6 months of summer could be the norm by 2100, study finds
Big deal: We had 10 months of summer where I grew up in tropical Australia -- and we did perfectly well in every way. We did drink a lot of cold beer though
Global warming will change the lengths of the four seasons, a new study suggests, potentially making six-month-long summers the norm in the Northern Hemisphere by the year 2100.
In contrast, winters could last less than two months a year, while spring and autumn similarly shorter. These drastic seasonal changes would have wide-reaching impacts on the world, disturbing agriculture and animal behavior, increasing the frequency of heat waves, storms and wildfires, and ultimately posing "increased risks to humanity," the study authors wrote.
"Tropical mosquitoes carrying viruses are likely to expand northward and bring about explosive outbreaks during longer and hotter summers," the researchers wrote in their study, published Feb. 19 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
These and other potential impacts "heighten the urgency of understanding" how the seasons morph with climate change, and whether that transformation will continue in the future.
To find out, the study authors looked at historical daily temperature data from 1952 to 2011 in the Northern Hemisphere. Specifically, they wanted to see how the onset of new seasons changed from year to year. The team defined the start of summer as the onset of temperatures in the hottest 25% of temperatures, averaged from 1952 to 2011. They defined winter as the start of temperatures in the coldest 25% from the same period, while autumn and spring were in between.
The researchers found that, on average, summer lengthened from 78 to 95 days between 1952 and 2011. Meanwhile, winter shrank from 76 to 73 days. The transition seasons shrank as well, with spring shortening from 124 to 115 days and autumn from 87 to 82 days. Average temperatures changed accordingly during this period; summer and winter both became warmer.
The team also used climate models to predict how much the seasons are likely to change in the future. Under the business-as-usual scenario (that is, if no efforts are made to mitigate global warming), spring and summer will start a month earlier in 2100 than they did in 2011, while fall and winter will start half a month later. As a result, the Northern Hemisphere will spend more than half the year in summer — and average summer temperatures are only expected to rise.
https://www.livescience.com/six-month-long-summers-2100.html
********************************NY Times Spread Fake News that East Coast Beaches Would Be ‘Gone’ by 2020
Fact check: It’s 2021 and America’s East Coast beaches are doing just fine!
Here’s the relevant portion from the original Times’ article:
"A continuing rise in average global sea level, which is likely to amount to more than a foot and a half by the year 2100. This, say the scientists, would inundate parts of many heavily populated river deltas and the cities on them, making them uninhabitable, and would destroy many beaches around the world. At the most likely rate of rise, some experts say, most of the beaches on the East Coast of the United States would be gone in 25 years. They are already disappearing at an average of 2 to 3 feet a year."
The date of the article is September 18, 1995. The headline reads, “Scientists Say Earth’s Warming Could Set Off Wide Disruptions.”
So here we are 25 full years later, a whole quarter of a century later, and the first prediction from these unnamed “experts” has not even come close to occurring, so why should we believe the dire predictions about the year 2100?
We shouldn’t.
Here’s something else that didn’t happen…
Despite these “expert” predictions, and despite the fact tons of leftists live on the East Coast, and despite the fact leftists claim to believe Global Warming is real, in 1995, there was no panicked exodus by those who live on the East Coast. If you believe Global Warming is real… If you believe the “experts”… Why would you not immediately sell your beach house before the rising tide destroyed your multi-million dollar investment?
But what happened is the exact opposite. The population along the East Coast has only gone up over the last 25 years, property values have gone up. Which tells you that no one believed — despite the “experts” and their own claims to believe “experts” — that the East Coast because would be gone by now.
So if they don’t believe the “experts,” why should anyone else?
Finally, allow me to close with this…
When people ask me why I don’t believe in Global Warming or Climate Change or whatever it’s being called today, my answer is a very simple one…
“If I told you to sell your house because my ‘expert’ calculations told me your home was in danger of being hit by a meteor, how many times would I have to be wrong before you stopped selling your house in a panic? Once? Twice? Ten times?”
“At some point,” I continue, “you would become skeptical of my predictions and my ‘expertise.’ At some point you would become incredulous. At some point you would stop believing me, then you would start laughing at me, than you would think I was lying to push some sort of agenda.”
I close my answer with this: “What if I made 43 predictions and all 43 of my predictions were wrong? Would you ever believe another word I said? Would you believe prediction number 44?”
“No, of course not,” my Global Warming believer answers.
“Okay,” I then say, “that’s why I don’t believe in Global Warming. Because over the course of my life, America’s climate/weather/government/environmental “experts” are 0-43 when it comes to predictions of some sort of environmental catastrophe, which tells me they are full of shit and pursing an agenda.
If someone is 0-43 with their predictions, only a fool would believe prediction number 44.”
And now, with this 1995 New York Times piece, we know America’s “experts” are 0-44, which means they know nothing and Global Warming or Climate Change or whatever these liars are calling it to today.
Global Warming is a total hoax, a means to scare us into giving away our freedoms to horrible elites and liars.
Only a fool would believe anyone with a 0-44 record about anything.
Don’t be a fool.
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EV Subsidies, Fantasies and Realities
Paul Driessen
Tesla may be synonymous with electric vehicles right now. But within a few years, GM, Volvo and many other manufacturers will be making mostly or only EVs, because they’re emission-free, climate-friendly, socially and ecologically responsible, and more affordable every year. Which explains why we need subsidies to persuade people to buy them, and mandates to force people to buy them.
President Biden wants all new light/medium-duty vehicles sold by 2035 to be EVs. Vice President Harris wants only ZEVs (zero emission vehicles) on America’s roads by 2045. Various states are considering or have already passed similar laws; some would even ban the sale of new gasoline and diesel vehicles by 2030. Climate Czar John Kerry will likely be happy to buy EVs to expand his fleet of twelve cars, two yachts, six houses, and the private jet he flies in to accept climate crusader awards.
AOC would use her Green New Deal to “massively” expand electric vehicle manufacturing and use. She herself now drives an EV, most likely a $48,000 Tesla Model 3 Long Range (350 miles per charge).
Mini AOC also has an EV, pink and suitably sized for a 10-year-old. She launched her GND and bought her mini-car after viewing, “like, the most important documentary on climate change. It’s called Ice Age 2: The Meltdown. That’s not me saying it. That’s science!” she explained. “My Green New Deal will cost, like, 93 trillion dollars. Do you know how much that is? Me neither. Because it’s totally worth it. If sea levels keep rising, we won’t be able to drive to Hawaii anymore!” (Not even in her EV!)
For some people EVs are an easy choice. But why the hefty subsidies? Why do the rest of us need mandates and diktats – and a new Henry Ford dictum, letting consumers have any kind of car they want, as long as it’s electric. Regardless of needs or preferences. (But at least we can choose the color.)
More important, who’s actually getting the subsidies? and who’s paying for them? What other costs and unintended consequences are Big Green, Big Government, Big Media and Big Tech keeping quiet about?
A 2021 Tesla Model S Long Range can go 412 miles on a multi-hour charge; its MSRP is $80,000. The Model Y all-wheel-drive is $58,000. A Nissan Leaf is “only” $34,000 but only goes 149 miles. Mileage of course assumes temperatures are moderate and drivers aren’t using the cars’ heater or AC. Similar sticker-shock prices apply to other EV makes and models, putting them out of reach for most families.
To soften the blows to budgets and liberties, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) wants to spend $454 billion to install 500,000 new EV charging stations, replace US government vehicles with EVs, and finance “cash for clunkers” rebates to help at least some families navigate this transportation transformation.
Politicians are being pressured to retain the $7,500 per car federal tax credit (and sweet state tax rebates) now scheduled to lapse once a manufacturer’s cumulative vehicle sales since 2009 reach 200,000. EV drivers also want other incentives perpetuated: free charging stations, access to HOV lanes for plug-ins with only the driver, and not having to pay fees that substitute for gasoline taxes to finance the construction, maintenance and repair of highways they drive on.
A 2015 study found that the richest 20% of Americans received 90% of these generous EV subsidies. No surprise there. Clearly, lobbyists are more valuable than engineers for EV manufacturers and drivers.
This perverse reverse-Robin-Hood system also means subsidies are financed by taxpayers – including millions of working class and minority families, most of which will never be able to afford an EV.
Any cash for clunkers program will exacerbate the problem. By enabling sufficiently wealthy families to trade fossil-fuel cars for EVs, it will result in millions of perfectly drivable cars and trucks that would have ended up in used car lots getting crushed and melted instead. Basic supply and demand laws mean the average cost of pre-owned ICE vehicles will soar by thousands of dollars, pricing even them out of reach for millions of lower-income families. They’ll be forced to buy pieces of junk or ride buses and subways jammed with people they hope won’t be carrying next-generation COVID.
The United States will begin to look like Cuba, which still boasts legions of classic 1960s and ‘70s cars that are cared for and kept on the road with engines, brakes and other parts cannibalized from wrecks and even old Soviet cars. Once the states and federales ban gasoline sales, even that will end.
Perhaps even more ironic and perverse, the “zero emissions vehicle” moniker refers only to emissions in the USA – and only if the electricity required to manufacture and charge ZEVs comes from non-fossil-fuel power plants. Texans now know how well wind turbines and solar panels work when “runaway global warming” turns to record cold and snow. Californians have to dodge future rolling blackouts.
For several years now, production engineers have been pondering how to retool plants from ICE to EV engines. They better start thinking about how to retool and power their entire factories – and our planet.
With many politicians and environmentalists equally repulsed by nuclear and hydroelectric power, having any electricity source will soon be a recurrent challenge. Having reliable, affordable electricity will be a pipe dream. Simply having enough electricity to replace all of today’s coal and gas power generation, internal combustion vehicle fuels, natural gas for cooking, heating and emergency power, coal and gas for smelters and factories, and countless other now-fossil-fuel uses, will be a miracle.
Every home, neighborhood and city will also have to replace existing gas and electric systems to handle the extra loads. More trillions of dollars. There’s also the matter of nasty, toxic, impossible-to-extinguish lithium battery fires – in cars now, and soon in homes, parking garages and backup battery facilities.
We’re talking millions of wind turbines, billions of solar panels, billions of battery modules, thousands of miles of new transmission lines. They’ll kill birds and bats, disrupt or destroy sensitive habitats, and impair or eradicate hundreds of plant and animal species. As electricity prices rise, US factories won’t be able to compete against China and other nations that don’t have to and will not stop using fossil fuels.
Zero emission fantasies also ignore the essential role of fossil fuels in manufacturing ZEVs (and pretend-renewable energy systems). From mining and processing the myriad metals and minerals for EV battery modules, wiring, drivetrains and bodies, to actually making the components and finished vehicles, every step requires oil, natural gas or coal. Not in California or America perhaps, but elsewhere on Planet Earth, especially Africa, Asia and South America, most often with Chinese companies in leading roles.
A single EV battery module needs some 30 pounds of lithium, plus many other metals and materials totaling at least 1,000 pounds: from commonplace iron, copper, aluminum and petroleum-based plastics, to “exotics” like cobalt and multiple rare earth elements. An EV requires three times more copper than its ICE counterpart; a single wind turbine needs some 3.5 tons of copper per megawatt of electricity.
And every 1,000 tons of finished copper involves mining, crushing, refining and smelting some 125,000 tons of ore – and removing thousands of tons of overburden and surrounding rock just to reach the ore. The same is true for all these other materials, especially rare earths. Try to imagine the cumulative global impacts from all this mining and fossil fuel use – so that AOC, Al Gore, Leo Di Caprio and other wealthy, saintly people can drive “clean, green, climate-friendly” electric cars. (That’s OK. Mini AOC can’t either.)
Even worse, many of these materials are dug up and turned into “virtuous” EVs, wind turbines and solar panels – in China, Congo, Bolivia and other places – with little regard for child labor, fair wages, workplace safety, air and water pollution, toxic and radioactive wastes, endangered species and mined land reclamation. It’s all far away, out of sight and out of mind, and thus irrelevant. And amid all this is the touchy issue of Uighur genocide and their people being sent to re-education/slave labor camps, to help meet China’s mineral, EV and other export markets.
How long will we let real social, environmental and climate justice take a back seat to EV mythology?
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Australian Federal Government threatens to build a natural gas generator if electricity sector doesn't replace retiring coal-fired power stations
With the coal-fired Liddell Power Station in the Hunter Valley due to shut down in 2023, the Federal Government is worried there will not be enough dispatchable power, given the sector's focus on building wind and solar farms.
The Federal Government will demand electricity generators come up with a plan for 1,000 megawatts of new dispatchable energy in time for the end of 2023.
If it is not satisfied with the private sector's commitments by the end of April next year, Prime Minister Scott Morrison is vowing to intervene directly in the market.
"We won't risk the affordability and reliability of the NSW energy system and will step in unless the industry steps up," Mr Morrison said.
The Federal Government has tasked Snowy Hydro Limited with drawing up plans for a gas generator in the Hunter Valley at Kurri Kurri.
Mr Morrison will press the Government's case for more non-renewable power generation in a speech to business and industry in Newcastle on Tuesday.
Energy Minister Angus Taylor said the market needed to focus on new, dispatchable power, arguing current plans fall "far short of what is required".
"Over the last decade, the private sector has not built a single new reliable power plant in NSW," Mr Taylor said.
"The Government has always been clear — we need to see life extension or like-for-like replacement of Liddell. "If industry steps up, we'll step back."
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC) Saturdays only
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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