Antarctica has crossed into slightly above the mean in the last 2 days.
Sea Ice Extent (Global Antarctic and Arctic) – Day 188 – 2016
Stupid Europeans and Diesel
Many years ago Europe decided to fight “Global Warming” by encouraging the use of diesel cars because diesel produces a little less CO2 per mile than gasoline engines.
But they are paying a massive price in terms of air pollution.
Diesel car owners could face tax rises to tackle deadly air pollution, a Cabinet minister indicated today.
In an interview with the Evening Standard, Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin said it had been a “mistake” for former Labour chancellor Gordon Brown to slash taxes on diesel.
The decision had caused a “dramatic rise” in the number of diesel cars spewing toxic nitrogen oxide (NOx) in London and other cities.
“We have got to look at that,” said the minister. “It is something the Chancellor will need to look at in due course.”
Mr Brown cut the duty on low sulphur diesel by 3p in his 2001 Budget — a move unveiled shortly before the general election — and also reduced company car taxes on diesels, billed as a bid to help meet climate change targets.
However, although diesel engines produce less carbon, which is blamed for global warming, they emit up to four times as much NOx and 20 times as many particulates — minute particles that penetrate and damage the lungs, heart and brain. About 9,400 Londoners die prematurely every year from breathing the city’s polluted air.
Sea Ice Extent (Global Antarctic and Arctic) – Day 187 – 2016
A Good Start
Two on fire
Sea Ice Extent (Global Antarctic and Arctic) – Day 186 – 2016
Expanding Antarctic sea ice linked to Natural Variability!!
Oh sure. If the climate does something that doesn’t match the theory they blame “natural variability”.
But maybe … just maybe … climate is mostly natural variability.
The recent trend of increasing Antarctic sea ice extent—seemingly at odds with climate model projections—can largely be explained by a natural climate fluctuation, according to a new study led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).
The study offers evidence that the negative phase of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO), which is characterized by cooler-than-average sea surface temperatures in the tropical eastern Pacific, has created favorable conditions for additional Antarctic sea ice growth since 2000.
The findings, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, may resolve a longstanding mystery: Why is Antarctic sea ice expanding when climate change is causing the world to warm?
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-07-antarctic-sea-ice-linked-natural.html#jCp
Sea Ice Extent (Global Antarctic and Arctic) – Day 185 – 2016
UK Energy Policy = Economic Suicide
In view of the shambles engulfing our politics in all directions, it might seem appropriate that last Thursday MPs should blithely have accepted that, within a few years, our lights will go out and our economy will grind to a halt. What they allowed to be nodded through was something called the “Fifth Carbon Budget”, committing us to an energy policy so insanely unworkable that it can only result in Britain committing economic suicide.
As I predicted and explained in more detail on May 14, what the MPs tacitly agreed to was that, between 2028 and 2033, we should cut our emissions of CO2 by a far greater amount than any other country in the world. We will put an end to any use of gas for cooking and heating. Sixty per cent of all our transport will be powered not by fossil fuels but by electricity. And to achieve this, we will double the amount of electricity we need (two thirds of which still comes from those same hated “carbon emitting” fossil fuels).
Much of this electricity, the Government fondly imagines (on advice from the fantasists on Lord Deben’s Climate Change Committee), will come from tens of thousands more lavishly subsidised wind turbines, solar farms, new nuclear power stations unlikely ever to be built and woodchips imported at vast expense from forests in North America.
Not one of the MPs who accepted this could plausibly explain what is to happen to all those electric cookers, heating systems, cars, cashpoints etc, when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. Furthermore, none seemed to notice that key ingredients in that make-believe scenario dreamt up months ago by the Climate Change Committee are based on assuming that by 2030 we shall still be in the EU, whose own energy policy is now falling apart in all directions, as Germany, Poland and other countries rush to build new coal-fired power stations.
sunshine hours 