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.
Europe's largest onshore wind farm is facing bancruptcy and has filed for reconstruction with Swedish court.
Markbygden ETT, the first phase of the Markbygden 1101 project, is facing difficulties after signing a baseload PPA with Norwegian Hydro Energi. pic.twitter.com/Aj0kIT9hjJ
The Greenland ice sheet is more than 1.2 miles thick in most regions. If all of its ice was to melt, global sea levels could be expected to rise by about 25 feet. However, this would take more than 10,000 years at the current rates of melting.
With COP28 scheduled to start on November 30, 2023 in Dubai, Climate Crisis Central decided the Greenland Ice Sheet is the doomsday story this week. For Example:
North Greenland ice shelves have lost 35% of their volume, with “dramatic consequences” for sea level rise, study says CBS News
Greenland’s ice shelves have shrunk by more than a THIRD since 1978 – and will cause global sea levels to rise by 6.8 FEET if they collapse entirely, study warns Daily Mail
Alarming collapse of Greenland ice shelves sparks warning of sea level rise Live Science
Greenland’s northern glaciers are in trouble, threatening ‘dramatic’ sea level rise, study shows CNN
Greenland glaciers melt five times faster than 20 years ago Reuters
Satellite data and 100-year-old images reveal quickening retreat of Greenland’s glaciers Space.com
Etc., Etc., Etc.
The scare du jour is about Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS) and how it will melt out and flood us all. It’s declared that GIS has passed its tipping point, and we are doomed. Typical is this report from phys.org Study finds Greenland’s glacier retreat rate has doubled over past two decades. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.
Although glaciers in Greenland have experienced retreat throughout the last century, the rate of their retreat has rapidly accelerated over the last two decades. According to the multiyear collaborative effort between the United States and Denmark, the rate of glacial retreat during the 21st century is twice as fastas retreat during the 20th century. And, despite the range of climates and topographical characteristics across Greenland, the findings are ubiquitous, even among Earth’s northernmost glaciers.
The findings underscore the region’s sensitivity to rising temperatures due to human-caused climate change. The study is published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
“Our study places the recent retreat of peripheral glaciers across Greenland’s diverse climate zones into a century-long perspective and suggests that their rate of retreat in the 21st century is largely unprecedented on a century timescale,” said Laura Larocca, the study’s first author. “The only major possible exception are glaciers in northeast Greenland, where it looks like recent increases in snowfall might be slowing retreat.”
The study finds that climate change explains the accelerated glacier retreat and that glaciers across Greenland respond quickly to changing temperatures. This highlights the importance of slowing global warming.
“Our activities over the next couple decades will greatly affect these glaciers. Every bit of temperature increase really matters,” Larocca said.
Annual Greenland Fluctuations in Perspective
Panic is warranted only if you treat this as proof of an alarmist narrative and ignore the facts and context in which natural variation occurs. For starters, consider the last seven years of GIS fluctuations reported by DMI and summarized in the fourteen graphs below. Note the noisy blue lines showing how the surface mass balance (SMB) changes its daily weight by 8 or 10 gigatonnes (Gt) around the baseline mean from 1981 to 2010. Note also the summer decrease between May and August each year before recovering to match or exceed the mean.
The other seven graphs show the accumulation of SMB for each of the last seven years including 2023. Tipping Point? Note that in both 2017 and 2018, SMB ended about 500 Gt higher than the year began, and way higher than 2012, which added nothing. Then came 2019 dropping below the mean, but still above 2012. Finally, the last three years exceeded the 30-year average. Note also that the charts do not integrate from previous years; i.e. each year starts at zero and shows the accumulation only for that year. Thus the gains from 2017 and 2018 do not result in 2019 starting the year up 1000 Gt, but from zero. Nor will the gains in 2021, 2022 and 2023 be added to the base.
And if you’re wondering, the current year is also above average.
While they may appear solid, all ice sheets—which are essentially giant glaciers—experience movement: ice flows downslope either through the process of deformation or sliding. The latest results suggest that the movement of the ice on the GIS is dominated by sliding, not deformation. This process is moving ice to the marginal zones of the sheet, where melting occurs, at a much faster rate.
“The study was motivated by a major unknown in how the ice of Greenland moves from the cold interior, to the melting regions on the margins,” Neil Humphrey, a professor of geology from the University of Wyoming and author of the study, told Newsweek. “The ice is known to move both by sliding over the bedrock under the ice, and by oozing (deforming) like slowly flowing honey or molasses. What was unknown was the ratio between these two modes of motion—sliding or deforming.
“This lack of understanding makes predicting the future difficult, since we know how to calculate the flowing, but do not know much about sliding,” he said. “Although melt can occur anywhere in Greenland, the only place that significant melt can occur is in the low altitude margins. The center (high altitude) of the ice is too cold for the melt to contribute significant water to the oceans; that only occurs at the margins. Therefore ice has to get from where it snows in the interior to the margins.
“The implications for having high sliding along the margin of the ice sheet means that thinning or thickening along the margins due to changes in ice speed can occur much more rapidly than previously thought,” Maier said. “This is really important; as when the ice sheet thins or thickens it will either increase the rate of melting or alternatively become more resilient in a changing climate.“
“There has been some debate as to whether ice flow along the edges of Greenland should be considered mostly deformation or mostly sliding,” Maier says. “This has to do with uncertainty of trying to calculate deformation motion using surface measurements alone. Our direct measurements of sliding- dominated motion, along with sliding measurements made by other research teams in Greenland, make a pretty compelling argument that no matter where you go along the edges of Greenland, you are likely to have a lot of sliding.”
The sliding ice does two things, Humphrey says. First, it allows the ice to slide into the ocean and make icebergs, which then float away. Two, the ice slides into lower, warmer climate, where it can melt faster.
While it may sound dire, Humphrey notes the entire Greenland Ice Sheet is 5,000 to 10,000 feet thick.
“In a really big melt year, the ice sheet might melt a few feet. It means Greenland is going to be there another 10,000 years,” Humphrey says. “So, it’s not the catastrophe the media is overhyping.”
Humphrey has been working in Greenland for the past 30 years and says the Greenland Ice Sheet has only melted 10 feet during that time span.
Summary
The Greenland ice sheet is more than 1.2 miles thick in most regions. If all of its ice was to melt, global sea levels could be expected to rise by about 25 feet. However, this would take more than 10,000 years at the current rates of melting.
Background from Previous Post: Greenland Glaciers: History vs. Hysteria
The modern pattern of environmental scares started with Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring claiming chemicals are killing birds, only today it is windmills doing the carnage. That was followed by ever expanding doomsday scenarios, from DDT, to SST, to CFC, and now the most glorious of them all, CO2. In all cases the menace was placed in remote areas difficult for objective observers to verify or contradict. From the wilderness bird sanctuaries, the scares are now hiding in the stratosphere and more recently in the Arctic and Antarctic polar deserts. See Progressively Scaring the World (Lewin book synopsis)
The advantage of course is that no one can challenge the claims with facts on the ground, or on the ice. Correction: Scratch “no one”, because the climate faithful are the exception. Highly motivated to go to the ends of the earth, they will look through their alarmist glasses and bring back the news that we are indeed doomed for using fossil fuels.
A recent example is a team of researchers from Dubai (the hot and sandy petro kingdom) going to Greenland to report on the melting of Helheim glacier there. The article is NYUAD team finds reasons behind Greenland’s glacier melt. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.
First the study and findings:
For the first time, warm waters that originate in the tropics have been found at uniform depth, displacing the cold polar water at the Helheim calving front, causing an unusually high melt rate. Typically, ocean waters near the terminus of an outlet glacier like Helheim are at the freezing point and cause little melting.
NYUAD researchers, led by Professor of Mathematics at NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Principal Investigator for NYU Abu Dhabi’s Centre for Sea Level Change David Holland, on August 5, deployed a helicopter-borne ocean temperature probe into a pond-like opening, created by warm ocean waters, in the usually thick and frozen melange in front of the glacier terminus.
Normally, warm, salty waters from the tropics travel north with the Gulf Stream, where at Greenland they meet with cold, fresh water coming from the polar region. Because the tropical waters are so salty, they normally sink beneath the polar waters. But Holland and his team discovered that the temperature of the ocean water at the base of the glacier was a uniform 4 degrees Centigrade from top to bottom at depth to 800 metres. The finding was also recently confirmed by Nasa’s OMG (Oceans Melting Greenland) project.
“This is unsustainable from the point of view of glacier mass balance as the warm waters are melting the glacier much faster than they can be replenished,” said Holland.
Surface melt drains through the ice sheet and flows under the glacier and into the ocean. Such fresh waters input at the calving front at depth have enormous buoyancy and want to reach the surface of the ocean at the calving front. In doing so, they draw the deep warm tropical water up to the surface, as well.
All around Greenland, at depth, warm tropical waters can be found at many locations. Their presence over time changes depending on the behaviour of the Gulf Stream. Over the last two decades, the warm tropical waters at depth have been found in abundance. Greenland outlet glaciers like Helheim have been melting rapidly and retreating since the arrival of these warm waters.
Then the Hysteria and Pledge of Alligiance to Global Warming
“We are surprised to learn that increased surface glacier melt due to warming atmosphere can trigger increased ocean melting of the glacier,” added Holland. “Essentially, the warming air and warming ocean water are delivering a troubling ‘one-two punch’ that is rapidly accelerating glacier melt.”
My comment: Hold on. They studied effects from warmer ocean water gaining access underneath that glacier. Oceans have roughly 1000 times the heat capacity of the atmosphere, so the idea that the air is warming the water is far-fetched. And remember also that long wave radiation of the sort that CO2 can emit can not penetrate beyond the first millimeter or so of the water surface. So how did warmer ocean water get attributed to rising CO2? Don’t ask, don’t tell. And the idea that air is melting Arctic glaciers is also unfounded.
Consider the basics of air parcels in the Arctic.
The central region of the Arctic is very dry. Why? Firstly because the water is frozen and releases very little water vapour into the atmosphere. And secondly because (according to the laws of physics) cold air can retain very little moisture.
Greenland has the only veritable polar ice cap in the Arctic, meaning that the climate is even harsher (10°C colder) than at the North Pole, except along the coast and in the southern part of the landmass where the Atlantic has a warming effect. The marked stability of Greenland’s climate is due to a layer of very cold air just above ground level, air that is always heavier than the upper layers of the troposphere. The result of this is a strong, gravity-driven air flow down the slopes (i.e. catabatic winds), generating gusts that can reach 200 kph at ground level.
Arctic air temperatures
Some history and scientific facts are needed to put these claims in context. Let’s start with what is known about Helheim Glacier.
Holocene history of the Helheim Glacier, southeast Greenland
Helheim Glacier ranks among the fastest flowing and most ice discharging outlets of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS). After undergoing rapid speed-up in the early 2000s, understanding its long-term mass balance and dynamic has become increasingly important. Here, we present the first record of direct Holocene ice-marginal changes of the Helheim Glacier following the initial deglaciation. By analysing cores from lakes adjacent to the present ice margin, we pinpoint periods of advance and retreat. We target threshold lakes, which receive glacial meltwater only when the margin is at an advanced position, similar to the present. We show that, during the period from 10.5 to 9.6 cal ka BP, the extent of Helheim Glacier was similar to that of todays, after which it remained retracted for most of the Holocene until a re-advance caused it to reach its present extent at c. 0.3 cal ka BP, during the Little Ice Age (LIA). Thus, Helheim Glacier’s present extent is the largest since the last deglaciation, and its Holocene history shows that it is capable of recovering after several millennia of warming and retreat. Furthermore, the absence of advances beyond the present-day position during for example the 9.3 and 8.2 ka cold events as well as the early-Neoglacial suggest a substantial retreat during most of the Holocene.
The topography of Greenland shows why its ice cap has persisted for millenia despite its southerly location. It is a bowl surrounded by ridges except for a few outlets, Helheim being a major one.
Helheim Glacier is the fastest flowing glacier along the eastern edge of Greenland Ice Sheet and one of the island’s largest ocean-terminating rivers of ice. Named after the Vikings’ world of the dead, Helheim has kept scientists on their toes for the past two decades. Between 2000 and 2005, Helheim quickly increased the rate at which it dumped ice to the sea, while also rapidly retreating inland- a behavior also seen in other glaciers around Greenland. Since then, the ice loss has slowed down and the glacier’s front has partially recovered, readvancing by about 2 miles of the more than 4 miles it had initially retreated.
NASA has compiled a time series of airborne observations of Helheim’s changes into a new visualization that illustrates the complexity of studying Earth’s changing ice sheets. NASA uses satellites and airborne sensors to track variations in polar ice year after year to figure out what’s driving these changes and what impact they will have in the future on global concerns like sea level rise.
Since 1997, NASA has collected data over Helheim Glacier almost every year during annual airborne surveys of the Greenland Ice Sheet using an airborne laser altimeter called the Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM). Since 2009 these surveys have continued as part of Operation IceBridge, NASA’s ongoing airborne survey of polar ice and its longest-running airborne mission. ATM measures the elevation of the glacier along a swath as the plane files along the middle of the glacier. By comparing the changes in the height of the glacier surface from year to year, scientists estimate how much ice the glacier has lost.
The animation begins by showing the NASA P-3 plane collecting elevation data in 1998. The laser instrument maps the glacier’s surface in a circular scanning pattern, firing laser shots that reflect off the ice and are recorded by the laser’s detectors aboard the airplane. The instrument measures the time it takes for the laser pulses to travel down to the ice and back to the aircraft, enabling scientists to measure the height of the ice surface. In the animation, the laser data is combined with three-dimensional images created from IceBridge’s high-resolution camera system. The animation then switches to data collected in 2013, showing how the surface elevation and position of the calving front (the edge of the glacier, from where it sheds ice) have changed over those 15 years.
Helheim’s calving front retreated about 2.5 miles between 1998 and 2013. It also thinned by around 330 feet during that period, one of the fastest thinning rates in Greenland.
“The calving front of the glacier most likely was perched on a ledge in the bedrock in 1998 and then something altered its equilibrium,” said Joe MacGregor, IceBridge deputy project scientist. “One of the most likely culprits is a change in ocean circulation or temperature, such that slightly warmer water entered into the fjord, melted a bit more ice and disturbed the glacier’s delicate balance of forces.”
In addition consider Greenland Ice Math
Prompted by comments from Gordon Walleville, let’s look at Greenland ice gains and losses in context. The ongoing SMB (surface mass balance) estimates ice sheet mass net from melting and sublimation losses and precipitation gains. Dynamic ice loss is a separate calculation of calving chunks of ice off the edges of the sheet, as discussed in the post above. The two factors are combined in a paper Forty-six years of Greenland Ice Sheet mass balance from 1972 to 2018 by Mouginot et al. (2019) Excerpt in italics. (“D” refers to dynamic ice loss.)
Greenland’s SMB averaged 422 ± 10 Gt/y in 1961–1989 (SI Appendix, Fig. S1H). It decreased from 506 ± 18 Gt/y in the 1970s to 410 ± 17 Gt/y in the 1980s and 1990s, 251 ± 20 Gt/y in 2010–2018, and a minimum at 145 ± 55 Gt/y in 2012. In 2018, SMB was above equilibrium at 449 ± 55 Gt, but the ice sheet still lost 105 ± 55 Gt, because D is well above equilibrium and 15 Gt higher than in 2017. In 1972–2000, D averaged 456 ± 1 Gt/y, near balance, to peak at 555 ± 12 Gt/y in 2018. In total, the mass loss increased to 286 ± 20 Gt/y in 2010–2018 due to an 18 ± 1% increase in D and a 48 ± 9% decrease in SMB. The ice sheet gained 47 ± 21 Gt/y in 1972–1980, and lost 50 ± 17 Gt/y in the 1980s, 41 ± 17 Gt/y in the 1990s, 187 ± 17 Gt/y in the 2000s, and 286 ± 20 Gt/y in 2010–2018 (Fig. 2). Since 1972, the ice sheet lost 4,976 ± 400 Gt, or 13.7 ± 1.1 mm SLR.
Doing the numbers: Greenland area 2.1 10^6 km2 80% ice cover, 1500 m thick in average- That is 2.5 Million Gton. Simplified to 1 km3 = 1 Gton
The estimated loss since 1972 is 5000 Gt (rounded off), which is 110 Gt a year. The more recent estimates are higher, in the 200 Gt range.
200 Gton is 0.008 % of the Greenland ice sheet mass.
Annual snowfall: From the Lost Squadron, we know at that particular spot, the ice increase since 1942 – 1990 was 1.5 m/year ( Planes were found 75 m below surface) Assume that yearly precipitation is 100 mm / year over the entire surface. That is 168000 Gton. Yes, Greenland is Big! Inflow = 168,000Gton. Outflow is 168,200 Gton.
So if that 200 Gton rate continued, (assuming as models do, despite air photos showing fluctuations), that ice loss would result in a 1% loss of Greenland ice in 800 years. (H/t Bengt Abelsson)
Comment:
Once again, history is a better guide than hysteria. Over time glaciers advance and retreat, and incursions of warm water are a key factor. Greenland ice cap and glaciers are part of the Arctic self-oscillating climate system operating on a quasi-60 year cycle.
CEOs of Western automakers are fed up with ‘hemorrhaging money,’ Climate Depot’s Marc Morano tells The Ezra Levant Show.With so much going on in the world right now, it’s easy to overlook the decline of so-called green energy policies. Here in Canada, premiers across the country are pressing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s federal government for relief from carbon taxes after the Liberals granted Atlantic Canada an exemption for home heating oils.On last night’s episode of The Ezra Levant Show, Marc Morano from Climate Depot joined the show to provide his insights into this underreported phenomenon.Detailing how off-shore wind projects and electric car projects in the U.S. and Europe are failing — despite massive government subsidies and support — Marc said things are finally starting to shift.He told Ezra:
We now have the CEOs of just about every major Western automaker — from Mercedes to Volkswagen to Ford, Chrysler — all saying ‘EVs [are] not working. They’re piling up on our lots, we are hemorrhaging money.’ As they’re saying this, they’re looking at the next 10 years and all of the mandates [for green technology] are coming in more. Government doesn’t care.This is an ideology like the Soviet Union, it’s like that old Soviet playbook (of central planning). They’re going forward with this statutorily in our books, but finally we’re getting the CEOs to come back.So what’s happened globally, this is an utter and complete collapse.
New Delhi: The Union coal ministry on Monday announced plans to increase India’s coal production to 1.404 billion tonne by 2027, with an eye to further boost it to 1.577 billion tonne by 2030.
Current domestic production hovers around one billion tonne annually. This increase in output aims to ensure ample supply of domestic coal to India’s thermal power plants, which are essential for the country’s growing energy needs.
The ministry also said that coal stocks at thermal power plants have been rising since 16 October, and stand at approximately 20 million tonne. Stocks at mines have hit 41.59 million tonne. Overall, including transit and captive mines, the stockpile has grown to 73.56 million tonne, up 12% from the previous year’s 65.56 million tonne.
“…The coal supplied to domestic coal-based power plant is around 821 million tonne (MT) for the current year,” it said.
The ministry is also preparing for an expected surge in coal demand, which is estimated to reach around 400 million tonne to support the additional 80 GW of thermal capacity projected by 2030. However, this figure may be adjusted based on future generation requirements and the contribution of renewable energy sources.
To meet these production goals, the ministry is planning opening of new mines, expansion of existing mine capacities, and utilisation of captive and commercial mines.
“The production plans for year 2027 and 2030 will far exceed the likely domestic requirement of thermal power plants in the country, including that for likely additional capacity,” the ministry said in a statement.
It also said that coal, power, and railway ministries are working in close co-ordination, resulting in smooth coal supplies.
The ministry’s statement comes against the backdrop of a robust 13.02% annual growth in coal production, outpacing an 8.99% growth in power generation from domestic coal-based plants. Demand for thermal power has seen a 20% increase over the last year.
In response to rising power demand, the government has asked power generating companies to blend 6% imported coal until March 2024 and has directed all imported-coal-based plants to operate at full capacity until June next year.
Climate tipping points are much more fantasy than science…
…when the last ice age ended some 12,000 years ago, the eastern Sahara turned green with vegetation, teemed with wildlife and had numerous bodies of water 5000 – 10,000 years ago .
Sahara has been shrinking over the past decades. Image: NASA
Dr. Kröpelin is an award-wining geologist and climate researcher at the University of Cologne and specializes in studying the eastern Sahara desert and its climatic history. He’s been active out in the field there for more than 40 years.
In the Auf 1 interview, Dr. Kröpelin contradicts the alarmist claims of growing deserts and rapidly approaching climate tipping points. He says that already in the late 1980s rains had begun spreading into northern Sudan and have since indeed developed into a trend. Since then, rains have increased and vegetation has spread northwards. “The desert is shrinking; it is not growing.”
Kröpelin confirms that when the last ice age ended some 12,000 years ago, the eastern Sahara turned green with vegetation, teemed with wildlife and had numerous bodies of water 5000 – 10,000 years ago (more here).
Later in the interview Kröpelin explains how the eastern Sahara climate was reconstructed using a vast multitude of sediment cores and the proxy data they yielded. According to the German geology expert: “The most important studies that we conducted all show that after the ice age, when global temperatures rose, the Sahara greened”…”the monsoon rains increased, the ground water rose”. This all led to vegetation and wildlife taking hold over thousands of year.
Then over the past few thousands of years, the region dried out. It didn’t happen all of a sudden like climate models suggest.
Modelers don’t understand climate complexity
When asked about dramatic tipping points (8:00) such as those claimed to be approaching by the Potsdam Institute (PIK), Kröpelin says he’s very skeptical and doesn’t believe crisis scenarios such as those proposed by former PIK head, Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber. He says people making such claims “never did any studies themselves in any climate zone on the earth and they don’t understand how complex climate change is.”
Except for catastrophic geological events, “it’s not how nature works,” Kröpelin says. “Things change gradually.”
The claims that “we have to be careful that things don’t get half a degree warmer, otherwise everything will collapse, is of course complete nonsense.”
“I would say this concept [tipping points] is baseless. Much more indicates that they won’t happen than that they will happen.”
Late last year in Munich, he called the notion of CO2-induced climate tipping points scientifically outlandish. He also called the prospect of the Sahara spreading into Europe preposterous.
U of Cologne Sahara Expert, Geologist Dr. Stefan Kröpelin Says Desert Is Shrinking, Calls Alarmist Tipping Points From 0.5°C Warming "Complete Nonsense"…Modelers Don't Understand Climate Complexity… Climate Changes Gradual @ClimateDepot@EIKE_KLIMAhttps://t.co/mVrbahV3Pfpic.twitter.com/XwnbdfupHv
CFACT student chapters are thriving on college campuses from coast to coast. Our bright young collegians are speaking out on issues of energy, environment, and individual liberty at public and government forums alike — and making their voices heard.
Maggie Immen, one of our Driessen Fellows at the University of Wyoming, recently presented hard-hitting facts on how wind turbines are a threat to birds before her state’s Public Service Commission. She did it dressed as an eagle.
The media loved it! She got a full write-up in the Cowboy State Daily showcasing her stunt.
At stake in Wyoming is a proposed 30 percent hike in electricity prices being sought by the utility called Rocky Mountain Power (RMP). The rate increase, according to RMP, is necessary to pay for the escalating costs attributed to new wind power being deployed throughout the state. Wyoming, rich in fossil fuels, used to get 97% of its power from coal and gas, but that has dropped to 70% in recent years. It was this rate hike to fund more wind power that Maggie was protesting. We now await the Commission’s final decision.
Meanwhile, on the East Coast, CFACT students in Maryland and Virginia weighed in with public testimony opposing the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) stamp of approval for two proposed wind farms 10 miles offshore of Ocean City, Maryland. Jamahl Evans, a CFACT Driessen Fellow from Old Dominion, took the lead in offering testimony. He stated during the online hearing, “Despite substantial subsidies, inflation has driven up the cost of building these steel wind towers to such a degree that companies have abandoned projects mid-build. To bail out these failing companies would require major electricity rate increases. This places an undue burden on the average and lower-income families in America, who are already struggling with rising costs of living.”
Of course, our student interns weren’t the only ones at CFACT taking aim at Big Wind over the past couple of weeks. I, too, had the honor of offering my testimony to BOEM against a ridiculous offshore wind proposal in Oregon. That proposal called for employing flimsy “floating wind” turbine technology to provide a pitiful amount of unreliable electricity generation to that state. You can read the full story about this and also find my comments HERE at cfact.org.
Biden Administration officials are beginning to discover that tremendous numbers of citizens are now emboldened to stand up in opposition to their irresponsible push for renewable energy expansion.
Best of all, the numbers keep growing, and they’re from diverse political affiliations.
For our part, CFACT is dedicated to providing the policy expertise and grassroots creativity needed to help the public not just push back but, one by one, score important energy victories that count.
Craig Rucker is a co-founder of CFACT and currently serves as its president. Widely heralded as a leader in the free market environmental, think tank community in Washington, D.C., Rucker is a frequent guest on radio talk shows, written extensively in numerous publications, and has appeared in such media outlets as Fox News, OANN, Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Hill, among many others. Rucker is also the co-producer of the award-winning film “Climate Hustle,” which was the #1 box-office film in America during its one night showing in 2016, as well as the acclaimed “Climate Hustle 2” staring Hollywood actor Kevin Sorbo released in 2020. As an accredited observer to the United Nations, Rucker has also led CFACT delegations to some 30 major UN conferences, including those in Copenhagen, Istanbul, Kyoto, Bonn, Marrakesh, Rio de Janeiro, and Warsaw, to name a few.
An exact knowledge of the instantaneous Earth’s rotation rate is indispensable for accurate navigation and geolocation. Fluctuations in the length of sidereal day are caused by momentum exchange between the fluids of the Earth (namely, the atmosphere, hydrosphere and cryosphere) and the solid Earth.
Since a multitude of different globally distributed and independent mass transport phenomena are involved, the resultant effect on the Earth’s rotation is not predictable and needs to be continuously measured. Here we report the observation of minute variations in the rotation rate of the Earth at the level of five parts per billion, namely, with a resolution of a few milliseconds over 120 days of continuous measurements.
Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have succeeded in measuring the Earth’s rotation more exactly than ever before. The ring laser at the Geodetic Observatory Wettzell can now be used to capture data at a quality level unsurpassed anywhere in the world. The measurements will be used to determine the Earth’s position in space, benefit climate research, and make climate models more reliable.
Care to take a quick step down to the basement and see how fast the Earth has been turning in the last few hours? Now you can at the Geodetic Observatory Wettzell. TUM researchers have improved the ring laser there so that it can provide daily current data, which until now has not been possible at comparable quality levels.
What exactly does the ring laser measure? On its journey through space, the Earth rotates on its axis at slightly varying speeds. In addition, the axis around which the planet spins is not completely static, it wobbles a bit. This is because our planet is not completely solid, but is made up of various component parts, some solid, some liquid. So, the insides of the Earth itself are constantly in motion. These shifts in mass accelerate or brake the planet’s rotation, differences which can be detected using measurement systems like the TUM ring laser.
“Fluctuations in rotation are not only important for astronomy, we also urgently need them to create accurate climate models and to better understand weather phenomena like El Niño. And the more precise the data, the more accurate the predictions,” says Prof. Ulrich Schreiber, who led the project at the Observatory for TUM.
Sensors and corrective algorithm revised
When overhauling the ring laser system, the team prioritized finding a good balance between size and mechanical stability, since the larger such a device is, the more sensitive the measurements it can make. However, size means compromises in terms of stability and thus precision.
Another challenge was the symmetry of the two opposed laser beams, the heart of the Wettzell system. The exact measurement is only possible when the waveforms of the two counter-propagating laser beams are nearly identical. However, the device’s design means a certain amount of asymmetry is always present.
Over the last four years, geodesists have used a theoretical model for laser oscillations to successfully capture these systematic effects to the extent that they can be precisely calculated over a long period of time and thus can be eliminated from the measurements.
Device measurements are significantly more precise
The device can use this new corrective algorithm to measure the Earth’s rotation precisely down to 9 decimal places, corresponding to a fraction of a millisecond per day. In terms of the laser beams that’s equivalent to an uncertainty starting at only the 20th decimal place of the light frequency and stable for several months.
Overall, the observed up and down fluctuations reached values of as much as 6 milliseconds over approximately two weeks.
The improvements in the laser have now made significantly shorter measurement periods possible as well. The newly developed corrective programs let the team capture current data every three hours.
Urs Hugentobler, Professor for Satellite Geodesy at TUM, says, “In geosciences, time resolution levels this high are absolutely novel for standalone ring lasers. In contrast to other systems, the laser functions completely independently and doesn’t require reference points in space. With conventional systems, these reference points are created by observing the stars or using satellite data. But we’re independent of that kind of thing and also extremely precise.”
Data captured independent of stellar observation can help identify and compensate for systematic errors in other measurement methods. Using various methods helps make work particularly meticulous, especially when accuracy requirements are high, as is the case with the ring laser. Further improvement of the system, which will enable even shorter measurement periods, is planned for the future.
Ring lasers measure interference between two laser beams
Ring lasers consist of a closed, square beam path with four mirrors completely enclosed in a certain body, referred to as the resonator. This keeps the length of the path from changing due to temperature fluctuations. A helium/neon gas mixture inside the resonator enables laser beam excitation, one clockwise and one counterclockwise.
Without the Earth’s movement, the light would travel the same distance in both directions. But since the device moves together with the Earth, the distance for one of the laser beams is shorter, since the Earth’s rotation moves the mirrors closer to the beam. In the opposite direction, the light travels a correspondingly longer distance.
This effect creates a difference in the frequencies of the two light waves the superposition of which generates a beat note that can be measured very exactly. The higher the speed at which the Earth turns, the greater the difference between the two optical frequencies. At the equator, the Earth turns 15 degrees to the east every hour. This generates a signal of 348.5 Hz in the TUM device. Fluctuations in the length of a day manifest with values of from 1 to 3 millionths of a Hz (1–3 microhertz).
Each side of the ring laser in the basement of the Observatory in Wettzell measures four meters. This construction is then anchored to a solid concrete column, which rests on the solid bedrock of the Earth’s crust at a depth of about six meters. This ensures that the Earth’s rotation is the only factor impacting the laser beams and excludes other environmental factors.
The construction is protected by a pressurized chamber, which compensates changes in air pressure or the desired temperature of 12 degrees centigrade and automatically compensates for these changes. In order to minimize such influencing factors, the laboratory is located at a depth of five meters under an artificial hill. Almost 20 years of research have gone into developing the measuring system.
The study is published in the journal Nature Photonics.
More information: K. Ulrich Schreiber et al, Variations in the Earth’s rotation rate measured with a ring laser interferometer, Nature Photonics (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41566-023-01286-x
South Africa will miss its binding 2030 carbon emissions targets under the Paris climate agreement, three senior government officials confirmed, as the country plans to run eight coal-fired power plants for longer than planned.
Three senior South African government officials told Reuters on Thursday that South Africa will miss its climate change targets under the Paris Agreement because shutting down the country’s eight coal-fired power plants would cause a massive energy crisis.
South Africa’s big miss is no small matter for the climate change movement because, as Reuters pointed out, it is “the world’s 11th biggest greenhouse gas emitter and has one of the world’s highest per capita emissions.”
The original plan called for South Africa to shut down six of its coal-fired power plants by 2030 and two more by 2034. The officials who spoke to Reuters said those goals are now considered “unrealistic,” although the government might set a “new decommissioning target for 2035.”
The South African environmental ministry issued a statement saying it was “too early” to conclude the Paris Agreement targets for 2030 cannot be met.
South Africa is already in the midst of a major energy crisis, even with all those coal plants puffing away. The World Bank announced in mid-October that talks were underway for a billion-dollar loan to help South Africa recover from rolling blackouts that have put a major crimp on economic growth.
The World Bank already loaned South Africa’s state utility company, Eskom, $497 million in 2022 to decommission one of its coal power plants. The plant, an aging facility located near the city of Komati east of Johannesburg, was shuttered last October, but the “transition to cleaner energy” was a disaster.
The South African government did not consult with the 1,600 local workers employed by the Komati plant or help them find new jobs. Energy officials fretted the loss of the plant would jeopardize the power grid, sowing panic, confusion, and vain hopes the Komati plant might reopen.
Eskom estimates that roughly 80 percent of South Africa’s power comes from its coal-fired plants, which are becoming unreliable due to mismanagement and corruption. Instead of “transitioning” to green energy, South Africa is leaning on its coal plants harder than ever as it experiences the worst blackouts in its history.
The South African government has said it would need about $80 billion to finance a proper transition to green energy, a sum that seems very unlikely to be forthcoming.
The United Nations published a report on Wednesday that said governments around the world planned to exceed the Paris Agreement’s limits on fossil fuels by over 110 percent by 2030. Meeting the Paris Agreement limits would require the almost total worldwide shutdown of coal power plants by 2040 – but the heaviest coal users, China and India, are still increasingtheir coal-fired generator capacity.
Sure 2023 has been an unusual year so far. But the key question remains: Has 2023 weather been driven or caused by emissions? A reasonably correct answer comes, surprisingly enough, from NASA’s chief climate alarmist, Gavin Schmidt who told the Washington Post: “It is indeed hard to give a good and informed answer to why this is happening.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.