Month: May 2017

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Antarctic Ice Expansion Shows Climate Models Are Unreliable

Antarctic Ice Expansion Shows Climate Models Are Unreliable

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
http://www.thegwpf.com

Despite a 20 percent increase in atmospheric CO2, and model predictions to the contrary, sea ice in the Antarctic has expanded for decades. Such observations are in direct opposition to the model-based predictions of the IPCC. This should give pause for thought about climate alarmism in general.

Antarctic ice is expanding when it should be shrinking

While there have been thousands of legacy media stories about the very real decline in summer sea-ice extent in the Arctic Ocean, we can’t find one about the statistically significant increase in Antarctic sea ice that has been observed at the same time.

Also, comparisons between forecast temperature trends down there and what’s been observed are very few and far between. Here’s one published in 2015:

Observed (blue) and model-forecast (red) Antarctic sea-ice extent published by Shu et al. (2015) shows a large and growing discrepancy, but for unknown reasons, their illustration ends in 2005.

Observed (blue) and model-forecast (red) Antarctic sea-ice extent published by Shu et al. (2015) shows a large and growing discrepancy, but for unknown reasons, their illustration ends in 2005.

For those who utilize and trust in the scientific method, forming policy (especially multi-trillion dollar policies!) on the basis of what could or might happen in the future seems imprudent.

Sound policy, in contrast, is best formulated when it is based upon repeated and verifiable observations that are consistent with the projections of climate models. As shown above, this does not appear to be the case with the vast ice field that surrounds Antarctica.

According to the most recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), CO2-induced global warming will result in a considerable reduction in sea ice extent in the Southern Hemisphere. Specifically, the report predicts a multi-model average decrease of between 16 and 67 percent in the summer and 8 to 30 percent in the winter by the end of the century (IPCC, 2013).

Given the fact that atmospheric CO2 concentrations have increased by 20 percent over the past four decades, evidence of sea ice decline should be evident in the observational data if such model predictions are correct. But are they?

Thanks to a recent paper in the Journal of Climate by Josefino Comiso and colleagues, we now know what’s driving the increase in sea-ice down there. It’s — wait for it — cooling temperatures over the ocean surrounding Antarctica.

This team of six researchers set out to produce an updated and enhanced dataset of sea ice extent and area for the Southern Hemisphere for the period 1978 to 2015. The key enhancement over prior datasets included an improved cloud masking technique that eliminated anomalously high or low sea ice values, assuring that their work is the most definitive study of Antarctic sea ice trends to date.

The six scientists report the existence of a long-term increasing trend in both sea ice extent and area over the period of study (see figure below), with the former measure increasing by 1.7 percent per decade and the latter by 2.5 percent per decade.

Figure 1. Monthly anomalies of Southern Hemisphere sea ice extent (left panel) and area (right panel) derived using the newly enhanced SB2 data (black) of Comiso et al. and the older SBA data (red) prior to the enhancements made by Comiso et al. Trend lines for each data set are also shown and the trend values with statistical errors are provided. Source: Comiso et al. (2017).

Figure 1. Monthly anomalies of Southern Hemisphere sea ice extent (left panel) and area (right panel) derived using the newly enhanced SB2 data (black) of Comiso et al. and the older SBA data (red) prior to the enhancements made by Comiso et al. Trend lines for each data set are also shown and the trend values with statistical errors are provided. Source: Comiso et al. (2017).

With regard to these observed increases, Comiso et al. confirm “the trend in Antarctic sea ice cover is positive,” adding “the trend is even more positive than previously reported because prior to 2015 the sea ice extent was anomalously high for a few years, with the record high recorded in 2014 when the ice extent was more than 20 x 106km2 for the first time during the satellite era.”

They compared satellite-based estimates of temperature over the ocean/ice and found a very high negative correlation between ice cover and temperature. So, the large and systematic increase in ice extent must be related to a cooling over the sea-ice region throughout the 36-year period of record in this study. […]

It is clear that despite a 20 percent increase in atmospheric CO2, and model predictions to the contrary, sea ice in the Antarctic has expanded for decades. Such observations are in direct opposition to the model-based predictions of the IPCC.

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via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) http://www.thegwpf.com

May 14, 2017 at 11:24PM

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Inside the National Grid’s epic challenge to keep the lights on

Inside the National Grid’s epic challenge to keep the lights on

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By Paul Homewood

 

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The Telegraph has an article by Jillian Ambrose, little Emily’s successor, which is ostensibly about the challenges faced by the National Grid.

The beginning summarises the situation quite well:

 

 

Before the Nineties we had a very clear-cut industry,” says Richard Smith, head of National Grid’s networks business.

Across the country, thermal power plants fired up by fossil fuels would send power via giant cables, strung up by pylons and criss-crossing the country. After spanning miles, cables meet substations which dim the power to a voltage which smaller distribution wires can carry into homes and companies.

“It’s not as simple now,” Smith says.

National Grid sits at the heart of this energy system. Now the £39bn company faces one of the country’s greatest challenges – delivering the energy system’s biggest shake-up since deregulation……

 

But industry veterans, including Centrica boss Iain Conn, fear that the boom in small-scale generation could tip the energy system on its head. Where once National Grid was at the centre of the UK’s energy universe, it could find itself running the safety net which backs up a thriving market for locally produced energy.

“The big challenge that National Grid is facing is that we have 38GW of large thermal plant that are going to be closed by 2025 and they were traditionally what we would use to keep the system stable,” says Tim Rotheray, boss of the UK’s Association for Decentralised Energy.

“At the same time we’re seeing a rise of variable, intermittent generation coming on to the system. The traditional tools that National Grid had are falling away so the challenge is to look at the new options which exist.”

The traditional tools that National Grid had are falling away so the challenge is to look at the new options which existTim Rotheray, boss of the UK’s Association for Decentralised Energy

Within the next decade the pipes and wires of the nation will need to accommodate a new generation of electricity generators and users. National Grid plans to harness these changes to overhaul the way it balances the system. By 2030, keeping the lights on will rely as much on bringing together the cumulative impact of small-scale power sources as it will on major power plants, it says.

 

 

However, there are a number of highly misleading statements and claims, including this fake table:

 

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As two commenters point out, transmission losses are nowhere near 54%:

 

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Official government figures from the BEIS show that total losses only amounted to 27 TWh last year, which is 7.7% of generation.

This includes losses tight up to the customer, most of which would occur under any circumstance.

 

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To make matters worse, it is claimed that this “energy waste” is equivalent to 37 nuclear plants. In fact, 27 Twh is about the output of Hinkley Point.

The table comes from an outfit called the Association for Decentralised Energy. It will come as no surprise that this is yet another lobby group for the renewable scam, as their website explains:

The ADE is the voice for a cost effective, efficient, low carbon, user-led energy system; a market in which decentralised energy can flourish.With over 100 members we bring together interested parties from across the sector to develop a strong, dynamic and sustainable environment for a range of technologies including combined heat and power, district heating networks and demand side energy services, including demand response.

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Needless to say, both CHP and DRS receive large subsidies, paid for by bill payers.

Much of the Ambrose article is then given over as free propaganda space to Tim Rotheray, boss of the ADE.

 

The article is full of misleading statements, such as:

The UK is home to about 12GW of solar PV, the equivalent of more than three Hinkley Point C nuclear power projects or 24 gas-fired power plants.

While this may be true in terms of capacity, why is it not explained that solar power only runs at about 11% of capacity. Therefore, in terms of output, all of this solar power is only the equivalent of 2 CCGTs?

 

The report then assures us that all of the electric cars on the road by 2030 will come to the rescue!

 

A boom in chargeable cars could mean an increase in electricity demand of 13- 21 TWh. By 2030 this could mean a drain of 1GW, or two large gas-fired power plants, at peak times. But National Grid believes there is the potential for the flow of electricity to go both ways, from the grid to the battery and vice-versa.

How EVs affect demand could be shaped by a number of factors: consumers could take up so-called “time-of use-tariffs” which offer cheap deals to charge up when demand is low. This would allow National Grid to make better use of surging wind and solar power on balmy summer Sunday afternoons. Conversely, the energy stored in the vehicle could be used to avoid peak tariffs imposed at times of low demand by flipping the mobile batteries to export power on dark January evenings

 

So we are all apparently going to charge our cars up in summer, leave them in the garage for six months, and then send all the juice back to the grid in January!

And Jillian Ambrose writes all of this with a straight face.

 

 

As usual, it takes a Telegraph reader to point out that the Emperor has no clothes.

 

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Why is it that the Telegraph’s “journalists” have not worked this out?

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May 14, 2017 at 10:54PM

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Matt Ridley: Our Race Against Computer Viruses Is Endless

Matt Ridley: Our Race Against Computer Viruses Is Endless

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
http://www.thegwpf.com

Cybercrime has become part of daily life but, as with natural diseases, ingenuity allows us to remain one step ahead

The WannaCry ransomware cyberattack of last week, which briefly crippled much of the National Health Service, may be the biggest, but it will not be the last outbreak of cybercrime. Remember your Through the Looking-Glass. The Red Queen lives in a world where, she says: “It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that.” We, the good guys, are locked in a Red Queen race with hackers, just as we, the human race, are locked in a race with real viruses, and with antibiotic resistance.

It is a race in which permanent victory is impossible, but so is permanent defeat. Perpetual struggle is inevitable. I say this with confidence because for once the biological analogies are apt. The right way to think about cybersecurity is epidemiological. Indeed, the similarity between a computer virus and a real virus is more than a metaphor: both are pieces of linear digital information (one made of binary electronic digits, the other of quaternary DNA bases) capable of getting themselves replicated and spread. One leading theory is that sexual intercourse evolved, a billion years ago, as a security patch against parasites.

The fact that malware is manmade while maladies are not makes little difference. So long as there are enough actors out there experimenting, both will evolve, through mutation, recombination and selection — through trial and error. That this latest cyberweapon may have been enhanced with something called EternalBlue stolen from America’s National Security Agency is again not altogether surprising to a biologist. Parasites have a habit of stealing good genetic ideas from their hosts.

Computer viruses are as old as computing. The first widespread one, Elk Cloner, spread through Apple computers in 1981 via floppy disks. Ransomware first appeared in 1989, with a trojan horse called AIDS. By the early 1990s you could buy anti-virus software. Especially bad outbreaks occurred in 2003 (the “slammer worm”) and 2009 (the “conficker worm”), just like the bad plague years of AD541, 1346 and 1665. But apocalyptic warnings that computer worms and viruses would eventually win proved wide of the mark. I recall business seminars around the turn of the millennium at which the audience was effectively told that the problem of computer viruses was insoluble so the end of the web was near. This was around the time we were told that computers would fail, and social order would collapse, because software could not cope with the start of a new millennium. In practice, anti-virus protection has evolved just as fast.

Perhaps we were just lucky, then. Despite the supposed heroic but accidental action last week of MalwareTech, an anonymous 22-year-old, I don’t think it is luck. Here is why the good guys will always be able to defeat the bad guys — temporarily: the former can operate in the daylight, the latter must stay in the dark. This was brought home to me about ten years ago when my laptop was infected by a virus and I quickly found a website on which people were freely sharing the latest features of this virus and how to deal with it. Such open sharing is not available to hackers, however large the dark web gets.

Thus Microsoft already has a patch for the WannaCry ransomware, released in March, having been alerted perhaps by the NSA itself. That some organisations, such as the NHS, have plainly done a terrible job of keeping their computer security updated is reprehensible but no great surprise. It is a bit like a community that relaxes its vaccination rate.

Minnesota is currently experiencing a measles outbreak: about 50 people have gone down with the virus, mostly from the Somali immigrant community. This is entirely because vaccination rates in that community have halved thanks to the recent influence of the anti-vaxxer movement and its autism theory. Drop your vaccination guard and the Red Queen will strike. Don’t update your cybersecurity and ditto.

Here’s another parallel. Antibiotic resistance is also a Red Queen phenomenon, in which new antibiotics must continually be introduced to counter antibiotic resistance. In failing to invent new antimicrobials, it is as if we have been failing to update our pharmacological security software.

Notice, too, that hospitals are the epicentres of antimicrobial resistance, plagued by MRSA and C. difficile. This is largely because they are full of ill and vulnerable people, some with fresh holes cut into them — tempting buffets for bacteria. Hence hospitals use lots of antibiotics, putting selection pressure on bacteria to evolve resistance. It is a curious coincidence that hospital computer systems likewise have to be open to sharing data with many partners, making them vulnerable to digital invaders, as we now know.

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via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) http://www.thegwpf.com

May 14, 2017 at 10:27PM

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Columbia River Gorge – Video by Nick Zentner

Columbia River Gorge – Video by Nick Zentner

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Beautiful!

The Columbia River Gorge features an incredible variety of geology and human history as it slices through the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest.

Nick Zentner talks about the Columbia River Basalts, the Missoula Floods, the Bonneville Flood, the Bridge of the Gods, Celilo Falls, Multnomah Falls, Beacon Rock, Lewis and Clark, the Oregon Trail, the Columbia River Highway, and more!

Columbia River Basalts Location – Nick Zentner

Nick Zentner is the science outreach and education coordinator for the Department of Geological Sciences at Central Washington University. He has produced more than 40 short videos about Central Washington geology.

Note:
I’ll be posting more fascinating episodes of “Nick on the Rocks” in the days to come.

 

The post Columbia River Gorge – Video by Nick Zentner appeared first on Ice Age Now.

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May 14, 2017 at 09:04PM