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Sunday, February 3, 2019
‘Cooling Is Warming’: Climate Hoaxters Panic As US Freezes, Media Provides Cover
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Enhanced adsorption for Pb(II) and Cd(II) of magnetic rice husk biochar by KMnO 4 modification
Abstract
Novel KMnO4-treated magnetic biochar (FMBC) was successfully synthesized by addition of Fe(NO3)3 during carbonization and KMnO4 treatment following for Pb(II) and Cd(II) adsorption. SEM-EDS, XPS, and ICP-AES were used to evaluate the FMBC and magnetic biochar (FBC) on surface morphology, surface chemistry characteristics, surface functional groups, and Pb(II) and Cd(II) adsorption behavior. Results showed that the Langmuir maximum adsorption quantity of FMBC reached 148 mg/g for Pb(II) and 79 mg/g for Cd(II), nearly 7 times of that of FBC. The enhancement of FMBC for heavy metal adsorption was due to the successful load of manganese oxides and the increased oxygen functional groups consistent with XPS and FTIR results. The adsorption capacities of FMBC were maintained over 95% when the pH value was higher than 2.5 and 3.5 for Pb(II) and Cd(II), respectively. The adsorption performances of both heavy metals by FMBC were hardly influenced by ionic strength and humid acid. The adsorption capacities of FMBC could maintain over 50% and 87% after four cycles for Pb(II) and Cd(II), respectively. The saturation magnetization of FMBC was about 11.5 emu/g, which did not change after adsorption. This work proposed a new method to fabricate a magnetic biochar with high adsorption capacities of heavy metals Pb(II) and Cd(II).
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Sediment phosphorus release in response to flood event across different land covers in a restored wetland
Abstract
The phosphorus (P) fraction and its release characteristics from sediment in response to flood events across different land covers (i.e., reclaimed land with dominant vegetation of Phragmites australis and/or Typha orientalis, grassland with dominant vegetation of annual and perennial forbs, and bare land) in the lakeshore of Chaohu Lake were investigated. The results indicated that the re-flooding of a restored wetland led to P release. IP (inorganic P) was the major P fraction in the soils pre-flood and post-flood. For all the soil samples, the rank order of P fractions was Ca-P (P associated with calcium) > OP (organic P) > Fe/Al-P (P bound to Al, Fe, and Mn oxides and hydroxides). During flooding, Fe/Al-P contributed the most as the P release source in the soils and to the P sources for the overlying water. In reclaimed land, Fe/Al-P release correlated significantly with soil pH. In grassland, Fe/Al-P release correlated significantly with soil pH and Al content. In bare land, Fe/Al-P release correlated significantly with Al and clay content. The max TP release rates were also significantly influenced by land cover, and the values in bare land, grassland, and reclaimed land were 9.91 mg P m−2 day−1, 8.10 mg P m−2 day−1, and 5.05 mg P m−2 day−1, respectively. The results showed that the P release processes might be regulated by different factors across different land covers, and that the re-introduction of vegetation during wetland restoration must be taken into account prior to flood events to avoid an undesirable degradation of water quality.
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Evaluating giant panda as a surrogate species for conservation co-occurring species in the Baishuijiang National Nature Reserve
Abstract
The establishment of nature reserves is a key approach for biodiversity conservation worldwide. However, the effectiveness of nature reserves established by protecting the habitat needs of surrogate species is questioned. In this study, the Baishuijiang National Nature Reserve (Baishuijiang NNR), located in the Minshan Mountains, China, which is established mainly for the conservation of giant panda (a surrogate for the conservation of other endangered species) was selected. We quantitatively evaluated the conservation effectiveness of the reserve for giant panda and co-occurring species (here, seven protected species) using a maximum entropy model (Maxent), and analyzed spatial congruence between giant panda and other seven species. Results shown that the habitat of giant panda generally included the habitat of other seven protected species, suggesting that conservation of giant panda habitat also allows the conservation for the habitat of almost co-occurring species. Hence, the natural reserve established for giant panda as a surrogate species has a relatively high effectiveness. A high proportion of the suitable habitat for six species is inside the core zone, but a high proportion of the suitable habitat for two species is located in the experimental and buffer zones. Thus, the two species are affected by human activities. To improve the conservation effectiveness of the nature reserve, the management zones need to be amended. The result of the study will be beneficial for future conservation and management of the reserve. This study provides an effective method for evaluating the conservation effectiveness of nature reserves in other area of the worldwide.
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Impact of dietary nano-zinc oxide on immune response and antioxidant defense of broiler chickens
Abstract
This study aimed to elucidate the response of broiler chickens to the dietary nano-zinc supplementation in terms of immune response and antioxidant activity. Ninety-one-day-old chicks (Ross 308) were randomly assigned to one of three dietary treatments in three replicates, in a feeding trial that lasted for 5 weeks. Birds were fed a basal diet supplemented with inorganic zinc oxide at 40 mg/kg diet (control), zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnONPs) at 40 mg/kg diet (ZN1), or ZnONPs at 80 mg/kg diet (ZN2). Birds were injected with DNP-KLH at the 7th and 21st days from the beginning of the experiment, and blood samples were collected on days 7, 14, 21, 28, and 35 to determine the levels of immunoglobulin Y (IgY) and malondialdehyde as well as the antioxidant enzyme activities. Cellular immunity was assayed by estimation of phagocytic percentage and index of peripheral monocytes of blood and estimation of the T lymphocyte activity using a lymphocyte transformation test. The results showed that feeding broiler chickens a diet supplemented with ZnONPs increased (p < 0.05) the activity of superoxide dismutase and catalase and decreased the concentration of malondialdehyde compared to the control diet, without significant differences between NZ1 and NZ2 diets. Moreover, the chicks fed diets supplemented with ZnONPs showed a significant increase (p < 0.05) in serum IgY, total lymphocyte count, and macrophages compared to the control. A higher significant response for antibodies IgY concentration was observed in birds fed the NZ2 vs NZ1 diet. Also, there was a significant increase in phagocytic activity and phagocytic index in ZnONP-fed groups with a higher significance in the group fed NZ1 than with NZ2 diet as compared with the control. In conclusion, ZnONP application up to 80 mg/kg in the diet is safe for broiler chickens and could improve their antioxidant defense and cellular immunity.
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Nanoanalytics: analytical methods for characterization of nano- and micro-objects
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Technologies for deodorization of malodorous gases
Abstract
There is an increasing number of citizens' complaints about odor nuisance due to production or service activity. High social awareness imposes pressure on entrepreneurs and service providers forcing them to undertake effective steps aimed at minimization of the effects of their activity, also with respect to emission of malodorous substances. The article presents information about various technologies used for gas deodorization. Known solutions can be included into two groups: technologies offering prevention of emissions, and methodological solutions that enable removal of malodorous substances from the stream of emitted gases. It is obvious that the selection of deodorization technologies is conditioned by many factors, and it should be preceded by an in-depth analysis of possibilities and limitations offered by various solutions. The aim of the article is presentation of the available gas deodorization technologies as to facilitate the potential investors with selection of the method of malodorous gases emission limitation, suitable for particular conditions.
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Rapid Nickel(II)-Promoted Cysteine S-Arylation with Arylboronic Acids
Chem. Commun., 2019, Accepted Manuscript
DOI: 10.1039/C9CC00159J, Communication
DOI: 10.1039/C9CC00159J, Communication
Kengo Hanaya, Jun Ohata, Mary K. Miller, Alicia E. Mangubat-Medina, Michael J. Swierczynski, David C. Yang, Reece M. Rosenthal, Brian V. Popp, Zachary Thomas Ball
S-Arylation of cysteine residues is an increasingly powerful tool for site-specific modification of proteins, providing novel structure and electronic perturbation. The present work demonstrates an operationally-simple cysteine arylation reaction with...
The content of this RSS Feed (c) The Royal Society of Chemistry
S-Arylation of cysteine residues is an increasingly powerful tool for site-specific modification of proteins, providing novel structure and electronic perturbation. The present work demonstrates an operationally-simple cysteine arylation reaction with...
The content of this RSS Feed (c) The Royal Society of Chemistry
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Nuclear Jet Missiles Anyone?
An interesting video by Curious Droid about the SLAM missile. Nuclear ram jet cruise missile the USA was able to make, but thought better of it... Continue reading →
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Study finds billion-year superocean cycles in Earth’s history
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Quietest Solar Cycle In 200 Years May Put The Brakes On Global Warming
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Recognition of Important Work and implications For Climate Change and Society.
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Minnesota Climate Change Believers in Full Damage Control Mode
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Wealthy Elites Attack Their Own Roots
It is the season for Corporate annual shareholder's meetings, and once again energy companies will be attacked. Wealthy individuals and institutions will again brandish knives against the energy goose that made them fortunes. Those who have benefited the most from modern society's use of fossil fuels now imitate a cancer eating away at the wellspring of prosperity. It is a puzzlement why they want to stop tapping the vast supply of underground energy before its benefits reach the impoverished masses in underdeveloped countries.
An outlook on the sparring ahead is provided at CNN Business
A standoff is brewing between investors, corporate boards and federal regulators as shareholders prepare to vote on resolutions that concern human rights, corporate governance, and climate change. Excerpts in italics with my bold.
Leveraging shareholder votes for environmental and social ends isn't new, but such resolutions have been on the rise in recent years. Shareholders proposed 464 resolutions in 2018 compared with 407 in 2010, according to an analysis by the Sustainable Investments Institute.
Although that's down slightly from a record of 494 resolutions in 2017, the number of proposals that were withdrawn jumped in 2018, often following quiet deals with management to accomplish some part of what the resolution called for without going to a public vote.
One key reason: Backing from the three largest asset managers in America. BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard, taken together, are the largest shareholder in 40% of all public companies in the United States.
All three of those heavyweights have altered their shareholder voting guidelines in recent years to be more open to progressive resolutions, resulting in a series of high-profile votes in favor of them. For example, in 2017 the trio voted for resolutions requesting that ExxonMobil and Occidental Petroleum compile reports analyzing how future climate change regulations would change their businesses.
Most shareholder resolutions are technically non-binding, and completing a report on the potential impact of climate change may not seem like that big a deal. But companies see them as a first step on the road toward real limits on their activities, and ultimately their profits.
To cut back on this kind of resolution, ACCF and other trade associations formed a group called the Main Street Investors Coalition. It advocates for small-time shareholders who might lose out if "politically motivated" resolutions hurt investors' portfolios.
Along with Nasdaq, the Business Roundtable, and the Chamber of Commerce's longstanding Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness, the coalition has been pushing for legislation that would raise the threshold of support needed to re-submit a resolution that failed previously. They're also asking the Securities and Exchange Commission to more tightly regulate proxy advisers.
Some changes already are taking root — including a narrower view of what's considered fair game for proxy ballots.
In late 2017, the SEC's staff issued a bulletin reinforcing the idea that boards of directors are better positioned to run the company's everyday operations than are shareholders, leading to fears that climate change resolutions would be ruled out of bounds.
in early 2018, the SEC ruled in favor of the oil producer EOG Resources when the company complained that a resolution calling for greenhouse gas emissions reductions had too much to do with its "ordinary business." Core business functions one of the categories considered off-limits for shareholders to micromanage.
Many of these resolutions are coming from Climate Action 100+, a group of 300 investors with $32 trillion in assets, including the investment arms of HSBC, Legal & General and the Church of England. For example, a resolution will be voted upon at the British Petroleum annual meeting.
In the proposal, BP is tasked with developing a business strategy in line with two of the Paris deal goals by the end of its 2019 financial year – holding temperature rises to well below 2C and reducing carbon emissions to net zero by the second half of the century.
BP has not specified what metrics and targets it might set if the resolution is passed, but they could include targets for the carbon intensity of its products and linking executives' bonuses to carbon emission cuts.
But the company will not be setting targets any time soon for "scope 3 emissions" produced by customers using its products, such as burning petrol in a car. These emissions are much bigger than those from the company's operations.
BP said it was not supporting a separate resolution, brought by the Dutch investor group Follow This, seeking to make BP set a goal for scope 3 emissions. The group has previously been credited with influencing Shell's decision to set such targets.
Climate Activists storm the bastion of Exxon Mobil, here seen without their shareholder disguises.
Postscript:
The SEC rulings show the line in the sand regarding these maneuvers to shut down oil companies. On March 12, 2018 SEC wrote EOG Resources Action Letter allowing management to set aside an invasive shareholder resolution.
What Trillium Asset Management Demanded of EOG
Resolved: Shareholders request EOG Resources, Inc. (EOG) adopt company-wide, quantitative, time-bound targets for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and issue a report, at reasonable cost and omitting proprietary information, discussing its plans and progress towards achieving these targets.
Whereas: The Paris Climate Agreement of 2015, agreed to by 195 countries, established a target to limit global temperature increases to 2-degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. To meet the 2-degree goal and mitigate the most severe impacts of climate change, climate scientists estimate it is necessary to reduce global emissions 55 percent by 2050 (relative to 2010 levels), entailing a US reduction target of 80 percent.
According to a 2015 report by Citigroup the costs of failing to address climate change could lead to a $72 trillion loss to global GDP.
EOG states: "Our safety and environmental management processes are based on a goal setting philosophy. The company sets safety and environmental expectations and provides a framework within which management can achieve safety and environmental goals in a systematic way." Despite this philosophy, EOG has not established time-bound or quantitative emissions reductions goals. Motivated by the imperative to reduce emissions, cut costs, and/or achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement, many companies are setting goals:
• Over 300 global businesses have committed to setting GHG emissions reduction targets consistent with the 2-degree goal.
• Hess, Apache, Kinder Morgan, and Southwestern, are among EOG's peers in the U.S. Oil and Gas sector that have set quantitative, time-bound GHG and/or methane reduction targets.
• The 10 major international oil and gas companies that constitute the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative recently announced their intention to work towards near-zero methane emissions.
• Over half of EOG's peers in the S&P 500 have set GHG reduction targets.
Setting GHG reduction targets is frequently found to be a sound business strategy. A 2013 report by CDP, WWF, and McKinsey & Company found that companies with GHG reduction targets achieved 9% better return on invested capital than companies without targets.
Setting targets would address a common concern of investors that are increasingly attune to the risks of climate change. State Street Global Advisors recently published disclosure recommendations for oil and gas companies, wherein it states, "We view establishing company-specific GHG emissions targets as one of the most important steps in managing climate risk."
One of the recommendations of The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, whose members include JPMorgan Chase, UBS Asset Management, Generation Investment Management, and BlackRock, is: "Describe the targets used by the organization to manage climate-related risks and opportunities and performance against these targets."
While EOG has implemented various emissions reduction strategies, proponents believe establishing time-bound, quantitative emissions reduction targets would serve to align new and existing initiatives, spur innovation to drive further emissions reductions, lower costs through enhanced efficiency, mitigate risk, and enhance shareholder value.
What EOG Said and SEC Confirmed:
See Also: Climatist Manifesto
Climatism is eroding the foundations of free enterprise democratic societies.
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Underwater drones could transform hurricane forecasts
Image credit: sanibelrealestateguide.com
H/T The Atlantic.
Researchers found that all 11 hurricanes they investigated that went through the mid-Atlantic in summer experienced ahead-of-eye cooling. This indicator was not previously known.
The key to predicting storm intensity may lie below the surface, says Undark magazine.
In August 2011, with Hurricane Irene bearing down on the mid-Atlantic coast, Scott Glenn, an ocean engineering researcher at Rutgers University, made a bold decision.
While most other research teams moved their ships, personnel, and expensive hardware to safety ahead of the hurricane, Glenn left his data-collecting drone—a torpedo-shaped underwater "glider" about 6 feet long and worth about $150,000—directly in its path.
Because that remote-controlled glider survived Irene—much to the relief of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, which technically owned it—it may have helped to change the science of hurricane-intensity prediction.
Hurricanes are considered atmospheric storms even though they can't live without drawing fuel from warm ocean water. While scientists have long known that hurricanes leave the ocean below them substantially cooler as they pull up energy from warm water, forecast models have long assumed that ocean conditions are slow to change and therefore factor them in as constants rather than driving factors in determining a storm's strength.
But Glenn challenged that assumption when his drone detected a rapid and sharp drop in ocean temperature ahead of Irene's eye that coincided with a decrease in the storm's intensity just before it hit the New Jersey shore.
He confirmed that discovery in reverse 14 months later when a rise in water temperature as Hurricane Sandy approached the same New Jersey shore coincided with an increase in the storm's intensity.
"It's very simple," Glenn says. "If the ocean's warm, it increases intensity. If the ocean's cool, it decreases intensity. So if you want to get the intensity right, you have to get the ocean right."
If Glenn is correct, and data like his can be made available to meteorologists and researchers in a timely way, it could dramatically improve the accuracy of hurricane intensity forecasting, which has barely budged in recent years even as track forecasting has gotten better by orders of magnitude. It could also benefit emergency agencies, particularly in cases where residents have ignored warnings because previous forecasts were overblown.
"It makes all the sense in the world," says Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts who specializes in Arctic climate change and how that affects weather patterns in the middle latitudes. Until recently, Francis worked in the same department as Glenn at Rutgers, but she conducted no joint research with him.
"This really key factor is probably going to offer a big step forward in doing a better job with intensity forecasting," Francis said.
Until drone gliders came along, forecasters had no way of knowing what was going on below the ocean surface during a storm. Unlike the hurricane-hunter aircraft that fly into and around storms, it's too dangerous to leave ships in their path to take measurements.
And satellites—which can only measure surface temperatures under the best of conditions—can't detect anything through storm clouds.
Full report here.
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Climate Change Friendly “Clean Gas” Movement Gathers Momentum
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Vortices Of Controversy…Experts Slam Polar Vortex-Global Warming Claim, Suggest Public Trickery
Cold in the USA: That's got to be climate change, right?
By Die kalte Sonne
(German text translated/edited in the English by P Gosselin)
"Climate communicators" always have the same "right" interpretation for every weather event: It's climate change! A warm, especially dry summer in Germany? Climate change! We reported on this just recently.
Polar vortex frequency declining
Now comes a cold air blast from the Arctic deep into the south of the USA, and that's climate change too. Here one TV station quoted a press agency report of the German DPA. Professor Stefan Rahmstorf provided an explanation. Who could be better at it? To check up on it, we first looked at the NOAA, which maybe should know the best. They report the polar vortex often weakens during the winter and the term "vortex" was in fact used in the USA back in 1853. But Rahmstorf now claims this is happening more and more often:
" …this has happened multiple times more often over the past decade, according to a data evaluation by the PIK."
We wanted to check up on this, and came across a statistic from Roy Spencer and John Christy of the University of Huntsville in Alabama:
Fig. 1: The frequency of "vortex" events in the USA. Source.
No increase, and also no significant decrease. The linear trend in Fig. 1 is rather an expression of randomness. We find no confirmation of the "PIK data evaluation".
January, 2019 Arctic not warm
What does Rahmstorf explain to us further?
Several studies suggest that this has to do with the dwindling sea ice cover on the Arctic Ocean, especially on the Barents-Kara Sea."
Rahmstorf is not changing the scene unnoticed: What he means is a suspected phenomenon: a warmer Arctic with less ice in winter produces colder temperatures over the northern continents.
But that was certainly not the case in January 2019:
Fig. 2: Temperatures at the core of the Arctic north above 80°N for January, 2019 (red) and the long-term mean (green). Completely normal! Source here.
Another evaluation for the entire Arctic in the period in question finds: Temperature deviation for 66-90°N is 0.0. So it turns out Rahmstorf has no reliable climate explanation for the event between 20 and 29 January 2019. What he has to offer us are controversial studies that detect a change in circulation due to a warmer Arctic with less ice, with the result that it tends to become cooler over the continents in winter. There are papers that suspect this, and there are papers that reject it and which go unmentioned by Rahmstorf, of course.
"Made up" explanation
Under no circumstances is the state of research suitable for attributing the current "vortex" in the USA, or anywhere else, to climate change. It has always happened, and it isn't becoming more frequent. That's weather. Aa a result one meteorologist reacted rather harshly:
Thus the PIK has definitely gone off base among the scientific community and is only cherry picking. Freely made up that there would be an increase in frequency of weak polar vortices. This has always happened almost every winter."
Prominent Swiss meteorologist Jörg Kachelmann is quite annoyed by the nonsense. So are we. And we ask ourselves why is so much unproven and controversial material used to explain every current event in the world? Are real arguments like global warming at a rate of about 0.125 ° C / decade since 1950 (as to Cowtan & Way) too weak?
Huge PR campaign can't sell it
Is climate change something that requires a high advertising effort to sell?
These PR campaigns, however, turn out to be baseless: every advertisement that runs too often only ends up annoying the consumer. The background is not science, as the consumer is supposed to believe. Instead, political ambitions are playing the main role. This is truly thin ice!
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Bob Ward, LSE and Booker
By Paul Homewood
Booker has a bit on the Bob Ward saga today, which should see the latter blow a few fuses!
It has always seemed rather odd that two of London's most prestigious universities, Imperial College and the LSE, should include a "Grantham Institute", lavishly funded by an asset management billionaire to promote research supporting the belief in global warming.
An employee of the LSE branch is Bob Ward, much of whose job seems to consist of lodging long and tortuous complaints against any journalist daring to point out factual errors in claims made by warming propagandists. I have lost count of how many such complaints Ward has made against me over the years, most recently under the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO). But not one has ever been upheld.
So enraged was Ward by IPSO's rejection of his latest complaint against me that he last week published a long rant on the LSE website, accusing me of "endangering lives" by producing scientific data to show why last summer's heatwave was not proof of global warming, and attacking IPSO for allowing the press to "promote climate change denial".
He seemed to be calling for a restriction on the freedom of the press. But isn't it odd that the LSE should be lending its prestige to such intemperate stuff?
Unfortunately the following sentence was edited out by Booker's girlie sub editor:
Under the official system now run by the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), a serious occupational hazard for the few of us who do this is having to spend days or even weeks (unpaid), answering these complaints in minute detail
As I mentioned in my post last week, I believe the real purpose of Ward's frequent complaints is to create so much work and hassle, both for authors like Booker and his editorial colleagues, that newspapers will eventually be discouraged from writing articles questioning warming orthodoxy.
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Western Europe Power Mix In January
By Paul Homewood
h/t Joe Public
There is a useful site for collecting data on the European power sector, called Energodock:
http://energodock.com/germany/electricity-generation
It gives a variety of data by country. I have used it to analyse generation data across Western Europe for last month. (I have ignored Eastern Europe at this stage).
Some observations:
1) Fossil fuels still account for 33%, despite the dominance of nuclear in France (73%), and high renewables share in Germany.
2) Solar is to all intents and purposes irrelevant in winter months, even with some output from Spain.
Total solar capacity for Western Europe is 98GW. Output of 3049 GWh in January equates to just 4% of total capacity.
3) Wind at 16% is very similar to the UK level. About half of the total comes from Germany and the UK.
As in the UK, wind output is extremely intermittent in Germany. Notably, output was very low in both countries for several days around 20th January, running at 38% of the average for the month as a whole.
According to BP, wind power capacity in the UK and Germany amounts to 75.7GW. With output down to 1575 GWh between 19th and 25th Jan, utilisation would have been down to 12%.
5) Nuclear generated 65 TWh during the month. France accounts for 40 TWh of this, and Germany a further 7 TWh.
With Germany already committed to close their nuclear capacity in the next few years, and uncertainty around French policy, it is evident that Western Europe as a whole will remain heavily dependent on fossil fuels for the foreseeable future..
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Gummer In £600K Conflict Of Interest Claim
By Paul Homewood
David Rose is back with a damning exposure of John Gummer:
Tory peer John Selwyn Gummer's private company has been paid more than £600,000 from 'green' businesses that stand to make millions from his advice to Ministers.
The Conservative grandee heads the Government's powerful Climate Change Committee that vigorously supports pumping billions of pounds in public subsidies into firms developing environmentally friendly technology.
Yet a Mail on Sunday investigation has discovered that his family-run consultancy has been paid huge sums by businesses that have cashed in on those lucrative taxpayer-funded handouts.
MPs say Gummer should have declared the payments – but he never has.
Last night, he vehemently denied any conflict of interest and insisted he had fully complied with disclosure rules.
He admitted his company received the payments, but insisted the work it undertook did not involve climate change issues.
Explosive documents leaked to this newspaper reveal that Sancroft International has been paid by at least nine businesses and campaign groups involved in projects to cut greenhouse gases.
That is the main aim of the committee 79-year-old Gummer leads – although policies it champions have been criticised for forcing up taxes and household energy bills.
Among the dossier's contents, we can reveal that:
- Engineering giant Johnson Matthey, which makes batteries for electric cars, paid Gummer's firm nearly £300,000 over five years before he personally urged the Government to speed up plans to make all new cars on Britain's roads battery-powered;
- Venture capitalists Temporis Capital – whose profits from windfarms and solar energy projects are bolstered by huge Government subsidies – paid the company £50,000 between 2012 and 2017;
- Controversial green energy producer Drax, which gets £700 million a year in Government subsidies, paid Sancroft £15,500 while the Climate Change Committee was writing a report on its activities.
Last night Gummer, who was a Tory MP for 40 years before becoming Lord Deben in 2010, was facing calls to resign over what appear to be 'colossal' and 'scandalous' conflicts of interest exposed by this newspaper.
MPs also demanded an urgent inquiry by Parliament's standards watchdog. David Davies, the Conservative MP for Monmouth, said: 'Based on the information you have given me, he appears to be unfit to hold public office.
'As CCC chairman, he has been playing a hugely influential role, giving evidence to Parliament, making speeches, and issuing reports that have an enormous impact on both policy and household bills.'
Labour MP Graham Stringer, a member of the Science and Technology Committee in the Commons, said he was 'staggered and appalled' by the conflict of interest.
All MPs, peers and public officials must officially declare their outside earnings and interests to avoid conflicts of interest.
As the £1,000-a-day chairman of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), Gummer is subject to a strict Cabinet Office code of conduct, which clearly states that officials should declare publicly 'any private interests which may, or may be perceived to, conflict with your public duties'.
And a spokesman for the CCC said: 'There is a clear policy on conflicts of interest and a register of committee members' interests. It is the responsibility of members to comply with this policy and to declare any potential conflict.'
Gummer does declare his chairmanship of Sancroft, but official records show the former Agriculture Minister –who famously fed his four–year-old daughter a beefburger on TV during the BSE crisis in 1990 – has not publicly declared any payments made by 'green' firms to his company.
A statement from his solicitor insisted: 'Allegations of conflict of interest and other improprieties are wholly false and misconceived… [he] has, at all times, made disclosures in accordance with the advice he has been given by the House of Lords and the CCC.'
The Committee on Climate Change, established by the 2008 Climate Change Act, is a supposedly independent quango which advises the Government on how to achieve Britain's target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.
Chaired by Gummer since 2012, it has urged Ministers to fund vast subsidies paid to 'renewable' energy companies.
The cost is met by adding 'green' levies to household and industry fuel bills, currently totalling £8.6 billion a year.
The CCC supports green taxes that feed the coffers of renewable energy firms. It has also argued in favour of a new carbon tax – a move that would benefit the companies paying Sancroft International.
Read the full story here.
Gummer's claim that all of this income is purely incidental really does not stack up. With annual turnover of £1.2m, the figure of £600,000 equates to 10% of turnover, clearly a significant proportion of income, which Sancroft could not afford to do without.
Gummer's position as Chair of the CCC is clearly no longer tenable. But questions must also now be raised about the workings of the CCC, which clearly is not independent by any definition.
In particular, most of its members are so heavily compromised by their own outside interests, that their objectivity must also be called into question.
Just one example. One of the members of the CCC is Rebecca Heaton, and this is the profile provided by the CCC:
https://www.theccc.org.uk/about/committee-on-climate-change/
Drax would be bankrupt without the massive subsidies, amounting to £729m a year in their latest accounts, all paid for by energy users.
On what planet can she be regarded as an independent or objective advisor on matters of renewable or decarbonisation policy?
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Summary Against Modern Thought: God Preserves All Things In Being
Being didn't happen for no reason, and the so-called laws of physics, or whatever is being claimed to be at base, such as quantum "fluctuations", cannot account for themselves.
THAT GOD PRESERVES THINGS IN BEING
1 Now, from the fact that God rules things by His providence it follows that He preserves them in being.
2 Indeed, everything whereby things attain their end pertains to the governance of these things. For things are said to be ruled or governed by virtue of their being ordered to their end. Now, things are ordered to the ultimate end which God intends, that is, divine goodness, not only by the fact that they perform their operations, but also by the fact that they exist, since, to the extent that they exist, they bear the likeness of divine goodness which is the end for things, as we showed above. Therefore, it pertains to divine providence that things are preserved in being.
3 Again, the same principle must be the cause of a thing and of its preservation, for the preservation of a thing is nothing but the continuation of its being. Now, we showed above that God, through His understanding, and will, is the cause of being for all things. Therefore, He preserves all things in being through His intellect and will.
4 Besides, no particular univocal agent can be the unqualified cause of its species; for instance, this individual man cannot be the cause of the human species, for he would then be the cause of every man, and, consequently, of himself—which is impossible. But this individual man is the cause, properly speaking, of that individual man.
Now, this man exists because human nature is present in this matter, which is the principle of individuation. So, this man is not the cause of a man, except in the sense that he is the cause of a human form coming to be in this matter. This is to be the principle of the generation of an individual man. So, it is apparent that neither this man, nor any other univocal agent in nature, is the cause of anything except the generation of this or that individual thing. Now, there must be some proper agent cause of the human species itself; its composition shows this, and also the ordering of its parts, which is uniform in all cases unless it be accidentally impeded. And the same reasoning applies to all the other species of natural things.
Now, this cause is God, either mediately or immediately. For we have shown that He is the first cause of all things. So, He must stand in regard to the species of things as the individual generating agent in nature does to generation, of which he is the direct cause. But generation ceases as soon as the operation of the generative agent ceases. Therefore, all the species of things would also cease as soon as the divine operation ceased. So, He preserves things in being through His operation.
Notes What this means for evolution, especially of man, is obvious.
5 Moreover, though motion may occur for any existing thing, motion is apart from the being of the thing. Now, nothing corporeal, unless it be moved, is the cause of anything, for no body acts unless by motion, as Aristotle proves. Therefore, no body is the cause of the being of anything, in so far as it is being, but it is the cause of its being moved toward being, that is, of the thing's becoming.
Now, the being of any thing is participated being, since no thing is its own act of being, except God, as we proved above. And thus, God Himself, Who is His own act of being, must be primarily and essentially the cause of every being. So, divine operation is related to the being of things as the motion of a corporeal mover is to the becoming and passive movement of the things that are made or moved. Now, it is impossible for the becoming and passive movement of a thing to continue if the motion of the mover cease. Therefore, it is impossible for the being of a thing to continue except through divine operation.
6 Furthermore, just as art work presupposes a work of nature, so does a work of nature presuppose the work of God the creator. In fact, the material for art products comes from nature, while that of natural products comes through creation by God. Moreover, art objects are preserved in being by the power of natural things; a home, for instance, by the solidity of its stories. Therefore, all natural things are preserved in being by nothing other than the power of God.
7 Again, the impression of an agent does not continue in the product, if the agent's action ceases, unless the impression be converted into the nature of the product. Indeed, the forms of things generated, and their properties, remain in them after generation until the end, since they become natural to them. And likewise, habits are difficult to change because they are turned into a nature. But dispositions and passions, whether of the body or soul, endure for a little while after the action of the agent, but not forever, since they are present in a state transitional to nature.
Now, whatever belongs to the nature of a higher type of being does not last at all after the action of the agent; light, for instance, does not continue in a diaphanous body when the source of light has gone away. Now, to be is not the nature or essence of any created thing, but only of God, as we showed in Book One [22]. Therefore, no thing can remain in being if divine operation cease.
8 Furthermore, there are two positions regarding the origin of things: one, from faith, holding that things have been brought into being by God, at the beginning; and the position of certain philosophers, that things have emanated from God eternally. Now, in either position one has to say that things are preserved in being by God. For, if things are brought into being by God, after they were not existing, then the being of things, and similarly their non-being, must result from the divine will; for He has permitted things not to be, when He so willed; and He made things to be, when He so willed. Hence, they exist just as long as He wills them to be. Therefore, His will is the preserver of things.
But, if things have eternally emanated from God, we cannot give a time or instant at which they first flowed forth from God. So, either they never were produced by God, or their being is always flowing forth from God as long as they exist. Therefore, He preserves things in being by His operation.
9 Hence it is said: "Upholding all things by the word of His Power" (Heb. 1:3). And Augustine says: "The power of the Creator, and the strength of the Omnipotent and All-sustaining is the cause of the subsistence of every creature. And, if this power were ever to cease its ruling of the things which have been created, their species would at once come to an end, and all nature would collapse. For the situation is not like that of a man who has built a house and has then gone away, and, while he is not working and is absent, his work stands. For, if God were to withdraw His rule from it, the world could not stand, even for the flick of an eye."
Notes A sobering thought and a hint, as we believe Peter, in what is to come. And also a proof that a physics which ignores the reason for physics, is a benighted physics.
10 Now, by this conclusion the position of the exponents of the Law of the Moors is refuted, for, in order to be able to maintain that the world needs God's preservation, they took the view that all forms are accidents, and that no accident endures through two instants.
So that, in this view, the informing of things would be in continuous process, as if a thing would not need an agent cause except while in the process of becoming. Hence, also, some of these people are said to claim that indivisible bodies (out of which, they say, all substances are composed and which alone, according to them, possess stability) could last for about an hour if God were to withdraw His governance from things. Also, some of them say that a thing could not even cease to be unless God caused in it the accident of "cessation." Now, all these views are clearly absurd.
Notes Amen.
from Climate Change Skeptic Blogs via hj on Inoreader http://bit.ly/2DQt34n
Variations in seafloor create freak ocean waves
Image credit: NASA
Researchers have an ambition to use 'new mathematics' to try and predict where and when these extreme events will occur.
Florida State University researchers have found that abrupt variations in the seafloor can cause dangerous ocean waves known as rogue or freak waves—waves so catastrophic that they were once thought to be the figments of seafarers' imaginations, Phys.org reports.
"These are huge waves that can cause massive destruction to ships or infrastructure, but they are not precisely understood," said Nick Moore, assistant professor of mathematics at Florida State and author of a new study on rogue waves.
The study is published in the journal Physical Review Fluids.
Once regarded as a myth, these waves have stumped the scientific community for several decades.
Over the years, researchers across the globe have examined a number of different factors they thought might contribute to these waves, including the seafloor, wind excitation and a phenomenon called Benjamin-Feir where deviations from a periodic waveform are reinforced by nonlinearity.
Most of the studies that focused on the seafloor considered only gentle slopes, and the few studies that pushed the slopes to greater extremes relied primarily on computer simulations.
"There was a relative underrepresentation of real-world data that you can get from laboratory experiments, where you can carefully control the various factors," Moore said. "Often you need this real-world data to see whether the computer simulations are giving you sensible predictions at all."
Moore's laboratory experiments were the first to examine the effect of abrupt seafloor variations on wave statistics.
Along with FSU's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Institute Director Kevin Speer and now-former FSU student Tyler Bolles, Moore created a long chamber with a variable bottom. Using a motor to generate randomized waves, the research team tracked thousands of waves to see if any patterns emerged.
After the waves passed through several feet of a constant depth, they encountered a step in the bottom of the tank that represented an abrupt change in the seafloor. Moore and his colleagues found that initially the waves appeared normal, following a traditional bell curve. But when they passed over the step, the structures of the waves significantly changed.
The altered waves followed what's called a gamma distribution, a mathematics function describing certain patterns that defy the bell curve in a particular way.
Full report here.
from Climate Change Skeptic Blogs via hj on Inoreader http://bit.ly/2RxRozn
Heartland: Special Edition Devoted to the Green New Deal
Reposted from The Heartland Institute February 1, 2019 By H. Sterling Burnett Climate Change Weekly #313 The much-hyped Green New Deal (GND) is being pushed by a rump group of progressive-socialists in the Democratic Party, including prominent members of the Senate with stated presidential aspirations. If enacted, GND would constitute a complete socialist makeover/takeover of…
from Climate Change Skeptic Blogs via hj on Inoreader http://bit.ly/2TAVc4A
Graph Of Global Thermometers
Interesting view of the world as a plot of thermometer density by Latitude & Longitude. Continue reading →
from Climate Change Skeptic Blogs via hj on Inoreader http://bit.ly/2G74WAy
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