Essay by Eric Worrall

Wasn’t there this issue, climate something, which used to be important to these people?

Day after nuclear power vow, Meta announces largest-ever datacenter powered by fossil fuels

Louisiana facility’s three natural gas turbine plants to churn out 2,262 MW

Brandon Vigliarolo 
Thu 5 Dec 2024  // 22:20 UTC 

Richland Parish, an idyllic rural area in northeast Louisiana, USA, is set to host a gigantic new Meta datacenter.

But instead of being powered by one of the on-site nuclear power plants Zuckercorp has previously advocated for, the facility is opting to drive its AI computing workload by burning more fossil fuels. 

The 4 million square foot, $10 billion facility, hailed by Louisiana governor Jeff Landry as “a game changer,” is one of the largest private capital investments in the history of the bayou state and will be Meta’s largest-ever datacenter, the Facebook parent said.

Meta has decided to jump the atomic gun with this project by partnering with Entergy instead. The power generation company plans to construct three combined-cycle combustion turbine (CCCT) plants with a total energy generation capacity of 2,262 megawatts. 

…

Read more: https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/05/meta_largestever_datacenter/?td=rt-3a

As I predicted a few weeks ago, it was inevitable the insatiable AI driven demand for energy would outstrip the ability to satisfy that demand with low hanging fruit like re-commissioned nuclear plants. But I expected them to wait a few years until the climate movement was safely dead and buried, before forging ahead with a mad dash to commission new fossil fuel plants.

To be fair Facebook’s energy partners Entergy claim in the article that the power plant could run on up to 30% green hydrogen. I’m sure this will happen one day. For sure. Sometime after they attach wings to pigs.

If you are interested in learning why AI requires such a crazy amount of energy, and why that insatiable demand for AI led big tech to dump big green, the following article delves into AI energy use in detail.

Essay by Eric Worrall

Some scientists are at a loss to explain the 2024 heat bump, 0.2C above what models predicted.

Fewer low-altitude clouds may explain ‘missing’ 0.2C of warming from Earth’s hottest year: study

By environment reporter Peter de Kruijff

Fri 6 Dec

In short:

Fewer-than-expected low-lying clouds has been identified as a potential reason behind mystery global warming in 2023.

Last year was the hottest on record, reaching 1.45 degrees of warming since pre-industrial times, well over climate predictions of 1.25C of warming for 2023. 

What’s next?

More research is needed to understand why there were fewer clouds and whether drops in cloud cover are tied to global warming.

A drop in the number of low-altitude clouds was behind unexplained warming that contributed to the world’s hottest year on record, a new study suggests.

The record-breaking heat of 2023, which saw the planet warm an average 1.45 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial surface temperatures, took many climate scientists by surprise.

Their closest predictions, which simulated the effects of human-created warming and other known drivers, were around 0.2C lower than observed temperatures.

…

NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies director and climatologist Gavin Schmidt, who was not involved in the study, said the research “goes some way into explaining the process of recent warming.

“But we still aren’t able to say why the albedo has been changing so much, and so there is still more to do before we can say what this means going forward.”

…

Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-12-06/clouds-climate-change-warming-planetary-albedo/104680446

The study referenced by the article above;

Recent global temperature surge intensified by record-low planetary albedo

HELGE F. GOESSLING, THOMAS RACKOW AND THOMAS JUNG
5 Dec 2024
DOI: 10.1126/science.adq7280

Abstract

In 2023, the global mean temperature soared to almost 1.5K above the pre-industrial level, surpassing the previous record by about 0.17K. Previous best-guess estimates of known drivers including anthropogenic warming and the El Niño onset fall short by about 0.2K in explaining the temperature rise. Utilizing satellite and reanalysis data, we identify a record-low planetary albedo as the primary factor bridging this gap. The decline is apparently caused largely by a reduced low-cloud cover in the northern mid-latitudes and tropics, in continuation of a multi-annual trend. Further exploring the low-cloud trend and understanding how much of it is due to internal variability, reduced aerosol concentrations, or a possibly emerging low-cloud feedback will be crucial for assessing the current and expected future warming.

Read more: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq7280

There is a fairly obvious possible explanation for unusual weather anomalies this year. Note I first heard this prediction from climate scientist Jennifer Marohasy, but I can’t recall if she published a paper.

Tonga eruption increases chance of temporary surface temperature anomaly above 1.5 °C

Published: 12 January 2023

Stuart Jenkins, Chris Smith, Myles Allen & Roy Grainger 

On 15 January 2022, the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apai (HTHH) eruption injected 146 MtH₂O and 0.42 MtSO₂ into the stratosphere. This large water vapour perturbation means that HTHH will probably increase the net radiative forcing, unusual for a large volcanic eruption, increasing the chance of the global surface temperature anomaly temporarily exceeding 1.5 °C over the coming decade. Here we estimate the radiative response to the HTHH eruption and derive the increased risk that the global mean surface temperature anomaly shortly exceeds 1.5 °C following the eruption. We show that HTHH has a tangible impact of the chance of imminent 1.5 °C exceedance (increasing the chance of at least one of the next 5 years exceeding 1.5 °C by 7%), but the level of climate policy ambition, particularly the mitigation of short-lived climate pollutants, dominates the 1.5 °C exceedance outlook over decadal timescales.

Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01568-2

The drop in global cloud cover might not be related to Hunga Tonga – it could be Hunga Tonga had no impact, and the drop in cloud cover driven by unknown forcings is the culprit. But a prediction of a global temperature bump and unusual weather, followed by a global temperature bump and unusual weather, seems to be one hell of a coincidence.

If Hunga Tonga is the mystery factor behind the global drop in cloud cover, if one single volcanic eruption can take scientists like Gavin Schmidt by surprise by causing a 0.2C bump in global temperature, natural forcings surely deserve far more attention as potential contributors to global warming. At the very least this is a potent reminder there are still large gaps in our understanding of the global climate system.

The other takeaway from the current bump is wild predictions 1.5C of global warming will cause climate disasters has now been demonstrated to be nonsense. If it wasn’t for climate scientists pronouncing the 0.2C rise in temperature, who of us would have noticed?

We all agree that the wind-driven surface flow of the Atlantic Multidecadal Overturning Circulation (AMOC) brings precious warmth from the tropics towards the Arctic & enables a milder climate in Europe and North America. We all agree it’s the oceans that tremendously effect climate and create temperature changes that cannot be explained by a CO2 greenhouse effect.

The AMOC is unique because 1) it carries tropical heat from the south Atlantic, across the equator into the north Atlantic and Arctic Ocean (red currents, graphic A).   2) it creates a reservoir of warm Atlantic water at 100 to 900 meters depth in the Arctic Ocean capable of melting all sea ice 4 times over (graphic C).  3) Because the Atlantic is saltier than the Pacific, it becomes dense enough to sink to the ocean floor when it cools, creating the pressure that drives a deep return current back to the Antarctic (blue currents, graphic A).

When the AMOC slows down, it delivers less heat to the Arctic. Now a growing ocean cold spot south of Greenland suggests the AMOC is indeed slowing down again. To protect global warming narratives, climate alarmists like Stefan Rahmstorf and Michel Mann push the idea that global warming is causing the cooling and that rising CO2 will soon cause a catastrophic AMOC collapse that freezes Europe and disrupts global climates. But the variations in the AMOC’s heat transport have been happening for millennia and do not correlate with changing CO2 concentrations.

Most scientists believe varying AMOC heat transport causes the global see-saw effect contributing to the Atlantic Multidecadal Variability (AMV) (graphic B). When the AMOC strengthens it also pirates more warmth from the south Atlantic. The north Atlantic then warms while the south Atlantic cools. During the 1930s & 40s, the north Atlantic warmed and Arctic sea-ice retreated similar to what is observed today. During the 1970s and 80s, the AMV cycled to cooling the north Atlantic and Norwegian glaciers grew prompting several scientists to warn we were headed for a new ice age. In the 1990s as the AMV cycled and the Atlantic warmed again, the new fear was global warming. Blinkered scientists blamed rising CO2 for the AMOC’s effects.  Most ignored the fact that Arctic sea-ice was melting mostly where warm Atlantic water entered the Arctic and downplayed the AMOC see-saw effect that was redistributing heat and causing Antarctic sea-ice to simultaneously increase (graphic D).

Nonetheless those changes provided the ammunition for drama queens and eco-loons like Roger Hallam to create the Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil movements. Ignorant politicians offered government grants to grifting alarmist scientists to demonize CO2 and blame fossil fuels for the warming that they soon hyped as a crisis. To manipulate our fears, alarmist scientists like Katharine Hayhoe falsely claimed the world is warming faster than ever before, rising 1.1°C (2°F) since 1850. But such claims dishonestly ignored climate history and the effects of the AMOC.

During the last glacial period CO2 concentrations were around 180-200 parts per million (ppm) and temperatures were approximately 11 degrees Fahrenheit (6 degrees Celsius) cooler than today. Yet associated with the AMOC effects, the Arctic experienced 25 Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O) events, raising Greenland temperatures by 18 to 27 degrees Fahrenheit (10 to 15 degrees Celsius) in just a few decades (graphic E, red numbers mark each D-O event in most recent half of glacial period). Such rapid warming can only be explained by the sudden ventilation of Atlantic heat transported via the AMOC and stored in the Arctic Ocean.

As is the case today, the warm salty Atlantic water is insulated from the surface ice and the atmosphere by a layer of fresh water that prevents the heat of the warm Atlantic water from rising to the surface. As the glaciers grew the air dried and the flow of fresh river water into the Arctic was reduced, enabling the warm Atlantic water to rise closer to the surface. Coupled with an increased AMOC bringing more heat, Arctic sea-ice melted, and its stored heat was released, rapidly raising air temperatures.

The ebb and flow of the AMOC today similarly, but less dramatically than during D-O events, contributed to Arctic sea-ice melt, which enabled stored heat to be released. The Arctic temperatures then rose 2 to 4 times faster than anywhere else. The current slowing of the AMOC is simply part of a natural oscillating dynamic. Its current slowdown will soon increase Arctic sea-ice and lower temperatures naturally without crazy Net Zero mandates or Gate’s sun blocking. The slowdown doesn’t mean we are all going to die like the eco-loons and alarmist scientists push with their catastrophic story telling. Whether we burn more or less fossil fuels, it will not change the AMOC. And perhaps it will then be realized that life-giving CO2 is not our enemy!