Their orbits have a ratio of 247:63, whereas 248:62 = 4:1.
– – –
Several interacting exoplanets have already been spotted by satellites.

But a new breakthrough has been achieved with, for the first time, the detection directly from the ground of an extrasolar system of this type, reports Phys.org.

An international collaboration including CNRS researchers has discovered an unusual planetary system, dubbed WASP-148, using the French instrument SOPHIE at the Observatoire de Haute-Provence (CNRS/Aix-Marseille Université).

The scientists analyzed the star’s motion and concluded that it hosted two planets, WASP-148b and WASP-148c. The observations showed that the two planets were strongly interacting, which was confirmed from other data.

Whereas the first planet, WASP-148b, orbits its star in nearly nine days, the second one, WASP-148c, takes four times longer.

This ratio between the orbital periods implies that the WASP-148 system is close to resonance, meaning that there is enhanced gravitational interaction between the two planets.

And it turns out that the astronomers did indeed detect variations in the orbital periods of the planets.

While a single planet, uninfluenced by a second one, would move with a constant period, WASP-148b and WASP-148c undergo acceleration and deceleration that provides evidence of their interaction.

Full article here.

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July 4, 2020 at 09:21AM

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July 4, 2020 at 08:59AM

This title is from a Bloomberg article that bemoans the loss of trust in mass transit from a health perspective.

Officials across the nation are worried that as the coronavirus pandemic persists, commuters will avoidtaking buses and trains, and opt for their cars, potentially leading to dangerous new levels of air pollution.

It seems a couple of the pillars of environmental “footprint” reduction, denser cities and mass transit are under strain in a time of fear of contagious disease.

More cars on the roads in congested urban centers like New York City—the virus epicenter in the spring—Washington, San Francisco, and Philadelphia means more emissions of smog-forming pollutants and poorer air quality. That could cause some cities to missfederal standards for ground-level ozone, which in turn could mean losing federal highway dollars at a time of already declining local revenues.

“If a significant number of people decide to drive to work then we could have congestion, and traffic, and air quality issues,” said Kristine Roselius, spokeswoman for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, which represents the nine counties that make up San Francisco.

The increase in driving of personal vehicles can lead to real pollution issues unconnected to Global Warming or Climate Change

Mobile sources like cars are a significant factor in ground-level ozone, a chief component of smog that is linked to respiratory illnesses. Major urban centers like San Francisco are already struggling to meet federal ozone standards of 70 parts per billion of air,even without any unexpected spikes in drivers on the roads.

Exceeding ozone limits can prove costly for localities, which would have to rewrite their emissions reductions plans to factor in the increased pollution. While unlikely, a decline in air quality could ultimately lead to a loss of federal highway dollars for much-needed improvements if those revised plans aren’t met.

Ridership and revenues of mass transit have plummeted

New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, or MTA, which boasts the nation’s largest fleet of buses, subway lines, and commuter trains, saw train ridership plummet 93% in mid-April to 365,835, a record low, while bus ridership dropped 84% from last year.

As of June 24, ridership levels in the country’s most populous city are still a long way from reaching pre-pandemic levels, with trains hovering at 81% of year-ago average ridership, and buses at about half of last year’s levels.

Vehicle traffic also plummeted, but is recovering much faster than mass transit as stay-at-home orders are being lifted.

Vehicle miles traveled in Washington, D.C., New York, and San Francisco are still 35% below pre-Covid levels. But StreetLight data indicates they increased sharply in the last month, rising nearly 70% since June 1 in D.C. and New York—and nearly doubling during that time in the Bay area. Philadelphia levels are now 18% below those pre-pandemic, and up 80% since June.

“These metrics certainly confirm what we’ve all anecdotally observed on our cities’ streets heading into the summer,” said Martin Morzynski, StreetLight’s vice president of marketing.

Officials worry that convincing people to ride mass transit again may be an uphill battle.

One challenge for transportation and air quality planners is to persuade people going forwardthat public transit won’t pose a threat to their health.

Sykora, the teacher, remains unpersuaded by New York City officials. She said the city took a long time to close public schools despite the surge in coronavirus cases—and only after Sykora and other teachers went on a strike of sorts that she described as a “sick-out.”

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July 4, 2020 at 08:23AM

The aim of activists now is not to engage with political opponents but to attempt to put them beyond the pale.

It is steadily becoming clear where the woke brigade will go once the current moral panic over racism has run its course (which can’t be long, following the news that London estate agents have stopped using the term ‘master bedroom’ to avoid its connotations with slavery). A week ago Andrew Willshire wrote here of how the activist group Hope Not Hate has now decided that climate change ‘denialism’ is now a hate crime.

Now comes another sign that climate change is becoming the next woke battleground. Earlier this week, an environmental campaigner, Michael Shellenberger wrote a mea culpa on the website of Forbes.com. ‘On behalf of environmentalists everywhere I would like to formally apologise for the climate scare we have created over the past 30 years,’ it began. ‘Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem.’

Shellenberger, who has been campaigning against the destruction of the rainforest since the age of 16, has not given up his campaign. On the contrary, that is the very reason he has changed his mind. Previously, he worked as an advocate for renewable energy – persuading the Obama administration to invest $90bn (£72bn) into renewables, he says. But he has now changed his mind. He has calculated that at present, 0.5 per cent of land on Earth is used for the production of energy. If the world switched to 100 per cent renewables, however, we would have to use 50 per cent of all land on Earth for wind farms, solar farms, growing biofuels or forest plantations to feed wood-burning power stations and so on. The devastation this would cause has led him to the conclusion that if we are going to reduce carbon emissions the only practical way is via nuclear power.

Now you may or may not agree with that conclusion. Personally, I have serious misgivings about using nuclear fission to provide the world’s energy needs, given the economic devastation that another Chernobyl or Fukushima would bring to a densely-populated country. Nuclear fusion, if we could get it to work on a commercial scale, would be a different story – although everyone has been promising that for the past half century, and there is a limit to how many billions you can throw at a technology in the hope of a breakthrough.

Anyway, that is by the by. What is surely true is that the world’s future energy needs, and the extent of the damage wrought on the climate by man-made carbon emissions, are areas of legitimate debate. If you do disagree with Shellenberger, you have every right to do so. But that is not, of course, how woke politics functions. The aim now is not to engage with political opponents but to attempt to put them beyond the pale, to try to delegitimise their opinions by making out that they belong on some far-right fringe from which the general public needs to be protected.

‘I know that the above facts will sound like “climate denialism” to many people,’ Shellenberger wrote prophetically in his Forbes piece. Not half. His piece has now been taken down by Forbes. A US journalist who tried to find out why was issued only with the following statement: ‘Forbes requires its contributors to adhere to strict editorial guidelines. This story did not follow those guidelines, and was removed.’

It is not hard to decode: a bunch of climate alarmists decided that Shellenberger is inconvenient to their cause and have tried to cancel him by complaining to the website – and the website caved in. Fortunately, Shellenberger has reposted his piece, so you can still read it here – and judge for yourself what ‘editorial guidelines’ Forbes judged it to breach (after initially passing it for publication).

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The post Ross Clark: The Next Culture War Will Be Over Climate Change appeared first on The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF).

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July 4, 2020 at 07:41AM