NOAA uses “billion dollar disasters” as a climate metric, because population growth and inflation give them one more way to create completely fake climate statistics.

“333 Dead as Floods Hit Barcelona Area; At Least 1,000 Hurt

By The Associated Press,
BARCELONA, Spain, Thursday, Sept. 27, 1962—Flash floods, from drought-breaking rain-storms tore through industrial centers of the Barcelona area early yesterday, killing hundreds of persons and destroying many factories, homes and bridges. Today, 24 hours later, unofficial estimates placed the death toll at 350 to 400. Latest official reports said at least 333 bodies had been recovered. The injured totaled at least 1,000.

Damage estimates ranged above $80,000,000, More than 1,500 homes were swept away. Twenty-five factories were destroyed and 50 others badly, damaged. An estimated 15,000 workers were left without jobs.

Mass Burials Planned
Stunned and homeless survivors sadly made plans for mass burials during the day.”

TimesMachine: September 27, 1962 – NYTimes.com

“Chicago Tribune
27 Sep 1962, Thu – Page 3

Floods in Greece

ATHENS, Sept. 26 (#i—Two thousand persons were reported homeless today in two Greek villages in the Larissa area which were flooded when an irrigation dam on the Pinios river cracked after big rains. Urgent requests for medical supplies, food, and tents were received from the stricken area. Wide- spread areas of Greece reported floods.”

27 Sep 1962, 3 – Chicago Tribune at Newspapers.com

h/t Don Penim

via Real Climate Science

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September 28, 2023 at 03:48AM

The lead and co-author have clearly different views on this:
Lead author: “While we can definitively say this weakening is happening, we are unable to say to what extent it is related to climate change or whether it is a natural variation.”
Co-author: “It saddens me to acknowledge, from our study and so many others, and from recent record-breaking headlines, that even the remotest parts of the ocean are now in the grip of our addiction to fossil fuels.”
What have headlines got to do with science research?
– – –
The Gulf Stream transport of water through the Florida Strait has slowed by 4% over the past four decades, with a 99% certainty that this weakening is more than expected from random chance, according to a new study.

The Gulf Stream — which is a major ocean current off the U.S. East Coast and a part of the North Atlantic Ocean circulation — plays an important role in weather and climate, and a weakening could have significant implications, says Science Daily.

“We conclude with a high degree of confidence that Gulf Stream transport has indeed slowed by about 4% in the past 40 years, the first conclusive, unambiguous observational evidence that this ocean current has undergone significant change in the recent past,” states the journal article, “Robust weakening of the Gulf Stream during the past four decades observed in the Florida Straits,” published in Geophysical Research Letters.

The Florida Straits, located between the Florida Keys, Cuba, and The Bahamas, has been the site of many ocean observation campaigns dating to the 1980s and earlier. “This significant trend has emerged from the dataset only over the past ten years, the first unequivocal evidence for a recent multidecadal decline in this climate-relevant component of ocean circulation.”

The Gulf Stream affects regional weather, climate, and coastal conditions, including European surface air temperature and precipitation, coastal sea level along the Southeastern U.S., and North Atlantic hurricane activity. “Understanding past Gulf Stream changes is important for interpreting observed changes and predicting future trends in extreme events including droughts, floods, heatwaves, and storms,” according to the article.

“Determining trends in Gulf Stream transport is also relevant for clarifying whether elements of the large-scale North Atlantic circulation have changed, and determining how the ocean is feeding back on climate.”

“This is the strongest, most definitive evidence we have of the weakening of this climatically-relevant ocean current,” said Chris Piecuch, a physical oceanographer with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who is lead author of this study.

The paper does not conclude whether the Gulf Stream weakening is due to climate change or to natural factors, stating that future studies should try to identify the cause of the weakening.

“While we can definitively say this weakening is happening, we are unable to say to what extent it is related to climate change or whether it is a natural variation,” Piecuch said. “We can see similar weakening indicated in climate models, but for this paper we were not able to put together the observational evidence that would really allow us to pinpoint the cause of the observed decline.”
. . .
The study builds on many earlier studies to quantify long-term change in Gulf Stream transport. While the weakening found in the current study is consistent with hypotheses from many previous studies, Piecuch noted that the current study is “water-tight” and is “the first unequivocal evidence of a decline.”

Piecuch said that the finding of definitive evidence of the weakening of the Gulf Stream transport of water “is a testament to long-term ocean observing and the importance of sustaining long ocean records.”

The current study, which is part of a bigger six-year project funded by the National Science Foundation to make new measurements of the Gulf Stream at the Florida Straits, emphasizes the importance of having long-term observations, he said. “The more subtle that the change is that you are looking at, the longer is the observational record that you need to be able to tease that subtle change out of an observational time series.”

Full article here.

via Tallbloke’s Talkshop

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September 28, 2023 at 03:36AM

By Paul Homewood

h/t Dave Ward

 

 

 

A $4 billion Panasonic electric vehicle battery factory in De Soto, Kansas, will help satisfy the Biden administration’s efforts to get everyone into an EV.

It also will help extend the life of a coal-fired power plant.

Panasonic broke ground on the facility last year. The Japanese company was slated to receive $6.8 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act, which has been pouring billions into electric vehicles and battery factories as part of its effort to transition America away from fossil fuels.

The Kansas City Star reports that the factory will require between 200 and 250 megawatts of electricity to operate. That’s roughly the amount of power needed for a small city.

In testimony to the Kansas City Corporation Commission, which is the state’s equivalent of the Wyoming Public Service Commission, a representative of Evergy, the utility serving the factory, said that the 4 million-square-foot Panasonic facility creates “near term challenges from a resource adequacy perspective,” according to the newspaper.

As a result, the utility will continue to burn coal at a power plant near Lawrence, Kansas, and it will delay plants to transition units at the plant to natural gas.

And environmentalists are not happy about that.

The situation reflects an ignored fact about EVs — they require enormous amounts of energy to produce.

A 15-pound lithium-ion battery holds about the same amount of energy as a pound of oil. To make that battery requires 7,000 pounds of rock and dirt to get the minerals that go into that battery. The average EV battery weighs around 1,000 pounds.

All of that mining and factory processing produces a lot more carbon dioxide emissions than a gas-powered car, so EVs have to be driven around 50,000 to 60,000 miles before there’s a net reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.

So, as more factories are built in the U.S. to supply EV manufacturers, there will be higher demands on the grid for power.

Emily Arthun, CEO of the American Coal Council, was in Washington, D.C., this week speaking with federal lawmakers and members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Arthun, who lives in Gillette, told Cowboy State Daily that there’s a growing recognition of the need for coal to supply baseload power.

“I met with senators and representatives who understand that we’re going to need coal for far longer than people are talking about,” Arthun said. 

The Inflation Reduction Act aims to produce more green energy industries here in America, and Arthun said there’s a growing recognition that these are energy intensive.

“People are starting to understand that energy needs are increasing, and these premature [coal-fired power plant] closures are a liability,” Arthun said.

Rep. Cyrus Western, R-Big Horn, told Cowboy State Daily that many people are unaware of how energy is produced to create a reliable grid.

“Kilowatts don’t just fall out of the sky,” he said.

Besides the energy demand for the industrial capacity in America, there will be more demands placed on the grid to charge all these vehicles.

“That electricity has got to come from somewhere. It’s not going to come from solar farms and wind turbines,” he said.

Western said renewables are a great source of “auxiliary supplemental power,” but without a solid base load to ensure a reliable energy supply, they don’t work. These are realities that some still don’t want to accept.

“This administration wants to put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig,” he said.

https://cowboystatedaily.com/2023/09/22/ev-battery-factory-will-require-so-much-energy-it-needs-a-coal-plant-to-power-it/

via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

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September 28, 2023 at 03:27AM

New evidence says that offshore wind sonar surveys may have committed hundreds of thousands of violations of the MMPA, each potentially subject to tens of thousands of dollars in fines.

The post Offshore wind is systematically violating the Marine Mammal Protection Act appeared first on CFACT.

via CFACT

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September 28, 2023 at 03:24AM