Ice Melting In Greenland? That’s What It Does In Summer!
By Paul Homewood
h/t Joe Public
I’ve been away cycling in Norfolk for the last few days, even though it was apparently shut!
While away, this familiarly hysterical story appeared in the “Independent”:
An extraordinary photograph of huskies pulling sleds through ankle-deep meltwaters on top of an ice sheet in Greenland has brought attention to the uncharacteristically warm temperatures affecting the Arctic.
Danish climatologist Steffen M Olsen took the picture on 13 June while on a routine mission through the Inglefield Gulf in northwest Greenland.
The rapidly melting ice caused difficult and dangerous conditions for the team of climatologists who were retrieving weather station equipment from the area.
The thin layer of water was standing on top of an ice sheet around 1.2 metres deep, Dr Olsen said on Twitter.
“We know the ice is around 1.2m thick and that we have about 870m [of] water below us. Together with the local hunters we have been measuring also ice thickness from December to now. An ongoing activity for almost a decade now.”
Dr Olsen’s colleague Ruth Mottram, an expert on Greenland’s ice sheet, told The Independent the onset of unusually warm temperatures combined with very few cracks in the ice meant the rapid accumulation of meltwater was unable to drain through the solid sheet of ice.
“Last week saw the onset of very warm conditions in Greenland and in fact much of the rest of the Arctic, driven by warmer air moving up from the south.”
She added: “The DMI weather station nearby at Qaanaaq airport registered a high of 17.3C on Wednesday and 15C on Thursday, which is pretty warm for Northern Greenland, even in summer!”
Greenland is currently in the grip of near-record levels of ice melt, with the day Mr Olsen took the photograph – 13 June – seeing the country lose more than 2 gigatons (equal to 2 billion tons) of ice on that day alone.
The sudden spike in melting “is unusual, but not unprecedented”, Thomas Mote, a research scientist at the University of Georgia who studies Greenland’s climate, told CNN.
“It is comparable to some spikes we saw in June of 2012,” he said.
That year saw record-setting ice melt with almost the entire ice sheet experiencing melting for the first time in recorded history.
The first thing to point out is that this is nothing to do with Greenland’s ice sheet, despite the misleading inference to that effect in the first paragraph. It is in fact fjord ice, which freezes every winter and melts every summer.
This year it is beginning to melt slightly earlier than usual, because of warm air moving up from the south. This is called “weather”, and has nothing to do with “global warming”.
Back to the Dark Ages Say German Greens
Potty greens want us all to starve:
http://www.thegwpf.com/back-to-the-dark-ages-german-greens-look-to-ban-all-industrial-farming/
“Unprecedented” Rainfall In Lincolnshire?
By Paul Homewood
h/t Joe Public
One of the areas worst affected by recent heavy rainfall has been Wainfleet in Lincolnshire:
High volume pumps are being used to lower water levels in a flooded Lincolnshire town.
More than 580 homes in and around Wainfleet were evacuated amid concerns about flood defences.
Dozens of people spent the night away from their homes in emergency centres.
The town flooded on Wednesday after two months’ worth of rain fell in two days and the banks of the River Steeping broke its banks.
The Environment Agency described the situation as "unprecedented" after 132mm (5.2in) of rain fell between Monday and Wednesday, with the Met Office predicting a further 20mm (0.79in) of rain during Saturday night and Sunday.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-48651254
Unprecedented?
Well, only if history began after 1960! In October that year, an almost incomprehensible 178mm of rain fell on Horncastle, a few miles south of Wainfleet, in just 3 hours.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather/climate-extremes/#?tab=climateExtremes
And this was not simply a rogue event. The month as a whole was exceptionally wet across southern England and Wales. And the meteorological set up was the same as last week, with low pressure stuck to the south of the UK:
https://digital.nmla.metoffice.gov.uk/digitalFile_8a897c4c-95d0-41f9-bf05-b25bc604ebf5/
Let us hope that the poor folk of Wainfleet soon see the floods recede. But they might consider how much worse things would be without those fossil fuelled pumps and helicopters, which have been working to reduce water levels.
Net Zero Power Scenarios
By Paul Homewood
https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/net-zero-the-uks-contribution-to-stopping-global-warming/
I’ve obtained a bit more detail from the Committee on Climate Change about their Net Zero plan.
First of all, the generation mix. This of course is only one of several scenarios, but it is regarded as being close to a likely one.
The following stand out:
- Gas still plays a significant role. Indeed, last year gas only generated 119 TWh. This is only compatible with the Net Zero plan if CCS is used. (Which raises the question, why even bother with renewables?)
- Gas capacity of 33 GW is slightly higher than now. Given retirement of a large chunk of present capacity, there would need to be a large scale rebuilding programme of CCGT.
- Taking bio and nuclear as well, but excluding peakers, dispatchable capacity amounts to 51 GW. According to the CCC however, peak demand could be up 150 GW by 2050. This simply does not stack up with the capacity available, even with peakers included.
https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/net-zero-technical-report/
Electric Cars
The second bit of information concerns EVs.
The CCC have assumed that there will be about 46 million electric cars and vans on the road in 2050, with electricity demand of 76 TWh additional to now.
Peak demand for EVs is assumed at 40 GW. This is equivalent to 13 Hinkley Points.
Claims from sceptics to this effect have been rubbished by the National Grid and the likes of the ECIU, who have argued that smart meter charging would largely solve the problem. It seems they were wrong.
The CCC confirm that this extra demand is built into their power scenarios above.
As an estimated 43% of households don’t have off street parking, a large number of public charging points will be needed:
https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/net-zero-technical-report/
There is one paragraph in the Technical Report which I cannot resist showing:
You have been warned! If you don’t obey the CCC diktat and buy EVs, you may be forced to walk!
BP Energy Review 2018
By Paul Homewood
https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy.html
You are no doubt aware that global emissions of carbon dioxide climbed again last year, up by 2% from the year before, according to the latest BP Energy Review.
Since 2010, emissions have grown by 9%:
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s £1 Trillion Delusion
By Paul Homewood
Climate obsessed AEP is back again, with a deluded and clownish analysis of the costs of the net zero plan, which also includes some serious factual errors:
If anything can distil the essence of conservative philosophy it is Edmund Burke’s paean to the “great primeval contract of eternal society”.
His Reflections on the French Revolution lay out our obligation to our children’s children through the ages: “a partnership between those who are living, those who have lived before us, and those who have yet to be born.”
I doubt that Burke would have had any difficulty concluding that the risk of runaway global warming today is a threat to this “contract between the generations”.
There were plausible reasons for climate scepticism in the early 2000s during the “hiatus” in surface temperatures – if you overlooked the oceans – but this has since been overwhelmed by the hottest years on record and an avalanche of science. Our knowledge is orders of magnitude greater than fifteen years ago. The weight of evidence points only in one direction.
Theresa May is the authentic Tory in this intra-party fight over climate policy. Her plea for zero emissions by 2050 – the first legally-binding target among major nations – was almost Burkean. She called it the “defining decision of this generation in fulfilling our responsibility to the next”.
Historians might judge this parting shot to matter more than her Brexit travails. It is certainly good diplomacy. The UK led humanity with the first climate law in 2008. It has now beaten Emmanuel Macron’s France to the ultimate pinnacle. Mrs May’s ambition confounds the false global narrative of an island sinking into self-absorbed nostalgia and the swamp of reaction.
It is the Treasury that should be in the dock. Chancellor Hammond’s leaked spoiler is a clutter of absurdities and category errors. It conflates spending with investment to come up with the outlandish tariff of £1 trillion. “It confuses costs that have a payback with those that don’t,” said Michael Liebreich, founder of Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
By Paul Homewood
h/t Dave Ward
From GWPF:
Now, Toyota and Hyundai are both halting sales of fuel cell vehicles in the country.
Does this spell the end of fuel cell hydrogen vehicles as a “zero-emission” alternative?
The Uno-X hydrogen station in Sandvika in Bærum exploded on Monday and resulted in two injuries in a nearby non-fuel cell vehicle.
According to the police, the explosion was strong enough that it activated the airbags in the vehicle without any impact.
The cause of the explosion is currently unknown and the rest of the refueling network is being shut down.
Jon André Løkke, CEO of Nel Hydrogen, the company operating those hydrogen refueling stations, commented:
“It is too early to speculate on the cause and what has gone wrong. Our top priority is the safe operation of the stations we have delivered. As a precaution, we have temporarily put ten other stations in standby mode in anticipation of more information.”
With the refueling network crippled, Toyota and Hyundai have announced that they are temporarily halting sales of fuel cell vehicles.
Toyota Norway manager Espen Olsen said (via TU):
“We don’t know exactly what happened on the Uno-X drive yet, so we don’t want to speculate. But we stop the sale until we have learned what has happened, and for practical reasons, since it is not possible to fill fuel now.”
They will be offering loaner vehicles to customers who currently own the Mirai since they won’t be able to refuel.
Toyota insists that this is not changing their view on fuel cell hydrogen vehicles:
“This does not change our view of hydrogen, and it is important for us to point out that hydrogen cars are at least as safe as ordinary cars. The hydrogen tanks themselves are so robust that you can shoot them with a gun without knocking them.”
Hyundai, the only other automaker delivering fuel cell vehicles in Norway, has made similar announcements and statements.
https://www.thegwpf.com/hydrogen-station-explodes-toyota-halts-sales-of-fuel-cell-cars-is-this-the-end/
Harrabin’s Jaunt To Madeira
By Paul Homewood
Roger Harrabin has been having a nice all expenses paid jaunt to Madeira, in order to pimp for EVs. Why he actually had to fly out there, instead of simply using film footage is a mystery!
Talk about an absurd solution to a non-existent problem!
May To Commit To Net Zero Plan
By Paul Homewood
As expected, the utterly discredited Theresa May has decided to take the rest of the country down with her when she goes:
Greenhouse gas emissions in the UK will be cut to almost zero by 2050, under the terms of a new government plan to tackle climate change.
Oreskes Discovers It’s Hot In India
By Paul Homewood
h/t Dave Ward/Joe Public
Nomeo’s getting her knickers in a twist because it’s hot in India:
NEW DELHI — When the temperature topped 120 degrees (49 Celsius), residents of the northern Indian city of Churu stopped going outside and authorities started hosing down the baking streets with water.
Churu — home to more than 100,000 people — has been the hottest place in India in recent days, part of a summer heat wave suffocating most of the country as temperatures rise above normal even for this sweltering time of year.
According to weather website El Dorado on Wednesday, five of the hottest 15 places on the planet over the previous 24 hours were in India or neighboring Pakistan. In Churu, the mercury hit 118 degrees, down from 122 degrees on Monday. That temperature is just shy of India’s all-time high, recorded in 2016.
In fact, 122F is not even as high as the previous record of 123F set in 1956, which was finally beaten in 2016.
As for Amritsar, which is pictured, daily temperatures in summer have not peaking higher in recent decades. As we so often see, annual average temperatures are only increasing because there fewer really cold days:
Which brings us to the crux of the matter – cold kills many more than heat, even in India, as this study last year showed:
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article/figure?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002619.t002
When do we ever hear the Washington Post or the rest of the shrill alarmists rejoice that winters are milder?
