Category: Climate Change

Climate Science’s Myth-Buster – Judith Curry

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Good article!

Not being a climatologist myself, I’ve always had trouble deciding between these arguments. And then I met Judith Curry at her home in Reno, Nevada. Curry is a true climatologist. She once headed the department of earth and atmospheric sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, until she gave up on the academy so that she could express herself independently. “Independence of mind and climatology have become incompatible,” she says. Do you mean that global warming isn’t real? I ask. “There is warming, but we don’t really understand its causes,” she says. “The human factor and carbon dioxide, in particular, contribute to warming, but how much is the subject of intense scientific debate.”

…

In 2005, I had a conversation with Rajendra Pachauri, an Indian railway engineer, who remade himself into a climatologist and became director of the IPCC, which received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize under his tenure. Pachauri told me, without embarrassment, that, at the UN, he recruited only climatologists convinced of the carbon-dioxide warming explanation, excluding all others. This extraordinary collusion today allows politicians and commentators to declare that “science says that” carbon dioxide is to blame for global warming, or that a “scientific consensus” exists on warming, implying that no further study is needed—something that makes zero sense on its face, as scientific research is not based on consensus but on contradictory views.

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Nuclear Power To Rescue US Northwest from Cold and Low Wind/Hydro

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Nukes to the rescue.

“low stream flows, high natural gas prices and the very cold weather and low wind.”

RICHLAND, WA 

For most of the month of February the Northwest’s only nuclear power plant has been under a “no touch” order to help keep the heat on across the region.

The Bonneville Power Administration, which markets the electricity produced at the nuclear plant near Richland, asked for the restriction during an unusually cold February across the state that increased the demand for electricity.

The policy limits any maintenance activity that would either require a reduction in power or would pose a risk to sustaining 100 percent production, said Mike Paoli, spokesman for Energy Northwest.

“No touch” is occasionally requested by BPA when unusually hot or cold weather increases demand for electricity.

For instance, in August 2017 the nuclear power plant was under the policy for about a week.

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But in February the plant was under a no touch policy for 23 of the past 26 days.

It restricted maintenance activities not only at the nuclear reactor, but also on its turbine generator and in the transformer yard.

The exception was for an hour or so on Feb. 16 when BPA agreed that it would be a good idea to do one of the periodically scheduled nuclear plant control rod adjustments.

Although the plant powered down by 30 percent, the change helped optimize power production, Paoli said.

Columbia Generating Station has the capability to produce 1,207 megawatts, which is typically enough energy to power Seattle and part of its metro area. It is the third largest electricity generator in the state.

The nuclear plant helps protect BPA from having to go out on the open market to buy power, said David Wilson, a BPA spokesman.

“We asked them for the “no touch order,” because of low stream flows, high natural gas prices and the very cold weather,” he told the Herald.

The cold snap comes as water flows that spin dam turbines are low and wind generation is not at peak production.

Snow: They Ran Out of Room on the Graph

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Northern Hemisphere this time. Snow Water Equivalent.

 

March 2000: According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.

“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.

Snow seems to be ignoring David Viner.

 

Too Many Whales?

Published on by sunshinehours12 Comments

Whales recovering. Thats good. Right? Not according to “experts”.

This is good … right?

Rapid growth in humpback whales in the Australian Southern Ocean could lead to a ‘population explosion’

And this is good too … right?

The population was brought to the brink of extinction in the 1960s, with just a few hundred surviving in the wild, a result of commercial whaling.

However, conservation efforts and the introduction of the Endangered Species Act saw the humpback population almost totally recover by 2015, to more than 25,000.

But nooo. Climate change rears its ugly head!

experts are now warning that the population could become too large for the ecosystem to support because of declining food sources in our oceans due to climate change.

What declining food sources? The population of whales just went up by 100x!!!

Climate change is such a party pooper.

If they stopped shooting 600 polar bears a year there would be a population explosion too.  Oh wait … there is one.

The “experts” are always sad when the poster children of climate change refuse to die off.

Rapid growth in humpback whales in the Australian Southern Ocean could lead to a 'population explosion' and an even bigger fall in numbers, according to scientists. They warn that they are growing at a rate which could get too high causing a 'significant crash'