This quote from the report stood out: ‘there are long-lasting periods of strong and weak solar activity, which is also reflected in the climate on Earth.’ Worth noting as we proceed through a period of weak activity right now.
– – –
An international team of researchers led by ETH Zurich has reconstructed solar activity back to the year 969 using measurements of radioactive carbon in tree rings, reports Phys.org.

Those results help scientists to better understand the dynamics of the sun and allow more precise dating of organic materials using the C14 method.

What goes on in the sun can only be observed indirectly. Sunspots, for instance, reveal the degree of solar activity—the more sunspots are visible on the surface of the sun, the more active is our central star deep inside.

Even though sunspots have been known since antiquity, they have only been documented in detail since the invention of the telescope around 400 years ago. Thanks to that, we now know that the number of spots varies in regular eleven-year cycles and that, moreover, there are long-lasting periods of strong and weak solar activity, which is also reflected in the climate on Earth.

However, how solar activity developed before the start of systematic records has so far been difficult to reconstruct.

Solar activity from tree rings

To reconstruct solar activity over a millennium with an extremely good time resolution of just one year, the researchers used tree-ring archives from England and Switzerland.

In those tree rings, whose ages can be precisely determined by counting the rings, there is a tiny fraction of radioactive carbon C14, with only one out of every 1000 billion atoms being radioactive. From the known half-life of the C14 isotope—around 5700 years—one can then deduce the concentration of radioactive carbon present in the atmosphere when the growth ring was formed.

As radioactive carbon is mainly produced by cosmic particles, which in turn are kept away from the Earth to a greater or lesser extent by the magnetic field of the sun—the more active the sun, the better it shields the Earth—it is possible to deduce solar activity from a change in the concentration of C14 in the atmosphere.

Continued here.

via Tallbloke’s Talkshop

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January 20, 2021 at 07:09AM

See Part 1 here (click)

#1. A press release for the 2021 Climate Adaptation Summit declares that the entity hosting this event is “a new international organization.”

But the website of the Global Center on Adaptation (CGA) says it was founded in 2018. Few of us would mistake a three-year-old for a newborn, so this is a bit odd.

That misleading press release is now all over the Internet. A copy can be found on the Associated Press website, as well as at AsiaNetNews, at BusinessInsider.com, and on the website of Italy’s Economy magazine. (This is by no means an exhaustive list.)

***

#2. But there’s more to the GCA backstory, and the 2018 claim is itself questionable. This entity actually began life as the Global Center for Excellence on Adaptation (GCECA). Here’s the old logo:

In February 2017, the UN announced that the Netherlands, Japan, and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) would establish the center. That may be the first occasion in which this entity was officially described as “new” (see here, here and here).

In September 2017, two Dutch cities were chosen to host it – Rotterdam and Groningen (see here and here). In the case of the latter, the GCECA would be housed in the airy, state-of-the-art, uber sustainable Energy Academy Europe building.

In November 2017, the GCECA was officially launched during the UN’s regular, year-end climate summit (COP 23, in Bonn).

By the following September, the organization had undergone a name change and adopted a new logo. Incoming CEO Patrick Verkooijen explained at the time that the shorter name and “new senior staff” marked the organization’s “next chapter.” Next chapter. Not the founding of a new entity.

In October 2018, former UN head Ban Ki-moon ceremonially opened the GCA offices in the above-mentioned building. The University of Groningen public relations department published a long account of the event, as well as numerous photos such as this one:

click for photo source

• first announced: Feb. 2017
• locations chosen: Sept. 2017
• officially launched: Nov. 2017
• name changed: Sept. 2018
• Groningen office ceremony: Oct. 2018

This timeline does not support the claim that the GCA was founded in 2018. In my experience, when an entity can’t be bothered to describe itself accurately, that’s a red flag.

#3. The same month Ban Ki-moon opened the Global Center on Adaptation’s Groningen office, he also launched the closely connected Global Commission on Adaptation.

The acronym for both entities is GCA. Which surely invites confusion. Here’s Groningen University referring to the Center as the GCA. Here’s it referring to the Commission as the GCA.

Some analysts think green entities deliberately structure themselves in ways that make it difficult for outsiders to understand what’s going on. That, of course, would be the opposite of transparent.

***

#4. Both arms of the organization hosting the Climate Adaptation Summit are awash in UN personnel.

CEO of the Center, Verkooijen, has an extensive employment history with the World Bank – a UN agency.

Both the Center and the Commission are led by Ban Ki-moon, the former head of the UN.

The Commission has two co-chairs. One is billionaire Bill Gates – a massive funder of the UN’s World Health Organization. The other is Kristalina Georgieva. She’s currently managing director of the International Monetary Fund (a UN agency). Before that she was CEO of the World Bank.

But that’s just the beginning. Among the additional 32 commissioners, we find eight UN power brokers:

1. the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) executive director, Inger Andersen
2. the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet
3. the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS executive director, Winnie Byanyima
4. the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change executive secretary, Patricia Espinosa
5. the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change former executive secretary, Christiana Figueres
6. the United Nations Development Programme administrator, Achim Steiner
7. the UN’s World Meteorological Association secretary general, Petteri Taalas
8. the UN’s World Bank director of operations, Axel van Trotsenburg

In other words, the GCA is just the UN in disguise. It doesn’t call itself a UN body, but that’s what it is. This is one of the UN’s many faces. This is yet another mechanism by which un-elected UN bureaucrats promote UN policies and goals.

The UN is a champ at organizing meetings. It produces an endless river of reports. But as I’ve observed elsewhere, it’s real-world record is another matter. After an earthquake devastated Haiti in 2010, UN peacekeepers introduced cholera to that country. Six years and 10,000 deaths later, Ban Ki-moon finally apologized – but his apology shamefully failed to acknowledge how the cholera got there.

Lawsuits against the UN on behalf of injured Haitians have gone nowhere because UN personnel are protected by diplomatic immunity. They are an untouchable class, a law onto themselves. Whenever anyone discusses the UN, that’s the vital point to remember.

UN bureaucrats perch up there in the clouds, atop pedestals, insisting they know best. They have no skin in the game. When things turn to dust, they shrug their shoulders and hop over to the next job.

Since they can never be held accountable for the damage they inflict, it will always be a bad idea to place our future in their hands.

via Big Picture News, Informed Analysis

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January 20, 2021 at 07:04AM

Severe frost in Siberia – Yakutsk

A lobe of air that broke off of the polar vortex, which is currently blanketing parts of Siberia, is sending temperatures plummeting across parts of Canada.

Canada is no stranger to temperatures below -30°C, but parts of eastern Russia have plummeted below -40°C since the middle of December, courtesy of the bone-chilling polar vortex lingering over Siberia. One of the more chilling temperatures, in Delyankir, just northeast of the coldest, permanently inhabited places on Earth recorded a -58°C on January 18th, 2021.

A lobe of frigid air that broke off of the polar vortex meandered its way down across North America and is sending temperatures tumbling across Canada. This raises the question, will the coldest air in the world soon make an appearance in Canada?

First, let’s look at a map that figuratively takes your breath away, or literally, if you’re a resident of Yakutsk, Russia.

For over 40 days, daytime highs remained below -30°C in the capital city of the Sakha Republic, with just over six hours of meagre daylight contributing next-to-nothing in terms of warmth.

POLAR VORTEX IS IN SHAMBLES

The temperature outlook is bleak for the remainder of January over Siberia – the coldest air in the world will continuously recharge and replenish itself over the region. Although it’s been cold even by Siberian standards, we can’t soon forget the record warmth anomaly that helped catapult the planet to one of the warmest years on record in 2020.

Keep in mind, back in last May, ‘zombie fires’ cropped into our lexicon – the forest fires that surprised us by smouldering below the Siberian snowpack. Temperatures soared to 38°C in Verkhoyansk last spring, while this week -57.5°C was recorded. That makes this a 95°C temperature difference!

The polar vortex has been temperamental as of late — it has recently weakened and allowed colder air to drift towards lower latitudes.

(Read more here)

Wed, 20 Jan 2021 Tyler Hamilton

via sott.ne

https://www.sott.net/article/447495-Coldest-air-on-Earth-sends-temperatures-below-50C-in-Siberia-down-to-58C-72-4F-at-one-locality