Month: February 2020

Daily News 12 Feb 2020

2020 Dems: Hatred Destroys from Within

Wise advice for 2020 Dems. If only they can stop hating and mend their ways.

Jonathan F. Keiler elaborates at the American Thinker After Three Years of Hate, the Dems Have Lost It Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Writing in the Atlantic (“This is No Way to Beat Trump”) Thomas Nichols, a self-described former Republican and #NeverTrumper, castigates Democrats for their failure to take down President Trump, in light of the disorganized Iowa Caucus and the party’s unimpressive stable of candidates. In the piece, Nichols pretends to dispense hard-headed political advice. In fact, the article reveals why he and the Democrats he wants to help are floundering.

Their perception of the world is so distorted by manic dislike of President Trump that they have ceased to act as a responsible political party which can offer a reasonable alternative.

The very premise of Nichols’ case, and by extension that of the Democrat party and all its putative candidates, is that beating Trump must be their principal goal, eclipsing all other concerns. Nichols thinks the Democrats are not attempting to do this — which is preposterous. But more interestingly having come to this false conclusion, he has no prescription for exactly how to beat Trump, only that it must be done.

Of course, beating Trump has been the monomania of the Democrats (and #NeverTrumpers) for over three years. It’s the first and last thing out of all the candidates’ mouths when they speak, and one of the few things they agree upon.

The Washington Post recently ran a typical article highlighting the malady entitled “’Tempted to despair’: Trump’s resilience causes Democrats to sound the alarm.” Huh? Are we talking about a presidential campaign or a soap opera? It’s quite as if Trump were ill, the Dems were suffering heirs hoping he’ll just die — which is probably not far from the truth.

Manias in general are not good things. Occasionally a smart or extremely lucky maniac reaches his objective. Much more often mania sidetracks its victim by severely narrowing his focus, depriving him of necessary context and a broader and more realistic picture of reality.

That’s what’s happened to the Democrats. The Iowa caucus disaster is one symptom. The failed impeachment of Trump another. The stable of unstable Democrat candidates yet another.

And it’s pretty easy to see in the modern Democrat party the same dynamic taking hold, albeit before they have actually achieved total political control. Trump in almost every respect is the Dems’ Emmanuel Goldstein, a subject of such mindless animus and vituperation that the party can’t see the forest for the trees. It’s been three years of hate, and way more than two minutes a day.

Modern therapeutic psychology would suggest an intervention, and in the United States such a role has often been played by the press. Historically, when a party or politician went off the deep end, there was a vibrant press to point it out, mock it, and return things to semblance of rationality. That has not been the case in America for a generation or two now, with the mainstream media having lost most all semblance of objectivity to become the Democrats’ great enabler. And indeed, the mandarins of the modern media are, if anything, even more Trump-afflicted than the party that they supposedly cover.

Very much like a schizophrenic, neither the Dems nor the media can recognize the pervasive objective truth about American today — things are going pretty well.

The economy is doing great, unemployment is low, and the markets are confident. We are ending a China trade war with some gains. Borders are more secure. Unemployment is at historic lows. With the exception of small military commitments to Afghanistan and Syria, we are at peace. We are energy self-sufficient, and even climate-change doomsayers must now admit things are not so bad.

The Democrats have a lot of problems. But their biggest one is their grip on reality. As long as that’s the case, whoever they pick in 2020 is not likely to be any more successful than Emmanuel Goldstein.

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February 12, 2020 at 05:28AM

Daily News 12 Feb 2020

Biofuels are meant to clean up flying’s carbon crisis – they won’t

Image credit: United Airlines

More wreck-o than eco? Here we find that ‘biodiesel from food crops emits an average of 1.8 times as much CO2 as fossil fuels which increases to three times more in case of biodiesel from palm oil.’ Looks like another non-solution to the claimed problem.

The UK’s aviation industry is touting biofuels as a way to make plane transport greener. But some biofuels can end up doing more harm than good, says Wired.

In the next 30 years, the number of flights is expected to increase by 70 per cent.

Unless things change, by 2050 the aviation industry will have used up more than a quarter of all the carbon dioxide we can safely emit while keeping global warming to under 1.5 degrees Celsius.

But the aviation industry says it has a way out.

Sustainable Aviation, a UK coalition of airlines, airports and manufacturers announced earlier this month that the sector plans to reach net zero emissions by 2050. Its plan? Biofuels.

The group claims that switching to biofuels will reduce the amount of carbon dioxide planes put into the atmosphere by at least 30 per cent in 2050. But they might not be the carbon solution the aviation industry is in need of.

Unless they’re used in the right way, biofuels could be a bigger source of carbon than expected, and won’t help reduce emissions at all.

Biofuel is an umbrella term for any fuel manufactured from organic material – an alternative to fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal which are formed by geological processes over long periods of time. They can be made from crops, wood or waste material which is turned into biodiesel and bioethanol.

Although burning biofuels releases carbon into the atmosphere – the same as burning any fuel – the supposed benefit of biofuels comes from the fact that that carbon released was absorbed by the organic matter as it grew.

In theory, this means that carbon simply cycles between plants and the atmosphere, rather than being released into the atmosphere after staying locked deep underground for millions of years.

At the moment Bergen, Brisbane, Los Angeles, Oslo and Stockholm airports provide a 50/50 mix of biofuel and jet fuel. Conventional fuels make the seal in the engines of older planes swell slightly which prevents leakage, so this mix is the minimum amount of fossil fuel that can be safely handled by all planes.

Representatives from the International Air Transport Association (IATA) say that manufacturers are starting to use a synthetic rubber substitute in the engines of new planes that isn’t affected by biofuels, so over time they expect the percentage of biofuel used in the mix to go up.

But just because biofuels are made from plants, it doesn’t mean they’re carbon neutral.

Although direct emissions from biofuel are lower than fossil fuels – burning enough biofuel to generate one megajoule of energy gives off the equivalent of 39g of CO2, whereas for fossil fuels that figure is 75.1g. But when you add in the carbon cost of growing and transporting biofuels, things become a lot more complicated.

“You can’t just say this is a biofuel, therefore it is five times better or tens times better,” says Chris Chuck, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Bath. “But they know that that consumers want to hear that.”

It all depends on how far you delve into the carbon cost of biofuel: how it is made and transported, and where the materials used come from. When this is taken into account, biodiesel from food crops emits an average of 1.8 times as much CO2 as fossil fuels which increases to three times more in case of biodiesel from palm oil.

In 2017, a group of 177 Dutch scientists signed an open letter to the government to stop biofuels made from food crops being included in the EU’s sustainable development agenda, calling it a “false solution”.

And growing crops for biofuels adds another problem to the mix: it requires vast tracts of land.

Full article here.

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February 12, 2020 at 04:54AM

Daily News 12 Feb 2020

GMSL Data Correction: Follow-up

Brief Note by Kip Hansen — 12 February 2020

FEATURED_IMAGE One month ago I posted a Brief Note here about a correction to the GMSL data and graphics at NOAA’s Laboratory for Satellite Altimetry (LSA). The problem at that time concerned the data files and their associated graphics, often used here at WUWT and elsewhere as definitive and reliable up-to-date information of Global and Regional Sea Level Rise, found from this web page:

star_nesdis This is the link:

https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/sod/lsa/SeaLevelRise/LSA_SLR_timeseries_global.php

At the bottom of the page illustrated, you see four columns of links to various forms of the data. The data is noted to be: “Only altimetry measurements between 66°S and 66°N have been processed. An inverted barometer has been applied to the time series. The estimates of sea level rise do not include glacial isostatic adjustment effects on the geoid, which are modeled to be +0.2 to +0.5 mm/year when globally averaged.”

The different versions of the data are:

four_data_formats

Last January, there was a glitch in the data and the graphics that resulted in 2 data points from the month of December to be missing from the files and images. They looked like this:

missing_data

Up at the upper right hand corner, you can see the one latest data point, and before it, blank space where at least two other data points should have been.

I wrote to the Webmaster of STAR, Eric Leuliette, who was helpful and replied:

“For 2 cycles of Jason-3 data, our database was missing some data due to a script failure. I’ve fixed the database and rerun the mean sea level data. The replacement files are on our web site now.”

Unfortunately, it appeared that the fix broke something else, and the result of the repair was this:

csv_and_png_disagree

It appears that the missing data points for December have been added in but according to the data file for this graphic, the point you see above at the intersection of the red lines, the first data point for January 2020, is shown to be just under 70 mm. The data file says it should be 63.41.

Naturally, I politely notified Eric of the new discrepancy by return email….and never heard back.

FAST FORWARD ONE MONTH, TO TODAY…..SITUATION: It is Worse Than We Thought

Here is the image of the same data set pictured above, download at 1400 hrs 11 February 2020.

11_Feb_global_free_all

Oops, it is exactly the same at it was on 10 January, no new data points have been added, there is no correction for the apparently missing/incorrect data for 2020.022.

In fact, checking all four of the graphics, and all four of the data files (.csv files), NONE of them have been updated since 2020.022 (one on 2020.023). It is not only the global mean sea level data sets and graphics, clicking through to the Regional sea level time series page, we find the exact same problem — nothing has been update since the first data point in January 2020. The ninth of February is, in digital date format, 2020.040.

For the year 2019, the .csv (comma-separated values) file shows 36 entries for the year, one approximately every 10 days. When investigating the previous problem, there were two missing values, each about ten days apart. This year, the last date for which there is any entry is, any of the sea level rise files (or on their graphics) is 2020.022 (in one case, 2020.023, which represents the same date).

The Official Scoop:

The webmaster at NOAA STAR/NESDIS, Eric Leuliette has been very responsive — the epitome of a public employee fulfilling his responsibilities to the general public. Truthfully, he has been more than patient with my several emails and many questions, responding and clearing up a less-than-simple situation.

Point 1: Why have these images and files not been updated since 9 January 2020?

Answer: “Jason-3 has been in safehold this week, so it’s likely that there will be missing data for one or two cycles.”

and

“CNES is investigating the source of the Jason-3 safehold.”

“The safehold position safeguards instruments by drastically reducing the satellite’s power usage, but it has the perturbing side effect of forcing DSCOVR [in this case, Jason-3 — kh] to stop transmitting data back to Earth.” [ source ]

Point 2: Why are the data files (.csv files) different from the graphics files which share the same name?

noaa_green Answer: “The plots have been smoothed with a 4-month boxcar filter. I have changed the text on the website to note this. This is the source of the differences that you noticed between the csv files and the plots. The attached figure shows the smoothed values (green) versus the unsmoothed values (red).”

As promised, the text on LSA/Sea Level Rise page has been changed to read:

“Only altimetry measurements between 66°S and 66°N have been processed. An inverted barometer has been applied to the time series. The estimates of sea level rise do not include glacial isostatic adjustment effects on the geoid, which are modeled to be +0.2 to +0.5 mm/year when globally averaged. The plots have been smoothed with a 4-month boxcar filter.” [the bolded text was added –kh]

Point 3: Why don’t the data files (the .csv files) agree with the plots?

Answer: “The plots have been smoothed with a 4-month boxcar filter. I have changed the text on the website to note this. This is the source of the differences that you noticed between the csv files and the plots.”

Point 4: What? Where are the data files with the smoothed data?

Answer: “We have not been providing a file with the smoothed values.”

Explanation: The data files contain data points for each “10-day pass” of the Jason-3 satellite. Apparently, the script that produces the images (.png files) shown above, the multi-color, multi-satellite graphs, first runs a 4-month boxcar filter on the data and then puts the smoothed data on the graph — not the original data. This is true, even though the .csv file and the graphics share the same name — they do not share the same data points.

Point 5: When we will see updated data and images?

Answer: “I only update the time series sometime around the 15th of each month.”

And, as Jason-3 is/was in safehold, it will depend.

# # # # #

Author’s Comment:

I promised last month that I’d let you know if there was any progress on this, expecting an answer in a few days. It took longer but now we know.

I normally wouldn’t fuss with an oddity like this, but I write about Sea level Rise and the STAR/NESDIS sites are my mainstay for up to the minute SLR data from the Jason series satellites.

I have been very impressed with NOAA’s response — from Eric Leuliette, the Center for Satellite Applications and Research (STAR) webmaster, who has gone the extra mile to answer my questions.

# # # # #

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February 12, 2020 at 04:03AM

Daily News 12 Feb 2020

AFTER THE DROUGHTS, HEATWAVES AND FIRES COMES THE FLOOD

This is in Western Australia where the heavy rain is finally quenching the bush fires. Of course the alarmists will try to say that all this is down to "climate change", but since all this has occurred in one year it is certainly not "climate" and it is typical of the weather of the region. So let’s stop all this nonsense talk of all this being climate change and accept that we are all subject to extreme weather and it can be very dangerous. We just have to get used to it and do our best to mitigate it.

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February 12, 2020 at 01:30AM