Energy giants spent $1bn on climate lobbying, PR since Paris: watchdog

Oil extraction [image credit: ewg.org]

It would be optimistic to expect any business to willingly cave in to pressure to become less successful, or let attempts to demonize it go unchallenged, especially for the sake of shaky climate theories. As long as the demand for their products is there, so will they be. World demand for oil is on the rise, regardless of those who wish otherwise.

The five largest publicly listed oil and gas majors have spent $1 billion since the 2015 Paris climate deal on public relations or lobbying that is “overwhelmingly in conflict” with the landmark accord’s goals, a watchdog said Friday.

Despite outwardly committing to support the Paris agreement and its aim to limit global temperature rises, ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, BP and Total spend a total of $200 million a year on efforts “to operate and expand fossil fuel operations,” according to InfluenceMap, a pro-transparency monitor.

Two of the companies—Shell and Chevron—said they rejected the watchdog’s findings, reports Phys.org.

Henrik Svensmark: FORCE MAJEURE The Sun’s Role in Climate Change

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The author writes in his 40-page document: ‘This report is not meant to be an exhaustive representation of all the published papers related to a solar influence on Earth’s climate, but aims to give a clear presentation of the current knowledge on the link between solar activity and climate.’

Where does cosmic ray variation fit into the ‘big picture’ of solar influences on the Earth?

The Next Grand Minimum

I am still studying this paper but wanted to share and get your feedback

Executive Summary

Over the last twenty years there has been good progress in understanding the solar influ- ence on climate. In particular, many scientific studies have shown that changes in solar activ- ity have impacted climate over the whole Holocene period (approximately the last 10,000 years). A well-known example is the existence of high solar activity during the Medieval Warm Period, around the year 1000 AD, and the subsequent low levels of solar activity during the cold period, now called The Little Ice Age (1300–1850 AD). An important scientific task has been to quantify the solar impact on climate, and it has been found that over the eleven- year solar cycle the energy that enters the Earth’s system is of the order of 1.0–1.5 W/m2. This is nearly an order of magnitude larger than what would be…

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Climate Crisis? Four Major Metrics That Say Otherwise

Credit: planetsave.com

Joe Bastardi argues that loud claims of a climate about to spin out of control are out of tune with various actual observations.

I have long advocated that climatologists take a course on long-range forecasting so they can better understand the inherent errors in trying to predict the weather or climate, says Joe Bastardi at Patriot Post.

In the debate over the fate of the planet, where one side is always pushing hysteria, the weather is plainly not cooperating with the missive.

Forecasters take climatology classes and are now being taught the one-sided climate narrative, but in general, climatologists do not have to learn how to forecast.

Leading climate researcher calls for ban on domestic flights in Germany to save emissions

Image credit: emeraldmedia.co.uk

How about a ban on endless international climate conferences that lead to hundreds of flights – including many long-haul – but produce little of value, ‘to save emissions’? In fact the ’20 flights in a lifetime’ proposed here would probably have that effect anyway. The report ends with an apparent claim that particulates in the air are a ‘climate problem’.

Leading German climate scientist Hans Joachim Schellnhuber has called for a substantial shift in strategy for the tourism industry to make sure that its carbon footprint does not contribute to the sector’s possible demise.

“Tourism bites the hand that feeds it if it contributes to climate change,” the former director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) said at the ITB international tourism fair in Berlin.

If beaches around the world are flooded due to a global rise in temperature of 4 or 5 degrees Celsius, “there will be no more beach tourism,” Schellnhuber said.

Perspective Needed in Climate Debate

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Unfortunately the IPCC shows little interest in perspective, preferring to trumpet absurd 8.5°C warming scenarios.

PA Pundits - International

Joe Bastardi  ~   

 

I went to school with a lot of great forecasters. One of them was Scott Chesner, who is an on-air meteorologist in Tyler, Texas. Scott tweeted something this week that I thought was quite profound regarding the current generation’s “consensus” on climate:

“One problem with global warming hysteria is ‘perspective.’ The warmer global temps of recent yrs. are relatively meaningless as we only have detailed records for~200 yrs. out of the Earth’s age of 4.5 billion yrs. That=30 sec. out of a person’s 80 yr. life!”

As you know, I am a big satellite-era proponent as far as temperatures are concerned. We have simply seen too much adjustment to older temperature records, and that has to at least raise questions. In almost every single case, temperatures are adjusted down in years before the satellite era.

This has some merit, given most errors on thermometers…

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China and ‘The Pause’

The pause seems to fit nicely into the gap between two major El Niños.
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Chinese climate scientists: The so-called hiatus in global temperature is illuminating, significant and real.

Chinese climate scientists are clearly off-message, says Dr David Whitehouse, GWPF Science Editor.

They keep referring to the global warming hiatus which so many scientists and activists – those who shout on twitter and prowl the comment sections of off-colour articles on the subject – know has been trounced and discredited again and again. They clearly ought to have a word with the emerging science powerhouse that is China.

The coming revolution in LED lighting

LED street lighting

There’s more to LED lighting than meets the eye, for example in durability and reduced energy use, as Phys.org reports. But claims they can help the climate seem somewhat starry-eyed.

A revolution in energy-efficient, environmentally-sound, and powerfully-flexible lighting is coming to businesses and homes, according to a paper in latest special energy issue of Optics Express, the Optical Society’s (OSA) open-access journal.

The paper envisions the future of lighting—a future with widespread use of light emitting diodes (LEDs), which offer a number of obvious and subtle advantages over traditional light bulbs.

Where’s winter? Western Europe basks in record temperatures – but there’s a catch

Credit: planetsave.com

This report more or less answers its own question, possibly without noticing that the answer given virtually rules out the presence of any particular trace gases in the atmosphere as a likely cause. ‘Hottest on record’ does not go back all that far anyway.

As western Europe enjoys record highs for winter temperatures, southern parts of the continent are being hit with snow flurries, reports Phys.org.

What is going on with the weather, and how closely are the topsy-turvy temperatures linked to climate change?

Scientist finds an influence of solar activity on European rainfall

Credit: BBC

Interesting result here, although they do admit: ‘The exact mechanism by which the solar signal influences precipitation is still largely unclear and requires further research.’ But the observations have been made.

Source: The GWPF

A balanced level of precipitation provides the basis for a wide range of economic and social activities in Europe. Particularly agriculture, drinking water supply and inland waterway transport are directly affected.

However, the amount of rain fluctuates strongly from year to year. While it may pour torrentially in one year, rain may remain absent for weeks in another year. The population is used to this variability and knows how to deal with it.

The chance discovery by an agricultural scientist from Münster, Germany, now suggests that in certain months rain over Germany and other parts of Europe follows a pattern that up to now has remained undetected.

Extreme rainfall events are connected across the world

We’re told there are patterns which ‘appear to be created by Rossby waves – wiggles in fast-flowing currents of air high in the atmosphere, known as the jet streams.’

An analysis of satellite data has revealed global patterns of extreme rainfall, which could lead to better forecasts and more accurate climate models, reports Phys.org.

Extreme rainfall—defined as the top five percent of rainy days—often forms a pattern at the local level, for example tracking across Europe.

But new research, published today in Nature, reveals that there are also larger-scale global patterns to extreme rainfall events.

Irish carbon tax rise in doubt following Yellow Vest revolt in France

Photosynthesis: nature requires carbon dioxide

It’s Ireland’s turn to find ways of sucking the life out of its economy to appease the climate alarm lobby.
H/T The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)

Irish MPs and senators are split over plans for a fourfold increase in carbon tax to put Ireland on course to meet its 2030 climate change targets, following the yellow vest protests in France, says The Times.

Fine Gael and Green Party members of the Oireachtas climate action committee want a report next month to recommend a carbon tax of at least €80 a ton over the next decade, which would add €12 to the cost of filling a car with diesel or petrol and €7.20 to a bag of coal.

Climate Hysterics Skyrocket Even As Weather Disasters Haven’t

Increasingly absurd disaster rhetoric is consistently contradicted by climate and weather data and backed up by little more than obstinate assertions, says Paul Driessen at Climate Change Dispatch.
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Call it climate one-upmanship. It seems everyone has to outdo previous climate chaos rhetoric.

The “climate crisis” is the “existential threat of our time,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi told her House colleagues. We must “end the inaction and denial of science that threatens the planet and the future.”

Former California Governor Jerry Brown solemnly intoned that America has “an enemy, though different, but perhaps very much devastating in a similar way” as the Nazis in World War II.

Not to be outdone, two PhDs writing in Psychology Today declared that “the human race faces extinction” if we don’t stop burning fossil fuels.

Solar Climate Connection and Cosmic Rays

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A look at possible implications of current and continuing low solar activity.

The Next Grand Minimum

The is a very interesting 40-minute video presentation by Nir Shaviv on the solar-climate connection and cosmic rays.

Shaviv first presents the evidence that the sun affects climate before explaining the cosmic ray ideas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9gjU1T4XL4

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Giant pattern discovered in the clouds of planet Venus

Venus

The researchers say the key to this is a phenomenon closely connected to Earth’s polar jet streams.

A Japanese research group has identified a giant streak structure among the clouds covering planet Venus based on observation from the spacecraft Akatsuki, reports Phys.org.

The team also revealed the origins of this structure using large-scale climate simulations.

The long memory of the Pacific Ocean

The Great Ocean Conveyor Belt – blue = deep cold and saltier water current, red = shallower and warmer current
[credit: NWS / NOAA]

It’s known, or at least believed, that transit times of some ocean waters can be as long as 1,000 years. The researchers are well aware that this exceeds the time since some well-known warming and cooling periods in the Earth’s past, such as the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age.

Whereas most of the ocean is responding to modern warming, the deep Pacific may be cooling, say researchers.

The ocean has a long memory. When the water in today’s deep Pacific Ocean last saw sunlight, Charlemagne was the Holy Roman Emperor, the Song Dynasty ruled China and Oxford University had just held its very first class.

During that time, between the 9th and 12th centuries, the earth’s climate was generally warmer before the cold of the Little Ice Age settled in around the 16th century.

Now ocean surface temperatures are back on the rise but the question is, do the deepest parts of the ocean know that?

Tornadoes have not co-operated with climate alarmists in 2018

Kansas tornado [image credit: Wikipedia]

Of course 2019 may be different, but claims of a trend towards more severe weather due to human activity fall flat when the evidence fails to point in the predicted direction.
H/T The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)

2018 [has] become the first year since formal record keeping began in 1950, in which the United States has not endured even one “violent” tornado.  

Ray Bates: My conclusion stands that SR1.5 is not a scientifically rigorous document

Prof Ray Bates discusses some points raised by a critic in response to his recent analysis of the latest IPCC summary report (SR 1.5).

Reply by Ray Bates to the blog post by Peter Thorne of Maynooth University
H/T The GWPF

A) General comments

1) Prof. Thorne states that my critique of SR1.5 was not peer-reviewed and should not be referred to as a paper.
His statement is incorrect. My critique was peer-reviewed.

I wouldn’t list it in my CV as a journal article, but it is correct to call it a paper (see the Oxford Dictionary). That said, it matters little to me whether my publication is called a critique, a piece, or a paper.

BBC And The Extinction Rebellion

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What are they trying to do – make Greenpeace look tame?

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

From the Guardian:

The BBC’s central London headquarters has been put on lockdown due to a protest by climate change campaigners who are demanding it uses its status as national broadcaster to declare a “climate and ecological emergency”.

Extinction Rebellion, a direct action group that has recently shut down key London roads, has demand the BBC makes the environment its “top editorial issue”.

Broadcasting House was locked down early on Friday afternoon, with BBC staff and guests unable to enter or leave the building while security kept the peaceful but noisy protesters away from the entrance.

Extinction Rebellion activists, who are demanding a meeting with the BBC director general, Tony Hall, said the corporation had a duty to broadcast about climate change with “the level of urgency placed on informing the public about the second world war”.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/dec/21/bbc-london-headquarters-put-on-lockdown-over-protest-by-climate-change-campaigners-extinction-rebellion

A case of the biter bit!

The BBC…

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Carbon Crossroads: Can Germany revive its stalled energy transition?

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

Germany – where you can drive at twice the UK legal speed limit on the autobahns, burning fuel at a furious rate, but they still claim to be worried about ’emissions’. Why would a major industrial country want to transition to intermittent and largely unpredictable power sources? No-one can make the sun shine or the wind blow on demand, so unless there are going to be massive and extremely costly reserves of power from other sources cutting in every time the wind drops and/or it gets dark, it seems Germany’s energy problems can only get more acute as it retreats from both coal and nuclear power. Fear of imaginary climate hobgoblins is clouding their judgment.

Although Germany has been a global leader in moving to decarbonize its massive economy, the country’s ambitious clean-energy transformation is faltering, says YaleEnvironment360.

Now, a broad spectrum of energy experts are working to revitalize the effort to make Germany nearly carbon-free by mid-century.

The Latest on the Double-Dynamo Solar Model, and Dr. Zharkova’s Predictions of a Grand Minimum

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How ‘grand’ the predicted solar minimum could be is a popular subject for speculation. More analysis here.

The Next Grand Minimum

By Stephanie Osborn

The Osborn post is a lengthy explanation of Dr. Zharkova’s model, model updates and predictions, with some additional example of how the ‘barycentric wobble’ influences the earth’s temperature. For readers who found Dr. Zharkova’s GWPF Presentation confusing, this article will help with the understanding of her model’s significance, and the output is worth considering. Osborn’s bio is HERE.

Osborn’s evaluation of Zharkova’s model:

Zharkova’s model is supported not only by sunspot numbers and solar activity, but by other solar-studies fields: magnetohydrodynamics and helioseismology. In fact, the resulting data plots from these fields are so close to Zharkova’s model predictions, that the model could as well be based on either of those. So this model is not functioning in isolation from related science, but is in fact harmonizing quite well with it.

The Dalton extended minimum (1790-1830) is evidently an example of a Gleissberg minimum, while the…

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