Watchch this interview. Write to your MP. Letters to the Editor. Stop the flights.
Our universities took a huge bet on Chinese students that is falling apart. They’ve creamed the profits, but taken no insurance and stand to lose billions if they can’t get students to Australia. Some 65,000 of whom got caught in China by the quarantine. Right now travel agents are marketing 14 day holiday stopovers in Thailand to Chinese students, who are then flying to Australia to get around the ban. But this is not quarantine. Thailand is open to China, and considered so risky that Israel has already banned flights from Thailand. What’s next? Australia imports the virus, tens of thousands may die, and all so the ivory tower smug academics can make their profits, while spineless politicians sell out the nations citizens — especially the senior, longest serving ones?
How long before Israel bans Australian planes? We could have been one the highest value clean nations in the world, waiting out our first winter of this pandemic until there is a treatment. We could have been a place that wealthy tourists come to stay safe (after a two week real quarantine) and […]
No-one can be surprised at the judges’ decision to block a third runway at Heathrow. Collectively, the country has failed to grasp the implications of deep decarbonisation.
Image: Nate Johnson
Many people will regard the decision to block a third runway at Heathrow as an unwelcome intrusion of judges into our democratic system. They will be bemused that those judges cited the Paris Agreement to justify their decision, when one can hardly see China*, or indeed any other signatory to the Paris Agreement, blocking vital airport expansion because of that same treaty.
But to blame the judges is to miss the point. All they have done is to take the commitments of that accord and the Government’s pledge to achieve net zero emissions at face value. It is simply a matter of fact that such expansion cannot be reconciled with reducing our emissions, at least in the short term. This is what net zero means. It means to abandon the pursuit of growth, the pursuit of new opportunities, of new trading links, of progress and resign the country to a new era of eco austerity. Today brings that decision, and the government’s shameful failure to be upfront about its implications, into sharp focus.
When the Paris Agreement was signed it was heralded as an extraordinary moment in the fight against climate change. Green journalists parroted this view, useful as it was to the politicians and activists desperate to show that some progress had been made. Those familiar with the details could see that all it really did was to confirm countries’ existing plans. China, India, and other developing countries were allowed to continue increasing their emissions, and the EU reaffirmed its own emissions targets. America’s inclusion was more significant, but it wasn’t long until Trump announced his intention to withdraw.
The end result is to leave Britain uniquely vulnerable to the economic consequences of rapid decarbonisation policies. While the more cautious approach of Eastern European countries will act as break for the EU, Britain is faced with a fundamental political choice as it leaves. It can choose to embrace the free market and technological progress, which will lead to the more efficient use of resources and indeed come to reduce the consumption of almost every natural resource. Or it can continue with an opportunity-destroying, insular and unilateral approach of state-mandated decarbonisation in one country. Time to choose.
*China, by the way, is planning to build 216 new airports by 2035.
ISSN 1063-7737, Astronomy Letters, 2019, Vol. 45, No. 11, pp. 778–790.c Pleiades Publishing, Inc., 2019. Nicola Scafetta1*,FrancoMilani2, and Antonio Bianchini3, 41Department of Earth Sciences, Environment and Georesources, University of Naples Federico II,Complesso Universitario di Monte S. Angelo, via Cinthia, 21, 80126 Naples, Italy 2 Astronomical Association Euganea, via N. Tommaseo, 70, 35137 Padova, Italy3INAF, Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, Vicolo dell’Osservatorio 5, I-35122 Padova, Italy 4 Department of Physics and Astronomy, Universit `a degli Studi di Padova, via Marzolo 8, 35131 Padova, Italy Received May 18, 2019; revised October 2, 2019; accepted October 23, 2019
Abstract—The high-resolution Jet Propulsion Laboratory DE431 and DE432 planetary ephemeris are used to evaluate the instantaneous eccentricity functions of the orbits of the planets of the solar system from 13 000 BC to 17 000 AD at different time scales. Spectral analyses are performed to determine the frequencies and the amplitudes of the detected perturbations from 0.1-year to 10 000-year periods.Taken as contiguous pairs (Mercury-Venus, Earth-Mars, Jupiter-Saturn, and Uranus-Neptune), we found anti-phase patterns between contiguous planets at specific time scales (30 000 years): namely,the eccentricity of one planet increases while the other decreases. Venus and Earth instead appear in phase. However, on shorter time scales the phase coupling becomes more complex and irregular. Yet,Jupiter and Saturn present a π/2 phase coupling at the 1000-year scale. Periodogram analysis of the planetary eccentricity functions shows several fast fluctuations whose magnitudes indicate the strength of their mutual interactions where the Jovian planets significantly perturb the orbits of the inner planets.Besides, the wavelet power spectrum and wavelet squared coherence spectrum analyses are adopted to examine the relationships in time-frequency space between the eccentricity functions of each couple of terrestrial and Jovian planets. The analysis reveals the complexity and the evolution of the gravitational couplings perturbing each other planetary orbits. In some cases and for specific frequencies, this analysis technique also led to the discovery that the coherence phase can rotate clockwise or anticlockwise. The eccentricity function of the orbit of Jupiter presents large oscillations with periods of about 60 and 900–960 years, mostly due to the interaction with Saturn. These oscillations also correspond to oscillations found in several geophysical records. The eccentricity functions of Uranus and Neptune are characterized by a large 4300-year oscillation. The eccentricity function of Pluto is characterized by a large nearly 20 000-year modulation.
DOI: 10.1134/S1063773719110094 Keywords: eccentricity function, orbital perturbations, planetary system.
Given the government has no detailed plan as to how it will achieve Net Zero without crashing the economy, or exporting our remaining manufacturing industry, the zero-carbon target presents activists with a means to challenge any government policy they feel is inconsistent with this goal.
It may well be, as Tom Goodenough argued here earlier, that Boris Johnson is secretly delighted at the Court of Appeal’s ruling that is was illegal for the government to give the go-ahead to a third runway at Heathrow without taking into account their own climate policy.
The Prime Minister had, after all, promised his constituents that he would lie down in front of the bulldozers to stop a third runway. He now has the cover of a court decision to shield him from the Conservative party’s pro-runway elements if the project ends up being dropped.
But the Prime Minister should be extremely concerned about the wider implications of this judgement. It is yet one more example of power draining away from elected government in Parliament, towards the courts. The courts are coming back again, and again, interfering in decisions which ought to be taken in the realm of politics.
Part of the reason for this transfer of power is activist judges. Increasingly they are flexing their muscles by straying into political decisions – something a few of us have long been opposing, recently joined by Lord Sumption in his Reith lectures last year. But a large part of the blame lies with the government itself (by which I mean the Conservative-led coalition, Cameron and May governments, as well as the Johnson administration). It continues to pass laws placing legal obligations on itself to reach targets and objectives. By doing so it is inviting activists to challenge decisions in court.
As the judge pointed out in his ruling, he hasn’t strictly ruled out a third runway. What he did rule was that the government had failed to take into account its own climate policy when making the Heathrow decision. But who passed the Climate Change Act which imposed a legally binding target to slash carbon emissions by 2050? The original act was introduced by the Brown government in 2008, but the Cameron-led Conservative opposition supported it with minimal dissent – only six MPs failed to vote in favour of it. That committed the government to reducing carbon emissions by 80 per cent, compared with 1990 levels, by 2050. Then, last summer, the May government upped the target to net zero emissions.
Given the government has no detailed plan as to how it will achieve this feat without crashing the economy, or exporting our remaining manufacturing industry, the zero-carbon target presents activists with a means to challenge any government policy they feel is inconsistent with this goal. That means just about every new road, airport, gas-fired power station – not to mention HS2. Could the government demonstrate that HS2 is consistent with zero carbon emissions by 2050? I doubt it, given the steel and cement involved in its construction.
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