Over 1000 ships trapped by ice in China

January 5, 2013
from Xinhua

from Xinhua

“The ice conditions in the Bohai Sea and the Yellow Sea this January may be more serious than that in the past years” reports Xinhua. Zheng Dong, chief meteorologist at the Yantai Marine Environment Monitoring Center under the state oceanic administrationsaid that the area under ice in Laizhou Bay was 291 square km this week.

Temperatures in China have plunged to their lowest in almost three decades, cold enough to freeze coastal waters and trap 1,000 ships in ice, official media said at the weekend.

The Shizuishan segment of the Yellow River is frozen due to persisiting cold weather in northwest China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Jan. 5, 2012. Two segments of the Yellow River in Ningxia region have been frozen up due to low temperature.

I would have thought it was just winter even if such conditions have not been seen for 3 decades. But – for political and religious correctness – it is no doubt all due to global warming and carbon dioxide!!

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Solar Cycle 24 will be the smallest sunspot cycle since 1906 (SC 14)

January 5, 2013

The January 2013 NASA forecast for the development of Solar Cycle 24 is out.

sc 24 prediction January 2013

SC 24 prediction Jan 2013 – Hathaway -NASA

The current prediction for Sunspot Cycle 24 gives a smoothed sunspot number maximum of about 69 in the Fall of 2013. The smoothed sunspot number has already reached 67 (in February 2012)due to the strong peak in late 2011 so the official maximum will be at least this high and this late. We are currently over four years into Cycle 24. The current predicted and observed size makes this the smallest sunspot cycle since Cycle 14 which had a maximum of 64.2 in February of 1906.

With sunspot activity at this low level the planet will cool. It remains to be seen whether this is the start of something like a Dalton Minimum (SC5 and 6) or even a Maunder Minimum. This cooling has begun and global temperatures peaked about 16 years ago and are now declining slightly while carbon dioxide concentration continues to increase. It is only a matter of time before the belief that carbon dioxide concentration (whether man-made or not) causes global warming will have to be completely discarded. But there is so much money now riding on this belief (and even though there is only conjecture and no direct evidence for this belief), that we will likely see a decade or more of rationalisation of reality before the belief is abandoned.

SC24 compared to SC5 in 2011 is shown below:

SC24 compared to SC5

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Posted in Climate, Solar science | 1 Comment »

Munich Re: Natural catastrophe and weather related deaths in 2012 were less than one-tenth of the 10-year average

January 5, 2013

Alarmism and fostering a fear of future events where the actual risk is well below the perceived risk is the stock-in-trade of insurance companies. A simple case of boosting revenues (premiums from perceived risks)  for any given cost (actual risk). It is inevitable that while statistics of past events from insurance companies are detailed and accurate any forecast from an insurance company will (must) exaggerate risks. There is no business if perception of risk is low.

When it comes to weather and global warming fears Munich Re is among the more strident of the alarmists. A fear of coming catastrophes by drought or too much rain or floods or rising sea levels are all actively promoted as new insurance products are touted.

Munich Re has just issued a press release about the statistics of natural and weather related catstrophes showing that costs for 2012 were below average and lives lost were well below average. Needless to say the headline is spun to help sell more insurance:

Overall, losses were significantly lower in 2012 than in the previous year, ….. 

Some 9,500 people lost their lives in natural catastrophes last year compared with the ten-year average of 106,000. The relatively small number of fatalities was due to the fact that, in 2012, few severe natural catastrophes occurred in emerging and developing countries, where natural catastrophes tend to have far more devastating consequences in terms of human lives.

Prof. Peter Höppe, Head of Munich Re’s Geo Risks Research then adds his spin to try and ensure Munich Re’s business for the future:

 “It is not possible, of course, to attribute individual events to climate change, each theoretically being possible in isolation. However, numerous studies assume a rise in summer drought periods in North America in the future and an increasing probability of severe cyclones relatively far north along the US East Coast in the long term. The rise in sea level caused by climate change will further increase the risk of storm surge. And, with no apparent prospect of progress in international climate negotiations like those held recently in Doha, adaptation to such hazards using suitable protective measures is absolutely essential.”

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It is Bharat versus India as Hindu fanatics try to justify the Delhi rapists

January 4, 2013

I have seen the Delhi rape being described as a manifestation of the conflict which arises at the interface between the rural and the urban life-styles. And there is probably some truth in that. There is little doubt that for the young who stream into the cities after leading highly repressed and frustrating lives in rural India it is difficult for them to make the transition from the middle-ages into the 21st century. The concept of women not being chattel is beyond some to grasp. The apparent “anonymity” of life in the city encourages a few to believe that they can prey on other “anonymous” and depersonalised victims with impunity. Most rapes and other crimes against people are rarely given high priority by city police forces struggling against an ever-increasing urban populace.  The speed with which the Delhi rapists have been apprehended and presented in court in this high profile case is the exception – not the rule. But this is not a problem which occurs only when rural meets urban or which only happens in cities. Rural India still abounds with horrendous cases of violence against others – against women,against children, against people of other religions and those of other castes. Most of this rural behaviour goes unremarked and unreported. The Khap Panchayats who use rape as a punishment and support “honour killing” and who are allowed to operate freely by supine politicians is a case in point.

So, I am not sure that this is just an “urbanisation” problem. It goes much deeper than that. The police act (or more correctly – fail to act) as they do in most cases because the political “leaders” give no priority to these. These “leaders” are rarely “leaders” but are mainly parasites. Many are themselves stuck in the attitudes of a few centuries ago and have not made the transition. Many themselves have no wish to make the transition. Many actually still believe that women are chattel. This view of women is not confined to any particular religion. It can be found among Hindus and Muslims alike. But among the Hindus, the parasitic politicians are usually those who continue not only  to believe in “caste” but are mainly responsible for the continued domination of caste politics. And they use the “privileges of caste” or the “perceived disadvantages of caste” to prop up their own out-dated and anachronistic positions. For some it is -paradoxically – the maintaining of the privileges of a “declared disadvantaged caste” which governs.

It is not a case of rural India versus urban India. The transition from rural to urban life and its difficulties could be anticipated by any competent politician or leader. It is surely the job of the leaders to manage and lead this transition. The root cause is a lack of  political leadership and a lack of political management. Fundamentally it is a lack of political competence. For “parasitic politicians” the continuation of a conflict at the interface provides more blood to be sucked out of the masses.

The issue is one of whether to live in a fantasy past or move to the real future. Whether to continue to exhibit the attitudes of  some glorified and completely false view of a Bharat – which never ever existed –  (or of the glorified view of a Moghul Hindusthan which exists only in the Muslim psyche) or to move forward to create the India of the 21st century.

In the particular case of the Delhi rape, the victim and all of the accused were Hindus. It has not taken long for the fanatics of the RSS (who may look utterly ridiculous in their khaki shorts and black caps but are a poisonous influence in the country) and some of the parasitic politicians of the BJP to try and justify the horrific behaviour of the Delhi six.

IBN Live:  Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat on Friday kicked up a controversy with his remark that rapes happened in cities and not in the rural areas. “Such crimes hardly take place in Bharat, but they frequently occur in India,” Bhagwat said seeming to indicate that “westernization” in Indian cities was the reason behind increasing cases of rapes. 

The remark follows a similar comment by a MP BJP leader who stated that women who did not stay within their limits, paid the price for it just like Sita was abducted by Ravana after she crossed the ‘Lakshman rekha’.

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Posted in Behaviour, India, Politics | 1 Comment »

Obama – sort-of – wins the “fiscal cliff” and goes the way of Europe

January 2, 2013

Well, Obama got some tax increases for the wealthy and a postponement of the fight for spending cuts. The fiscal cliff was little more than a fiscal bump. Republicans are more upset than Democrats – at least judging by the “squeal index” – and the Democrats actually prevailed over the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. So, the view from across the Atlantic based on the belief that the loser squeals the loudest, is that Obama must have won. (The splits in the Republican Party are particularly interesting since these may completely nullify their majority in the Congress!)

But whatever it was that was agreed to, the US debt will rise by some $4 trillion directly as a consequence of this “deal”. The US follows exactly the same way as Europe in putting off the day when the music must be faced. The fight about spending and debt will come in about two months. Years of profligacy and living beyond available means cannot just be wished away. Just wishing that the economy will rebound – faster than has ever happened before – and will increase revenues so that spending cuts can be avoided is not living in the “land of hope” but is living in a fantasy. It is the same fantasy being played out in Europe. Obama is merely following Francois Hollande’s super-tax on the very rich to postpone the cuts in spending that are desperately needed and must come. The fundamental rule of party politics is being upheld: “Tax the voters for the other party and spend on your own”. The pain to come is inevitable. Of course, those who have been profligate have taken their benefits and gone. The pain will have to be borne by others – in the US as in Greece and Spain and Italy. I can’t help suspecting that the goal – whether for Hollande or for Obama – is to just postpone the evil day of spending cuts long enough so that it happens on someone else’s watch. But both Obama and Hollande are at the start of new terms and neither will be able to avoid facing reality.

The high drama at the end of the year in the US bears a strong resemblance to a Christmas farce. It couldn’t possibly have been a pantomime since any kind of music was notably absent. Obama’s performance on the 31st of December was badly out-of-tune and a little embarrassing to watch. And the other bit-players on display – Biden and Reid and Boehner and Cantor and McConnell – with their self-adulation, self-congratulations and mutual admiration were even worse.

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Kyoto protocol fails in all ways: Goals not achieved and for something utterly unnecessary

January 1, 2013

A failure of something utterly unnecessary ought to be a success. But the damage caused by the pursuit of meaningless goals for unsound reasons has been immense.

The Kyoto protocol was adopted in 1997 and came into effect in 2005.  “The controversial and ineffective Kyoto Protocol’s first stage comes to an end today, leaving the world with 58 per cent more greenhouse gases than in 1990, as opposed to the five per cent reduction its signatories sought”. 

It has been a solution addressing the wrong problem.

Kyoto Protocol aimed for 5% cut in carbon emissions — instead, we got a 58% increase

But in spite of this increase global temperatures have flattened out and may even have decreased slightly.

Global warming stopped 16 years ago

And all that has been achieved is that electricity prices have increased to pay for the massive subsidies for chasing a mirage. The financial crisis was not caused by the Kyoto Protocol but the crisis has certainly been prolonged and the recovery has been delayed by unnecessarily high electrical prices.

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Animal camouflage: Spot the animal

December 31, 2012

A superb collection of wild-life camouflage images at the Daily Mail.

A wonderful collection of pictures by photographer Art Wolfe. “He has spent over 35 years roaming the deserts of Africa, the rainforests of South America, the mountains of the United States and snow plains of Canada to capture wildlife at its most invisible”.

Here’s one example:

SPOT THE LEOPARD

Can you spot me? A Leopard conceals herself in vegetation at the base of a tree in Kruger National Park, Transvaal, South Africa

Spot the Leopard

 

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In the Year Twenty Thirteen,

December 31, 2012

1. In the Year Twenty Thirteen,

Twice shall the world be shaken,

At Richter 8 or more,

And once shall a volcano

Violently erupt.

But the invincible, soothing Sun

Shall calm the roiling seas,

And the climate of the world,

Shall continue to cool.

 

2. The New World in the West

Shall regain its composure,

While the weary Old World

Struggles in its disparate cackle,

Where Old Reprobates refuse to die

But their poison shall be contained.

Doomsayers shall be shriller,

More fanatic and more extreme.

But there will come an end

To their profligacy and waste.

 

3. The boils in the Middle of the East

Shall still swell and suddenly  burst

And new carbuncles formed

Will need very prompt incision.

Blood-letting shall there be

And the recovery shall be slow,

The rashes will continue

And the itches will need scratching.

 

4. Corruption in the Body Orient

Shall fester and turn gangrenous,

But surgery of the infected parts

Will give some hope of renewal.

The Dragon shall breathe fire,

And the Tiger shall begin to roar,

And together, in new harness,

Will draw the chariot of the world.

 

5. Men shall marry men,

And women dally with women,

While children lose their innocence

Well before their time.

But of 7 billion people,

Six will be fed and clothed,

And will cherish a measure of hope

For the life that waits for them.

 

6. Reading  the Human Alphabet

Will ease and grow in fluency,

And even little babies shall know

What diseases they must endure.

The Healers and the Drugmakers

Shall sell wonderful new cures,

For imaginary ailments

Of no great significance.

But they shall also find new Drugs

Against many human woes,

Precisely to be directed,

And immediately effective.

 

7. Twenty Thirteen

Will be just another Year.

A natural state of turmoil

In a world that shall not end.

There will, again as always,

Be much sound and bluster,

Of very little value

And signifying nothing.

 

8. We will be one year older

And that much more mature,

But one year in 200,000

Is not so very much.

But every little gain

Is not to be lightly given up.

 

9. And so in Twenty Thirteen,

I am glad to be alive,

Not for any raptures, but

For there was no better time to live!

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Himalayan earthquakes did break the surface in 1255 and 1934

December 30, 2012

The Indian Tectonic Plate split from Godwana some 140 million years ago and started colliding into the Eurasian Plate some 40 – 50 million years ago. The Indian Plate is being subducted under the Eurasian Plate. The collision is still going on with the Indian Plate moving North East at about 6 -7 cm per year while the Eurasian Plate is moving Northwards at about 2 cm per year. The region is geologically active and earthquakes are not uncommon as the Himalayas continue to grow. It was thought that Himalayan earthquakes rarely, if ever, broke the surface and were “blind quakes”. But a new paper describes field work with novel imaging and dating techniques which show that at least the earthquakes of 1255 and 1934 have left discernible ruptures.

S. N. Sapkota, L. Bollinger, Y. Klinger, P. Tapponnier, Y. Gaudemer, D. Tiwari. Primary surface ruptures of the great Himalayan earthquakes in 1934 and 1255. Nature Geoscience, 2012; DOI: 10.1038/ngeo1669

Wikipedia: The Indo-Australian plate is still moving at 67 mm per year, and over the next 10 million years it will travel about 1,500 km into Asia. About 20 mm per year of the India-Asia convergence is absorbed by thrusting along the Himalaya southern front. This leads to the Himalayas rising by about 5 mm per year, making them geologically active. The movement of the Indian plate into the Asian plate also makes this region seismically active, leading to earthquakes from time to time.

Even blind quakes can be devastating as with the Kashmir quake of 2005:

Read the rest of this entry »

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Low energy prices with shale gas leading to shift of jobs from Europe to US

December 28, 2012

It is inevitable that investment and jobs – and especially in energy intensive industries – will migrate to regions of low energy costs. Over the next few years the lead that the US has developed over the rest of the world in the exploitation of shale gas will cause European companies to shun the high energy costs at home and shift to the US.

Reuters: Austria’s group Voestalpine is considering a plan to build a $1 billion plant in the United States that would convert iron ore into concentrate used in steelmaking, Trend magazine reported. ………. Trend said the plant was envisioned for a coastal city in the southern United States, given cheap and reliable supplies of natural gas, political stability and efficient port infrastructure.

And the problem has been the unnecessary and misguided European obsession with chasing a mirage.  A meaningless and unjustified pursuit of “low carbon” energy; profligate subsidies for ineffective renewable energy; wasteful – and eventually corrupt – attempts to bias the market with carbon credits and the shutting down of perfectly viable coal and nuclear power plants has given the highest energy costs in the world. Gas prices in Europe are 4 or 5 times as high as in the US. Europe has plenty of shale gas potential but development is lagging far behind the US largely because of the political opposition from the “Green” lobbies. As the New York Times reports:

High Energy Costs Plaguing Europe

.. Asked whether he had considered building the plant in Europe, Voestalpine’s chief executive, Wolfgang Eder, said that that “calculation does not make sense from the very beginning.” Gas in Europe is much more expensive, he said.

High energy costs are emerging as an issue in Europe that is prompting debate, including questioning of the Continent’s clean energy initiatives. Over the past few years, Europe has spent tens of billions of euros in an effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The bulk of the spending has gone into low-carbon energy sources like wind and solar power that have needed special tariffs or other subsidies to be commercially viable.

“We embarked on a big transition to a low-carbon economy without taking into account the cost and without factoring in the competitive impact,” says Fabien Roques, head of European power and carbon at the energy consulting firm IHS CERA in Paris. “I think there will be a critical review of some of these policies in the next few years.” 

Both consumers and the industry are upset about high energy costs. Energy-intensive industries like chemicals and steel are, if not closing European plants outright, looking toward places like the United States that have lower energy costs as they pursue new investments.

BASF, the German chemical giant, has been outspoken about the consequences of energy costs for competitiveness and is building a new plant in Louisiana.

“We Europeans are currently paying up to four or five times more for natural gas than the Americans,” Harald Schwager, a member of the executive board at BASF, said last month. “Energy efficiency alone will not allow us to compensate for this. Of course, that means increased competition for all the European manufacturing sites.”

And it beomes increasingly clear that the chase for politically correct “brownie points” by European  governments as they have demonised carbon dioxide quite needlessly while spending massively on renewable subsidies is not sustainable. Just as Japan must now waste political energy in “reviewing” their hasty decisions about the use of nuclear energy after Fukushima , Europe will have to spend the next decade in “reviewing and reversing” the spate of bad decisions made based on climate alarmism.

The expansion in renewables will probably ensure that Europe will meet its target of reducing greenhouse gases 20 percent from their 1990 levels by 2020. But it has been a disappointment on other levels. For one thing, emissions continue to rise globally. In a sense, Europe is likely to have exported its emissions to places like China, where polluting economic activity continues to increase while the European economy stagnates.

A striking indicator that the European effort has not achieved all that it intended to is the continued rise in the burning of coal, by far the biggest polluter among fossil fuels.

The International Energy Agency, a Paris-based group formed by consumer nations, recently said that coal was likely to catch up with oil as the world’s largest source of energy in a decade.

Much of the increase in coal use can be blamed on China and India, but not all of it. Europe has increased its coal use this year, and that has led to an increase of about 7 percent in carbon dioxide emissions from power generation, according to IHS. Coal use is increasing in all regions except the United States, the I.E.A. said.

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