Lowest Solar Activity In 200 Years Accompanied By High Northern Hemispheric Snow And Ice

via NoTricksZone
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Frank Bosse and Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt present their monthly solar activity report at their Die kalte Sonne site.

In May the sun was very quiet as sunspot number was a mere 18.8, which is only 36% of what is typical for the month this far into the cycle. Seven days saw no sunspot activity at all.

The following chart shows the current cycle, Solar Cycle 24 (red), compared to the mean of the previous cycles (blue) and the similarly behaving SC 5 (black).

It’s clear that the current cycle is significantly weaker than the mean and far weaker than the cycles we saw throughout most of the warming 20th century. So far there have been a number of signs indicating that upcoming SC 25 will also be a weak one. Historically periods of weak solar activity are associated with cooler periods and altered weather patterns.

The current cycle SC 24 has been so quiet that it is in fact the weakest since SC 6, which took place close to 200 years ago.

The above chart shows the accumulated monthly anomaly for each cycle this far into the current cycle. Bosse and Vahrenholt write that SC 24 has a chance, though a very small one, to overtake SC 5 and become the second weakest cycle since observations began in 1755.

Arctic sea ice remains stubbornly thick

Arctic sea ice has been surprising many observers lately because it has so far refused to melt like some predicted it would. Tony Heller here writes that the Northwest Passage is “blocked by very thick ice in the Beaufort Sea“. Latest sea ice extent chart shows sea ice extent being back into the statistical pack. There are even forecasts that point the melt season may be a slow one, see Weatherbell Weekend Summary.

Ice blocks Arctic study

Little wonder that a scientific global warming expedition to the Arctic had to be cancelled – due to excessive ice! James Delingpole at Breitbart reports: “Ship of Fools III – Global Warming Study Cancelled Because of ‘Unprecedented’ Ice“.

Dr. David Barber, lead scientist on the study, insisted that all the unexpected ice was caused by “climate change” — sort of like blaming obesity on a lack of calories.

Northern hemisphere snow cover well over normal

Also surprising in these times of “global warming” is that northern hemisphere snow cover is well above normal as of June 15, according to Environment Canada:

Snow cover over the northern hemisphere remains more than 1 standard deviation above the mean. Source: Environment Canada.

Greenland is also defying global warming. Kirye at Twitter tells us accumulated surface mass balance as computed by the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) is far above the mean:

Accumulated surface mass balance from September 1st to now (blue line, Gt). Source: DMI.

El Nino 2017 disappearing before arriving

At Weatherbell meteorologist Joe Bastardi reports that the forecast El Nino for 2017 has weakened considerably over the past few months. As what appears to be a curve from Scripps, the curve has gone from a powerful projected El Nino to a La Nina in just over the course of a couple of months (watch Joe’s Weekend Summary for the details).

Source: Cropped from Weatherbell Weekend Summary.

If the revised forecasts hold, a cooling globe over the coming months is likely.

via NoTricksZone http://notrickszone.com

June 18, 2017 at 12:48PM

Colorodoans Can See Climate Change Out Their Window

via The Deplorable Climate Science Blog
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But only if they are left wing, stoned, watch fake news CNN, or all three.

This is what I see out my window.

via The Deplorable Climate Science Blog http://ift.tt/2i1JH7O

June 18, 2017 at 12:29PM

L’Utopie du tout renouvelable, par Jean-Pierre SCHAEKEN, Bruxelles, Académie royale de Belgique, 2017

via Friends of Science Calgary
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Après la sortie américaine de l’Accord de Paris, il se confirme que l’Europe s’engagera, seule, dans la voie d’une électricité tout intégralement générée par de l’énergie renouvelable (soleil, vent).

via Friends of Science Calgary http://ift.tt/2on3Vep

June 18, 2017 at 09:30AM

The Bank of England’s Response to Climate Change Policies

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
http://www.thegwpf.com

By focusing only on risks to carbon intensive assets, whilst ignoring the possibility that current climate policies may be creating malinvestment in renewable energy technologies, the Bank of England is failing in its statutory duty to identify and address risks to the resilience of the UK financial system.

The Bank of England is under a statutory duty to “identify, monitor, and take action to remove or reduce risks that threaten the resilience of the UK financial system”. Consequently, as a an article published as part of the Quarterly Bulletin on the 16 June explains, the Bank is engaged in an ongoing examination both of the physical risks from climate change, and “transition risks” from the shift to a low carbon economy.

While some will think that the Bank overstates the physical risks (hazard x probability) “which can arise from climate-related events, such as droughts, floods and storms”, they have extensive company in taking that position, and one can easily imagine the pressures on the staff responsible not to allow any qualification. That is regrettable, but it is certainly not wrong in itself to consider extreme threats in a risk assessment. Indeed, that is the function of risk assessment.

A more serious failure, in my view, is the narrow characterisation of the “transition risk”. The Bank sees this entirely in terms of risks to carbon related assets, in other words to “sectors involving the production of fossil fuels, such as coal, oil and gas” and also “utilities, heavy industry, and the transportation sector, among others, whose business models rely upon using fossil fuels or are energy intensive” (p. 7). Nowhere in this document is there any evidence that the Bank recognizes that the very large investments in renewables, the Bank itself mentions “tens of trillions of dollars”, are themselves far from copper-bottomed.

One need not be dogmatic about this, simply open minded, but in fact the signs are not overwhelmingly positive. Renewable energy required very heavy subsidy to enter the market, still requires it, and will require it for a very long time to come. A much more balanced assessment published this week by J P Morgan, Many Rivers to Cross: Decarbonization breakthroughs and challenges (June 2017) notes that solar power auction prices seem to be converging below $100/MWh, a very high price, that most of the projects making these bids benefit from some sort of government subsidy, and that the International Energy Agency (IEA) is reporting that even as late 2040 half of world solar power will still need subsidy, and that in that year fossil fuels will still be providing the bulk of, for example, electricity in the United States. The renewable energy sector is not mature, and its realistic prospects are modest at best.

Furthermore, there are fundamental physical reasons for thinking that renewables may have no long term role in any future energy system. Renewable energy sources are low density flows. The entropy of these energy sources is high, as compared to the very low entropy of fossil and nuclear fuels. A great deal of low load factor capital equipment is required to collect, concentrate, and deliver these stochastic flows to consumers in the form of timely and controllable energy. This suggests an energy system based on renewables will be one of comparatively low productivity, a fact that would have very important and one would have thought obvious implications for wealth creation. However, in a strikingly one-sided summary the Bank of England writes that:

The allocation of capital and labour to projects not aligned with climate policies and technological changes could be a drag on productivity and economic growth. Conversely, allocating capital and labour to green technologies can be growth-enhancing.

Then again it might, and not at all improbably, be quite the other way around. Failing to allocate resources to projects not aligned with climate policies may destroy wealth, and directing them instead to green technologies could well reduce productivity and suppress growth. Why does the Bank not consider this unwelcome outcome? The study, after all, is a risk assessment, a type of analysis in which the authors are under an obligation, in this case a statutory obligation, to consider all the hazards, no matter how disagreeable.

Judging from this document the Bank of England is failing in its statutory duty to identify and address threats to the financial stability of the United Kingdom. There is, no doubt, a real possibility that the policy driven commitment of capital resources to renewable energy generation is malinvestment that will have to be written off within a decade or two, but the Bank, which now writes as if it were part of the policy delivery mechanism, does not give any consideration to this “transition risk”. Regardless of how probable you think that risk, this omission is clearly a mistake.

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) http://www.thegwpf.com

June 18, 2017 at 08:50AM