ROSS ANTARCTIC ICE SHELF GROWING, NOT SHRINKING - NEW RESEARCH

This piece explains how by passing a camera through bore holes that  the underside of the ice adorned with a glittering layer of flat ice crystals—like a jumble of snowflakes—evidence that in this particular place, sea water is actually freezing onto the base of the ice instead of melting it.

EXPLANATION OF THE ICE AGES

This article by the excellent Matt Ridley gives a clear explanation of the reason for the ice ages. Matt is a very good writer and this piece is well worth reading. 

SUPER SHALE FRACKING ON A MAMMOTH SCALE

Cheap Energy Forever: Mammoth Cubes Herald Supersized Future For Shale
Bloomberg, 23 February 2018

‘Cube development,’ which taps multiple layers of shale all at once, could accelerate the U.S. shale boom and make the world swim in cheap and abundant energy for much of the next 250 years

In the scrublands of West Texas there’s an oil-drilling operation like few that have come before.

Encana Corp.’s RAB Davidson well pad is so mammoth, the explorer speaks of it in military terms, describing its efforts here as an occupation. More than 1 million pounds of drilling rigs, bulldozers, tanker trucks and other equipment spread out over a dusty 16-acre expanse. As of November, the 19 wells here collectively pumped almost 20,000 barrels of crude per day, according to company reports.

Encana calls this “cube development,” and it may be the supersized future of U.S. fracking, says Gabriel Daoud, a JPMorgan Chase & Co. analyst who visited Davidson last year. The technique is designed to tap the multiple layers of petroleum-soaked rock here in Texas’s Permian shale basin all at once, rather than the one-or-two-well, one-layer-at-a-time approach of the past.



After a years-long land grab by explorers, “the Permian is graduating,” according to Daoud. “Now it’s all about entering manufacturing mode.”

With the new technique, Encana and other companies are pushing beyond the drilling patterns that dominated during the early, exploratory phases of the shale revolution. Now, operators are assembling projects with a dozen or more well bores that touch multiple underground layers of the Permian and other shale plays simultaneously, tapping the entire 3-D “cube” beneath a producer’s acreage.

The shift has been controversial, with some of the biggest names in oil shying away from the approach as too aggressive and expensive. But if proponents are right, the cube could accelerate a drilling boom that’s already helped push U.S. production past an historic 10 million barrels a day, rewriting the rules of global energy markets along the way.

Along with the Davidson pad, Calgary-based Encana has 12- and 14-well operations in Texas as well as a 28-well behemoth in the Montney shale play in Alberta and British Columbia.

Devon Energy Corp. said on Wednesday that it has more than 10 multi-zone projects scheduled for 2018, including the 11-well Boomslang pad in the Permian and the 24-well Showboat project in Oklahoma. Concho Resources Inc., another early champion, debuted its Brass Monkey operation in the Permian last year, with 10 wells that dive underground and then burrow about two miles horizontally.

“We have just started to get into the manufacturing and harvest mode of the shale revolution,” Concho Chief Executive Officer Tim Leach said on a conference call.

CLIMATE ALARMIST CLAIMS ALL REBUTTED

This post provides a nice set of rebuttals to  the common alarms raised by those in thrall to the climate change meme as set out below:

Claim #1: Heat waves are increasing at an alarming rate and heat kills
Claim #2: Global warming is causing more hurricanes and stronger hurricanes.
Claim #3: Global warming is causing more and stronger tornadoes
Claim #4: Global warming is increasing the magnitude and frequency of droughts and floods.
Claim #5: Global Warming has increased U.S. Wildfires
Claim #6: Global warming is causing snow to disappear
Claim #7: Global warming is resulting in rising sea levels as seen in both tide gauge and satellite technology
Claim #8: Arctic, Antarctic and Greenland ice loss is accelerating due to global warming
Claim #9: Rising atmospheric CO₂ concentrations are causing ocean acidification, which is catastrophically harming marine life
Claim #10: Carbon pollution is a health hazard

What a good thing they are all false alarms!

HOW THE LAYOUT OF CITIES INCREASES THE URBAN HEAT ISLAND EFFECT (UHI)

This piece looks at the effect of city design on the retention of heat. The UHI effect is real and  this piece is yet more evidence for it. It is something that is not allowed for in the surface temperature record.

WIND TURBINES MAINTENANCE COSTS ESCALATING

This article reveals what is going on in the harsh conditions at sea. Did anyone actually not realise that salt was likely to corrode the metal blades? There is no such thing as "free energy". What we get is expensive intermittent energy, and that is supposed to be progress!

CLIMATE CHANGE ALARMISM CONTROLLED BY GROUPTHINK

That is the conclusion of This short video. You can read a short summary of the report here.
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DATA TAMPERING MAKES WARMING TREND UNRELIABLE

This article looks at data from many places which contradict the narrative of a warming globe. It shows that there are many regions where there is no warming trend at all and in some parts there is actually a cooling trend. Even though CO2 levels appear to be increasing year on year and if we accept that this, by itself, will have a small warming effect, there must be other climatic forces which can overwhelm the CO2 effect in many places. 

THE PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT EXPOSED FOR WHAT IT ISN'T

This piece revisits the infamous Paris climate accord and looks at what it didn't achieve. It was the best outcome that was achievable, but that is precisely the problem in that it was meant to be a starting point. Those nations that were set to gain the most from it, or be damaged the least, were only too happy to sign up. The rest were forced to sign as a mark of their homage to the planet. They mostly had little intention of increasing their contribution, or even getting up to it.

THE MADNESS OF LABOUR'S ENERGY NATIONALISATION POLICY

This article puts the spotlight on to Jeremy Corbyn's plans to nationalise the energy sector (as well as others) and also his crazy plans to move over to even more renewables. He obviously has taken no notice of his brother Piers who is an astro-physicist who is a climate sceptic. 

LATEST FEARS OVER SMART METERS

This piece in the Mail on Sunday won't have pleased the government who are desperate to get us all on to smart meters. While the scares may be ott it is still enough to put a lot of people off, such is the fear of hacking and data stealing.

FRACKING DRIVES DOWN USA ELECTRICITY PRICES

This article gives the details. Of course this makes renewable electricity seem even dearer.  For how much longer can governments continue to ignore this fact while voters out up with high cost unreliable renewables?

LATEST SEA LEVEL RISE PAPER IS JUNK SCIENCE

That is according to this article. What it shows is just how easy it is to use statistics to reach incorrect conclusions. 

PROF TIM BALL CLIMATE CASE DISMISSED AFTER 7 YEARS

This article gives the details of the case in which Professor Tim Ball a long standing climate sceptic has finally won his case in which he was being sued by an academic who accused him of libelling him. Prof. Ball had claimed that what he said or wrote was fair comment and that was what the judge finally agreed after seven long years, and no doubt a lot of legal costs. Let's hope his opponent has been forced to pay those costs.

A much fuller account is here.

EXXON FIGHTS BACK AGAINST THE LAWYERS

Exxon fights back - the company has targeted at least 30 people and organizations, including the attorneys general of New York and Massachusetts, hitting them with suits, threats of suits or demands for sworn depositions. The company claims the lawyers, public officials and environmental activists are “conspiring” against it in a coordinated legal and public relations campaign.

IS THE GOVERNMENT BACKTRACKING ON PLEDGE TO HALT ONSHORE WIND FARMS?

This piece explains how recent statements from climate change ministers has suggested that there may be a change to the manifesto commitment to stop encouraging onshore wind farms.

ONLY THE BEST DATA WILL LEAD TO THE BEST POLICY ON CLIMATE

Many in Washington are attempting to establish greenhouse gas policy, namely carbon dioxide (CO2) policy, and related energy policies based on faulty intelligence provided by the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) in its National Climate Assessments.

The greenhouse gas effect occurs in the atmosphere. To directly measure any changes in climate due to greenhouse gases, we need to measure changes in the atmosphere. Surface-air temperature measurements are a poor proxy, as the strong divergence between surface-air temperature trends and atmospheric trends demonstrates.
Before the method of using satellite data to comprehensively calculate atmospheric temperature was announced in 1990, and thoroughly tested shortly thereafter, there was no option but using incomplete, sparse, surface data. Now, there is no excuse for not using the 39-year satellite data record.
Yet, the USGCRP, and programs with NOAA, and NASA continue to promote false intelligence based on faulty surface data. Worse, they use long-term forecasts from global climate models which are demonstrated to be wrong – they fail in short-term forecasts. Thus, there is no logical reason to assume the models will succeed in long-term forecasts.
The US government errs in believing it can build prudent policy based on “scientific research” that deliberately uses false intelligence. That the USGCRP boasts on its web site that it follows the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an insult. The USGCRP ignores its independent mandate to understand both human and natural influences on climate.

PACIFIC ISLANDS ARE GROWING NOT DROWNING!

New evidence proves beyond doubt that many Pacific Islands, such as Tuvalu, are actually growing in area.  In May last year, despite Tuvalu being used as an advertising posterchild for climate change for years, it had not received funding from the Green Climate Fund. In August 2017 UNDP finally promised $38 million. That’s theoretically an extra income equivalent to 20% of their GDP for the next seven years. No wonder these islanders are keen to talk “climate change”.

UK EMISSION CUTS SLOWING DOWN - NEXT COMES THE HARD BIT

This piece explains the details.  There are no more easy things to do, no more relatively painless one-off changes in economic structure to induce. The emissions reductions that are occurring are almost entirely in power generation, and driven by policies that increase the cost of electricity and so actually inhibit emissions reductions in those sectors of the economy where electrification is essential, in transport for example. The incoherence of the UK’s climate policies has never been clearer.

USA ENVIRONMENT CHIEF SAYS GW MAY BE BENEFICIAL

This piece gives the details of an interview with Scott Pruitt the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, in which he makes the point.

THE SCEPTICS CASE ON GLOBAL WARMING

This short video gives an excellent succinct summary of the scientific case for not supporting the hypothesis of dangerous global warming. 

AMERICA AND ENVIRONMENTALISM

A Climate Of Crisis: America In The Age Of Environmentalism
History News Network, 4 February 2018



“Denier!” It has become the epithet of choice among climate change activists to malign those who dissent from the prevailing consensus [says] Patrick Allitt, author of A Climate of Crisis: America in the Age of Environmentalism. The term, inherently political, is almost exclusively limited to two groups of people: Holocaust deniers and climate change skeptics. When used against the latter group, the implication is that questioning the accuracy of a scientific study is like questioning the historical reality that Nazis murdered 6 million Jews. Is the position of a climate change skeptic as meritless as someone who denies a well-documented genocide?

Patrick Allitt, a professor of environmental history at Emory University, is of the position that the response to climate change has been disproportionate to the scope of the problem. Is he a denier, as his detractors would suggest? No, Allitt insists. He says he believes in the overwhelming array of evidence that shows that the climate is changing and that this has serious implications. Where Allitt departs from the herd is that he does not believe climate change is catastrophic; rather, he believes that the benefits of industrialization outweigh the perceived harms of climate change.

In A Climate of Crisis Professor Allitt explores the history of American environmentalism since World War II and highlights the progress that the United States has made in solving its environmental issues. As Allitt explains, the “United States is far less severely polluted than it used to be, it uses energy more effectively, and it is actively responding to the new environmental challenges as they arise.” However, according to Allitt, this progress has been attached to a culture of alarmism within in the environmental movement where the problems are amplified and the solutions are simplified.

Allitt argues that the history of American environmentalism is filled with repeated alarms that later turned out to be false. In the 1960s there was a great alarm that overpopulation would lead to mass famine and death for millions in the developed world, a false alarm according to Allitt. In the 1970s warnings about the exhaustion of oil and other raw materials were echoed by scores of environmentalists, with the claim that by 2000 we would run out of vital resources, which Allitt cites as yet another false alarm. Allitt argues that both of these cases, much like climate change today, were described in catastrophic rhetoric, which was disproportionate to the severity of the issue.

What could be behind this phenomenon? Allitt believes it is all about votes, noting that “in a democracy it’s important to motivate voters, and using crisis rhetoric is a good way of doing it.” As a historian, Allitt believes it is important to look beyond the rhetoric and to recover a sense of balance and perspective. Unlike the environmental causes of the past, Allitt contends that the hysteria and overreaction characterize our response to climate change and that this can have unintended consequences which may end up burdening the potential victims of climate change, future generations.

Climate change, as Allitt explains, is unique in that it has no immediate constituency and the beneficiaries of climate change abatement are not easily identified. As such, Allitt is reluctant to commit large resources to the solution of long-term problems, which may or may not benefit a generation that does not yet exist. At a time when hundreds of thousands of people still die prematurely because of remediable problems like contaminated drinking water and smoke inhalation, Allitt argues that governments’ commitment of vast resources to the issue of climate change is misplaced.

With all that said, Allitt is adamant that he believes climate change is a serious, yet manageable issue that should be addressed. According to Allitt, we are less vulnerable to the impacts of climate change because “we are so much more knowledgeable than we were before and have so many more ways to respond.”

How should we respond to climate change? Allitt suggests that we should carry on with research connected with reducing greenhouse gas emissions without sacrificing economic growth in the process. Why is economic growth such a central concern? Allitt argues, “the creation of wealth enables societies to respond to severe environmental challenges and that only wealthy societies have active environmental movements.”

Industrialization is, as Allitt puts it, “the source of salvation to populations throughout the world” and the benefits of it needed to be weighed against its adverse impacts on the environment.

In Allitt’s view, one of the biggest misconceptions regarding climate change is that it is a recent phenomenon when, as he explains, “climate change has been a fact of life throughout earth’s history, and not just since the Industrial Revolution.” Again, Allitt acknowledges that industrialization contributes to climate change, but emphasizes, “Industrialization is only one of the causes.”

Are the other causes of climate change a matter of settled science? Allitt does not see climate change through the lens of “settled science” which he suggests is a misnomer.
Our understanding of climate change has been shaped, in large part, within the last half of the century with studies and experiments from a range of scientific disciplines including meteorology, astronomy, oceanography, and paleo-climatology. As such, Allitt believes that looking at climate change as matter of settled science is actually ahistorical. Allitt explains that science is “constantly developing and changing, with each new generation of scientists contesting the findings of their predecessors, and occasionally starting over by subjecting familiar data to new interpretive paradigms.”

Back in 1500, the idea that the earth was the center of the universe was also “settled science.” Additionally, Allitt points to the early 1900s when the racial superiority of Anglo-Saxons was settled science,but later generations of scientists challenged that orthodoxy and, eventually rejected it outright. The history of every science shows the same kind of process. Given the dynamism of science, Allitt argues that it would be “extraordinarily anomalous if climate scientists said to one another: All these issues are now settled, and there’s nothing more to be done.”

GLOBAL TEMPERATURES FALL BACK AS LA NINA TAKES CONTROL

Global Temperatures Drop Back To Pre-El Nino Levels
Michael Bastasch, The Daily Caller, 2 February 2018

The onset of La Niña in the tropical Pacific Ocean has caused temperatures drop to levels not seen in six years, according to satellite temperature data.



“Note that La Niña cooling in the tropics has finally penetrated the troposphere, with a -0.12 deg. C departure from average,” wrote atmospheric scientists John Christy and Roy Spencer, who compile satellite data at the University of Alabama, Huntsville.

Satellite data, which measures Earth’s bulk atmosphere, show temperature anomalies dropped from 0.41 degrees Celsius in December to 0.26 degrees in January. The temperature drop was brought about by a La Niña cooling event in the tropics.

La Niña is in full swing in 2018, plunging temperatures in the tropics to -0.12 degrees Celsius in January, down from 0.26 degrees the previous month. It’s the third-largest tropical temperature drop on record.

“The last time the tropics were cooler than this was June, 2012 (-0.15 deg. C),” the scientists wrote.

“Out of the 470 month satellite record, the 0.38 deg. C one-month drop in January tropical temperatures was tied for the 3rd largest, beaten only by October 1991 (0.51 deg. C drop) and August, 2014 (0.41 deg. C drop),” they wrote.

La Niña settled in late 2017, with cooler waters reaching from South America, across to eastern Pacific islands. It’s the opposite of El Niño warming events.

“The last time the Southern Hemisphere was this cool (+0.06 deg. C) was July, 2015 (+0.04 deg. C),” Christy and Spencer wrote.

“The linear temperature trend of the global average lower tropospheric temperature anomalies from January 1979 through January 2018 remains at +0.13 C/decade,” they wrote.

SEA LEVEL RISE - IT'S LESS THAN PREDICTED

This piece explains the evidence for this welcome news. It is very difficult to measure such a small change in such a vast system as the world's oceans. I expect there will always be arguments about it, but it is encouraging that there are serious doubts about the alarming predictions of the doomsayers.

EXXON REPORT TO SHAREHOLDERS - OUR BUSINESS IS SOUND

This article explains that Exxon has stated that the company believes that policies to combat climate change will have a minimal effect on their business. Apparently some green activist shareholders demanded that the company should let the shareholders know about this, expecting the company to conclude that they would be seriously affected, only to read the very opposite. No doubt they will now complain that the report is wrong and must be re-appraised to reach the conclusion they want. 

THE TRUE COST OF OFFSHORE WIND MAY BE MUCH MORE THAN WE WERE TOLD

This piece looks at the recent profits warning of a company building an offshore wind farm and links it to the recent collapse of Carillion. It seems that they both were involved with wind farms and appear to have under estimated the costs. Wind turbines are expensive to build and expensive to maintain. Thus they do not produce cheap electricity - nor is it reliable. 

MARINE SCIENTIST SNUBS UNIVERSITY GAG ORDER

Graham Lloyd, The Australian, 1 February 2018

Marine scientist Peter Ridd has refused to accept a formal censure and gag order from James Cook University and expanded his Federal Court action to defend academic freedoms and free speech.


James Cook University professor Peter Ridd. Picture: Cameron Laird

A revised statement of claim alleges JCU trawled through private email conversations in a bid to bolster its misconduct case against him.

JCU had found Professor Ridd guilty of “serious misconduct”, ­including denigrating a co-worker, denigrating the university, breaching confidentiality, publishing information outside of the university and disregarding his obligations as an employee.

Professor Ridd has asked the Federal Court to overturn the university ruling and confirm his right not to be silenced.

In the revised statement of claim, Professor Ridd has dropped an earlier claim of conflict of interest against JCU vice-chancellor Sandra Harding, but has alleged other senior staff had been biased and had not acted fairly or in good faith.

Professor Ridd’s Federal Court action is seen as a test of academic freedom and free speech, and has been supported by the Institute of Public Affairs.

Professor Ridd said he would seek public donations to continue the fight against JCU. He first took court action in November in a bid to stop a JCU disciplinary process against him for comments he made to Sky News presenter Alan Jones.

The university said by expressing concerns about the quality of some reef science, Professor Ridd had not acted in a “collegiate” manner.

Professor Ridd told Sky News: “The basic problem is that we can no longer trust the scientific ­organisations like the Australian Institute of Marine Science, even things like the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies.”

He said a lot of the science was not properly checked, tested or replicated and “this is a great shame because we really need to be able to trust our scientific institutions and the fact is I do not think we can any more”.

A JCU spokesman said the university’s lawyers had invited Professor Ridd to discontinue his proceedings. “(He) has amended his proceedings. His decision to do so is a matter for him,” he said.

“The university intends to vigorously defend those proceedings (but) as these matters are before the courts, JCU will not comment further.”

Lawyers for JCU wrote to Professor Ridd on November 28 confirming the university had determined he had engaged in “serious misconduct” and issued him with a “final censure”.

“The disciplinary process and all information gathered and recorded in relation to the disciplinary process (including the allegations, letters, your client’s responses and the outcome of the disciplinary process) is confidential pursuant to clause 54.1.5 of the university enterprise agreement,” the JCU lawyers said.

Professor Ridd has subsequently published his concerns about the quality of reef science in a peer-reviewed journal. He said he was determined to speak freely about his treatment “even though it will go against explicit directions by JCU not to”.

“This is as much a case about free speech as it is about quality of science,” he said.

Full story
 
Please support Peter Ridd’s Legal Action Fund 
 https://www.gofundme.com/peter-ridd-legal-action-fund
 
His web page with all the details is here: 
https://platogbr.wordpress.com/serious-misconduct/

Peter Ridd: The Extraordinary Resilience of Great Barrier Reef Corals, and Problems with Policy Science
Climate Change: The Facts 2017

The state of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is often used to show that we are facing an imminent crisis from climate change. It is photogenic, the water sparkles blue, the fish and corals are beautiful and delicate, and most who see it, particularly marine biologists, fall in love with it. It is abhorrent to even contemplate that it be destroyed, or damaged, by humanity.

The claimed imminent peril faced by the GBR has captured the public imagination. When Barack Obama was president of the United States and visited Australia he remarked that he wanted global action on climate change so maybe his daughters had a chance to see the Great Barrier Reef. A visiting architect to my university revealed that his daughter, on discussing the latest reef bleaching event at school, came home depressed that she would probably never be able to see the GBR. A majority of the world’s population seem to have been persuaded that it has no more than a few years left.

There is no doubt that every decade or so, abnormally high sea water temperature can cause corals to bleach (Marshall and Schuttenberg, 2006). This is when the coral expels the symbiotic algae (zooxanthellae) which live inside the individual coral polyp. The polyps are the animals, generally a few millimeters across, which make the calcium carbonate structure of the coral.

Thousands or even millions of polyps make up an individual coral. The symbiotic algae live inside the polyp and make energy from sunlight, which it shares with the polyp in exchange for a comfortable environment. However, when the water gets much hotter than normal, something goes wrong with the symbionts and they effectively become poisonous to the polyp. The polyp expels the symbionts and because the symbionts give the polyp its colour, the coral turns white. Without the symbionts, the polyp will run out of energy and will die within a few weeks or months unless it takes on more symbionts which float around naturally in the water surrounding the coral.

The ghastly white skeletons of bleached coral, and on a massive scale, make graphic and compelling images to demonstrate the perils of climate change. The fact that this only happens when the water gets much hotter than normal makes it a plausible hypothesis that coral bleaching is caused by anthropogenic climate change. It is also often claimed by scientists that mass bleaching has only occurred since the 1970s; that it is a recent phenomenon which did not occur a hundred years ago when the water temperature of the GBR was 0.5o C cooler (Hughes, 2016).

Despite this apparently plausible hypothesis, I argue in this chapter that there is perhaps no ecosystem on Earth better able to cope with rising temperatures. Irrespective of one’s views about the role of carbon dioxide, I will show that the GBR corals are masters of temperature adaptability, and able to cope with the modest warming that has occurred over the last century – and are also so-far unaffected by ocean acidification. There are, however, issues with how GBR science is reported, and a desperate need for some basic quality assurance.

Full paper

 

ALARMISTS ATTACK THEIR OWN SIDE IN USA

This piece explains how poor Bill Nye has been attacked for attending President Trump's State of the Union Address. Such petty behaviour is more likely to lead to more division. I can't help but smile to see it.

AUSTRALIAN ELECTRICITY PRICES KEEP ON RISING

This piece gives the details. As you expect it is being caused by phasing out cheaper fossil fuels in favour of increased use of renewables. Or should we call them "unreliables"?