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"Quotes" | Hockey-Stick discussions |
last update: 26 Sep 2019 |
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| Energy and the Hydrogen Economy | Many of us believe that an Hydrogen economy might be THE answer to a carbon-free energy world. Read his older but extremely clear report by Ulf Bossel (a fuel cell expert) and Baldur Eliasson (ABB) titled "Energy and the Hydrogen Economy".Did you know that for transporting the same energy amount as compressed H2 than as gasoline you will need 15 to 22 times more trucks? Read also this paper. | |||
| Best illustrations of the urban heat island effect (UHI) | Picture only. | |||
| Presentation by Dr. Roy SPENCER (UHA) | Watch this very short but extremely clear presentation by Dr. Roy SPENCER (UHA) showing the discrepancies between climate models and observations (both by satellites and 4 reanalysis ). From the 102 CMIP5 models used by the IPCC only the Russian model comes close to the observations. Click here for the graph. | |||
| Modellanalyse liefert Hinweise auf Verluste von Fluginsekten in Windparks | Paper by Dr. Trieb on the massive killing of insects by wind tirbines. | |||
| Trees are big emitters of the greenhouse gas methane | Shocking new research: trees are big emitters of the greenhouse gas methane! So you much criticised cattle farmers, take solace that you are not the only climate wrong-doers anymore! (report from Yale University). | |||
| A reality check on renewables |
In these times where everybody aims to a net-zero carbon future, the excellent presentation of he late Sir David MacKAY "A reality check on renewables" is still an eye opener regarding the enormous land usage that biofuels and other renewables demand. David MacKAY passed away in 2016; he was the Regius Professor of Engineering at the University of Cambridge (more here). Concerning intermittent electricity storage in batteries, you may watch this interesting video "The Liquid Metal Battery: Innovation in Stationary Electricity Storage" by MIT Prof. Donald Sadoway. Listen what he says about the Lithium-Ion battery "a yesterday solution". |
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| Pétition sur le le Réchauffement Climatique Anthropique |
Prof. Uberto Crescenti has prepared a call for
reason titled "Pétition sur le le Réchauffement
Climatique Anthropique" which has be signed
until today by 91 professors, scientists and
researchers. Click
here for the text in French, which has this
sentence
"La
responsabilité anthropique du changement climatique
observée au siècle dernier est donc exagérée de
façon injustifiée et les prévisions catastrophiques
sont irréalistes....
".
Original Italian text
here.
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| Die Welt vergrünt |
Read this
article (English translation) of Benny Peiser
and Matt Ridley on the positive influence of higher
atmospheric CO2 levels:
"The unexpectedly slow rise in temperatures and the failure of predicted climate disasters to materialise has sparked growing concern among climate scientists...70 percent of global greening is due to the fertilisation effect of rising CO2 levels...the increase in CO2 emissions is beneficial for maintaining and potentially enhancing the recovery of rainfall in the Sahel region...” (link to original "Die Weltwoche" article in German) |
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| The warming effects of CO2 are benign | by Sanjeev Sabhlok (an economist) in the Times of India: "The problem with climate “science”, however, is that the data – which are telling us to relax – fly in the face of the strong tendency of its advocates to bully us into a panic.....India should take it easy and focus on more important and urgent environmental issues. " | |||
| Climate Change Reconsidered. Part II: Fossil Fuels |
800 pages blockbuster
report by the NIPCC on the economics of
using or not using fossil fuels.
"...the
authors...find
that while climate change is occurring and a human
impact on climate is likely, there is
no consensus on
the size of that impact relative to natural
variability,
the
net
benefits or costs of the impacts of climate
change." More than 100 scientists were involved in the making of this report by the NonGovernmental International Panel on Climate Change. |
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| Presentation by Laurent ALEXANDRE |
Watch this
excellent
presentation by Laurent ALEXANDRE (in
French) given at a conference of the "climato-réalistes",
where he talks about
climate religion, "collabsology" and exponential
hysterical political decisions: "le discours
religieux collabsologique prévoyant la fin du monde
s'est développé à une vitesse absolument sidérante". Laurent Alexandre is a medical doctor (in chirurgical urology) and entrepreneur; he writes regularly in the "l'EXPRESS". |
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| Climate's Uncertainty Principle | Article by atmospheric physicist G. Paltridge, published in Quadrant Online: "...reasonably correct forecasts of the average climate of the world might be possible in principle. On the scale of regions (anything much smaller than the scale of the major ocean basins for example) it has yet to be shown that useful long-term climate forecasting is possible even in principle." | |||
| Non uniform contribution of internal variability to recent Arctic sea ice loss |
by Marc England et al. (Columbia University, New
York, University of Colorado at Boulder):
"...nearly
half of the observed loss of summer sea ice cover is
not due to anthropogenic forcing, but due to
internal variability...spring (April-May) sea ice
loss, notably in the Barents Sea, has so far been
dominated by internal variability." Paper published by AMS. |
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| A new 200 year spatial recontruction of West Antarctica surface masse balance. |
New paper by Yetang Wang et al. (JGR Atmospheres)
which concludes that "significant negative trend (-1.9 ± 2.2 Gt yr-1 decade-1) in the SMB over the entire WAIS during the 19th century, but a statistically significant positive trend of 5.4 ± 2.9 Gt yr-1 decade-1 between 1900 and 2010". So during a period of strongly increasing atmospheric CO2 levels the SMB of the WAIS increased! (WAIS = West Antarctica Ice Surface , SMB = Surface Mass Balance) |
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| Kohlemotoren, Windmotoren und Dieselmotoren: Was zeigt die CO2-Bilanz? |
Extraordinary clear and easy to read paper by Christoph Buchal, Hans-Dieter Karl and Hans-Werner
Sinn: E-cars emit more CO2 per km as modern
Diesel cars, if you make a serious calculation
and do not accept the politically correct
monster-lie. The authors propose to introduce
hydrogen as the best storage medium for excess green
electricity, and convert it to methane to power the
cars (or to use fuel cells to power E-cars): "Wir
vermuten in der postulierten vollständigen
Emissionsfreiheit der E-Autos eine
industriepolitische Täuschung..." See comment on the blog. |
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| The State of the Climate 2018 |
Read the latest report by Prof. Ole Humlum
(Uni. Oslo, Uni.Center Svalbard, creator of the
climate4you
website) with clear data and no hype. From the summary: "Since 2004, when the Argo floats came into operation, the global oceans above 1900m depth have on average warmed somewhat. The maximum warming (between the surface and 120m depth) mainly affects oceans near the equator, where the incoming solar radiation is at a maximum. In contrast, net cooling has been pronounced for the North Atlantic since 2004." |
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| The New Energy Economy: an exercise in wishful thinking. |
Read this well written comment
by Mark Mills (Manhattan
Institute) which pours some cold water on
overhyped future energy scenarios:"This
“new energy economy” rests on the belief ... that
the technologies of wind and solar power and battery
storage are undergoing the kind of disruption
experienced in computing and communications,
dramatically lowering costs and increasing
efficiency... An energy revolution will come only
from the pursuit of basic sciences... These will
emerge from basic research, not from subsidies for
yesterday’s technologies... Wind turbines, solar
arrays, and batteries, meanwhile, constitute a small
source of energy, and physics dictates that they
will remain so." Read also this article in Power Magazine: Solar power is economical today, but comes with challenges. |
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| Iceland's glaciers are expanding! | "The researchers were shocked by the discovery that all of Iceland’s glaciers, including Vatnajökull, Langjökull, Hofsjökull and Mýrdalsjökull, have expanded in the last twelve months". Just a question: why were the researchers shocked? Have good news become bad news in activist climatology? Read also here about growing Greenland glacier. | |||
| 5 continent aviation neutron survey |
We know that trans-continental flights at high
altitude are exposed to much higher radioactive
radiation (about 50 times that at ground-level). A
new research campaign focused on neutrons,
and found (rather surprisingly) that over 40% of the
radioactive dose comes from cosmogenic neutrons,
which are about 10 times more effective in creating
cellular damage than gamma rays. (Source: spaceweatherarchive.com) |
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| Energy Revolts & the Crisis of Europe's Green Energy Agenda | Look at this presentation given by Benny Peiser at the De-Greening Day in Amsterdam: : "...the EU's green energy policies have failed to solve the technological Achilles heel of intermittent renewables" | |||
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Lying with science: a guide to myth debunking |
Read this article by Matt Ridley in "The Spectator": "Newspapers, politicians and pressure groups have been moving smoothly for decades from one forecast apocalypse to another (nuclear power, acid rain, the ozone layer, mad cow disease, nanotechnology, genetically modified crops, the millennium bug…) without waiting to be proved right or wrong...Some people are willing to forgive exaggeration and error if it is in a good cause, like increasing concern about plastics or climate change. This is a risky strategy because it encourages a Trump-like refusal to believe evidence even when that evidence is good" | |||
| La transition énergétique est inutile, coûteuse et injuste |
writes Rémy Prud'homme in a report
contributing to the "Grand Débat National" in
France.
Prud'homme is a former professor invited to the MIT, directeur adjoint at the OECD, consultant for the
World Bank etc..., so this report is not the work of
an amateur.
"Une politique forte, qui contraindrait les pays de l’OCDE à réduire de moitié leurs rejets annuels d’ici à 2050, réduirait cette augmentation de la moyenne des températures du globe à 0,23 °C. Par rapport à l’évolution « naturelle », cette lourde politique de transition aurait donc pour effet de réduire la moyenne des températures de 0,027 °C" |
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| Was tragen CO2 und die Sonne zur globalen Erwärmung bei ? | Very interesting and easy to follow presentation by Prof. Hermann Harde (Uni. Helmut-Schmit, Hamburg). Using a simple but complete 2 layer model (which includes convection and evaporation) he suggests that the observed global warming is caused to 65% by solar influence and to 35% by rising CO2 levels. | |||
| Grid-Scale Storage | Very interesting new report on electricity storage by Prof. Jack Ponton (Uni. Edinburgh) on storage technologies of intermittent electricity producers like solar, wind and tidal. The report is easy to read, sober and realistic. "There seems to be no possibility that any existing storage technology can handle the intermittency of wind generation and make it effectively dispatchable...Solar plus battery storage is probably already cost-competitive for locations in or near the tropics...Only storage as hydrogen could provide summer to-winter storage (in the UK), but cost and lack of suitable storage sites would rule out this approach...The combination of tidal stream generation and pumped storage (are) worth consideration. However, the number of tidal sites with sufficient stream velocity to provide useful generation in the neap tide-season may be limited" | |||
| Climate change denier |
There is a
reprint of a comment of Prof.
Robert
G. Brown from Duke University on the use of the
term "climate change denier" in WUWT. His
text starts after the title "UPDATE" after Dr.
Bain's letter. Please read
this clear and sober comment from a theoretical
physicist: "... if one examines the complete geological record of global temperature variation on planet Earth (as best as we can reconstruct it) not just over the last 200 years but over the last 25 million years, over the last billion years — one learns that there is absolutely nothing remarkable about today’s temperatures! " Read also this article by Thomas Sowell, Stanford University. |
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| Deficiencies in the IPCC's Special Report on 1.5 Degrees | Paper by Prof. Ray Bates. Look how the global average heat content of the upper 300m water layer of the oceans varied since 1910 (ECMWF CERA-20C reanalysis ensemble). Do you notice a continuous ongoing warming? (look here at Fig.4 for more on the ECMWF reanalysis) | |||
Ban plastic straws and bags? Then what?
|
Beware of the unintended consequences! "...maybe we should think about the climate benefits of plastic" says Rachel A. Meidl (PhD) "Simply introducing single-use plastic bans without first defining the problem and contemplating a practical, holistic plan is premature and will result in rudimentary, dead-ended and misguided policies".Read also this GWPF paper on this subject. |
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| Sinking Tehran | Tehran (Teheran), Persia's capital, breaks the world record in sinking: up to 25 cm a year. The cause: not climate change but excessive extraction of groundwater. (Nature Communications) | |||
| COP24 KATOWICE 2018 | 1084 pages long list of the 22771 delegates at COP24. The relatively small African country of Guinea sends 406 delegates! Read comment (in German) here. Luxembourg dispatched 25 persons, see page 348. This makes 1 delegate per 30318 people for Guinea and 1 delegate per 24080 people for Luxembourg. | |||
| Extra-strong solar Coronal Mass Ejection triggers more than 4000 sea-mines during the Vietnam War (4 August 1972) |
. Read this
paper based on declassified Naval documents.
(h.t. spaceweather.com):
"this
storm deserves a scientific revisit as a grand
challenge for the space weather community"
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| Basic Science of a Changing Climate | This was the theme of a series of conferences organized by the University of PORTO in September 2018. Click here to start reading/downloading the presentations and posters and view the videos. | |||
| The intensity of cosmic rays is increasing |
Another natural phenomenon to scare the
people out of their minds: as we enter into a very
deep solar minimum, the intensity of cosmic rays
is increasing. Beware of planned flights, or of
a career in the flying industry :-)) Read this well-written article from NASA's Spaceweather. Just to confuse you definitively: read this paper on the relation-ship between death and Solar Activity (SA): lower SA will haste your journey to the Styx! (but curiously higher Cosmic Rays will make you live longer, go figure!) |
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| The $2.5 Trillion Reason We Can’t Rely on Batteries to Clean up the Grid |
Very good article showing that using lithium-ion
batteries for electricity storage in a 100%
solar/wind/hydro fluctuating grid is impossible
(electricity costs presumed to be 49 $/MWh for 50%
renewables would go up to 1612 $/MWh for 100%
renewables). |
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| On the economic nobelists of the year |
Read this
good article on the 2018 economic nobelists
Romer and Nordhaus.
Nordhaus models give an optimum
strategy with a CO2 tax starting at 30$/to, and
accepting a warming between 2.5 and 4°C. Read also this comment by Rémy Prud'homme with the conclusion "S’il présentait ses travaux à une réunion du GIEC, de l’IDDRI, ou d’un Climate Finance Summit, le Professeur Nordhaus serait accueilli à coup d’insultes et de tomates." |
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| Global Warming for the two cultures. |
The
lecture given by emeritus Prof. Richard Lindzen
(MIT) is a model of clarity: no avalanche of
graphs, no incomprehensible statistics, no moral
hype, no breathless "the end is nigh", just an
extremely accessible text. Two citations will
do: "An implausible conjecture backed by false
evidence and repeated incessantly has become
politically correct 'knowledge'......What we will be
leaving our grandchildren is not a planet damaged by
industrial progress, but a record of unfathomable
silliness." |
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| An ode to nuclear waste |
Read this
wonderful article by the Dutch journalist Marco Visscher, published at spiked-online. |
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| Science educators need to talk about the identity of scientists. | Read this well written article by Alan Levinovitz in the Washington Post about the scientific method, the fudging of data and morality in science research."At no point in my science education did I learn about fraudulent, biased or mistaken scientific conclusions...we should remember that what we want to believe — what’s easiest to believe — isn’t necessarily true." | |||
| Europe's renewable energy directive poised to harm global forests |
... and will even increase CO2
emissions! "Wood that reaches a power plant can displace fossil fuel emissions but per kWh of electricity typically emits 1.5x the CO2 of coal and 3x the CO2 of natural gas" One of the authors says that “Treating wood as a carbon-neutral fuel is a simple policy decision with complex cascading effects on forest use, energy systems, wood trade and biodiversity worldwide. Clearly, many of these effects have not received due attention.” Read also this article: Why burning trees for energy harms the climate. and this article from Ireland: ‘Green’ home heating fuels causing ‘extreme levels of air pollution’ Click here for a picture showing that only 15% of the PM10's come from transportation, whereas wood burning contributes 27%. |
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| Does Global Warming Drive Changes in Arctic Sea Ice? |
Now that Arctic annual sea-ice minimum is higher than in many years a decade ago and Greenland ice sheet has for the 2nd year gained extraordinary more mass, chamjamal has an interesting blog paper showing that global temperatures increase is not statistically relied to Arctic sea-ice extent: "It is found that of the twelve calendar months only two contain both statistically significant sea ice loss and statistically significant correlation of the rate of sea ice loss with global warming...It is likely that the observed loss in sea ice area is a more complex phenomenon". |
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| Land-use emissions play a critical role in land-based mitigation for Paris climate targets | There is a new and interesting paper by Anne Harper (and 25 co-authors!) on the efficiency of bio-energy crops with carbon storage in the underground versus reforestation. The conclusion is that bio-energy crops (even with CCS) might well be a poor choice in CO2 avoidance and should be replaced by forest management. This long paper sits entirely on the outcomes of models and their vastly different conclusions....How miserable would the climatologist's life be if he had no models! (Nature Communications). | |||
| Highview Power storage system | Forget batteries, rare lithium, toxic ingredients etc. to store electrical energy: liquefy air with surplus electrical power and evaporate the air to drive turbines and generators to recoup (some of) the stored energy. The UK company Highview Power just made this happen, with a facility that uses mostly common components and easy to recycle steel. Is this the definitive solution for electricity storage? | |||
| Battle for the Climate and Democracy | Is the "battle for the climate" (bataille pour le climat) not compatible with democracy? Read this comment of Benoìt Rittaud (in French), English translation here): "...nous avons perdu toute capacité collective à mener un débat normal sur le climat." | |||
| Cargo-cult statistics and scientific crisis |
An excellent paper on science, research and
(mis)use of statistics by
Prof. Stark (Berkeley) and Saltelli (Oberta). One of
the best articles written on this subject for the
last 10 years! "cargo-cult statistics – the ritualistic miming of statistics rather than conscientious practice. This has become the norm in many disciplines, reinforced and abetted by statistical education, statistical software, and editorial policies" Read also this excellent paper by Carl Wunsch (from MIT): "The perils of near-tabloid-science" |
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| The State of World's Beaches |
A new paper by A. Luijendijk et al. on the changes of world beaches
has been published by Nature's Scientific Reports.
Globally there are more positive than negative
changes since 1984.
"Australia and Africa are the only continents
for which net erosion (−0.20 m/yr and −0.07 m/yr
respectively) is found, with all other
continents showing net accretion." The authors also have set up a very clever Google Earth map which shows where beaches are increasing or eroding. Click on the left map and zoom up to see the bars corresponding to the detected trends. |
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| Open letter of members of the Geological Society | A group of 33 geologists (current and former fellows of the GSL) wrote an open letter to its president contesting the GSL's position on climate change. One important argument is this one: "Why the 285 ppm of atmospheric CO2 estimated for the beginning of the Industrial Revolution is in any way, a desirable benchmark. It coincides with the Victorian Little Ice Age, a period of starvation and population decline, which cannot possibly be a desirable target, unless you want to depopulate the earth." | |||
| Save the oceans...stop recycling plastic | Prof. Mikko Paunio (University of Helsinky) has a very interesting paper (published by the GWPF), where he suggests to stop recycling plastics and burn it instead in incinerators. This to avoid the leakage of disused plastic shipped (by many EU countries) to Asia, where a big part finds its way into the streams and the oceans. He concludes that "Austria, Denmark and Sweden have been at the forefront ... and should be seen as environmental leaders. However, their remarkable progress in managing MSW (municipal solid waste)... is now being compromised by the EU’s new anti-incineration stance." | |||
| Compendium on the German Energiewende |
The "Bundesinitiative für vernünftige
Energiepolitik" VERNUNFTKRAFT has published a
large
Compendium on the German Energiewende,
whose "ambitious" targets for 2020 will not be
achieved (link to English translation). The compendium says that "wind and solar energy, which seem to promise a quick fix, are not simple alternatives to fossil fuels... What we therefore need is a large-scale and generous energy research programme that covers all aspects of energy efficiency, storage, transport and generation in a technology neutral manner..." Original German edition here. |
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| Tokamak Energy |
A new break-through on the way for a
small nuclear fusion reactor. The privately
financed company
Tokamak Energy (Oxford, UK) has achieved
in its ST4 prototype reactor a plasma hotter
than 15 million degrees C.
More
here and read
here of the now defunct Alcator C-Mod
which set a world record in 2016 in the USA. Watch this time-lapse video of the construction of the ST40 which gives a good idea of its small scale. Lockheed-Martin patented its Compact Fusion Reactor recently in Feb.2018: look here and here. So there is much research worldwide on smaller fusion reactors which might become operational well in advance of the ITER behemoth. Speak about this to the people who think that nuclear energy belongs to the past! |
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| A Critical Look at Claims for Green Technologies |
Vaclav SMIL, emeritus professor of the University of Manitoba, published a very interesting article in the IEEE Spectrum (3Jun2018): "...many of today’s ambitions will not become tomorrow’s realities..." and concludes "While it is easy to extoll—and to exaggerate—the seductive promise of the new, its coming will be a complicated, gradual, and lengthy process constrained by many realities." |
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| Four questions on climate change. | Very interesting article by Garth Paltridge, published at Prof. Judith Curry's blog. | |||
| The impact of recent forcing and ocean heat uptake data on estimates of climate sensitivity |
by Nic Lewis and Judith Curry in the Journal of Climate,
which finds in essence that the IPCC scenarios
run much too hot! Read Dr. Roy Spencer's comment here. |
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| State of the Climate 2017 | Prof. Ole Humlum (the author of the climate4you.com website) has written the GWPF report #30. This report uses only observations (not the output of climate models) and discusses the most important climate trends. A crystal clear and sober writing style makes this an absolutely must read ! | |||
| PAGES2k project | Arctic temperatures in perspective: see what the (corrected) PAGES2k project tells us! More on the blog. | |||
Update on the Worsening Particle Radiation Environment Observed by CRaTER and Implications for Future Human Deep‐Space Exploration |
The unusually low solar activity brings new dangers for space flight from increasing cosmic rays. Schwadron et al. (University of New Hampshire) published an update paper to the new limits for days spent in space. Read the blog. | |||
| A Case Study in Groupthink | Christopher Booker (a journalist, author and historian) has written a very interesting essay on groupthink in the current climate change/global warming debate (essay published as the GWPF Report #28). Prof. R. Lindzen wrote some punching sentences in the foreword like "...how do otherwise intelligent people come to believe such arrant nonsense despite its implausibility, internal contradictions, contradictory data, evident corruption and ludicrous policy implications." Read the monograph, and make out your own opinion! | |||
| Gefahren durch Autoabgase bewusst aufgebauscht? | ..says Prof. Dr. med Köhler, a famous German lung specialist. On the many studies which find that NO2 and fine particles are causing xxxxxx deaths per year he says "Diese Studien sind eine der größten Seifenblasen, die es gibt." Now that many cities plan outing Diesel cars, a cooler appreciation of the many claims that even low levels of NO2 are dangerous is overdue. | |||
| The Thorium Molten Salt Reactor |
Interesting video ("Thorium - Atomkraft ohne Risiko?"in German) by ARTE on the (rediscovered) molten salt reactor, first proposed by Alvin Weinberg et al. at Oak Ridge Nat. Lab. in the fifties. This type of reactor belongs to the so-called 4th generation, heavily investigated in India and China, but practically ignored by the main-stream media in Germany. |
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| Evidence for a continuous decline in lower stratospheric ozone offsetting ozone layer recovery |
This new paper by W.T.Ball (ETHZ) and 21 (!) co-authors made big splashes in the media for its main finding that the total ozone column in the lower stratosphere is declining (contrary to what should be expected if the Montreal protocol was efficient). As usual, journalists did not read the fine print...so look at my blog ! |
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| Can Climate Models Predict Climate Change? | Short (5 minutes) and easy video at PragerU by Prof. William Happer (Princeton University). You may guess the answer in advance! | |||
| The sea-level budget along the Northwest Atlantic coast GIA, mass changes, and large-scale ocean dynamics | Paper by Thomas Frederikse et al. (Uni Delft) on sea-level changes along the US Northern West coast. One of the main conclusions is that possible human caused rise (through ice melt) is small compared to natural ground movements. More on the blog. | |||
| Benoît Rittaud, interview AGEFI | Benoît Rittaud, president of the French "Association des Climato-Réalistes", mathematician at the Université Paris 13, was interviewed by the Luxembourg journal of finance AGEFI. Read (in French) this crystal clear interview: "Les alarmistes du climat ont remarquablement réussi à se donner l’image de groupes désintéressés, de joyeuses bandes de hippies uniquement préoccupées du sort de la planète. En réalité, il est avant tout question de gros sous..." | |||
| Diurnal cloud cycle biases in climate models | A new paper by Yin et al. (Nature Communications) finds that climate models have big errors with the daily cloud cycle: they get the amplitude and the phase (= hour of maximum) wrong, which can lead to a radiative error up to 2.7 W/m2 to be compared to the 3.7 W/m2 radiative forcing assumed by the increase of atmospheric CO2 since pre-industrial times. Read also here. | |||
| Wieviel Zappelstrom veträgt das Netz? |
Watch the presentation by Prof. Hans-Werner SINN given at the LMU (Ludwig-Maximilian Universität München) on the German Energiewende (duration: 01:15). "Wissen wir wirkich was wir tun? ...zumal wenn man bedenkt wie wenig zum Schluss bei dieser Sache herauskommt". Read the paper on which this presentation is based. |
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| Increased ionization supports growth of aerosols into cloud condensation nuclei. | With solar activity at a historic low, the dwindling solar wind is unable to chase away the cosmic rays reaching the earth. As a consequence, atmospheric (stratospheric) radioactivity is increasing since 2015! According to Svensmark's cosmic rays theory (and experiments), the result should be an increase in (lower) cloud cover and some cooling.(h.t. www.spaceweather.com) | |||
| Heretical Thoughts about Science and Society |
Fed up with climate scare? Global
warming and COP23 blues? Read this gem of an
essay (2005) of the great physicist Freeman
Dyson:
:
"As a scientist I do not have much faith in
predictions". |
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| On sea level change | Prof. Judith Curry has an interesting (provisional) slideshow on sea level that puts things back into perspective. She predicts 3 to 8 inch (about 7 to 20 cm) from 2017 to 2050, an insignificant number. Just to show how silly the global sea level as a valuable metric is, look here for the sea level changes in Oslo (climate4you graph).What's important is the local sea level change, not a modelized global level. | |||
| Climate Change: The Rule in the Geological Record | With COP23 coming to steam, it would be a good idea to re-read the presentation by Prof. Alain Préat (ULB): "If one thing has been constant about Earth's climate over geological time, it is constant change." | |||
| Did European temperatures in 1540 exceed present days records? |
... asks René Orth and
co-authors from ETHZ, Uni. Giessen and Uni. Bern
in a paper published in IOP (open access).
The answer is probably yes (medium confidence in IPCC speak)! "Our results
show medium confidence that summer mean temperatures(TJJA) and maximum temperatures(TXx)
in Central Europe in 1540 were warmer than the
respective present-day mean summer temperatures
(assessed between 1966–2015)". (h.t. GWPF) |
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| Recent increases in terrestrial carbon uptake at little cost to the water cycle |
Higher atmospheric CO2 levels increase global
plant productivity and water usage efficiency,
according to Cheng et al. in Nature
Communications (July 2017, link to pdf) Read blog and this comment here |
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| Daring to Doubt |
Tony Abbott, former Australian prime minister,
gave on the 9th October 2017 a lecture at the GWPF in London. You might not agree with every statement made, but reflect on these two sentences: 1." Beware the pronouncement, “the science is settled”. It’s the spirit of the Inquisition, the thought-police down the ages." 2. "A market that’s driven by subsidies rather than by economics always fails. Subsidy begets subsidy until the system collapses into absurdity." Click for video. |
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| Are Climate Models Overstating Warming? |
Ross McKitrick (University of Guelph) has a
comment on Climate Etc. :
"The
model-observational discrepancy is real, and
needs to be taken into account especially when
using models for policy guidance." Read also here, here and here and this comment from Michel de Rougemont: "To date, no instrumental observations made in our climate system can disentangle anthropogenic effects and natural variations." |
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| The Little Boy |
New important publication by Prof. A. Tsonis (atmospheric science, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) on ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation) and its relation to climate change: "...the climate system consists of distinct subsystems whose interplay dictates decadal variability...ENSO and it's cousins do, however, underscore the importance of natural variability in climate change." The paper has very good non-mathematical explanations and descriptions of chaotic and coupled systems and its attractors |
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| Environmental Reporting in a Post Truth World. |
Dr. David Blackall (University of
Wollongong) has published an interesting paper
at Sage.
In a very clear and easy to understand language
he gives many examples how the media ignore
major scientific results that they find "inconveniant"
or ""dissenting". His conclusions: "...journalists
need to understand science...they need to
question the key players and to look to the
agendas that may be driving them..." (There are 2 errors at page 4: do you find them?) |
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| Climate-driven variability in the occurrence of major floods across North America and Europe |
Hurricanes and climate
change: Brand-new paper by Hodgins et al. "Climate-driven
variability in the occurrence of major floods
across North America and Europe" published in ScienceDirect: "The number of significant
trends was about the number expected due to
chance alone" Read Dr. Roy Spencer's comment here and this comment in the Spectator (UK) blog here. |
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| Transatomic White Paper 2.1. (Nov.2016) | TransAtomicPower is a new startup company created by former young MIT researchers. Its aim is to develop a molten salt nuclear reactor (a modification of the ORNL type) that is inherently safe, creates less than half spent fuel as the actual PWR's, is proliferation resistent and runs for decades providing stable, carbon-free base-load power, and possibly load following for grids impacted by intermittent wind/solar producers. | |||
| "Paleoclimate Cycles are Key Analogs for Present Day (Holocene) Warm Period" |
Renée Hannon, a geoscience advisor at the
University of Texas at Dallas, has a very good
guest comment at WUWT.
Look
what will happen when
this warm period is going to end similarly to
the previous one. I really appreciate her conclusion: "Because the astronomical processes affecting significant climate changes are beyond human control our focus should be on adaptation rather than climate manipulation. It is not a question if cooling will occur but simply a question of when." |
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It is with great sadness that I have to inform that Prof. Istvan Marko has passed
away on July 31th. I. Marko was a regular
professor of organic chemistry at the UCL (Université
catholique de Louvain, Belgium), and a
courageous and outspoken climate realist. His
many writings and presentations on climate
matters were first class science, crystal clear and often very
witty. Look at this
interview
(2016), and these two videos ([1]
[2]
in French, Agora Erasmus 2015). Here links to 4 pdf's, the last one being a presentation given for the Rotary Club in Luxembourg, 2016: [1] [2] [3] [4] Read also this comment on the NTZ blog |
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| Pronounced differences between observed and CMIP5 simulated multidecadal 2 climate variability in the twentieth century |
An important new
paper in GRL by Kravtsov & Callicutt on
the failure of the IPCC CMIP5 model ensemble to
correctly represent oceanic oscillations:"The observed internal variability
exhibits a pronounced multidecadal mode with a
distinctive spatiotemporal signature, which is
altogether absent in model simulations..." |
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| The Uncertainty has Settled |
Watch this excellent documentary from Marijn
POELS on Vimeo (video on demand, ~4.5 Euro)
questioning "modern" energy trends and changing
climate. Featuring Freeman Dyson, Piers Corbyn,
Hans von Storch and other scientists. |
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| What happened to the traditional role of skepticism in climate science? |
I am a great fan of Forrest M. MIMS III whom
I admire for his qualities of a long standing
exceptional "maker", his publications on
electronics and an outstanding book on the Mauna
Loa research station (look
here). This "hors norme" inventor and builder
is also the designer of the Microtops
instruments we use at meteoLCD for measuring the
total ozone column. He is a climate realist and a strong defender of the virtue of skepticism in science. Read here his comment in WUWT |
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| New Insights on the Physical Nature of the Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect Deduced from an Empirical Planetary Tempertaure Model |
A new paper by Nikolov and Zeller in "Environment Pollution and Climate Change" finds that global average near surface temperature for many celestial bodies depends only on solar irradiance and atmospheric pressure: no need to introduce greenhouse gases to explain the thermal enhancement at the surface! Read also blog on this important paper. |
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| Fatalities at wind turbines may threaten population viability of a migratory bat | A new paper by Frick et al. in Biological Conservation (Feb.2017) pours cold water on the naive beliefs that wind power may easily save the planet: "...we show that mortality from wind turbines may drastically reduce population size and increase the risk of extinction" | |||
| Private Benefit of CO2 and its Social Cost | New paper by Prof. Richard TOL (University of Sussex):"The private benefit of carbon (411 $/tCO2) is much higher than the social cost of carbon (12 $/tCO2)." | |||
| Nucléaire et Eolien: Etude comparée de démantèlement |
Very interesting article
(in French) by Jean Pierre Riou with surprising
results: cost for nuclear decommissioning: 1.85 €/MWh cost for wind turbine removal: 4.32 €/MWh Look also here. |
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| Acceleration in European Mean Sea Level? |
This is an excellent new paper by Phil
J. Watson in the Journal of Coastal Research
(Jan.2017) titled:
(note the question mark!).In short: no acceleration, relative sea-level
changes are modest and are negative in
regions where uplifting due to glacial rebound
is high (Baltic). |
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| Delayed warming hiatus over the Tibetan Plateau | New paper by An et al. finds that the Tibetan Plateau and China cooled down by about 0.2°C during last decade. | |||
| Diminishing number of weatherstations |
Look at this
graph from NOAA showing how the number of land-based
weather stations has plummeted during the
1990's. What is more intriguing is that the
percentage of air port located stations
increased from 40% to 75%: is the measured
warming a surprise? |
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| Berliner-Kreis: Klima- und Energie Standpunkt | A position of the "Berliner-Kreis" group of conservative CDU members which question and disagree with the official "Merkel" policy (02Jun2017) | |||
| About intellectuals and climate alarmism | From Frits Bolkestein, the former Dutch minister and European Commissioner. The link shows the English translation of the original Dutch article): "Censorship looms large in the field of climatology, which is not conducive to balanced decision-making...Why do so many intellectuals take pleasure in predicting catastrophes? Is it because they relish attention by the media? Or has it anything to do with Christian guilt feelings?" | |||
| Thoughts on the Public Discourse over Climat Change |
Discussion on an article by Prof. Richard Lindzen (emerited, MIT) published the 25th April 2017."The accumulation of false and/or misleading claims is often referred to as the ‘overwhelming evidence’ for forthcoming catastrophe." |
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| Tokamak Energy | A private UK company is developing a small tokamak-style fusion reactor and achieved its first plasma creation. The company plans to have a small fusion reactor ready to deliver energy into the electricity grid in 2030 | |||
| Was wäre wenn wir alle elektrisch fahren würden? |
Caustic article by physicist Vince Ebert in "Spektrum der Wissenschaften" (19 März 2017): "Um 30 Kilogramm Benzin zu ersetzen, brauchen Sie derzeit eine moderne Lithiumionen-Batterie, die rund 900 Kilogramm wiegt...wir bräuchten sogar knapp 140 neue Kraftwerke oder 220 000 Windräder oder eine Fotovoltaikanlage von der Größe des Saarlands, um den zusätzlichen Strombedarf zu decken" |
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| Cosmic Rays, Solar Activity and Changes in the Earth's Climate |
New 2017 paper by Russian scientists (Science
Academy, Moscow State University) Y.I.Stozhkov et al. (link
to paywalled version). They predict (as many
others did before) a coming cooling, based on spectral analysis of
past climate and correlation of global temperature change with the
measured flux of cosmic particles in the
lower 0.3 to 2.2 km atmosphere. This paper is
refreshingly short and very readable! A more extensive blog comment is here. |
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| Energiewende - Index Deutschland | A new report from McKinsey says that "...Die Kosten steigen weiter....Zentrale Ziele werden verfehlt und rücken in immer weitere Ferne...CO2 Ausstoss weit über dem Limit....das Preisniveau für deutschen Haushaltsstrom liegt 47.3% über dem europäischen Durchschnitt".This report bites and hurts! (more on the BLOG) | |||
| Climate models for the layman |
An excellent must read new briefing paper by Prof. Judith Curry (ex. GeorgiaTech): "... there is a secular warming trend at least since 1800 (and possibly as long as 400 years) that cannot be explained by carbon dioxide... " |
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| Exxon Mobile 2017 Outlook for Energy: A view to 2040 | The part of renewables remains rather modest (less than 15%, with wind and solar extremely poor), the total of carbon-free energy (which includes nuclear) about 22%, which leaves still 78% for fossil fuels. | |||
| "Tanktourismus-Bericht" Luxemburg 2016 | Dr. Dieter Ewringmann from the FiFo Institute (Köln) wrote a report on Luxembourg's pump tourism (i.e. the costs and benefits of selling large quantities of fuel at the pump to drivers from abroad). Read my comments here (with links to short and full versions of the report). All parts (1,2,3 and 4) of the discussion are now on-line. | |||
| Third Industrial Revolution Lëtzebuerg |
The great "Third Industrial Revolution Lëtzebuerg" report by Jeremy Rifkin has been released.I wrote a multi-part discussion of this 475 page blockbuster in my blog. Links to short and full version are included. |
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| Earth climate identification vs. anthropic global warming attribution |
Prof. Philippe de Larminat (from Ecole Centrale
de Nantes), a specialist in systems theory, has
published a very interesting paper in Elsevier's
"Annual Reviews in Control".
He applies systems theory to the climate data
and finds that, contrary to what the IPCC
says, "the natural contributions by solar and
internal variability could be the dominant
factor in recent global warming". Excellent and clear paper with some not too difficult maths! |
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