Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
Climate modeling has arguably been worse than nothing because false information has been presented as true and “consensus.” Alarmism and disruptive policy activism (forced substitution of inferior energies; challenges to lifestyle norms) have taken on a life of their own. Fire, ready, aim has substituted for prudence, from science to public policy.
The only way that global populations can be persuaded to embrace the insane policy of removing irreplaceable fossil fuel energy from human society within less than 30 years is to be kept in a perpetual state of fear. The climate must be seen to be tipping, collapsing and generally behaving in a way to turn Mother Earth into an uninhabitable fireball. Step forward the UN-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that bases over 40% of its climate impact predictions on the implausible suggestion that temperatures will rise up to 4°C in less than 80 years (current rate of progress over last 25 years – about 0.2°C). Step forward climate scientists who use similar temperature projections to back 50% of their impact forecasts, and step forward trusted messengers in mainstream media who hide behind ‘scientists say’ as a cover for promoting almost any scary clickbait nonsense.
The distinguished academic and science writer Roger Pielke Jr. has been a fierce critic of using a set of temperature and emission assumptions in climate models known as RCP8.5. This scenario suggests temperatures could rise in short order by 3-4°C, and it is responsible for producing much of the propaganda messaging that backs the collectivist Net Zero project. Pielke recently said that the continuing misuse of scenarios in climate research had become pervasive and consequential, “so much so that we can view it as one of the most significant failures of scientific integrity in the 21st Century so far”. Now Pielke has returned to the fray trying to understand how such obvious corruption of the scientific process has been allowed to stand for so long – the short explanation being “groupthink fuelled by a misinformation campaign led by activist climate scientists”.
Pielke starts by noting that he cannot explain why the “error” has not been corrected by the IPCC or others in authoritative positions in the scientific community. In fact, he says, “the opposite has occurred – RCP8.5 remains commonly used as a baseline in research and policy”.
Last March, the BBC ran a story claiming that Antarctica Ocean currents were heading for collapse. To drive home the scare, there was even a reference to the 2004 climate disaster film The Day After Tomorrow. The scientists’ claims were based on computer models fed with RCP8.5 data – a fact missing from the BBC’s imaginative story.
The above graph shows the progress the IPCC made from 2000 to 2014 in upping its baseline scenario to RCP8.5. Watts per square metre (W/m2) refers to the difference between incoming and outgoing radiation, or energy waves, at the top of the atmosphere. The RCP8.5 scenario takes its title from the W/m2 number. Interestingly, it might be noted that climate model temperature forecasts also started to go haywire from the middle of the 2000s, a fact that suggests activist scientists started work in earnest on producing the correct results needed to ferment the exploding green agenda.
Pielke observed that in 2000, the IPCC presented 40 baseline scenarios that described an envelope of possible emission futures. In 2014 it published its fifth assessment report (AR5), and although an earlier draft noted a majority of scenarios were above 6.0 the final report mentioned only RCP8.5. Since then, the IPCC has pulled back a little – noting in the latest assessment report (AR6) that the massive temperature rises are of “low likelihood”. But this admission is not to be found in the widely-distributed ‘Summary for Policy Makers’. A recent highly critical report on AR6 by the Clintel Foundation found that the IPCC was still using RCP8.5 that was “completely out of touch with reality”.
Despite the IPCC appearing to pull back a little, Pielke notes it still has many champions. Recently, the AR5 working group co-chair Chris Field and Marcia McNutt, President of the U.S. National Academy of Science, wrote that RCP8.5 had long been described as a ‘business-as-usual’ pathway with a continued emphasis on energy from fossil fuels with no climate policies in place. This was said to remain “100% accurate”.
How things change in just two decades of relentless green propagandising. In 2000, the authors of the UN’s Special Report Emissions Scenario (SRES) said:
The broad consensus among the SRES writing team is that the current literature analysis suggests that the future is inherently unpredictable and so views will differ as to which of the storylines and representative scenarios could be more or less likely. Therefore, the development of a single ‘best guess’ or ‘business-as-usual’ scenario is neither desirable or possible.
Such is the debate in 2000 of scientists working their way through the scientific process. But little evidence of such questioning can be found within the ranks of scientists following the agenda that has been ‘settled’ for them by political operatives. Today, RCP8.5 is deeply woven into the fabric of climate research and policy, observes Pielke. “Understanding how we got here should provide a cautionary warning for how science can go astray when we allow self-correction to fail,” he hopes. A less charitable view might be, don’t believe a word the IPCC, the legions of activist climate scientists and their useful idiots in the mainstream media say until they rid themselves of the RCP8.5 corruption.
Chris Morrison isthe Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
Scene off Norfolk coast
** Note: Slight graininess, best at smaller sizes
New York has set a goal for its electricity to be 70% powered by clean energy by 2030. This latest investment means the state is going to beat that goal because it will have enough operating, contracted, and under-development clean energy projects to supply 79% of the state’s 2030 electricity needs. New York is investing in a massive 6.4 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy – the largest state investment in clean energy in US history.
I am fed up with rent-seeking capitalists and naïve academics who claim that wind, water, and solar resources are the only ones needed to provide reliable electric power. This post shows by way of example that this is an unrealistic argument.
My primary focus over the last several years has been New York’s the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act). Robert W. Howarth authored sections of the Climate Act and was a member of the Climate Action Council that is responsible for preparing the Scoping Plan that outlines how to “achieve the State’s bold clean energy and climate agenda.” . He submitted a statement supporting the Scoping Plan that exemplifies the narrative that no new technology is needed:
I further wish to acknowledge the incredible role that Prof. Mark Jacobson of Stanford has played in moving the entire world towards a carbon-free future, including New York State. A decade ago, Jacobson, I and others laid out a specific plan for New York (Jacobson et al. 2013). In that peer-reviewed analysis, we demonstrated that our State could rapidly move away from fossil fuels and instead be fueled completely by the power of the wind, the sun, and hydro. We further demonstrated that it could be done completely with technologies available at that time (a decade ago), that it could be cost effective, that it would be hugely beneficial for public health and energy security, and that it would stimulate a large increase in well-paying jobs. I have seen nothing in the past decade that would dissuade me from pushing for the same path forward. The economic arguments have only grown stronger, the climate crisis more severe. The fundamental arguments remain the same.
I addressed Howarth’s claim and others in his statement in a post here late last year. I include this because it exemplifies the idea that wind, sun, and hydro can power New York’s electric grid completely. In this post I consider the challenge of using wind, solar, and hydro to replace one component of the NY grid – New York City’s existing fossil fired units
According to the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) Gold Book the New York City (Zone J) fossil generation summer capability in 2022 was 9,026 MW. This represents the capacity needed to replace New York City’s fossil generation capacity at any hour. For the purposes of this thought experiment I am going to ignore reliability rules related to transmission constraints and in-city generation. I assume only that New York City needs dedicated availability of 9,026 MW. There is no chance that an additional 9,026 MW of hydro can be developed in New York and there is no guarantee that the amount of capacity will only be needed during the day which means we cannot use solar. This example estimates how much wind capacity from somewhere will be needed to provide this dedicated capacity requirement.
New York Wind Variability
In May 2022 I published Climate Act and New York State 2021 Wind Resources that evaluated New York State onshore wind availability. I used a New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) resource that provides 2021 wind production and 2021 wind curtailment. The data sets list the hourly total wind production and curtailments for the entire New York Control Area (NYCA). I have summarized the data in the following table. Curtailments are those hours when the system load is small enough that wind production is greater than what is needed so the wind power is curtailed, i.e., not used.
Table 1: NYISO 2021 Hourly Wind Production at the Aggregated NYCA-Wide Level
These data are representative of every wind energy resource data set I have ever seen. See, for example, analyses for Belgium by Michel at the Trust Yet Verify website or for Australia by Anton Lang. The crux of the problem is that low-energy density wind resources are highly correlated across wide areas. Across New York, and other regions, the wind speeds drop across the entire area frequently. Frequently, as in every time a high-pressure system crosses over the area. As a result, the mean annual average availability for all the NYCA onshore wind turbines is only 22% and the median is 16%.
Moreover, I believe it is unlikely that additional sources in a region will change the availability much. I do not expect any significant change to the low-end onshore wind numbers when all the land-based wind resources proposed to meet the Climate Act net-zero transition are developed. The overall distribution of expected offshore wind will be similar although the numbers will show slightly higher availability.
Implications
Wind variability has implications on the use of wind energy to replace firm dispatchable generation. I use these data as a starting point for this analysis to explain why the fact that the wind is always blowing somewhere does not mean it can be used cost-effectively to replace dispatchable fossil-fired generating in an electric grid that relies on wind and solar as claimed by Dr. Howarth and others.
To estimate the wind resources needed to replace New York City’s 9,026 MW of existing fossil-fired generation I will use the distribution of New York land-based wind with the following assumptions. In the absence of offshore observed wind energy historical data, I assumed that the wind production would be increased by a five-percentile category from the onshore wind distributions. In other words, when the onshore wind is at the 75% percentile capacity availability level, I assumed that offshore wind resources are at the 80% capacity level.
Table 2 estimates the amount of land-based or offshore wind capacity from the New York Control Area necessary to replace New York City’s 9,026 MW fossil capacity. Because the observed wind production capability at the 99th percentile is 78%, 11,563 MW of wind turbine capacity are needed (9,026 divided by 78%) to assure replacement of the existing fossil-fired units in New York City. For reliability support the wind resources must be able to cover all the levels of wind resource availability. Half of the time (50th percentile) 55,068 MW of capacity would be needed. In order to ensure reliability, wind capacity must be available at all hours but the wind capacities at the lower end of the distribution are unrealistic so a system dependent upon only wind energy is going to have to go wherever the wind is blowing. The proponents of the wind is always blowing somewhere respond that all New York must do is to import electricity from outside the NYCA to address this but have not used this kind of distribution to determine how much, from how far, would be necessary
Table 2: NYCA Wind Capacity Support Requirements to Replace NYC Fossil – 9,026 MW
To determine how much wind capacity is needed outside of New York, I first determined the
potential wind energy availability within the New York Control Area (NYCA). For capacity potential I used the larger capacity projections for land-base and offshore wind from two different modeling analyses. The offshore wind capacity (MW) in the Integration Analysis Scenario 2: Strategic Use of Low-Carbon Fuels was 12,675 MW. The onshore wind capacity in the NYISO 2021-2040 System & Resource Outlookwas 19,087 MW. Table 3 uses those resource projections to provide estimates of the available energy in the NYCA at each resource potential level. For each percentile I calculated the available capacity at each percentile for on-shore and offshore wind, summed them, and listed the deficit if the sum was less than 9,026 MW. For this thought experiment, the projected wind resources can replace the fossil resources up to the 70th percentile if all the wind power can be dedicated just to New York City at the hour when 9,026 MW of wind capacity is needed in the City. This means that somewhere between 65% and 70% of the time, wind resources outside the NYCA must provide additional power to replace New York City’s existing fossil resources.
Table 3: NYCA Wind Energy Available from Climate Act Wind Resource Projections
Table 4 provides an estimate of the wind generated capacity available to cover the deficit margin in Table 3 outside the control area in an area similar in size and characteristics to the NYCA 500 miles away from New York City. For this thought experiment I assumed that the wind capacity at any hour in this region would be at a production percentile 25% higher than the corresponding NYCA percentile. I believe that there is higher level of spatial correlation than those who believe that the wind is always blowing somewhere acknowledge. In this example, when NYCA wind levels are at the 65th percentile I presume that 500 miles away the wind resource will be at the 90th percentile. Because I believe that wind in all regions of a similar size to New York will exhibit the same wind distribution pattern, a key takeaway is that wind resources 500 miles away are insufficient to always provide support when power outside the NYCA is needed. The 500-mile resources only cover the NYCA deficit down to 55th NYCA percentile corresponding to the 500-mile 80th percentile. We must go out at least another 500 miles for reliable power.
Table 4: Wind Resource Availability from 10,000 MW of Turbines 500 Miles from NYC
Table 5 provides an estimate of the additional wind generated capacity needed outside the control area in an area 1000 miles away from New York City. I assumed that the wind capacity at any hour would be at a production percentile 50% higher than the corresponding NYCA percentile. In this example, when NYCA wind levels are at the 50th percentile I presume that 1000 miles away the wind resource will be at the maximum level of 86%. Importantly, this assumption is the same as assuming there is no correlation between NYCA wind and 1000- mile wind. I do assume that the correlation has the same directionality. In other words, winds in both regions go down at the same time. Of course, it is more complicated because “somewhere else” winds could go up when NYCA winds go down. In order to address that issue an analysis for the entire onshore and offshore wind resource availability is needed.
The 1000-mile resource availabilities s cover the NYCA deficit down to 25th NYCA percentile and the 1000-mile 75th percentile so we must go out another 500 miles to assure replacement of the existing fossil generation.
Table 5:Wind Resource Availability from 10,000 MW of Turbines 1000 Miles from NYC
Table 6 provides an estimate of the additional wind generated capacity needed within NYCA and the 500- and 1000-mile resource areas in an area 1500 miles away from New York City. I assumed that the wind capacity at any hour would be at a production percentile 75% higher than the corresponding NYCA percentile. In this example, when NYCA wind levels are at the 5th percentile I presume that 1000 miles away the wind resource will be at the 80th percentile. Even the addition of these resources is insufficient to cover all the power needed by New York City existing fossil resources. However, it is so close that adding another 1,049 MW of capacity in any of the regions would assure that New York City’s existing fossil generation could be replaced by resources where” the wind is always blowing”.
Table 6:Wind Resource Availability 1500 Miles from NYC
Discussion
The forgoing analysis confirms that the wind is indeed always blowing somewhere and that wind energy resources could replace the existing fossil generation in New York City as suggested by Howarth and others However, just because it is possible does not mean it is feasible. The fatal flaw is that New York City requires dedicated resources to replace existing generation when it is needed to keep the lights on. This is particularly important because the high pressure systems that characterize low wind availability over large areas also are associated with hottest and coldest periods of the year when the electric load peaks and the need for reliable power is the greatest.
Existing fossil generation capacity in New York City totals 9,026 MW. New York’s Climate Act projected onshore and offshore wind planned capacity is 31,762 MW. Relying on wind only requires another 30,000 MW located “somewhere else”. The fatal flaw to the wind blowing “somewhere else” argument for New York City is that those resources must be dedicated to New York City. The idea that anyone could afford to build 10,000 MW and 500 mile transmission lines for use as backup that will only be used 65% of the time, another 10,000 MW and 1,000 mile transmission lines for backup 50% of the time, and another 10,000 MW with 1,00 mile transmission lines for backup 25% of the time is disconnected from reality.
Of course, there are suggestions that the surplus power could be stored in batteries or used to make “green hydrogen” to address the low wind availability problem. However, Howarth claimed that New York “could rapidly move away from fossil fuels and instead be fueled completely by the power of the wind, the sun, and hydro” and that “it could be done completely with technologies available at that time (a decade ago) and that that it could be cost effective”. This simple analysis suggests otherwise.
I agree with Francis Menton who has argued that we need a demonstration project to prove all the wind, solar, and energy storage components necessary for a zero-emissions electric grid that does not rely on nuclear power can work. In addition, I believe that a comprehensive analysis of wind and solar resource availability across the continent that addresses the correlation and energy density deficiencies of wind and solar is also needed. Based on my work, I think that this sort of analysis would show the need for far more resources than anyone is contemplating at this time.
Roger Caiazza blogs on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York. This represents his opinion and not the opinion of any of his previous employers or any other company with which he has been associated.
“The doomsters’ favorite subject today is climate change. This has a number of attractions for them. First, the science is extremely obscure so they cannot easily be proved wrong. Second, we all have ideas about the weather: traditionally, the English on first acquaintance talk of little else. Third, since clearly no plan to alter climate could be considered on anything but a global scale, it provides a marvelous excuse for worldwide, supra-national socialism.” – Margaret Thatcher (2002)
Margaret Thatcher changed her mind on climate alarmism–against. Current UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, responding to “populist sentiment,” is backtracking on his country’s aggressive climate policies, a long overdue, pragmatic mid-course correction.
One could tie the two events together to explain why public policies making energy more expensive and less reliable are anathema for a country that produces only one percent of global emissions. But in an article for Yale Environment 360, “Why Is Britain Retreating from Global Leadership on Climate Action?,” journalist Fred Pearce does the exact opposite.
Here is what Pearce stated last week about Thatcher:
In 1988, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher became the first world leader to take a stand on fighting climate change. Last month, exactly a quarter-century later, her successor Rishi Sunak tore up a cross-party consensus on the issue that had survived the intervening eight general elections and replaced it with a populist assault on what had been his own government’s environmental policies.
Thatcher, who trained as a chemist before entering politics, took her stand at a packed meeting of the country’s most prestigious science body, the Royal Society, on September 27, 1988. She told the assembly that “we are creating a global heat trap which could lead to climate instability” and promised action to curb global warming and achieve “stable prosperity”.
Pearce continues:
That speech marked the start of 25 years during which Britain led the world in cutting its carbon dioxide emissions, which are today 47 percent below 1990 levels.
But Thatcher’s advocacy on climate change was genuine and had far-reaching consequences. In 1990, she established the Hadley Centre for Climate Research, an early hothouse for climate-change modeling, whose work subsequently underpinned the newly established UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC has twice been chaired by British scientists, most recently with the appointment of Jim Skea of Imperial College London in July.
The Rest of the Story
Margaret Thatcher set the story straight in her 2002 memoir, Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World (New York: HarperCollins). Thatcher, in fact, declared war against “the doomsters’ favorite subject … climate change.”
Here is her full reconsideration (pp. 449–50):
The doomsters’ favorite subject today is climate change. This has a number of attractions for them. First, the science is extremely obscure so they cannot easily be proved wrong. Second, we all have ideas about the weather: traditionally, the English on first acquaintance talk of little else.
Third, since clearly no plan to alter climate could be considered on anything but a global scale, it provides a marvelous excuse for worldwide, supra-national socialism. All this suggests a degree of calculation. Yet perhaps that is to miss half the point. Rather, as it was said of Hamlet that there was method in his madness, so one feels that in the case of some of the gloomier alarmists there is a large amount of madness in their method.
Indeed, the lack of any sense of proportion is what characterizes many pronouncements on the matter by otherwise sensible people. Thus President Clinton on a visit to China, which poses a serious strategic challenge to the US, confided to his host, President Jiang Zemin, that his greatest concern was the prospect that “your people may get rich like our people, and instead of riding bicycles, they will drive automobiles, and the increase in greenhouse gases will make the planet more dangerous for all.”
It would, though, be difficult to beat for apocalyptic hyperbole former Vice President Gore. Mr Gore believes: ‘The cleavage in the modern world between mind and body, man and nature, has created a new kind of addiction: I believe that our civilisation is, in effect, addicted to the consumption of the earth itself.’
And he warns: “Unless we find a way to dramatically change our civilisation and our way of thinking about the relationship between humankind and the earth, our children will inherit a wasteland.”
But why pick on the Americans? Britain’s then Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, has observed: “There is no greater national duty than the defense of our shoreline. But the most immediate threat to it today is the encroaching sea.” Britain has found, it seems, a worthy successor to King Canute.
The fact that seasoned politicians can say such ridiculous things – and get away with it – illustrates the degree to which the new dogma about climate change has swept through the left-of-centre governing classes….
What changed for Thatcher in less than a decade? First, she found climate science less alarming than before. Secondly, an “ugly … anti-growth, anti-capitalistic, anti-American” political agenda had emerged around the issue. Harking back to her free-market roots, Thatcher forwarded her own version of the precautionary principle (p. 453): “Government interventions are problematic, so intervene only when the case is fully proven.”
Fred Pearce and Yale Environment 360–please present the full story.
Australia, the world’s second biggest coal exporter, is finally trying to clean up its power sector, its biggest source of greenhouse-gas emissions. It still relies on coal for 57% of electricity generation and emits more from burning it, per person, than any other g20 country. But its states and centre- left federal government have set targets to slash emissions to net zero by 2050 or earlier.
Aussie Energy & Climate Minister: “I don’t see we can put all the pressure on Renewables for Stability and Reliability”, blames Climate Change for Hot Summers.
Chris Bowen on renewables providing reliable energy:
…
CHRIS BOWEN:One of the biggest challenges to stability is frankly coal-fired power station outages that were unexpected. I mean we saw a big impact when the Callide Power Station in Queensland went offline a few years ago and is still not yet back online.
I don’t think we can just put all the pressure on renewables for stability and reliability. We have 3.4 gigawatts more going into this summer than we had last summer of generation, that’s a good thing. Yes, we need more storage. We have policies in place to get that through our Capacity Investment Scheme, which we’ve already begun rolling out. This is an ongoing task for governments and will continue to be.
Modern zero carbon nuclear plants generally run like clockwork, delivering predictable, dispatchable electricity 24×7, 365 days per year.
3.4GW of reliable nuclear capacity would have contributed significantly to Australia’s grid stability this summer, and barring a transmission line failure, would likely have all but eliminated the risk of a summer blackout. Instead we have 3.4GW of additional useless renewables, which even the minister responsible admits can’t be relied upon to improve grid stability.
The following is Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen in 2022, explaining to the audience that we don’t have to worry about renewable intermittency, because we can store electricity like water.
Chris Bowen isn't having any of Uhlmann's 'wind doesn't always blow' rhetoric.
"the rain doesn't always fall either, but we manage to store the water – we can store the renewable energy if we have the investment"#auspolpic.twitter.com/LjJkEr3zJy
Chris Bowen is sounding a lot less confident now he’s had his nose rubbed in a few energy market realities, but he still hasn’t got the balls to publicly admit he has taken Australian energy policy in the wrong direction.
When the proverbial hits the fan, Bowen will not be able to claim he wasn’t warned. Australia’s official energy grid body has been sounding the alarm for years on Australia’s increasingly precarious energy grid, and the risks posed by a lack of dispatchable capacity, since well before Bowen took office.
The bigger the wind turbine, the better the production and the economics. Hence, they’re scaling up to ludicrous proportions. MingYang Smart Energy
The new turbine proposed for 2025 by MingYang, according to Bloomberg, will have a peak output of 22 MW, and a rotor diameter over 310 m (1,017 ft) and will be taller than New York’s 319-m (1,047-ft), 77-story Chrysler Tower, or the 324-m (1,063-ft) Eiffel Tower in Paris . This wonderful new human experience means more dead whales, more dead birds and more dead bats.
Wind turbines just keep getting bigger – the MingYang MySE 18.X-28X will rise out of the ocean higher than a 70-story building MingYang
In the race for “free” but random energy, or perhaps for bigger status symbols, China set a new record in July with a 16MW wind tower with a rotor diameter of an awesome 853 feet (260m). It’s a bird mincer one quarter of a kilometer across. But already plans are being drawn up for an even bigger one.
Imagine something as tall as New York’s Chrysler building, but spinning. China’s Mingyang Smart Energy has announced plans for a colossal 22-megawatt offshore wind turbine, and standing in its presence will be an unprecedented human experience.
The new turbine proposed for 2025 by MingYang, according to Bloomberg, will have a peak output of 22 MW, and a rotor diameter over 310 m (1,017 ft), corresponding to a swept area of at least 75,477 sq m (812,425 sq ft, 14.1 NFL football fields, 60 olympic swimming pools), minus hub.
Elon Musk said Sunday that he’d give Wikipedia $1 billion if the organization changed its name to “Dickipedia.”
It feels like it’s been a hot minute since Musk stepped out from behind … I have literally no idea where he lives, or what he does in his work time … anyway, Musk is finally back in action with an amazing troll of Wikipedia. It seemed to all start with Musk asking why the Wikimedia Foundation wants so much money. “It certainly isn’t needed to operate Wikipedia. You can literally fit a copy of the entire text on your phone!” Musk wrote on Twitter.
He then shared a screenshot of Wikipedia’s endless cringe claw for cash, which presents itself as a desperate message from the site’s founder, Jimmy Wales. Musk accompanied the post with a sleepy-face emoji, which seemed to be about how boring this plea is (even though some really, really intelligent people fall for Wales’ bullshit and donate to this uselessly biased website).
I will give them a billion dollars if they change their name to Dickipedia https://t.co/wxoHQdRICy
About 30 minutes after this tweet, Musk offered to give the organization $1 billion dollars. That amount of money should theoretically be enough to fund the site until the artificially intelligent robots and lizard people finally decide to kill us all and live in the wealth we created for them.
There’s just one catch: Wales would have to change the name of his site to “Dickipedia” in order to get the cash. “(Please add that to the [bullshit] on my wiki page),” Musk stated, seemingly pissed off at whatever Wales has allowed to spew all over his site.
Unhinged Musk is basically the only thing I like to see on the internet other than videos of kittens, puppies, other animals, and those military reunion videos. It would be great if he kept coming out with this stuff because then I’d have more fun… so… yeah.
The presence of grand minima, characterized by significantly reduced solar and stellar activity, brings a challenge to the understanding of solar and stellar dynamo. The Maunder Minimum (1645–1715 AD) is a representative grand solar minimum. The cyclic variation of solar activity, especially the cycle length during this period, is critical to understand the solar dynamo but remains unknown.
The sun’s solar cycles were once around three years shorter than they are today, a new analysis of centuries-old Korean chronicles reveals. This previously unknown anomaly occurred during a mysterious solar epoch known as the “Maunder Minimum,” more than 300 years ago, LiveScience has the story.
The sun is constantly in a state of flux. Our home star cycles through periods of increased activity, known as solar maximum, when solar storms become more frequent and powerful, as well as spells of reduced activity, known as solar minimum, when solar storms almost completely disappear.
It currently takes about 11 years for the sun to complete a solar cycle, from minimum to maximum and back again. Scientists can track the sun’s progress through a solar cycle by counting the number of sunspots on the star’s surface, which appear more frequently in the lead-up to and during solar maximum.
But just as the sun fluctuates within individual cycles, historical sunspot records show that over longer periods, spanning decades or centuries, the overall output of solar cycles can also rise and fall.
The Maunder Minimum, sometimes referred to as the Grand Solar Minimum, was a period of greatly reduced solar activity between 1645 and 1715 when sunspots “effectively disappeared,” Scott McIntosh, a solar physicist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado who was not involved in the recent research, told Live Science in an email.
A comparison of the sun during solar maximum (left) and solar minimum (right). (Image credit: NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory)
During this time, the sun’s output was so low that average global temperatures also dropped, in what scientists have dubbed a “mini ice age,” according to NASA — though it was also likely linked to high levels of volcanic eruptions at the time.
Sunspot records paint a general picture of the Maunder Minimum, which is named after the English astronomer Edward Walter Maunder. But there is still much about the period that scientists don’t know.
In the new study, published Oct. 3 in the journal AGU Advances, researchers analyzed historic auroral records from Korea and found that solar cycles during the Maunder Minimum were only eight years long on average — three years shorter than modern cycles.
This graph shows how solar activity (measured by estimated solar irradiance) dropped off during the Maunder Minimum. (Image credit: NASA/University of Colorado’/LASP Interactive Solar Irradiance Datacenter)
The aurora records were part of three separate books, or chronicles, written on behalf of Korean kings that contained detailed daily reports of royal business, state affairs, weather and astronomical phenomena that occurred within the Korean peninsula between 918 and 1910, according to the 2021 study that first described them.
The astronomical sections of the chronicles frequently speak of “red vapors” or “vapors like firelight.” The researchers believe these descriptions refer to the West Pacific Anomaly (WPA) — an area above Korea that produces regular red auroras despite being far from the magnetic poles. Like other auroras, the WPA occurs when solar radiation collides with Earth’s magnetic shield. But unlike other auroras at the time, these lightshows persisted despite a decrease in solar activity because the Earth’s magnetic field is thinner in this region, which makes them a great proxy for solar cycle progression, the researchers wrote.
A diagram of Earth showing the location of the West Pacific Anomaly (WPA). (Image credit: Yan et al. 2023)
The dates when these auroras occurred show that solar radiation from the sun followed an eight-year cycle.
Scientists don’t know what causes long-term solar cycle trends like the Maunder Minimum, McIntosh said. There are “many things” that could influence solar activity over such long periods, he added. It is also unclear why the solar cycles shortened during that time. But the new findings could provide “pivotal clues” in understanding this mysterious epoch in greater detail, researchers wrote in the paper.
Over the last few solar cycles, solar activity has decreased slightly, and there have been some slight fluctuations in cycle length. This led some experts to predict that we were entering a new epoch of reduced solar activity.
Africa has abundant water. In many places rainfall levels are high, and the continent is home to giant river systems including the Nile, Congo, Zambezi and Volta. Dams and lakes are plentiful. The challenge lies in getting water to where it is needed.
Geoff Hill is a Zimbabwean writer working across Africa. In this paper, he explains why reliable energy for Africa is the only way to address the continent’s chronic lack of clean water.
To give Africans a better quality of life, we need to do more than blame the climate. There are solutions, and most of them involve electricity. That’s the key to granting everyone the basic human right of clean water.
It is abundantly clear that the establishment will do all it can to shut down anybody who challenges its control of the media narrative, as OFCOM’s continual vendetta against GB News shows:
If OFCOM are finding GBN guilt of breaching impartiality rules, why have they failed to take any action against the BBC over the years, who often breach the same rules.
Take, for instance, Roger Harrabin’s campaign against the Cumbria coalmine a couple of years ago.
When the controversy over the mine was at its height in early 2021, Harrabin wrote four articles over the space of a month, all grossly biased against the proposed mine. Below is an excerpt of my complaint to the BBC at the time:
6th Jan – Whitehaven coal mine: Govt refuses to call in plans
Harrabin provides his analysis, which is wholly anti mine.
14th Jan – Govt defends Cumbria coal mine green light
This quotes at length Greenpeace and CPRE, both heavily critical of the mine. The only pro mine comment is one solitary unattributed sentence at the end.
23rd Jan – Six questions about the Cumbria coal controversy
Virtually all of this article is devoted to anti mine comments by Islands at Risk, the Fiji ambassador, Oxfam, Greenpeace, the Labour, Lib Dems and Green parties and the Committee on Climate Change.
The only pro mine comment comes from the local MP
30th Jan – Minister rapped for allowing Cumbria coal mine
This article is wholly anti mine, quoting at length Lord Deben and Greenpeace . There is not one pro mine comment.
Throughout this series, I can find no mention by Harrabin at all of the economic benefits of the mine, eg number of jobs created, boost to the local /national economy, increased government revenue, balance of payments, or by how much emissions will be reduced by avoiding imported coke.
Nor have there been any comments at all by the local council (who approved the mine unanimously), the mining company, the local community, steel companies or economists.
This is a gross dereliction of the BBC’s Charter, which requires impartial news coverage and the need to provide audiences with the full facts.
This series of propaganda pieces culminated with this article devoted to a letter to the government from the US climate activist James Hansen – note the prejudicial headline:
The leading climate scientist James Hansen has warned Boris Johnson that he risks “humiliation“ over plans for a new coal mine in Cumbria.
The UK government, which hosts a climate summit this year, has allowed the mine at Whitehaven to go ahead.
Dr Hansen, formerly Nasa’s leading global warming researcher, urged the PM to halt production – or be “vilified”.
In his letter, Dr Hansen – whose testimony before the US Senate helped raise wider awareness of global warming back in 1988 – writes: “In leading the [climate conference], you have a chance to change the course of our climate trajectory, earning the UK and yourself historic accolades.
“Or you can stick with business-almost-as-usual and be vilified around the world.
“It would be easy to achieve this latter ignominy and humiliation – just continue with the plan to open a new coal mine in Cumbria in contemptuous disregard of the future of young people and nature.
“The contrary path is not so easy, but, with your leadership, it is realistic.”
The letter continues: “Prime Minister Johnson, young people are fed up – and for good reason. They demand that political leaders follow the science and take the actions needed to preserve and restore a healthy climate.
If this [conference] is like the prior ones – with soothing words and worthless ambitions – they will be justifiably outraged.”
There was no attempt by Harrabin to challenge Hansen’s views. Nor were any alternative views offered. In other words, everything GBN was guilty of applied equally to Harrabin.
Naturally the BBC’s in house Executive Complaints Unit rejected my complaint. And OFCOM did not even respond when I referred it to them.
This was just one complaint. You could write a book about all the other instances of BBC bias.
In Africa, an area the size of Switzerland is cleared of forest every year, with an estimated 90% of the wood used for cooking or to heat the home. Dust storms across the continent and on the island of Madagascar have become more serious because, with the forest gone, there is little to hold down the soil. The loss of forest leaves wildlife without a home, and has been shown to affect rain patterns and the spread of desert.
Geoff Hill is a Zimbabwean writer working across Africa. In this paper, he explains why reliable energy for Africa is the only way to address the problem of deforestation.
“In Africa, an area the size of Switzerland is cleared of forest every year, with an estimated 90% of the wood used for cooking or to heat the home… There is a need for reliable energy, and at a price local people can afford. Without this, the forest will continue to fall and, ultimately, vanish.”
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