Archive for September, 2020

EPA Warns California: Ban On Gas-Powered Cars Possibly Illegal

Posted: September 30, 2020 by oldbrew in government, ideology, Legal, Travel
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Los Angeles, CA


A spot of ‘see you in court’ sabre-rattling seems to be going on here. At some point over-zealous climate ideology will get exposed, as power cuts get ever more unavoidable. California’s rulers want to lead the charge into that elephant trap, although they would put it differently.

H/T Climate Change Dispatch.
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Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler on Monday warned in a letter sent to California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) that his executive order banning gas-powered vehicles may be unlawful, Reuters reports.

Wheeler wrote that Newsom’s plan “raises serious questions regarding its legality and practicality” and argued that it may cause further issues problems plaguing the state’s electrical grid.

“California’s record of rolling blackouts – unprecedented in size and scope – coupled with recent requests to neighboring states for power begs the question of how you expect to run an electric car fleet that will come with significant increases in electricity demand when you can’t even keep the lights on today,” the Trump official stated.

Newsom has yet to reply to the EPA.

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

Posted: September 29, 2020 by oldbrew in ENSO, predictions, weather

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

New study shows converting to electric vehicles alone won’t meet climate targets

Posted: September 29, 2020 by oldbrew in Emissions, modelling, research, solar system dynamics, Travel
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Teslas in Norway [image credit: Norsk Elbilforening (Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association)]


Delete ‘alone’. The study is essentially redundant, as a reduction from 0.04% of carbon dioxide’s very small share of the atmosphere won’t do anything noticeable to the climate anyway. However it does highlight some difficulties with the current policies pretending to ‘tackle the climate crisis’, such as the massive increase in electricity generation needed to power hundreds of millions of electric vehicles. Closing down all thermal power plants is not compatible with such a policy, as the researchers admit, but climate obsessives may not want to face up to that.
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Today there are more than 7 million electric vehicles (EVs) in operation around the world, compared with only about 20,000 a decade ago, says Phys.org.

It’s a massive change—but according to a group of University of Toronto Engineering researchers, it won’t be nearly enough to address the global climate crisis.

“A lot of people think that a large-scale shift to EVs will mostly solve our climate problems in the passenger vehicle sector” says Alexandre Milovanoff, lead author of a new paper published today in Nature Climate Change.

“I think a better way to look at it is this: EVs are necessary, but on their own, they are not sufficient.”

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Nuclear power: Suffolk’s Sizewell C is too expensive says ex-energy minister Ed Davey

Posted: September 27, 2020 by oldbrew in Energy, Nuclear power, opinion
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As someone until last month involved with a renewables company, he would say that, wouldn’t he? The green jobs claim may also be over-optimistic, if Scotland’s experience is anything to go by.
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Ed Davey, who approved a nuclear plant in 2013, says the “economic case” is no longer there, reports BBC News.

Instead the new Liberal Democrat leader argues the government should invest more in renewable energy to help boost the economy.

“The economic case for nuclear power is not there any more,” said Mr Davey.

Energy firm EDF, which is behind the £20bn proposals, said the plant on the Suffolk coast would deliver low-carbon electricity.

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Film ‘Climate Hustle 2’ Targets Hollywood’s Green Hypocrisy, Double Standards

Posted: September 26, 2020 by oldbrew in alarmism, climate, Critique

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How much longer will the climate alarm circus get away with its dodgy propaganda and assertions?

PA Pundits - International's avatarPA Pundits International

ImageBy Kevin Mooney ~

Politicians, media figures, and Hollywood elites who maintain lavish lifestyles while advocating restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions are on full display in a new documentary.

ImageIn a scene from the documentary “Climate Hustle 2,” Marc Morano, left, interviews Alex Epstein, author of “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels,” on a beach in Southern California. (Photo courtesy of CFACT)

“Climate Hustle 2: Rise of the Climate Monarchy” is a sequel to the 2016 documentary film “Climate Hustle,” which questioned the premise of theories linking human activity with potentially catastrophic climate change.

“Climate Hustle 2” is not in theaters because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but was scheduled to be streamed as of  8 p.m. Thursday and available for replay through Sunday.

The new film builds on the findings of the first one while taking a deeper dive into motivations behind climate change initiatives such as the

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The strange storms on Jupiter

Posted: September 26, 2020 by oldbrew in Maths, research, solar system dynamics, wind
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Cyclones in Jupiter’s atmosphere [image credit: NASA]


At the south pole of Jupiter lurks a striking sight—even for a gas giant planet covered in colorful bands that sports a red spot larger than the Earth, says Phys.org.

Down near the south pole of the planet, mostly hidden from the prying eyes of humans, is a collection of swirling storms arranged in an unusually geometric pattern.

Since they were first spotted by NASA’s Juno space probe in 2019, the storms have presented something of a mystery to scientists.

The storms are analogous to hurricanes on Earth. However, on our planet, hurricanes do not gather themselves at the poles and twirl around each other in the shape of a pentagon or hexagon, as do Jupiter’s curious storms.

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Global warming hiatus was real, Chinese study finds 

Posted: September 25, 2020 by oldbrew in Natural Variation, pause, research, Temperature
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Snow-covered UK, January 2010 [image credit: NASA]


The inconvenient ‘pause’ following the strong El Niño of 1997-98 comes back to life in this study. Attempts by climate alarmists to bury it have failed.
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A new analysis of global air temperature by researchers from Tongji University in Shanghai has cast light on the much debated recent hiatus in global temperature, says Dr David Whitehouse @ The GWPF.

Writing in the Journal of Earth Science the Chinese scientists say there was a rapid rise in global mean surface air temperature after the late 1970s but that this stalled and there was a relative stagnation and even slight cooling that lasted for about 15 years (1998–2012).

They add that even though the slowdown was acknowledged by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report (IPCC AR5) and termed as a hiatus (IPCC, 2013) there was a debate in the scientific community about whether there was a hiatus in global warming or not.

The researchers believe that the debate about the global warming hiatus poses a substantial challenge to our understanding of the global climate response to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and natural variability.

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UK can be ‘Saudi Arabia of wind power’ – PM 

Posted: September 24, 2020 by oldbrew in Big Green, Energy, government, ideology, net zero
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Saudi Arabia exports oil. Who does he plan to export electricity to – Ireland perhaps? The green lobby obviously wrote his script, but nobody told him ‘carbon’ theories of climate don’t cut the mustard. And how does his plan work if Scotland leaves the UK? Something’s blustery other than the weather.
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Prime Minister Boris Johnson says he wants to make a “big bet” on renewables, turning the UK into the “Saudi Arabia” of wind power, reports BBC News.

Speaking via video link to a climate roundtable discussion at the UN in New York, Mr Johnson said the country held “extraordinary potential for wind”.

He said the UK should embrace a range of new technologies to achieve its goal of net zero emissions by 2050.

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Nicola Scafetta: Jupiter’s orbital eccentricity may drive ~60yr and millennial climate cycles.

Posted: September 24, 2020 by tallbloke in solar system dynamics
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Figure 3. The 60‐year eccentricity function (blue) of Jupiter (see Figure 2) against: (a) the HadCRUT global surface temperature record (Morice et al., 2012) detrended of its quadratic polynomial fit f(t) ¼ a(t − 1850)2 + b (cf. Scafetta, 2010, 2016) (correlation coefficient r^2 = 0:5, p < 0.01); (b) the 5‐year running average of the Indian summer monsoon rainfall from 1813 to 1998 (Agnihotri & Dutta, 2003) (correlation coefficient r^2 = 0:5, p < 0.01)


 Plain Language Summary 

The physical origin of the modulation of the cloud system and of many of the Earth’s climate oscillations from the decadal to the millennial timescales is still unclear, despite its importance in climate science. One of the most prominent oscillations has a period of about 60 years and is found in a number of geophysical records such as temperature reconstructions, aurora sights, Indian rainfalls, ocean climatic records, and in many others. These oscillations might emerge from the internal variability of the climate system, but increasing evidence also points toward a solar or astronomical origin.

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Scotland’s ‘green jobs’ fiasco

Posted: September 24, 2020 by oldbrew in Big Green, Emissions, Energy, government, Subsidies
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Scottish offshore wind project [image credit : urbanrealm.com]


Electricity bill payers are in effect subsidising work that’s being exported round the world while promises of so-called green jobs for Scottish workers, and the government’s own ’emissions’ policies, are forgotten or ignored. The irony being that the high cost of UK electricity – and rising due to renewables – is part of the problem.
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A trade union has called for a halt to new offshore wind farms until a local supply chain is established, says The National (via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF).

GMB London echoed the growing anger from GMB Scotland after it was announced last week that contracts to supply turbine jackets for SSE’s offshore wind farm, Seagreen, in Angus, were awarded to firms in China and UAE.

The decision meant Scottish firm Burntisland Fabrications (BiFab) was left overlooked in favour of companies based thousands of miles away, even though it has engineering sites in the country, in Fife and Stornoway.

Despite BiFab securing backing from the Scottish Government to win the work, SSE Renewables claimed the gap between the submissions of foreign firms and BiFab was “too significant to close”.

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Ecologists confirm Alan Turing’s theory for Australian fairy circles

Posted: September 23, 2020 by oldbrew in modelling, research

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Image credit: Science News


We highlighted this in a 2016 blog post, and now new research provides this update.
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Fairy circles are one of nature’s greatest enigmas and most visually stunning phenomena, says Phys.org.

An international research team led by the University of Göttingen has now, for the first time, collected detailed data to show that Alan Turing’s model explains the striking vegetation patterns of the Australian fairy circles.

In addition, the researchers showed that the grasses that make up these patterns act as “eco-engineers” to modify their own hostile and arid environment, thus keeping the ecosystem functioning. The results were published in the Journal of Ecology.

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Aurora Cometalis: The Northern Lights of Comet 67P

Posted: September 23, 2020 by oldbrew in Electro-magnetism, solar system dynamics
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Scientists report electric fields naturally occurring in the comet’s atmosphere in connection with its auroras. NASA calls them electromagnetic emissions.

Dr.Tony Phillips's avatarSpaceweather.com

Sept. 22, 2020: Imagine putting your thumb on a garden hose and sending a jet of water into the sky. At the apex of the stream, auroras form. It turns out, some comets can actually perform this trick.

In a paper published this week in Nature Astronomy, researchers described how comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko turns vaporous jets of water into auroras.

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The European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft observed the weird lights while it was orbiting Comet 67P in 2014-2016. At first researchers misunderstood what the glow was. It couldn’t be an aurora, could it? For one thing, the comet doesn’t even have a magnetic field–a key ingredient of geomagnetic storms. Also, the lights of Comet 67P are invisible to the human eye. They shine at far ultraviolet wavelengths, unlike the familiar red and green curtains that dance around Earth’s poles.

“Nevertheless, they are auroras,” says Marina Galand of Imperial College London…

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Is Al Gore downsizing?

Posted: September 22, 2020 by oldbrew in alarmism, climate, Critique
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Countdown to another big climate yawnfest 🥱

PA Pundits - International's avatarPA Pundits International

ImageBy Peter Murphy~

Former Vice President turned nine-figure millionaire, Al Gore, long a global warming celebrity, will be among several speakers next month for a series of “TED Talks” to launch “Countdown,” which is a global initiative to deal with the “climate crisis.” The Countdown is pushing to reduce global carbon emissions in half by 2030 “in the race to a zero carbon world …that is safer, cleaner and fairer for everyone” (emphasis mine).

ImageNo one is against “safer, cleaner and fairer” in the abstract, which is why such terms are used incessantly in commercials, and by interest groups, politicians, salespeople and hucksters alike. I’m especially curious about that word “fairer” when it comes to climate activism. “Fairness” also is a subjective term; one person’s definition of fair is not necessarily another person’s.

From a political or policy standpoint, fairness is about who gets and who pays. The various…

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Airbus reveals ‘zero-emission’ plane plan – maybe by 2035

Posted: September 22, 2020 by oldbrew in Emissions, hydrogen, ideology, solar system dynamics, Travel
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Image credit: Airbus


Nonsensical climate virtue signalling takes to the skies. Hydrogen production is expensive, and operating two fuelling systems at airports also sounds costly. ‘Zero emission’ only applies if hydrogen is produced without burning any fuels – as the EU recently told the Netherlands – so the burden on renewables to power entire countries, plus all their vehicles, will have to extend to aircraft as well? Pie in the sky springs to mind.
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Aerospace giant Airbus has announced plans to build zero-emission aircraft using hydrogen power technology.

On Monday (21 September), the firm revealed three concept designs that are on the table and is targeting a 2035 entry-into-service, reports Euractiv.

Airbus is working on three designs for aircraft that could be zero-emission, which range from a conventional turbofan jet with space for 200 passengers to a ‘blended wing’ concept that is a significant departure from the current generation of planes.

“These concepts will help us explore and mature the design and layout of the world’s first climate-neutral, zero-emission commercial aircraft, which we aim to put into service by 2035,” said CEO Guillaume Faury.

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Research reveals “climate-change complacency” across Europe

Posted: September 21, 2020 by oldbrew in climate, research
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It seems most people rightly have little faith or interest in the alarmist output of climate models, and are unimpressed by claims that governments can somehow influence the climate by changing their energy policies.
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Most European citizens do not particularly care about climate change, complains Warwick University.

That’s the striking finding from new research on the views of 70,000 randomly sampled European men and women. Only 5% described themselves as “extremely worried” about climate change.

The climate and the environment ranked only fifth in people’s overall views about priorities. There was also scepticism that co-ordinated action, for example to cut personal energy use, would make much difference.

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Brussels shoots down Dutch plan to subsidize hydrogen to replace fossil fuels

Posted: September 20, 2020 by oldbrew in Emissions, Energy, hydrogen
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Irrational fear of a minor trace gas in the atmosphere, largely based on the output of failing climate models, continues to disrupt national energy policies. EU leaders add to the chaos and confusion.

The European Commission turned down Dutch plans to support hydrogen production with subsidies, reports the NL Times.

The government of the Netherlands wants to use hydrogen instead of other fossil fuels to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but because the Dutch plans got shot down, this will not be continued, Climate Minister Eric Wiebes told the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of Parliament, on Monday, according to FD.

The government saw possibilities to replace oil, natural gas and coal by hydrogen, especially within heavy industry.

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Construction begins on energy storage system relying on gravity

Posted: September 20, 2020 by oldbrew in Energy, Gravity, innovation
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The plan is to use abandoned coal mining shafts globally as power storage plants, and/or drill their own shafts if necessary. Costs are estimated to be lower than other existing energy storage options (see report for details).
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Gravity has been the center of wonderment for physicists, mathematicians and thinkers of all kinds for centuries, says TechXplore.

In the early 1600s, astronomer Galileo dropped balls from the Tower of Pisa and declared that gravitational acceleration is the same for all objects.

Decades later, Isaac Newton expanded on those thoughts and devised his theory of gravity, that all particles attract all other particles with a force directly proportional to the square of the distance between their centers.

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EU’s stricter CO2 targets “impossible”, say automakers

Posted: September 19, 2020 by oldbrew in climate, Emissions, ideology, Politics, Travel
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Money to burn?


The EU pushes ever further into its climate fantasy land, where so-called targets can be raised at will and the victims of them miraculously obey, regardless of any real world obstacles like actually selling cars. It prefers noises made by teenage ‘activists’ to anything said by the wealth-creating vehicle makers. The bill for this insanity is now expected to top a trillion euros every three years. Where are such gigantic sums supposed to come from?
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The EU’s target to reduce its industrial emissions by 2030 should increase from 40% to “at least 55%”, European Commission (EC) president Ursula von der Leyen said in her State of the Union address.

That would seriously burden Europe’s auto industry, says Fleet Europe.

The cause of decarbonisation is better served by better policies rather than stricter targets, ACEA counters.

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Solar Panels Generate Mountains Of Waste – And Heat The Planet

Posted: September 19, 2020 by oldbrew in Big Green, Critique, Energy
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Time for climate obsessives to look the other way — again.

PA Pundits - International's avatarPA Pundits International

ImageBy Duggan Flanakin ~

The problem of solar panel waste is now becoming evident. As environmental journalist Emily Folk admits in Renewable Energy Magazine, “when talking about renewable energy, the topic of waste does not often appear.” She attributes this to the supposed “pressures of climate change” and alleged “urgency to find alternative energy sources,” saying people may thus be hesitant to discuss “possible negative impacts of renewable energy.”

ImageMs. Folk admits that sustainability requires proper e-waste management. Yet she laments, “Solar presents a particular problem. There is growing evidence that broken panels release toxic pollutants … [and] increasing concern regarding what happens with these materials when they are no longer viable, especially since they are difficult to recycle.”

This is the likely reason that (except in Washington state), there are no U.S. mandates for solar recycling. A recent article in Grist reports that most used solar panels are…

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Shocking News! Plug-In Hybrids Are No Damn Good If You Don’t Plug Them In!

Posted: September 18, 2020 by oldbrew in Batteries, Critique, Emissions, Travel
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Mitsubishi Outlander Plug-in Hybrid [image credit: greencarreports.com]


More evidence that a PHEV is often used as a device for getting a hefty government subsidy to buy a fuel-powered car. The report also begs the question: if plug-in hybrids need the engine for heating below about 14C, what can full electric vehicles offer drivers when it’s cool, or freezing – apart from battery drainage?
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Greenpeace and Transport and Environment have conducted a study of how owners of plug-in hybrid cars use them in real world driving and come to a startling conclusion — plug-in hybrids are no damn good at lowering emissions if drivers don’t plug them in.

This revelation is intended to convince UK regulators to include PHEVs in their proposed ban of gasoline and diesel powered cars by 2030, says CleanTechnica.

Whoa. Who’da thunk it, huh? A car with a plug needs to be plugged in! That is shocking news.

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