“Stop griping about the weather, or the climate, no government can change it anyway. Just try to make the best of it and learn how to to adapt to it and enjoy the variations.”
– Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser

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Let’s outlaw the Weather (and the Climate, too)

Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser

Some days it’s too cold, on others too warm;
Some weeks it doesn’t rain at all, in others there’s a deluge;
Some months it dead calm, in others the gales are blowing.

Isn’t it time the government did something about that helter-skelter of the weather? Should it be not more steady and balanced, a bit of everything every day? Neither hot nor cold, just sort of so-so, day-in and day-out, what some people may envision as paradise on earth, or King Arthur’s Camelot. The lyrics of the song state it right up front:

It’s true!  It’s true!

          The crown has made it clear,

          the climate must be perfect all the year.

Camelot

Ah, Camelot, or paradise before Eve gave the apple to Adam. Is it only a figment of mankind’s imagination or did it really exist, ever? The biblical scriptures describe it in glowing terms but where & when, exactly, was it supposed to exist? Was it the Hanging Gardens of Babylon?

Perhaps it moved on to planet Mars or another place in the grand universe?

As far as I know, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, widely known as NASA, has yet to make its findings about the Paradise known. It must be somewhere – right here on earth, not just on some distant planet or star way out there. Don’t you agree? So what’s NASA really up to?

NASA

While we’re being treated with (subjected to ??) ever more discoveries on ever more distant objects in the sky, we don’t get much 24/7 type information for this planet. For example, NASA produces daily updates on minimum & maximum temperatures, together with wind and pressure data, for the equatorial Elysium Plain on planet Mars.

Perhaps it’s just NASA’s scientific curiosity, or is there more to it? If NASA can give us daily accounts of the weather at the equator of Mars, where does NASA report such for Earth?

We are certainly reading more about asteroids that seem to whiz by earth at incredible speeds, sort of one day barely recognizable and a day later they have disappeared again. Some are small specs of rocks (say a few ft. in size), others are said to be of devastating “city-killer” size that would make the (rather) late Egyptian Pharaoh Cheops (2589-2566 BC), also known as Khufu blush with envy. He’s had the Great Pyramid at Giza erected. But what’s his pyramid against nature’s arsenal of asteroids?

Cheops’ “Asteroid”

Cheops’ pyramid, seen nearby, took many years to be built, with many thousands of slave-like workers while those pyramid-size asteroids are whizzing by earth to be here one day and gone the next – except for when they happen to actually collide with earth.  And sometimes they do.

The consequences of such collisions are usually severe, rather beyond imagination.

Apart from the utter devastation in the immediate zone of impact (that can stretch 100 miles or more) of a sizeable asteroid, it has tremendous effects on earth’s “climate,” that’s lasting for many years. In geological parlance, such effects are described as boundaries between multi-million year epochs.

Geological Epochs

There’s a neat graph showing the major and some minor geological periods, as seen nearby. The most recent period, named Holocene, started only around 10,000 years ago, when the last ice age went out of nature’s good grace.

Ever since, the earth has had a severe bout of global warming and that mass of solid ice, one mile-plus thick and covering then much of what is Canada today simply melted. The energy required to melt it all would be in the order of several quadrillion barrels of oil incinerated. Yes, that caused the oceans’ water level to rise quite rapidly. However, also the northern hemispheric land mass is rising as well, just much slower. That process is still ongoing.

The main geological time periods; source: https://jeofizikkulubu.com/

Of course, most folks who are living in latitudes above 45 degrees from the equator are quite pleased about that “climate change.” Without that worldwide warming since the the ice left, it would be impossible to live there.

In brief

So, stop griping about the weather, or the climate, no government can change it anyway. Just try to make the best of it and learn how to to adapt to it and enjoy the variations — just beware of high-speed asteroids.

__________________________

Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser is a professional scientist with a Ph.D. in chemistry from the Technical University, Munich, Germany. He has worked as a research scientist and project chief at Environment Canada‘s Canada Centre for Inland Waters for over 30 years and is currently Director of Research at TerraBase Inc. He is author of nearly 300 publications in scientific journals, government and agency reports, books, computer programs, trade magazines, and newspaper articles.

Dr. Kaiser has been president of the International Association for Great Lakes Research, a peer reviewer of numerous scientific papers for several journals, Editor-in-Chief of the Water Quality Research Journal of Canada for nearly a decade, and an adjunct professor. He has contributed to a variety of scientific projects and reports and has made many presentations at national and international conferences.

Dr. Kaiser is author of CONVENIENT MYTHS, the green revolution – perceptions, politics, and facts
convenientmyths.com

Dr. Kaiser can be reached at: mail@convenientmyths.com

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February 14, 2020 at 01:51PM

The Green New Deal is anything but ‘clean’ or ‘green.’ Even the relatively modest numbers of solar and wind installations in the United States today are causing serious environmental damage.

A few minutes of serious thought from self-described environmentalists would prompt a realization that if the Green New Deal, a program championed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, were implemented, it would create an environmental disaster.

In recent decades, policymakers have forced public utilities to generate increasingly more electricity from fashionable “renewable energy” sources, especially wind and solar, and pushed automakers to manufacture more electric vehicles. Their chief goal is to eliminate reliable, affordable, generally clean fossil fuels, including natural gas, even though they generate most of America’s electricity and power most U.S. transportation.

Environmentalists claim to worry that carbon dioxide from these fuels will cause devastating global warming. Many would also eliminate nuclear power, which they say is inherently unsafe.

As I argue in a new Heartland Institute policy study, however, environmentalists have paid too little attention to the serious harm Green New Deal policies would inflict on the environment — including scenic lands, wildlife habitats, and threatened and endangered species. Implementing the Green New Deal would undermine the very values environmentalists have espoused for decades.

America faces a dilemma. Will it focus on real environmental problems that do measurable harm to human and ecological wellbeing, or will it mandate policies to head off climate disasters that are based on warming predictions have been repeatedly proven wrong by real-world empirical observations? Will it recognize that harnessing intermittent, weather-dependent wind and solar energy requires enormous amounts of raw materials and mining, resulting in massive land-use impacts and human rights abuses, and is anything but clean, green, renewable, and sustainable? Or will it ignore all this?

Solar farms generate only 1.5 percent of the nation’s electricity and would be an inefficient way to generate the more than 8 billion megawatt-hours of power that fossil fuels and nuclear provide each year to meet industrial, commercial, residential, and automotive transportation needs and charge backup-power batteries. Using cutting-edge Nellis Air Force Base solar panels to generate that electricity would require completely blanketing 57,000 square miles of land — equivalent to the land area of New York and Vermont — with 19 billion photovoltaic solar panels. Because billions would be placed in less-sunny places, the area required would certainly be higher still. The effects on habitats and wildlife would be incalculable.

Onshore wind turbines are no better. Indiana’s Fowler Ridge Wind Farm covers 68 square miles, an area larger than Washington, D.C. Using similar facilities to replace all our country’s fossil fuel and nuclear power would require more than 2 million turbines on more than 500,000 square miles of farm, wildlife habitat, and scenic lands. That’s equivalent to the combined acreage of Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon, and one-quarter of Washington state. Consider also that many of the huge number of turbines needed to meet Green New Deal requirements would have to be placed in lower-quality, less-windy sites, which would certainly drive the amount of required land and raw materials even higher.

Environmental groups have long expressed concern that onshore wind turbines kill bats and birds. In fact, the 56,000 turbines we now have could already be slaughtering millions every year, including many protected and endangered species. Remember that these birds and bats eat insects, which, when left alive, can ravage crops and harm humans. The millions of turbines required by the Green New Deal could even threaten the existence of some species.

Renewable energy proponents tout offshore wind turbines as superior to those on land because ocean winds blow more steadily. Yet because of opposition from environmental groups, only one relatively small offshore facility is operating today off Rhode Island’s coastline.

Turbines ruin scenic views, kill countless birds and bats, and harm marine mammals, which is why environmentalists — and even the late leftist icon Sen. Ted Kennedy — have long opposed the planned Vineyard Wind facility off the Massachusetts coast. To provide enough power for the country, Green New Deal advocates would have to build hundreds of thousands of truly gigantic offshore turbines.

Environmentalists Should Shun This Policy

Green New Deal-mandated solar and wind facilities would need to be located further from populated urban areas than natural gas, coal, and nuclear facilities, meaning a major expansion of high-voltage transmission lines. But as recent wildfires in California show, power lines can cause major environmental damage if brush, trees, and grass are not cleared regularly. Environmental groups have opposed new power lines, and consistently oppose clearing vegetation, calling it “unnatural” or “harmful to wildlife,” thereby making deadly, habitat-destroying fires more probable.

Solar panels require many toxic materials, and wind turbines require enormous amounts of steel, concrete, copper, and rare earth elements. Storing a week’s worth of power for periods when the sun is not shining or the wind isn’t blowing would require some 2 billion half-ton Tesla car battery packs. Meeting these needs would require a massive expansion of mining for lithium, cobalt, and other substances in the United States or in Asia, Africa, and South America. Operations in the latter countries involve extensive child labor, create environmental disasters, and even lead to premature death.

Full post

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February 14, 2020 at 01:22PM

Up to twelve times normal snowfall.

__________

This year this has been the snowiest February 1 – 9 on record for Belgrade, Big Sky, and Grant (near Dillon), and the 2^nd snowiest start for Bozeman MSU and Ennis.

Many (not all) valleys east of the divide across SW Montana saw between one foot (30 cm) to just under two feet (60 cm) of snow in the first nine days of the month and ski resorts reported around 3.5 feet of new snow.

Normal valley total snowfall for the first nine days of the month is between 1 inch to 3 inches.

This past week’s snowfall contained a tremendous amount of water, which added substantial weight to the snow. It was more reminiscent of what we would see in late March rather than early February.

https://www.kbzk.com/weather/early-february-setting-records-for-snowfall

Thanks to Ryan for this link

“Snowiest ever here,” says Ryan. “Coldest October, probably coldest last March, yet everyone insists winters aren’t what the used to be. Just plain weird.”

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February 14, 2020 at 01:10PM

By Paul Homewood

 

 BP has been in the news lately, with its announcement that it is going Net Zero by 2050:

 

 

 https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/who-we-are/reimagining-energy.html

 

And this is how they intend to do it:

 

 

Now, you may be puzzled how you can carry on producing oil and gas, but not emit any CO2 when you burn it.

And so are many others!

And if you believe that this is all just a bit of virtue signalling PR by BP, you may be right.

The BP presentation is hopelessly vague as to how it is going to achieve all of this. But Greenpeace have suspicions of their own. Here’s their take, which I suspect is not a million miles away from what will happen:

 

Update: Bernard Looney’s speech about BP’s net zero carbon ambition left the urgent questions unanswered. The handful of answers he did provide showed BP isn’t serious about tackling climate breakdown.

When you cut away the fat, here’s what’s left: Bernard Looney isn’t going to stop BP drilling for new oil and gas.

Reinventing BP – as the speech was titled – means a little bit less oil and gas, and a little bit more renewable energy. But the core business won’t change. “BP is going to be in the oil and gas business for a very long time,” he said. “That’s a fact.”

Does this meet the needs of the climate? Absolutely not.

---

BP has a problem. On the one hand, it wants to be seen as a responsible company, one that is taking the climate emergency with the seriousness it deserves. On the other, it still makes huge profits from digging up the very fossil fuels that caused the emergency in the first place.

Fortunately, BP has a solution. A change at the top will help reshape the company for this new, hotter world. Out goes the hard-nosed oil men of old, in comes someone more in tune with the sensibilities of our modern times. Someone who can deliver BP’s charm offensive to persuade the world that it’s serious about the climate crisis.

Bernard Looney is that person. Or is he? He says he understands the frustrations of people who feel BP is not moving quickly enough to cut its share of global emissions, and “shares their deep concern”. People like the Greenpeace activists who shut down BP’s head office in London on his first day in the job. But Looney was head of oil drilling at BP for years, and beneath the shiny green veneer lies someone who plans to keep drilling for oil for years to come.

BP’s net-zero carbon ambition needs to be: stop drilling oil

Looney will reveal just how much he gets it, as he delivers his maiden speech as BP CEO. He will lay out his vision of how the company will respond to the climate crisis.

In truth, Looney only needs to say one thing. That BP will stop drilling for new oil and gas, right now.

BP is projected to invest $71 billion over the next decade in finding new oil and gas. But this can’t be burnt if there’s to be any chance of keeping temperature increases below 1.5ºC. There’s a global agreement to meet this target and avoid climate breakdown, but it’s in jeopardy until BP decides to stop digging up more fossil fuels.

And Looney needs to go further. To stick to the 1.5ºC target, production from existing oil and gas fields needs to be cut – 9% for oil and 6% for gas. In other words, the oil and gas already discovered needs to be left in the ground. So not only is there no space for any new oil or gas, Looney needs to announce that BP will leave some of the oil and gas in its existing fields untouched.

BP’s plan will rely on net-zero carbon tricks

In reality, Looney’s speech won’t say anything like this. Instead, he will say that BP will become net zero carbon by 2050. At face value, this sounds great. But it’s a smokescreen, designed to draw attention from the fact that BP has no intention of ramping down the oil and gas investments.

Net zero carbon is an accounting trick, based on the idea that someone else will clean up any carbon emissions BP is responsible for. BP will continue with its $71 billion plan to release even more carbon into the atmosphere, but will ‘offset’ those emissions elsewhere or rely on new technologies that don’t exist.

That’s the theory. In practice, it doesn’t work like that.

Offsetting and carbon capture are false solutions

Offsetting means doing something that will cancel out BP’s emissions. Planting trees to draw down and store carbon is one example – expect Looney to talk a lot about trees. But this approach is fraught with problems.

Trees take a long time to grow. To be effective, BP would need to guarantee these trees would survive for decades. And while planting trees and restoring forests is good, BP would need a mind-boggling number of trees to take care of its emissions. Shell’s CEO has talked of planting “another Brazil in terms of rainforest” to meet the 1.5ºC target.

More trees are definitely needed, and forests need to be restored to tackle the climate crisis. But it’s a terrible idea to let BP pump out carbon emissions now in the hope that someone else will plant trillions of tree later to make up for it.

What about new technologies? Looney will no doubt refer to carbon capture and storage, sucking carbon out of the atmosphere and squirrelling it away. The problem is this technology is unproven and doesn’t exist at the scale BP would need to reach net zero carbon.

And above all, whatever magic tricks Looney relies on, BP will still be pumping out fossil fuels. Once burnt, that carbon will heat the planet further still and the climate crisis will only get escalate. The only solution is to cut those emissions at source, by burning less oil and gas.

BP’s net zero carbon ambition might sound impressive, but means little in practice. The truth lies in where BP puts its money – pumping billions of dollars into new oil and gas shows it’s not serious about climate change.

BP: switch to 100% renewable energy

BP’s net-zero carbon ambition won’t stop the climate emergency. The only choice BP has is to stop drilling for oil and gas, and go all out for clean, renewable energy instead.

https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/news/bps-net-zero-carbon-ambition-climate-change-oil/

 

When you drill into the detail, there are plenty of way BP can “cheat” the system, and not at a crippling cost.

Carbon offsets, for instance, are little more than a scam. The Energysage website, for instance, reckons that worldwide, the range of carbon offset prices in the voluntary offset market can be anywhere from $0.10 per tonne to $44.80 per tonne. Even at the top rate, BP could offset all of its 415 Mt of emissions for $18bn, a price worth paying if it allows them to carry on business as usual.

And I am perfectly sure there are many countries more than happy to provide dodgy offset schemes for much less.

And as Greenpeace point out, planting trees is not panacea it is made out to be.

Expect as well the buying up of renewable energy certificates, in the same way that “green energy companies” do now. Again, these have zero effect on emissions, as the renewable energy is already being produced. And I am sure there will be a burgeoning market abroad, which will be happy to sell them off cheap, no questions asked.

We can also expect BP to ramp up investments in renewable energy projects, where this can be profitable. Often this will simply involve buying up existing operations, which will have zero impact on global emissions but make BP’s balance sheet look a bit greener.

Even if they fund new renewable projects, this still won’t actually reduce emissions from the oil and gas they produce.

The final catch all is new technology. If CCS can be made to work, maybe BP will one day be able to produce all of the oil and gas it wants, safe in the knowledge that it can be burnt emission free.

But I suspect that is still a long way in the future. Until then the world still needs their product, with or without green accounting tricks.

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February 14, 2020 at 01:09PM