greenhouse gas emissions are measured which could mean that Net Zero could be met in one definition up to five years ahead of the other, says the Met Office .

The IPCC report shows that global temperature will stop increasing when we reach ‘net zero’ emissions of CO2. [Talkshop comment -*claims*, not shows].

To achieve this, human activity cannot put more CO2 into the atmosphere than it removes – we need to massively reduce our emissions, with some removal of CO2 to help areas which are really hard to decarbonise.

This sits behind the principle of Net Zero, which countries including the UK hope will be reached by 2050.

More cloud uncertainties: researching the effect of aerosol particles on clouds and the climate

Again it turns out that climate modellers don’t understand cloud effects too well. As this article bluntly puts it: ‘The interactions of atmospheric aerosols with solar radiation and clouds continue to be inadequately understood and are among the greatest uncertainties in the model description and forecasting of changes to the climate. One reason for this is the many unanswered questions about the hygroscopicity of aerosol particles.’ — Other reasons aren’t discussed here. Why do we keep reading about ‘state-of-the-art’ climate models when they clearly have a long way to go to merit such a description? Any forecasts they produce should be treated with great caution, to say the least.
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The extent to which aerosol particles affect the climate depends on how much water the particles can hold in the atmosphere, says Phys.org.

The capacity to hold water is referred to as hygroscopicity (K) and, in turn, depends on further factors—particularly the size and chemical composition of the particles, which can be extremely variable and complex.

Through extensive investigations, an international research team under the leadership of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry (MPIC) and the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS) was able to reduce the relationship between the chemical composition and the hygroscopicity of aerosol particles to a simple linear formula.

US Watchdog Has Grim Winter Warning: There May Be Blackouts

If it’s climate obsession versus reality in US power supplies, there can only be one winner. Strong opposition to new gas pipelines plus increasing reliance on intermittent renewables can only end badly for consumers of power.
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As much as two-thirds of the United States could experience blackouts in peak winter weather this and next year, the North American Reliability Corp has warned.

These warnings have become something of a routine for the regulatory agency lately, says OilPrice.com.

Earlier this year, NERC issued a blackout warning for some parts of the U.S. over the summer, citing extreme temperatures.

Drought saps the Panama Canal, disrupting global trade – can El Niño already be a factor?

Ship passing through the new Agua Clara Locks, Panama Canal [image credit: Mariordo @ Wikipedia]

Having stated water levels in the canal have been a problem for a number of years, blaming the recently arrived El Niño seems a bit strange, and the last significant one ended in 2016. One expert is quoted saying it could be a source of drought, which implies some uncertainty. Using seawater to top up the canal isn’t an option for ecological reasons. Every vessel passage uses a lot of water (200 million litres per ship as an average), and capacity was doubled in 2016.
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For over a century, the Panama Canal has provided a convenient way for ships to move between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, helping to speed up international trade, says the Houston Herald.

But a drought has left the canal without enough water, which is used to raise and lower ships, forcing officials to slash the number of vessels they allow through.

That has created expensive headaches for shipping companies and raised difficult questions about water use in Panama. The passage of one ship is estimated to consume as much water as half a million Panamanians use in one day.

Earth’s Ring Current System Just Sprang a Leak

Earth’s Ring Current System Just Sprang a Leak

Worth a look just for the pictures, plus interesting commentary re. what is or isn’t auroral activity.
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This year ‘virtually certain’ to be warmest in 125,000 years, EU scientists say — ignoring contradictory evidence?

Thermometer with Fahrenheit and Celsius units [image credit: Stilfehler at Wikipedia]

The ‘virtual’ in virtually certain is from a computer model result: ‘we combine our data with the IPCC’. Two things to bear in mind: satellite data only started in the 1970s, with other less accurate (due to shortage of data) records being kept from the 1880s onwards, and ‘the mid-Holocene … mean annual temperature reached 2.5°C above that of today’ (source: Encyclopaedia Britannica).
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This year is “virtually certain” to be the warmest in 125,000 years, European Union scientists said on Wednesday (8 November), after data showed last month was the world’s hottest October in that period, says Euractiv.

Last month smashed through the previous October temperature record, from 2019, by a massive margin, the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said.

“The record was broken by 0.4 degrees Celsius, which is a huge margin,” said C3S Deputy Director Samantha Burgess, who described the October temperature anomaly as “very extreme”.

How wind turbines are blinding the RAF’s vital North Sea radars

Hornsea Offshore Wind Project, Yorkshire, England
[image credit: nsenergybusiness.com]

Is the Government scoring a major own goal in pursuit of its fantasy climate goals? Hoped-for ‘energy security’ from wind power is looking further away than ever.
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Britain’s race to net zero risks blinding crucial radars protecting the UK from incursions over the North Sea amid fears that Russia will launch a campaign of sabotage.

Offshore wind farms blades interfere with radar signals and there are concerns that plans for a significant expansion of turbines in the North Sea by the end of the decade will cause problems for the Royal Air Force (RAF).

The Ministry of Defence has spent £18m over the past three years trying to stop wind farm blades from scrambling radar readings, the Telegraph can reveal.

However, none of this public spending has, so far, yielded a concrete solution to the problem.

Electric cars risk becoming uninsurable

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

Over-sensitive and unpredictable lithium-based batteries continue to be a headache, for various reasons. Is the EV industry really ready for prime time, as government ‘net zero’ mandates take hold?
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Electric cars risk becoming effectively uninsurable as analysts struggle to put a price on battery repairs, the researcher for the car insurance industry has said. — The Telegraph reporting.

Jonathan Hewett, chief executive of Thatcham Research, the motor insurers’ automotive research centre, said a lack of “insight and understanding” about the cost of repairing damaged electric car batteries was pushing up premiums and resulting in some providers declining to provide cover altogether.

Electric cars can be particularly expensive to repair, costing around a quarter more to fix on average than a petrol or diesel vehicle.

Experts have previously warned electric vehicles are being written off after minor bumps because of the cost and complexity of fixing their batteries.

Powering AI could use as much electricity as a small country

Image credit: technologyhill.com

The definition of a ‘small’ country could change to ‘not so small’ quite quickly. When so-called net zero climate policies are threatening to make electricity supplies more restricted and unreliable, the added effect of AI demand could become significant. This is on top of the issue with data centres – the BBC recently reported that Data centres use almost a fifth of Irish electricity.
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Artificial intelligence (AI) comes with promises of helping coders code faster, drivers drive safer, and making daily tasks less time-consuming, says TechXplore.

But in a commentary published October 10 in the journal Joule, the founder of Digiconomist demonstrates that the tool, when adopted widely, could have a large energy footprint, which in the future may exceed the power demands of some countries.

“Looking at the growing demand for AI service, it’s very likely that energy consumption related to AI will significantly increase in the coming years,” says author Alex de Vries, a Ph.D. candidate at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Energy leaflet: ‘Preparing for a power cut’

The UK electricity network is clearly not what it used to be. Can it be any coincidence that as coal power disappears thanks to ‘net zero’ type climate obsessions, leaflets like this start arriving on the domestic mat like this one today?

SP Energy (aka Scottish Power) covers parts of southern Scotland, North West England and North Wales. If other energy providers are doing the same type of leafletting or similar (emails etc.), let us know.

One section is about ‘Storms and Severe Weather’ but the one about ‘Preparing you for extreme events’ gets to the heart of the matter: ‘the possible but unlikely scenario of an energy shortage due to the current energy landscape’. They can’t even bring themselves to say electricity (see leaflet title)!

Motorway service stations hiring staff to police surging levels of EV ‘charge rage’

Image credit: motorwayservices.uk

Net zero chaos: the UK grid just can’t meet current(!) EV requirements at busy travel times. Good luck if such a time happens to be a windless day. Electricity can’t easily be stored at the service station, like liquid fuels – who knew?
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Britain’s biggest motorway service station provider has brought in marshals to police “charge rage” among electric vehicle drivers battling for access to plug-in points, reports The Telegraph.

Moto chief executive Ken McMeikan warned the UK’s motorway service stations are facing growing “public disorder” due to a lack of grid connections preventing him from installing enough car chargers to meet the surge in demand.

It means many motorists are facing long waits, with angry drivers confronting staff and each other over the lack of charging facilities.

Subsea cable failures could derail offshore wind ambitions – insurance costs ‘becoming prohibitive’

Image credit: nawindpower.com

Another blow for net-zero dogmatists. More evidence that cheap offshore wind power doesn’t exist and nobody can control its costs, or be sure of a good level of reliability.
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Global Underwater Hub (GUH) is leading the charge to tackle failures in underwater cables which could derail global offshore wind ambitions, says AGCC.

The trade body, which champions the UK’s £8billion underwater industry, says that reliability of subsea cables is “paramount” to the success of offshore wind and the energy transition.

But failure of these cables is all too common, to the point that the cost of insuring them is becoming prohibitive.

Walker Circulation study is a damp squib for climate worriers, contradicts models

Walker Circulation – El Niño conditions [image credit: NOAA]

The paper this article is based on informs us that ‘The Pacific Walker circulation (PWC) has an outsized influence on weather and climate worldwide. Yet the PWC response to external forcings is unclear’. Under a headline saying: ‘Greenhouse gases are changing air flow over the Pacific Ocean, raising Australia’s risks of extreme weather’, the article here offers almost nothing to support an argument for any human-caused climate effects ‘in the industrial era’. The paper is somewhat embarrassing for climate models: ‘Most climate models predict that the PWC will ultimately weaken in response to global warming. However, the PWC strengthened from 1992 to 2011, suggesting a significant role for anthropogenic and/or volcanic aerosol forcing, or internal variability’. So that role could be anything or nothing, but the models trended the wrong way anyway. The search for ‘anthropogenic fingerprints’ continues.
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After a rare three-year La Niña event brought heavy rain and flooding to eastern Australia in 2020-22, we’re now bracing for the heat and drought of El Niño at the opposite end of the spectrum, says The Conversation (via Phys.org).

But while the World Meteorological Organization has declared an El Niño event is underway, Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology is yet to make a similar declaration. Instead, the Bureau remains on “El Niño alert.”

The reason for this discrepancy is what’s called the Pacific Walker Circulation. The pattern and strength of air flows over the Pacific Ocean, combined with sea surface temperatures, determines whether Australia experiences El Niño or La Niña events.