By Alexandros G. Sfakianakis,Anapafseos 5 Agios Nikolaos 72100 Crete,Greece,00302841026182,00306932607174
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Saturday, January 26, 2019
Green Financial Advisor Makes the Case for a “Free Market” Carbon Tax
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Memes In Winter
Another meme page. Continue reading →
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California’s Wildfire History – in one map
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Climate Is a State of Mind
A recent survey by Yale and George Mason activists is another reminder that "climate change" is actually a branch of environmental psychology. Consider that "climate" is an human construct, defined as the pattern of weather we remember in our living space over seasons and years. And "climate change" is therefore an added belief that our expectations about future weather are uncertain and unreliable. And so, attitude surveys are a suitable way to explore an issue that is wholly a matter of public opinion, IOW a state of mind rather than a state of nature.
The survey is appropriately entitled: Climate Change in the American Mind. Title is link to the website for the 2018 edition, with earlier results back to 2008.
The resources there are informative, including articles expressing both satisfactions and disappointments with the levels of belief and concern expressed by survey participants. The compliant mass media cherry pick various findings, giving headlines like these.
"We've entered a new era" of climate concern, survey finds CBS
Americans Believe in Climate Change, But Not Climate Action NYmag
Yale Poll: Climate Change 'Personally Important' to Record Number of Americans EcoWatch
Most Americans Don't Know Vast Majority Of Scientists Agree On Climate Change CleanTechnica
Most Americans now worry about climate change—and want to fix it National Geographic
Poll Shows Most People Believe 'Global Warming is Happening' necn
Survey reveals 70% of Americans favour the environment over economic growth ClimateAction
What is the American Mindset according to the Survey?
So beyond details of particular responses, what can we learn from this series of polls about the American state of mind regarding global warming/climate change?
The specific questions and response patterns are at Appendix I: Data Tables & Sample Demographics
There are a lot of questions asked and answered, including exploring a complete range of feelings people have on the issue. I will summarize the central questions and the pattern of responses over the last decade.
The core set of global warming beliefs are listed on the left. The marked lines show the % of responses each one achieved over the years. For example, over 50% agreed to four of them in 2018: GW is happening, GW is man made, Future generations will be greatly harmed and Most scientists agree. Other patterns are also of interest. Personal experience of GW effects is reported by almost 50%, while only 30% are very worried. Indeed, people are less concerned about harm to themselves or even the US, then they are fearful for Developing Countries (DCs) and for Future Generations.
Notice there is a general curve to most of the answer time series. Beliefs are only slightly higher in 2018 than they were in 2008. In general, the %s were flat or declining in this decade until starting to rise again around 2014. This points to the linkage between the opinions held by the public and the emphasis promoted in the mass media. Compare the curvature in the above graph with this chart of climate change coverage in leading US newpapers.
The chart and research and research come from International Collective on Environment, Culture & Politics, AKA ICECaP. Note the peaks in 2007-8 at the time of IPCC AR4 and Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth flick, and in 2009-10 around the time of the Copenhagen COP. The Climategate emails were also in the news in 2010, but for some reason newspapers were less interested in that aspect, the topic dropped in coverage.
The spike in 2013 coincides with Obama's SOTU speech featuring climate change as the "defining issue of our time." The rise in climate change coverage in recent years is a more complex matter.
Climate journalists (like most all journalists) have been obsessed with trashing Donald Trump, and climate change is mentioned often as a subset of Trump complaints. Consider this chart from Media Matters.
See that huge spike in the middle? That's from June 1, 2017, when President Donald Trump announced that he intended to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement. No other day in the last three years saw anywhere near that much coverage. When Trump stages an event related to climate change, the media snap to attention. The rest of the time it's like, "Climate what?"
That aligns with what Media Matters found when we looked at climate coverage on broadcast TV news programs in 2017: Trump dominated the news segments about climate change. Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder, in the International Collective on Environment, Culture & Politics, reached a similar conclusion when they analyzed TV news coverage from November of this year: "In US television coverage of climate change or global warming in November 2018, 'Trump' was explicitly invoked over fourteen times more frequently than the words 'science' or 'scientists' together and nearly four times more frequently than the word 'climate' itself."
A research group at the University of Colorado-Boulder, the International Collective on Environment, Culture and Politics (ICE CaPs), produced the findings that illustrate how much climate coverage has been driven by President Donald Trump. It examined coverage last year in five major American newspapers: The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Times. In the 4,117 stories in those papers that mentioned "climate change" or "global warming," the word "Trump" appeared 19,184 times — an average of nearly 4.7 times per article.
Summary
There is not much upward movement in public belief in global warming/climate change. There is increased attention from the left-leaning media as part of their general dislike of the Trump administration. One more time, who made global warming into a political rather than a scientific issue?
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Oh NO, It’s BONO!
By Paul Homewood
h/t Patsy Lacey
Shouldn't silly little girls like this be at school?
A teenage activist has told the global elite at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos that they are to blame for the climate crisis and that the "house is on fire".
The Swiss summit is characterised as a discussion of momentous issues like Brexit, world trade and global warming.
Environmentalists have been complaining of alleged hypocrisy after reports that a record number of flights by carbon-spewing private jets would ferry rich corporate bigwigs to talk at the event this year.
Greta Thunberg, a Swedish 16-year-old, whose speech to a climate conference in December went viral, was speaking on a panel with musicians Bono and Will.I.Am when she brought up the issue.
"Some people say that the climate crisis is something that we will have created, but that is not true, because if everyone is guilty then no one is to blame. And someone is to blame," Greta said.
"Some people, some companies, some decision-makers in particular, have known exactly what priceless values they have been sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of money. And I think many of you here today belong to that group of people."
Greta, who got a waiver from school to travel 32 hours from her home in Sweden – by train, to keep her carbon footprint down, said she wanted those in the audience to "panic".
"I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. We owe it to the young people, to give them hope. I want you to act … as if the house was on fire. Because it is," she added.
There was apparently a short pause in the room before U2 front man Bono started clapping, according to CNN.
The conference centre in the ski resort of Davos is bustled with business executives, presidents and prime ministers, heads of non-governmental organisations, scientists, and artists.
Several hundred environmentalists and political activists have bene protesting and waving green and red flags to demonstrate their opposition to the WEF and capitalism.
Greta too is a keen activist and has been staging weekly sit-ins outside the Swedish parliament. She says she will not stop until her country is in line with the Paris Agreement.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/davos-2019-swedish-teenage-activist-201828107.html
But the biggest joke is that tax dodger Bono even dared to be there, never mind clap.
Could this be the same Bono who narrowly escaped death after his private jet door fell off in 2014?
Or the same Bono who flew into Sydney on a private jet, during his 2010 tour?
http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/YsPBx62sO-9/Bono+Boards+a+Private+Jet/6bygDqA17_r/Bono
Or the same Bono who loves to flaunt his luxury private yacht?
http://www.celebsonyachts.com/inside-look-bonos-secret-yacht-is-called-kingdom-come/
Perhaps little Greta should be more careful who she shares panels with in future.
But I wonder who paid her fare?
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Al Gore, UN Officials Team Up To Push A ‘New Deal For Nature’
http://bit.ly/2Wlgll7 The United Nations has joined forces with former Vice President Al Gore to promote a sweeping environmental agenda that seems all too familiar: a "New Deal For Nature." The U.N. is calling for a "New Deal For Nature" ahead of a biodiversity summit in 2020 where some sort of global compact is expected to [...]
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Long-term spatiotemporal variations of atmospheric sulfur, nitrogen and particle pollutants in Chongqing, southwest China: implication of industrial transfer
Abstract
Industrial transfer has swept through in China. However, there is still a knowledge gap about its environmental effects. In this study, industrial transfer status was assessed and evaluated by industrial ratios (%; the gross product contributions of the secondary industry to the whole industry) and the impact of such transfer on atmospheric environment (SO2, NO2, PM10 (particles with aerodynamic diameter less than 10 μm), precipitations of SO42−, NO3−, and NH4+) in the 38 districts and counties in Chongqing was analyzed and discussed for the period of 2006–2015. Results showed that industries were transferred obviously from the main urban region (MUR) into the 1-h economic region (OHER). Atmospheric sulfur and PM10 were efficiently put in control, but atmospheric nitrogen (NO2; precipitations of NO3− and NH4+) was increasing and posted a potential threat to air quality especially during 2011–2015. Correlations showed that industrial ratios had significantly positive relationships with concentrations of ambient SO2 and PM10 in the MUR and ambient NO2 in the OHER (p < 0.05) while a remarkably negative one with concentrations of ambient SO2 in the OHER (p < 0.05) during 2006–2015, implying that industrial transfer could be effective in transferring sulfur pollution but not as efficient in transferring atmospheric nitrogen and PM10 pollutions as SO2 between in the MUR and OHER. More measures should be taken to reduce nitrogen and PM10 emission and a regional monitoring network of ambient NH3 is in urgent need.
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Are Studies of High Penetrations of Wind Power Valid?
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Claim: compressed air in underground rocks could be the next batteries
The very fact that these kinds of idea are being put forward is another admission that renewables are chronically intermittent and unreliable as electricity generators. We're told 'considerable investment' would be needed but ignore the fact that, for less cost and complexity, some reliable new gas power stations would be a far more practical plan.
By pumping compressed air into porous rocks deep under the sea floor, scientists think we could effectively store energy for months at a time, says Discover magazine.
With reports about climate change becoming increasingly dire, it's increasingly important to find an eco-friendly way to not only generate energy, but also store it.
After all, wind turbines and solar power and the like don't run steadily. So we can't just stick that extra energy in a bottle to use when the wind dies down and the sun sets.
Only no, that's almost exactly what a group of Scottish scientists is proposing. Except, in this case, the bottle is a layer of porous rocks deep within the sea bed, and the energy comes from compressed air.
You simply [sic] use your renewable energy source to compress and store the air, and then when you need the energy again you pop the cork, so to speak, and let the escaping air drive a turbine that re-generates the electricity. (Thanks to the extreme pressures down there, the air would stay in place, and not escape on its own.)
The researchers unveiled the details behind the plan, dubbed porous media compressed air energy storage (PM-CAES), in a Nature Energy paper this week. It's a simple-sounding mix of technologies that could seriously make a dent in a country's energy production — and mitigate the trends that are pushing the global climate to extremes.
Compressed Air of Superiority
Currently this plan is all theoretical — the paper just runs the numbers on the idea to see if it's at all practical. But boy, does it seem to be.
The authors specifically looked at how a PM-CAES system could work for the United Kingdom, using the sandstone deep below the waters of the North Sea. They looked at existing geological records to model the terrain, and assumed the air "wells" would be physically near to the energy sources they'd be storing — offshore wind turbines, for example.
According to the researchers, it could really work.
Continued here.
– – –
Nature Energy article: Inter-seasonal compressed-air energy storage using saline aquifers
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Spot The Volcano, 1815 Edition
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Week in review – science edition
by Judith Curry
A few things that caught my eye this past week.
Important new paper analyzing troposphere/stratosphere measurements and implications for understanding climate change [link]
Atmospheric circulation as a source of uncertainty in climate change projections [link]
Heinrich events show two-stage climate response in transient glacial simulations [link]
Diagnosing the impacts of Northern Hemisphere surface albedo biases on simulated climate [link]
Towards operational prediction of near-term climate [link]
Rapidly receding Arctic Canada glaciers revealing landscapes continuously ice-covered for more than 40,000 years [link]
Implications for Lindzen's iris hypothesis: Self-aggregation of deep convection and its implication for climate [link]
Any influence of the 11-year solar cycle in the winter North Atlantic Oscillation is not significant. [link]
Ocean mesoscale mixing linked to climate variability [link]
What Thwaites glacier can tell us about the future of West Antarctica [link]
Four decades of Antarctic Ice Sheet mass balance from 1979-2017 [link]
Massive controversy, including attacks on dissenting scientists: How much can forests fight climate change? [link]
"We conclude that the QBO can potentially provide another source of skill for Northern Hemisphere winter prediction" [link] …
Aerosol-driven droplet concentrations dominate coverage and water content for oceanic low level clouds – key cloud feedback [link]
Modeling the recent changes in the Arctic Ocean CO2 sink (2006–2013) [link]
Snow cover trends in Finland over 1961‐2014 based on gridded snow depth observations [link]
Timescale for detecting the climate response to st ratospheric aerosol geoengineering [link]
(Re)presenting urban heat islands in Australian cities: A study of media reporting and implications for urban heat and climate change debates [link]
Are the near-Antarctic easterly winds weakening in response to enhancement of the Southern Annular Mode? [link]
The solar cycle's potential impact on weather and climate [link]
Exploring uncertainty in streamflow estimates [link]
The effect of Arctic sea‐ice loss on the Hadley circulation [link]
Why Antarctica's sea ice cover is so low (and no, it's not just about climate change) [link]
Coupled ocean-atmosphere interactions that lead to the extreme 2017 Coast El Niño event [link]
A reconciled estimate of the influence of Arctic sea-ice loss on recent Eurasian cooling [link]
20th century redistribution in the drivers of global tree growth [link]
Global atmospheric CO2 inverse models converging on neutral tropical land exchange, but disagreeing on fossil fuel and atmospheric growth rate [link]
Permafrost is warming at a global scale [link]
Ocean Circulation Signatures of North Pacific Decadal Variability [link]
"Although the amount of water contained in the snowpack has declined over the past century, it has been surprisingly stable since the 1980s, despite 1 °C of warming over the same period. " [link]
1D scaling analysis of the ice dynamics suggests that the currently destabilized glaciers are the fastest of all possible MIS-instabilities in #Antarctica. [link]
New insight from CryoSat-2 sea ice thickness for sea ice modelling [link]
Clarifying the relative role of forcing uncertainties and initial‐condition unknowns in spreading the climate response to volcanic eruptions [link]
How Ningaloo Nino supercharges El Nino [link]
A decadal dataset of global atmospheric dust retrieved from IASI satellite measurements [link]
Greenland Near-Surface Land Air Temperature Data from Berkeley Earth Present Some Surprises [link]
Heterogeneous changes in western North American #glaciers linked to decadal variability in zonal wind strength. [link]
Uncertainty representations of sea level rise: a telephone game? [link]
Arctic sea ice (Barents-Kara Sea) anomalies can modulate vertical wave propagation and stratosphere-troposphere coupling in weak polar vortex events [link]
Millennial‐scale Vulnerability of the Antarctic Ice Sheet to Regional Ice Shelf Collapse [link]
Significant Biologically‐mediated CO2 Uptake in the Pacific Arctic During the Late Open Water Season [link]
Irrigation in the Indian subcontinent strongly modulates water budget and land surface temperature [link]
Adapting attribution science to the climate extremes of tomorrow [link]
Social science, technology & policy
Article says high-pressure air in deep saline aquifers could store immense amounts of energy, sufficient to keep the lights on in Britain for a couple of months. [link]
Some of the best environmental #peacebuilding work in the world is currently taking place in Wadi El Ku, Sudan. A @UNEnvironment project has helped triple crop yield, increase farmers' income, and improve community-based natural resources management [link]
Incorporation of inland flooding into hurricane evacuation decision support modeling [link]
for Minnesota, it is cheaper to overbuild (and curtail) renewable energy than it is to build long-term storage. [link]
Warming trends in summer heatwaves [link]
German wine makers see boon in climate change [link]
EC Report: Climate Change Adaptation: research, science and innovation [link]
Second largest earthquake in South Korean history tied to geothermal plant [link]
Reshaping Africa's rural food systems and cutting food losses [link]
Factors influencing the adaptation of farmers in response to climate change: a review [link]
US Oil Boom Is Headed Into Uncharted Territory — 12 Million Barrels Per Day [link] …
About science & scientists
This is not reality: excellent analysis of uncertainty and validation in modeling [link]
Feeling Exhausted. That's how many #womeninscience feel having to fight the constant battles, big and small. [link]
Long but fascinating read: Is ancient DNA research revealing new truths, or falling into old traps? [link]
Finally, a good paper on 'motivated reasoning'. [link]
"Our habit of dismissing the doomsday messages broadcast by right-wing media has prevented those of us on the left from getting an accurate read on the state of campus free expression." [link]…
"The National Science Foundation and philosophy of science's withdrawal from social concerns." [link]
New Institute for Integrity in Science [link]
Listening to people who think we are wrong [link]
Scientific progress is build on failure [link]
Problems with second-order logic: Metalogic and the overgeneration argument [link]
from Climate Change Skeptic Blogs via hj on Inoreader http://bit.ly/2B5nXiC
Weekend Unthreaded
…
Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)from Climate Change Skeptic Blogs via hj on Inoreader http://bit.ly/2CLG90U
The Green Energies Of Instability…Swiss Power Grid Requires 200 Fold More Intervention Than 8 Years Ago!
Switzerland's power grid operator, Swissgrid, seems to have its hands full nowadays.
Just less than 10 years ago, Switzerland's power grid was among the most stable worldwide, operating with the same efficiency as its famous Swiss-made watches.
Today however, thanks to green energies like wind and sun, this is no longer the case, so reports the country's Baseler Allgemeine Zeitung (BAZ).
According to the BAZ, "In 2011 Swissgrid, the operator of the Swiss electricity grid, only intervened twice in the electricity grid to prevent major problems."
But last year, in order to keep the power supply stable, "these interventions reached a new record number with 382 interventions."
In other words, on average more than once a day. Hence the article by the BAZ is titled: "The power grid is fluctuating like never before."
The number of interventions needed to keep the Swiss power grid stable jumped from just 2 in 2011 to 382 last year, a new record. Chart source: Swissgrid, via BAZ.
Stabilizing the Swiss grid can mean throttling one or more of its dozen power plants, says the BAZ. Power fluctuations in the grid not only heighten the risk of overload and blackouts, but also threaten sensitive production equipment which rely on a steady supply of power for critical process control.
The BAZ adds that the problem is not only getting worse in Switzerland, but also in all the grids in neighboring countries, such Germany, France, Austria and Italy.
What's the reason for all the instability? The BAZ reports:
With more and more electricity from the sun and wind, whose production depends on the weather changing at short notice, it is becoming increasingly difficult to ensure an even supply. The production of these renewable electricity producers is much higher than consumption in wind and sunshine, but too low at night and when there is no wind."
The BAZ also notes that Switzerland is sorely lacking in energy storage systems to balance out the peaks that are seen in sun and wind power production.
"Customers bearing the costs"
The Swiss daily also writes that the country's power grid at times is so unstable that on July 2 (2018) alone, Swissgrid "had to throttle power plants eight times or have them started up so that grid operation was not endangered."
In Switzerland, whenever a power plant is asked to throttle its power production in order to keep the green-energy-flooded grid stable, it is entitled to financial compensation. No problem here: The power consumers pick up the tab, reports the BAZ.
When asked why the grid has become increasingly unstable with each passing year, Swissgrid replied that it was "due to sun and wind energy", the BAZ reports.
Europe dodged a bullet two weeks ago
Not only the Swiss power grid has been rickety and unstable, but so has the entire European grid, writes the BAZ. An example of this occurred recently, Swissgrid here reported in a press release:
A drop in frequency on the synchronously interconnected Continental Europe system was registered on 10 January 2019 at around 21.00.
The causes of this drop are still under investigation by the transmission system operators (TSOs) of ENTSO-E Regional Group Continental Europe.
A mismeasurement on lines between Germany and Austria was identified and corrected by TenneT Germany. However, this mismeasurement cannot explain the entire frequency drop on 10 January. The investigation, which is still on-going, is reviewing the significant variation in European production around 21.00 which coincided with changes in trade between different countries.
The frequency drop was sufficient to alert the TSOs but did not at any moment endanger security of supply.
TSOs of ENTSO-E Continental Europe Regional Group are taking collective actions to restore frequency as foreseen in such cases and continue their technical analysis of the incident."
Next time Europeans may not be so lucky.
Unfortunately it may just take a widespread blackout to get European leaders back to their senses. But even then, don't count on it. Some policymakers are in fact insisting that the grid instability problems can be solved by "adding more wind and solar power."
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Harrabin Peddles Latest Arctic Nonsense
By Paul Homewood
More nonsense from Roger Harrabin:
A rapid climate shift under way in the Barents Sea could spread to other Arctic regions, scientists warn.
The Barents Sea is said to be at a tipping point, changing from an Arctic climate to an Atlantic climate as the water gets warmer.
A conference in Norway heard that the Kara Sea and the Laptev Sea – both further to the east – are likely to become the new Arctic frontier.
The scientists warn that it will affect ecosystems.
It may also impact on global weather patterns, although there's no agreement on that.
They're concerned because the north Barents Sea has been governed by an Arctic climate since the end of the last Ice Age, 12,000 years ago.
The Arctic Ocean has a cold, fresh surface layer which acts as a cap on a layer of warm, saltier Atlantic water beneath.
But now in the Barents Sea there's not enough freshwater-rich sea-ice flowing from the high Arctic to maintain the freshwater cap.
And that's allowing warm, salty Atlantic water to rise to the surface.
In what's known as a feedback loop – the more the layers mix, the warmer the surface gets. And the warmer the surface gets, the more the waters mix.
So it's now only a matter of time, the researchers say, before this section of the Arctic effectively becomes part of the Atlantic. It could happen in as little as a decade, they warn….
And in another puzzle, freshwater in the western Arctic seems to be increasing as it diminishes in the eastern Arctic. Scientists are still struggling to fathom the complexities of human impact on the planet.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46976040
Why on earth should any of this have to do anything to do with "human impact on the planet"?
You only have to go back to the 1920s to see exactly the same climatic changes in that part of the Arctic.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/1520-0493%281922%2950%3C589a%3ATCA%3E2.0.CO%3B2
This period, called the Warming in the North, is well known to scientists, and lasted from around 1920 to 1960.
Bob Dickson and Svein Osterhus wrote extensively about it in their seminal paper, "One hundred years in the Norwegian Sea":
As our hydrographic time series is lengthened into the middle decades of the 20th century, it begins to capture evidence of one of the largest and most widespread regime shifts to affect our waters within the modern instrumental record. These were the decades of 'the Warming in the North', when the salinity of North Atlantic water passing through the Faroe-Shetland Channel into the Norwegian Sea reached a century-long high (Dooley et al. 1984), when salinities were so high off Cape Farewell that they were rejected as erroneous (Harvey 1962) and when a precipitous warming by more than 2°C in the 5-year mean pervaded the West Greenland banks (Fig. 6), and also when the northward dislocations of biogeographical boundaries for a wide range of species, from plankton to commercially important fish, terrestrial mammals, and birds, were at their most extreme in the 20th century. The astonishing nature of these radical events is vivid in the contemporary scientific literature, most notably in the classic accounts by Knipowitsch (1931), Sæmundsson (1934), Hansen et al. (1949), Stephen (1938), Jensen (1939), Tåning (1943), Tåning (1949), Fridriksson (1949), and many others summarized in a comprehensive bibliography by Arthur Lee (1949) and reviewed in an ICES special scientific meeting on 'Climatic Changes in the Arctic in Relation to Plants and Animals' in Copenhagen in 1948.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00291950701409256
The Warming in the North ended abruptly in the 1960s, when Arctic currents took over again, and brought the sea ice back.
Go back a bit further, and we can see how sea ice around the Barents Sea fluctuated backwards and forwards:
And go back 3000 years, and we can see that current sea ice extent to the north of Iceland is near historical highs.
It should not take Harrabin more than a few minutes to check this out for himself. So why does he continue to peddle every bit of junk science he is fed?
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Growth of legal pot farms drives smog worries
From Science Mag Leaf enclosure measurements for determining volatile organic compound emission capacity from Cannabis spp. Summary Air pollution researchers are going to pot. The expansion of legal pot farms in the 10 U.S. states and Washington, D.C., that have legalized recreational marijuana has researchers and regulators concerned about their impacts on air quality and…
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This Week In Doom — Celebrity Meat Edition
Item Abortion until birth in New York State.
In a democracy, what is voted yes on becomes both true and moral. Maranatha.
Item Everyone Stop Everything. What Is This?
A lot of weird stuff shows up on the Internet, but Bite Labs is really, really weird. The site claims to be collecting tissue samples from celebrities, isolating the muscle stem cells, growing celebrity meat in "proprietary bioreactors," and then turning it into artisanal salami. Wut?
From the BiteLabs' website:
"We mix celebrity and animal meats, grown in house through a proprietary culturing process, into curated salami blends. Our process yields high-quality, luxury protein, in a sustainable manner that eliminates the environmental and ethical concerns associated with traditional livestock production."
Yup. No obvious ethical concerns here. Nothin' to see. This must be a hoax, right? Or a marketing campaign that wants to go viral (in which case we're helping). So far the BiteLabs Tumblr isn't revealing much. Neither is #EatCelebrityMeat.
Gives new meaning to the terms beefcake and (forgive me) piece of ass.
Besides the opportunities for hilarity and our culture's obsession with entertainers, there is a deeper trend here. We have seen in other places attempts to make meat from bugs in a large-scale manner, and also "meat" from petri dishes. We are losing the ability to tell man from animal, a difficult even pagans did not face. Yet we do. If animals are people, too, then of course they must have "rights" and cannot be eaten. That they eat each other is brushed aside.
What about plants? Surely they don't have "rights"?
Item Another Push for Plant "Rights"
Rejecting human exceptionalism leads from one bizarre concept to the next, including the ridiculous anthropomorphized idea that plants are persons too.
The New York Times published a professor (of course!) claiming that peas are "not only a what, but a who." The paper's science writer Natalie Angier even wrote that plants are "ethical autotrophs."
Trees as "Beings"
And now an Australian scientist has written a book claiming trees and other plants should be considered "beings" instead of "objects." From the Sydney Morning Herald story:
"It's OK to cut down a tree, or poison a weed, because plants don't feel pain when we chop them down, right? They don't have brains. Everyone knows that.
But plants make sounds — little underground clicks that microbes and insects might be able to hear. They communicate with each other, and other species, using chemicals…
'We have studied plants for a long time, but we only understand them as objects — not as beings,' says Associate Professor Monica Gagliano, a plant biologist at the University of Western Australia who conducted those studies. 'And if they are beings, then maybe they have rights? Definitely the right to be treated with respect and care — which we don't always do well.'"
Scoff as you like. But SJWs go from success to success. Every idiotic and foolish idea they have has the habit of becoming ensconced in law. They rely on people laughing at them but doing nothing. They know that most people will cower under their glare, once it's turned on them.
Right now, though, the SJWs have to battle Big Ag. It's one thing to claim corn cries, but it's another to muscle Monsanto into forgoing farming.
That means we'll likely see "studies" and "research" with "proves" that the least profitable plants are those that truly have feelings, while GMO cash crops, like corn, soy, and wheat, have had all feelings genetically modified out of them.
Write this one down, folks. You'll remember it in a year or two.
The Coriolis reception brings together lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender-queer (LGBTQ) friends and allies to mentor, network, and connect with individuals who share common professional and personal interests. The 10th year Coriolis reception …
Question: What does interest or participation in non-procreative sexual simulation have to do with fluid flow on a rotating sphere? Answer: Not one damn thing.
Science is becoming increasingly woke.
Item Lesbian Couple Identifying As Straight Couple Prepares To Transition 5-Yr-Old Son Into A Daughter
The headline is enough. We can only imagine the alleged parents of this poor child to say someday, "Who knew I'd wind up in Hell?"
Many people find math frustrating.
But for some, it can actually turn into 'statistics anxiety,' a fear of doing math or statistics problems that can be debilitating or even stand in the way of graduation.
A new study from the University of Kansas discovered which factors can contribute to statistics anxiety and how it can be dealt with.
Previous studies have shown that some 80 percent of college students suffer from statistics anxiety, the University of Kansas explained.
'We teach a statistics class in the psychology department and see many students put it off until senior year because they're scared of this class,' Michael Vitevitch, professor and chair of psychology at the University of Kansas, said in a statement.
I used to have this power — to inflict statistics anxiety. But I am no longer a danger to the kiddies.
Item Why aren't doctors speaking of reality against tranny madness?
If you wonder why physicians aren't speaking up, I know of one just now who was mocked, threatened, and doxxed. All because he dare question, the paradigm of blocking normal puberty and wrecking child/adolescent bodies with high dose wrong sex hormones. /1
— Michael K. Laidlaw, MD (@MLaidlawMD) January 25, 2019
from Climate Change Skeptic Blogs via hj on Inoreader http://bit.ly/2DAgH05
The UN’s Global Green Law is going nowhere for now
It may have taken a knock, but it's by no means the last we'll hear of it, as CFACT explains.
The first major meeting of the UN's (take a breath) "Ad hoc Open-ended Working Group towards a Global Pact for the Environment" or simply OEWG, convened on Monday, 14 January 2019 at the United Nations Environment Program offices in Nairobi, Kenya.
During the week-long session, delegates considered the report of the United Nations Secretary-General (UNSG), titled "Gaps in international environmental law and environment-related instruments: towards a global pact for the environment."
This is the newly hatched grand green dream, for a binding set of new global laws that both encompasses and surpasses all of the existing multinational environmental treaties and agreements (MEAs). I am not making this up.
Not surprisingly this wackiness originated in France, where President Macron wants to be the green king of the world.
Introduced at the 72nd session of the UN General Assembly in 2017 by Macron, the pact began its voyage through the UN system, and UN General Assembly resolution 72/277 subsequently established the OEWG with a mandate to submit its recommendations in the first half of 2019.
About 300 participants attended the meeting, especially government delegates from many countries, including the U.S., plus representatives of various international and UN organizations.
The good news is that the meeting turned into something of a fiasco. It turns out that the countries are not excited about surrendering their treaties and agreements.
The issue is so-called "gaps" in the existing legal system, at least according to the Secretary-General's contentious report. Many delegates, including America's, said they were biased wishes, not gaps. In fact they were seen by many countries as attacks on existing laws and agreements.
The Trump team was quite aggressive, but so were many others.
Continued here.
from Climate Change Skeptic Blogs via hj on Inoreader http://bit.ly/2WmCEXD
Sonophotocatalytic treatment of rhodamine B using visible-light-driven CeO 2 /Ag 2 CrO 4 composite in a batch mode based on ribbon-like CeO 2 nanofibers via electrospinning
Abstract
CeO2/Ag2CrO4 composite photocatalyst was successfully fabricated using electrospinning and calcination and chemical precipitation method based on CeO2 ribbon-like fibers and characterized by field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), energy dispersive X-ray (EDX), X-ray diffraction (XRD), UV–Vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). The as-obtained CeO2/Ag2CrO4 composite used photocatalytic performance in the sonophotodegradation of rhodamine B in aqueous solution under visible-light (LED) irradiation. DRS analysis illustrates that CeO2/Ag2CrO4 composite exhibited enhanced absorption in the visible region-attributed CeO2 nanofibers. The effect of four effective parameters including initial concentration of rhodamine B (RhB), photocatalyst dosage, pH, and irradiation time was studied and optimized using central composite design. The kinetic studies confirmed ability of pseudo first-order reaction based on the Langmuir–Hinshelwood model for fitting empirical data, while its rate constant (kobs), L–H rate constants (kr), and L–H adsorption constants (KA) were 0.0449 min−1, 11.66 mg L−1 min−1 and 1.09E−3 mg L−1, respectively. The enhanced photocatalytic activity could be ascribed to the ultrasound field and formation of a heterojunction system among CeO2 and Ag2CrO4, which lead to a better mass transfer and higher efficiency of charge electron–hole separation, respectively.
from Climate Change Skeptic Blogs via hj on Inoreader http://bit.ly/2B5hBA5
Chironomid genera distribution related to environmental characteristics of a highly impacted basin (Argentina, South America)
Abstract
The objective of the present study was to investigate the responses of the chironomid communities (Diptera: Chironomidae) to environmental variables in four moderately and highly disturbed rivers located in one of the most degraded watersheds in South America. Sampling campaigns were carried out during 2014–2016 in four sites of the Matanza-Riachuelo basin. The physical-chemical and hydrological variables were measured and, the ecological indices were calculated and evaluated by ANOVA. The responses of Chironomidae to the environmental variables were evaluated by redundancy analysis (RDA), and the sampling sites were grouped according to the populations of chironomids and the main environmental variables. Finally, the Spearman correlation was made to determine which of these variables were significant. In total, 13 chironomid taxa were found in 36 samples during the study period. The greatest density registered belongs to Rheotanytarsus and Cricotopus. The ANOVA detected the greatest Chironomidae density and taxonomic richness in the sites with agricultural-urban impact. The changes in the distribution of Rheotanytarsus, Thienemanniella, and Polypedilum were mainly explained by the increase in current velocity, organic matter, and hardness, and the decrease of NH3 and BOD. On the other hand, Goeldichironomus, Chironomus, Parachironomus, Dicrotendipes, and Cricotopus were explained by the increase in conductivity, dissolved oxygen, and temperature, and the decrease of the variables NO3, BOD, and Cu. In addition to this, the sites with urban-agricultural impact were clearly separated from sites with urban-industrial impact. The last one was more related to the increase in BOD, Cu, and NO3 that indicates moderate to poor water quality. In conclusion, we can infer that the physical and chemical variables are correlated with changes in the structure and distribution of the chironomid community and there are genera that respond differently at high and intermediate situations of disturbances. This knowledge contributes to the execution of strategies for the conservation and restoration of the lotic ecosystems.
from Climate Change Skeptic Blogs via hj on Inoreader http://bit.ly/2Tgy1fY
Inequality promotes deforestation in Latin America
from Climate Change Skeptic Blogs via hj on Inoreader http://bit.ly/2FQddc7
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