University of Copenhagen study says Greenland's glaciers melting at five times previous rates over the last 20 years
Here we go again! La de da de da. Once again no mention of Greenland's subsurface volcanoes. The galoots below admit that the warming has been uneven -- which is consistent with the erratic nature of volcanoes, not the even effect that would be expected from global warming
Global warming has increased the speed at which glaciers in Greenland are melting fivefold over the last 20 years, according to scientists from the University of Copenhagen.
Greenland's ice melt is of particular concern, as the ancient ice sheet holds enough water to raise sea levels by at least 6 metres if it were to melt away entirely.
A study of a thousand glaciers in the area showed the rate of melting has entered a new phase over the last two decades, Anders Anker Bjørk, assistant professor at the Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management at the University of Copenhagen, told Reuters.
"There is a very clear correlation between the temperature we experience on the planet and the changes we observe in how rapidly the glaciers are melting," Dr Bjørk said.
The glaciers on average decrease by 25 metres annually, compared with 5-6 metres two decades ago.
Scientists reached their conclusion after studying the development of the glaciers over 130 years through satellite imagery and 200,000 old photos.
The University of Copenhagen said the study was the most comprehensive monitoring of Greenland's glaciers to date.
Only one of the country's 22,000 glaciers has been monitored continuously since the mid-1990s. Others seemed unaffected by rising temperatures just a few years ago.
"Previously, we saw areas in northern Greenland, for example, that were lagging behind and melting less compared to the hardest hit glaciers," Dr Bjørk said.
"This generated a bit of doubt about how serious things were in these areas.
"At the same time, no one before us had ever shed light on such a long period of time, which precipitated doubts as well.
"But now, the picture is conclusive: The melting of all glaciers is in full swing, there is no longer any doubt."
The Greenland ice sheet contributed 17.3 per cent of the observed rise in sea level between 2006 and 2018 and glaciers have contributed 21 per cent.
Ice sheet expected to melt further as temperatures rise
The world has already warmed by nearly 1.2 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures.
This year was "virtually certain" to be the warmest in 125,000 years, scientists from the European Union said earlier this month.
Climate scientists issue warning over Antarctic sea ice levels
Scientists say warming ocean temperatures are having an alarming impact on Antarctic sea ice levels, with currently 1.5 million square kilometres less sea ice than is typical at this time.
Lowering temperatures would require a global effort to minimise greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, said Jørgen Eivind Olesen, Institute Director of the Climate Institute at Aarhus University.
"I believe we can prepare for those glaciers to continue to melt at increasing speeds," he said.
Glaciers in Greenland have often been used to anticipate the effects of climate change on Greenland's ice sheet.
"If we start to see glaciers losing mass several times faster than in the last century, it can make us expect that the ice sheet will follow the same path, just on a slower and longer time scale," William Colgan, senior researcher at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, said.
Dr Bjørk said the research was "quite disturbing". "Because we're well aware of where this is headed in the future," he said. "Temperatures will continue to rise and glaciers will melt faster than they do now.
"But our study also shows that glaciers respond to climate change very quickly, which is in itself positive because it tells us that it's not too late to minimise warming.
"Everything that we can do to reduce CO2 emissions now will result in slower sea level rise in the future."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-13/greenland-ice-sheet-glacier-research/103097030
********************************************CFACT President Craig Rucker has blown the whistle on Federal plans to put hundreds of floating wind generators off the Oregon coast
Floating wind is the latest green energy fantasy, taking its place along with hydrogen, EVs, battery storage, and net zero.
The idea is that where the water is too deep for conventional offshore wind generators, we will simply put these huge towers and turbines on floats. Pretty much all of the West Coast fits this bill, as does most of Maine.
Responding to a Federal request for comments on a big floating wind proposal for Oregon, Rucker explains clearly that the technology needed to do this does not exist and may never exist in an economically feasible form. The federal agency is the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM). The plan is to designate hundreds of thousands of ocean acres as Wind Energy Areas and then start auctioning them off to floating wind developers.
First, let me say that, sure, we can put huge turbine towers on floats. Our fighter jets take off from and land on floats, right, floats called aircraft carriers. But they are really big, hence expensive. The same is true for floating wind, albeit at a somewhat smaller scale.
Look at it this way. Suppose you took a sailboat and put a 600′ tall mast on it. At the top, you put an 800-ton turbine with three 500′ long wind-catching blades. How big would that boat have to be not to blow over when hit by severe wind and waves?
The answer is very big indeed, in fact, huge. Now compare this huge float with the simple monopile that conventional offshore generators sit on. The monopile is a simple steel tube, maybe 30′ in diameter and a few hundred feet long, driven solidly into the ocean floor.
Compared to the huge float, the monopile is small and cheap. But simple monopile base offshore wind facilities are already tremendously expensive. Floating wind is projected to cost much more, from 2.5 to 3 times more, in fact.
In addition to the huge float holding up the turbine tower, there have to be a bunch of monster mooring chains anchored firmly to the ocean floor in all directions to keep the float from rocking too much in heavy seas or from capsizing. Then, too, the power lines taking off the electricity have to somehow get from these bobbing floats to the distant shore.
The highly specialized fabrication facilities and work boats required to make and install all this stuff in deep water do not exist. Given that over 50 vastly different floating wind designs have been proposed, we do not even know what to build.
I say projected because no utility-scale floating wind facility exists in the world today. BOEM is talking about quickly building thousands of Mega Watt (MW) of floating wind. Five leases pegged at 3,600 MW have already been sold off California. But as Rucker points out, the biggest facility in the world today is an experimental 88 MW and that just fired up a few months ago.
Those five California leases are, in effect, experimental. The developers are each going to try to produce an economically viable floating wind facility. As things stand, the odds are very long against them. I can hardly wait to see the Construction and Operations Plans, which are the first required step in the long road toward project approval.
But the ultimate crunch point is selling the juice via a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA). If costs run three times regular offshore wind, which is already extremely expensive, then the required PPAs might simply be unobtainable.
However, California just passed a law allowing the State to directly buy offshore wind energy. Perhaps the plan is for the State to buy horrendously expensive electricity, sell it to the utilities at the much lower going wholesale rate, then let the taxpayers eat the losses. It is, after all, Crazy California.
Mind you, this silly game is being played around the world. Several countries have launched similarly speculative large-scale floating wind projects, and many more are talking about it. Of course, they are also talking about mass-scale hydrogen, EVs, and net zero. It is all part of the same green nonsense.
https://www.cfact.org/2023/11/09/cfact-blasts-feds-floating-wind-fantasy/
**************************************************Coal jobs hit record levels in Australia, as China demand returns
NSW coalminers – who now employ a record 25,170 workers and are set to eclipse Queensland as Australia’s coalmining powerhouse – are cashing in on Beijing’s removal of export bans after shipping $3.3bn worth of coal to China in eight months.
After two years of zero coal exports, NSW miners sent 21 million tonnes of coal to China between January and August, and are projecting a bumper year after lifting exports to Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and India during the Chinese ban.
A new report released by the NSW Minerals Council on Monday reveals that at the end of July there were 25,172 coalmining workers in the state.
The workforce is more than double 1998 levels and surpasses the previous 2012 record of 24,972 jobs. Just under 8000 NSW workers are employed in the metals mining sector.
In the NSW Hunter region, coalmining jobs surged to more than 15,100, with workforces in Gunnedah and the state’s western region remaining at near record levels.
NSW miners are pushing to fast-track 15 coal projects under assessment, with the state now boasting greater job forecasts in mining and stronger investment interest than Queensland, where the Palaszczuk government has imposed crippling royalty taxes on miners.
The projects, which are mainly seeking to extend existing operations, represent almost $3.7bn in investment opportunities for the regions and would create or protect almost 10,000 jobs.
Amid calls from the Greens and climate activists to phase out coal and gas, NSW Minerals Council chief executive Stephen Galilee said “these job numbers highlight the need to support mining communities”.
After BHP sold its coal assets in Queensland last month and lashed the state’s tax grab, Mr Galilee said “NSW coalmining is playing a critical role in the budget repair task being undertaken by the state government”.
In Chris Minns’ first budget in September, the NSW government imposed a royalty hike from July next year to raise an extra $2.7bn over four years.
“Although the increase in royalties will add to the cost burden for NSW coal producers, the NSW government at least consulted constructively with the industry prior to making a final decision,” Mr Galilee said. “By contrast, the Queensland government completely ambushed coal producers in that state with a massive royalty hike that has put jobs and investment at risk. We may now be seeing the impact.
“The record number of people working in the NSW coalmining sector shows that over the last 25 years, coalmining has become increasingly critical to regional communities and the state economy.”
The Department of Industry and Resources September quarterly report said thermal coal exports to China had returned to pre-ban levels of 2019-20. The report warned thermal coal exports were forecast to fall from $66bn in 2022-23 to $36bn in 2023-24 and $28bn the following year. Metallurgical coal exports are projected to fall from $62bn in 2022-23 to $41bn in 2024-25.
Queensland Resources Council chief executive Ian Macfarlane last week released a report warning that Queensland coal producers will pay an extra $6.5bn over two years under the Palaszczuk government’s royalty regime.
“The state government’s short-term thinking for short-term gains is killing the golden goose and doing long term damage to Queensland by deterring investment in new, greenfield projects and drying up that pipeline of future projects,” he said.
“The loss of investment confidence threatens new projects across all commodities, including battery minerals and renewable energy projects, so the impact is broader than the coal sector.”
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The Australian Greens are, by sins of omission, soft apologists for Hamas
It has been a wild old time in Australian politics. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more off-piste, we find ourselves in a weird kind of parallel universe in which the Australian Greens want to help run the country. The Greens, regardless of what you thought of them back in the day, once stood for something meaningful under former leader Bob Brown. More recently, though, they have morphed into this country’s most ungrateful, juvenile, destructive and mean-spirited group of underachievers. Yet somehow they think they should be in the starting line-up.
You can argue the ALP already is dancing with this particular devil, but a couple of weeks ago news broke that the Greens want Anthony Albanese to sign a public power-sharing deal with them and offer cabinet positions in the event of a minority government at the next election. Can you imagine the likes of Lidia Thorpe (yes, she’s no longer a Green but she was) and Mehreen Faruqui in the federal cabinet? The idea should fill all sensible folk with a sense of impending doom.
ACT Greens leader and Attorney-General Shane Rattenbury is the party’s most senior MP. He argues federal Labor will do better by welcoming the Greens with open arms, formally. And while they’re at it, they may as well throw in a few lazy cabinet roles as well.
Some of you will dismiss this as a pie-in-the-sky kind of deal. I can almost hear some of you saying, “Yeah it will never happen, it’s just politics. Just part of the game.”
Maybe some of you also thought there’d never again be a time when Jewish Australians didn’t feel safe in their own neighbourhoods. Life moves pretty fast, so the saying goes.
Back to the Greens. The elite of the mediocre.
Perhaps let’s judge them for a moment on what they’ve delivered in terms of value to the Australian people. You know, those of us who pay their wages.
Nothing. Not a thing. You see, they can afford to be absolutists; they have the luxury of being able to be as hardwired and hard left as they like. They don’t have to listen to the broader community. They can say and do as they please because there is never any accountability. They don’t have to be inclusive. They don’t have to do anything other than preach to their own choir and bargain with the government for power.
This week’s walkout of the federal parliament in protest against the government’s position on Israel is a powerful validation of this view. Like a bunch of petulant four-year-olds, the Greens stormed out of the chamber, all bluster, piss and wind, because they want an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and they can’t get what they want.
Apart from the fact the collective IQ of the federal parliament immediately and exponentially increased, it’s a shame we couldn’t just lock the door behind them and be done with it.
Walking out delivers nothing. Adds nothing. Brings nothing. Proves only that those who take their metaphorical toys and leave aren’t capable of the debate of ideas. Not capable of holding a mature discussion. All it proves is their disdain and disrespect for the parliament and the government.
On this issue, the Greens are, by sins of omission, soft apologists for Hamas. They have nothing meaningful to say about the confirmed testimony and evidence of the massacres. Of women being raped, mutilated and shot. Parents being mutilated while still alive, in front of their children. The absolutely unthinkable, inhuman barbarism perpetrated by Hamas.
Grudgingly, they say: “Well, look it’s wrong – but occupation!”
Spare me the hypocrisy. Did they walk out of parliament when thousands of Palestinians were slaughtered by the Syrian regime in 2020? Of course not. Because the Assad regime is not an easy target for the ideologically obsessed.
Australian Greens leader Adam Bandt said on social media platform X this week that he was proud of Faruqi for leading the walkout. Imagine being proud of someone for having a tantrum.
I tell you what, send the parliamentary Greens to Gaza and give them a real chance to live their truth.
The deeper issue here is, of course, the dilemma for the Albanese government. It is a friendly bedfellow with the Greens. Perhaps not yet sharing a marital bed, more like bunking in together. Shared room, shared bathroom, twin-share type situation. Labor can protest as much as it likes but in the pitched battled between perception and reality we know who the winner will be, and for the federal government that’s a problem.
In issues beyond Israel’s sovereignty and its right to defend itself, the problem for the federal government is closer to home. The Greens’ stated policy positions reads like a celebration of victimhood for all, wrapped in delusion fit for a university Trotsky club. I urge you to invest the 15 minutes it takes to read it all. It’s terrifying in its lack of sophistication. Everybody wins, everything, all the time!
The Greens in the ACT where Rattenbury reigns want children as young as 14 to have access to euthanasia. They boasted about “quietly” decriminalising drugs such as MDMA, cocaine and ice. They are, by every metric imaginable, out of step with sensible people of all backgrounds, creeds and colour.
They wrap themselves in words such as diversity yet tolerate no divergent view. They talk about ending violence against women but have nothing to say about the rape and mutilation of Jewish women in this pogrom. They embody ideological hypocrisy. They want to shut down our mining industry, get rid of the military and believe in some kind of universal income paid for with fairy dust.
There is nothing like the cowardice of those who never have to face accountability, and this is the party that fancies itself as the co-pilot of the good ship Australia.
The Prime Minister best be careful. As my Nonna Pina used to say: Gemma, you lie down with dogs, you start to bark.
This is the time for clear, strong and forthright leadership. Not the time for entertaining folly such as this. This government has a choice to make about who it aligns with. For a party that’s defined by the phrase “Whatever it takes” this will be a telling period indeed.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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