Cooling Sun May Partially Offset Global Warming, U.S. Scientists Predict
In this newsletter:
1) Scientists Surprised: Ozone Layer Not Healing, Continues To Deplete Despite Montreal Protocol
Press Trust of India, 6 February 2018
2) Cooling Sun May Partially Offset Global Warming, U.S. Scientists Predict
Times of San Diego, 5 February 2018
3) Princeton Physicist Points Out The Obvious: Climate Models ‘Don’t Work’
Michael Bastasch, Daily Caller, 5 February 2018
4) Hong Kong Pulls The Plug On Electric Cars Incentives
Capital.com, 6 February 2018
5) Climate Alarmists Claim To Believe In Science … But Fall For Dystopian Sci-Fi
S.E. Cupp, New York Daily News, 6 February 2018
6) Reality Check: Fossil Fuels, Not Renewables, Are The Energy Sources Of America’s Future
Mark Perry, Carpe Diem, 6 February 2018
Full details:
1) Scientists Surprised: Ozone Layer Not Healing, Continues To Deplete Despite Montreal Protocol
Press Trust of India, 6 February 2018
Scientists are surprised that the ozone is thinning out in the lower stratosphere because their models do not show this trend and CFCs continue to decline.
A team led by researchers from ETH Zurich and the Physikalisch-Meteorologisches Observatorium Davos in Switzerland have found that despite the ban on CFCs, the concentration of ozone in the lower part of the stratosphere has continued to decline at latitudes between 60 degree South and 60 degree North.
Geneva: The ozone layer – which protects life on Earth from high-energy radiation – has continued to thin over the last three decades, a study has warned.
In the 20th century, when excessive quantities of ozone-depleting chlorinated and brominated hydrocarbons such as CFCs were released into the atmosphere, the ozone layer in the stratosphere – ie at altitudes of 15 to 50 kilometres – thinned out globally.
The Montreal Protocol introduced a ban on these long-lasting substances in 1989.
At the turn of the millennium, the loss of stratospheric ozone seemed to have stopped. Until now, experts have expected that the global ozone layer would completely recover by the middle of the century.
However, a team led by researchers from ETH Zurich and the Physikalisch-Meteorologisches Observatorium Davos in Switzerland have found that despite the ban on CFCs, the concentration of ozone in the lower part of the stratosphere has continued to decline at latitudes between 60 degree South and 60 degree North.
The study, published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, used satellite measurements spanning the last three decades together with advanced statistical methods.
Ozone is formed in the stratosphere, mainly at altitudes above 30 kilometres in the tropics. From there it is distributed around the globe by atmospheric circulation.
The scientists were somewhat surprised that the ozone is thinning out in the lower stratosphere because their models do not show this trend and CFCs continue to decline.
Full story
see also GWPF TV Report (August 2016) — Is the Ozone Hole Really Mending?
2) Cooling Sun May Partially Offset Global Warming, U.S. Scientists Predict
Times of San Diego, 5 February 2018
The Sun might emit less radiation by mid-century, giving Earth a chance to warm a bit more slowly but not halting human-induced climate change, according to a new study by Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Magnetic loops gyrate above the sun,on March 23-24, 2017. NASA photo
Our star’s cool down would be the result of what astrophysicists call a “grand minimum,” a periodic event during which the Sun’s magnetism diminishes, sunspots form infrequently, and less ultraviolet radiation makes it to the surface of Earth. This last happened in the 17th century.
A team of scientists led by research physicist Dan Lubin at Scripps has created the first estimate of how much dimmer the Sun should be when the next minimum takes place, which could be by the middle of this century.
His team’s study, “Ultraviolet Flux Decrease Under a Grand Minimum from IUE Short-wavelength Observation of Solar Analogs,” appears in the publication Astrophysical Journal Letters and was funded by the state of California.
“Now we have a benchmark from which we can perform better climate model simulations,” Lubin said. “We can therefore have a better idea of how changes in solar UV radiation affect climate change.”
Lubin and colleagues David Tytler and Carl Melis of UC San Diego’s Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences arrived at their estimate of a grand minimum’s intensity by reviewing nearly 20 years of data gathered by the International Ultraviolet Explorer satellite mission.
They compared radiation from stars that are similar to the Sun and identified those that were experiencing a grand minimum.
The reduced energy from the Sun would set into motion a sequence of events on Earth beginning with a thinning of the stratospheric ozone layer.
The cooling is not uniform. In the last grand minimum, during the 17th Century, areas of Europe chilled –the Baltic Sea froze — while Alaska and southern Greenland warmed correspondingly.
Lubin said that an upcoming grand minimum would not stop the current trend of planetary warming but might slow it somewhat. That’s because the cooling effect of a grand minimum is only a fraction of the warming effect caused by the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Lubin’s team predicts a significant probability of a grand minimum in this century because the downward sunspot pattern in recent solar cycles resembles the run-ups to past grand minimum events.
Full story
Dan Lubin et al. (2017) Ultraviolet Flux Decrease Under a Grand Minimum from IUE Short-wavelength Observation of Solar Analogs, The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Volume 852, Number 1
3) Princeton Physicist Points Out The Obvious: Climate Models ‘Don’t Work’
Michael Bastasch, Daily Caller, 5 February 2018
Princeton University physicist William Happer is not a fan of models used to predict future manmade global warming, and stars in a new educational video laying out the reasons he believes climate models are faulty.
“And I know they don’t work. They haven’t worked in the past. They don’t work now. And it’s hard to imagine when, if ever, they’ll work in the foreseeable future,” Happer said in a video produced by PragerU.
In the video, Happer argues that even supercomputers used to predict the weather and forecast future global warming aren’t strong enough to capture the complexity of Earth’s atmosphere, including cloud cover and natural ocean cycles.
“That’s why, over the last 30 years, one climate prediction after another — based on computer models — has been wrong,” Happer said in the video. “They’re wrong because even the most powerful computers can’t solve all the equations needed to accurately describe climate.”
WATCH:
Full post
4) Hong Kong Pulls The Plug On Electric Cars Incentives
Capital.com, 6 February 2018
Tesla’s sales in Hong Kong plunged during much of 2017 after the local government cut tax incentives for electric vehicles.
Data from Hong Kong´s Transport Department shows Tesla sales fell to just 32 between April and December 2017, a dramatic decline from the near 2,000 sales notched up over the same period of 2016.
The removal of tax incentives in Hong Kong almost doubled the price of some Tesla models.
Blow
A major blow for Tesla, it underlines how the company´s sales can be highly sensitive to changes in government policy.
There was also a similar fall in electric car sales in Denmark following the local authorities´ decision to end tax breaks.
Tesla shares were down 1.3% in pre-market trading on Monday.
Pressure
Tesla is lobbying the Hong Kong authorities to at least partially reverse the tax change.
The sheer scale of the sales slump is likely to have come as a surprise to the government, strengthening the hand of those supporting a rethink when it finalises its budget in the next few weeks.
In total, including non-Tesla models, just 99 electric cars were registered in Hong Kong over the last nine months of 2017.
Full story
5) Climate Alarmists Claim To Believe In Science … But Fall For Dystopian Sci-Fi
S.E. Cupp, New York Daily News, 6 February 2018
When most of us begin to think about family planning, we consider one or more of the following questions: Am I responsible enough to have a child?
Can I afford it?
Will my partner and I be loving parents?
We are not thinking, But what if the world were to end?
According to an agonizingly earnest story in Monday’s New York Times, some millennials are, in fact, making family planning decisions based on fears of catastrophic climate change, overpopulation and pollution — in short, based on dystopian science-fiction depictions of end times and the hyperventilating junk science that has come to inform some climate change zealots.
All of this, ultimately, is very, very bad for science.
Before getting to that, let’s start with the Times’ claims about this so-called trend. They’re dubious off the bat.
For one, the report surveys a population of “more than a dozen people ages 18 to 43,” while acknowledging “few, if any” studies have determined the role climate change plays in childbearing decisions.
I could probably find more than a dozen people to say they had kids just to ritually sacrifice them on a pagan altar. That wouldn’t make it a trend….
Yet science is not at all settled on the link between climate change and hurricanes. As one climate scientist puts it, “Determining the role of climate change in increasing or decreasing the present and future likelihood of a rain storm like Harvey presents a challenge.”
Another in this genre is Bill Nye, who has asked if we need “policies that penalize people for having extra kids in the developed world” to address overpopulation, a problem science has largely dismissed as science fiction because, well, we aren’t anywhere close to running out of resources.
Nye has also said he might be willing to consider jail time for climate deniers.
This is not science, folks. Neither are movies like “Angels and Demons,” “The Day After Tomorrow,” “Mad Max: Fury Road” or “Geostorm.”
And yet the scare-tactic overreach of some climate alarmists has plenty believing we are at death’s door as a civilization.
If you believe climate change is real and that we should be having smart conversations about how to best address it — and I do — this isn’t helping, not a bit.
Full post
6) Reality Check: Fossil Fuels, Not Renewables, Are The Energy Sources Of America’s Future
Mark Perry, Carpe Diem, 6 February 2018
Department of Energy projections to 2050 suggest that fossil fuels, not renewables, are the energy sources of America’s future
The chart above is based on energy projections through the year 2050 released today by the Energy Information Administration in its Annual Energy Outlook report for 2018. Here’s a summary:
EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook provides modeled projections of domestic energy markets through 2050, and it includes cases with different assumptions regarding macroeconomic growth, world oil prices, technological progress, and energy policies. Strong domestic production coupled with relatively flat energy demand allow the United States to become a net energy exporter over the projection period in most cases. In the Reference case, natural gas consumption grows the most on an absolute basis, and nonhydroelectric renewables grow the most on a percentage basis. […]
Bottom Line: Despite all of the hype, hope, cheerleading, fuel standards, portfolio standards, and taxpayer subsidies for renewable energies like wind and solar, America’s energy future will still rely primarily on fossil fuels to power our vehicles, heat and light our homes, and fuel the US economy. In other words, America’s energy future will look a lot like it does today with fossil fuels providing American consumers and businesses with low-cost, dependable and reliable energy for about 80% of our energy needs.
Full post
The London-based Global Warming Policy Forum is a world leading think tank on global warming policy issues. The GWPF newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.thegwpf.com.
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