Guest essay by Eric Worrall

Carbon capture vs Renewable Energy? Proponents of contradictory green visions for Britain’s future are fighting over British PM Boris Johnson’s renewable energy policy largesse.

Carbon capture is vital to meeting climate goals, scientists tell green critics

Supporters insist that storage technology is not a costly mistake but the best way for UK to cut emissions from heavy industry

Robin McKie

Sun 17 Jan 2021 04.36 AEDT

Engineers and geologists have strongly criticised green groups who last week claimed that carbon capture and storage schemes – for reducing fossil fuel emissions – are costly mistakes.

The scientists insisted that such schemes are vital weapons in the battle against global heating and warn that failure to set up ways to trap carbon dioxide and store it underground would make it almost impossible to hold net emissions to below zero by 2050.

“Carbon capture and storage is going to be the only effective way we have in the short term to prevent our steel industry, cement manufacture and many other processes from continuing to pour emissions into the atmosphere,” said Professor Stuart Haszeldine, of Edinburgh University.

“If we are to have any hope of keeping global temperature [increases] down below 2 degrees C then we desperately need to develop ways to capture and store carbon dioxide.”

…

But campaigners at Global Witness and Friends of the Earth Scotland said last week that a reliance on CCS was not a reliable way to decarbonise the energy system, and published a paper last Monday from the Tyndall Manchester climate change research centre that they said proved that CCS has a “history of over-promising and under-delivering”.

Both groups claimed CCS would not make “a meaningful contribution to 2030 climate targets” despite the investment, and instead urged the construction of more renewable energy plants to be given priority.

…

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/16/carbon-capture-vital-meeting-climate-goals-scientists-cut-emissions

It is all kind of entertaining in a macabre way, once you get past the sadness of watching such a stupendous waste of all that taxpayer’s money.

In my opinion there is no chance either camp will achieve anything useful.

At 50 degrees North, Britain will never build enough renewables to replace fossil fuel. Even if I’m wrong, at best Britain would end up with what they already have – the ability to produce electricity.

Carbon capture – what can you say? If you pump all the empty North Sea gas wells full of CO2, you provide a cash bonanza for people who thought their exhausted fossil fuel claims were worthless – kind of like a lottery win for billionaires, where ordinary taxpayers pay for the tickets.

via Watts Up With That?

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January 18, 2021 at 12:42PM

via Real Climate Science

Posted on January 18, 2021 by tonyheller

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January 18, 2021 at 11:15AM

Mid-Holocene South China Sea maximum temperatures were ~3.5°C warmer (33.5°C vs. today’s 29.9°C) about 5000 yrs ago, when corals experienced an “optimum coral growth period”. There were “numerous coral bleaching episodes” even when temperatures weren’t as high, as coral bleaching is naturally occurring.

Key points from a  new study (Wang et al., 2021) that throws cold water on the claims that modern coral bleaching is unprecedented, unusual, or unnatural.

• “Compared with the average Sr/Ca-SST of the 1990s, the Sr/Ca-SST between 6800 and 5000 B.P. was 0.9°C–0.5°C higher.”

• “A warmer climate makes the mid-Holocene an optimum coral growth period when corals grew abundantly (Clark et al., 2018; Yan et al., 2019).”

• “During the period 3434–4568 B.P., the climate was colder than 6.8–5.0 ka B.P., but there were numerous coral bleaching episodes.”

• “[C]oral bleaching caused by thermal stress has been repeated over the long-term scale of the mid-late Holocene period and severe or prolonged coral bleaching events can lead to massive coral death.”

• “[T]he mid-late Holocene coral thermal bleaching events are a natural response to abnormal temperature.”

• There is “evidence of rapid recovery after bleaching” and “coral bleaching events have occurred repeatedly in the mid-late Holocene during times of high SST, and corals have proved to be resilient despite this environmental stress.”

Image Source: Wang et al., 2021

via NoTricksZone

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January 18, 2021 at 11:00AM

Temperatures across China have plunged to their lowest in decades, boosting demand for power and fuel to historic highs in the world’s largest energy consumer.

12 Jan 21 – “The sea ice situation is more severe this year than the same period in previous years,” said Wang Jun, a professor specialising in transport issues at Dalian Maritime University.

Expansion of sea ice makes it tougher for ships to berth and discharge at key energy product import terminals along the coast of northern Bohai Bay.

“It could impede sailing and docking for vessels, no matter how big they are.”

Sea ice stretches 45 to 55 nautical miles at Liaodong Bay and 10 to 20 nautical miles at Bohai Bay, close to levels that could prompt temporary bans on shipping.

Last weekend, the marine safety bureau in northern Hebei sent several tugboats to the aid of vessels, , trapped in sea ice that was one metre (three foot) thick, to help bring them to Caofeidian and Huanghua ports, state television said. The vessels included LNG tanker Clean Planet and coal bulk tanker Agia Eirini Force

Sea Ice Slows Ships In North China Ports

See more

Thanks to Don Don Villeneuve for this link

The post Sea Ice Affects Ships In North China Ports appeared first on Ice Age Now.

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January 18, 2021 at 09:56AM

By Paul Homewood

 Greenland Ice Mass Change (DMI)

http://polarportal.dk/en/greenland/mass-and-height-change/#c8450

DMI have not yet got around to updating their Greenland ice mass charts for last year, but the data is available from NASA up to October.

The DMI graph is in any event pretty difficult to look at for trends, and has the usual distorted y-axis, which make it look that the ice cap will soon be gone.

Taking the actual data from NASA, derived from GRACE satellite measurements, we can see the year on year changes below, which tell us clearly what has actually been going on:

https://climexp.knmi.nl/showmetadata.cgi?TYPE=i&WMO=greenland_mass&station=Greenland_mass&id=someone@somewhere

The warm summers of 2012 and 2019 stick out, but equally there have been cold wet summers, such as 2017 and 2018.

What is evident is that there has been no acceleration in melt since the start of records in 2002. This runs counter to the alarmist message commonly perpetuated, for instance the ever reliable BBC!

The annual average mass loss since 2002 is 264 Gt, but this is a microscopic amount in comparison with the total ice cap mass, which weighs 2.6 million Gt. And as the top graph shows, the sea level rise in the last decades resulting from the melt is only around 10mm.

There is of course no reason we we should at all surprised or alarmed about this melting. We know Greenland is now warmer than in the 19thC, which ice cores prove was the coldest era there since the end of the Ice Age.

We know that temperatures in Greenland now are no higher than the 1920s to 50s. And we also know that glaciers there grew massively between the Middle Ages and the Little Ice Age.

There is no evidence whatsoever that melting will suddenly start to run away. Indeed everything points to it being a natural event, which may well reverse or slow down when the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation switches to cold phase and temperatures in Greenland fall sharply, just as they did between the 1960s and 90s.

via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

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January 18, 2021 at 09:42AM