January 6, 2011
Most homes in Delhi have no insulation and no central heating. Double glazing is almost unheard of. No doubt Pachauri’s home in the prestigious Golf Links area of Delhi is an exception. Current Delhi temperatures are running some 45°C lower than maximum summer temperatures. And from my week in Delhi during December 2010 I can testify that it is a mind and body numbing experience when temperatures inside the home are less than 10°C.
The claims that global warming is responsible and Pachauri’s IPCC must seem like bad jokes.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-12125207
A continuing cold snap has forced authorities in the Indian capital to keep schools closed till Sunday. Delhi has been badly hit by the cold, along with Indian-administered Kashmir, and the states of Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh.
Temperatures have been hovering around 4°C after dipping to 3.7°C on Tuesday morning, the city’s lowest this winter. The death toll in the cold snap that has disrupted life across northern India has reportedly risen to 47.
http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/north-india-in-the-grip-of-intense-cold-wave-77387
The cold wave intensified further in Kashmir division, including Ladakh region, as the minimum temperature across the state dipped several degrees further, with Leh town freezing at -23 °C.
Leh recorded the coldest temperature in Kashmir division at -23 °C, which was 2.8 degrees lower than the minimum temperature recorded on Tuesday. The maximum temperature recorded in Leh was three degrees below the freezing point. In Srinagar city, the minimum temperature dipped by 1.3 deg C to settle at -5.4 °C. Kargil town witnessed an extremely cold night as the minimum temperature remained -18 °C for the second consecutive night. In Kashmir Valley, the tourist resort of Pahalgam recorded a temperature of – 11.6 °C which was nearly four degrees lower compared to Tuesday’s minimum of -7.7 °C.
http://www.thehindu.com/news/states/other-states/article1032332.ece
Daily wage labourers on their way to work braving the cold and windy conditions in New Delhi even as the minimum temperature dropped below 3.4°C the season's lowest, on 04, January 2011. Photo: V.V.Krishnan
Tags: Delhi winter, global warming, India cold wave, IPCC, Pachauri
Posted in India, Weather, Winter | Comments Off on Northern India shivers: Schools closed in Delhi till Sunday
January 6, 2011
jackdaw: Image via Wikipedia
The birds found dead in Falköping yesterday died of external trauma.
Svenska Dagbladet reports:
Jackdaws found dead in Falköping on Wednesday night died of external trauma according to the autopsies carried out by the National Veterinary Institute (SVA). According to Marianne Elvander the birds died of severe internal bleeding. None of the birds showed signs of infection or disease.
Aftonbladet reports that a professional chauffeur said he had driven over a large flock of jackdaws during Tuesday night at that location. “The man came driving late at night when he saw a lot of birds that were alive. They were probably eating road salt ” said Bengt Ljungberg of the Falköping-Tidaholm rescue service.
The dead jackdaws were discovered shortly before midnight last night. Between 50 and one hundred birds lay dead on the road and five of them were taken to the National Veterinary Institute for autopsy. According to Marianne Elvander, it is unclear what caused the birds to die.
But why they were sitting on the road? Investigations are continuing.
Tags: bird deaths, jackdaws, Swdeen
Posted in Sweden, Trivia, Wildlife | Comments Off on Swedish jackdaws died of external trauma
January 6, 2011
Tags: climate change, coldest December, global warming, weather
Posted in Climate, Uncategorized, Weather, Winter | Comments Off on Frigid December 2010 was no local phenomenon
January 5, 2011
It had to come.
The unholy alliance between the extremists of conservation and environmentalism and global warming is not sustainable. Faith is set against faith. Now conservationists are beginning to find the vast tracts of undeveloped land needed by solar projects objectionable.
Reuters reports:
(Reuters) – A leading environmental advocacy group is suing the state of California’s Energy Commission over its approval of a giant solar plant, underscoring the growing challenge to the nation’s renewable-energy goals from within the environmental community.
The lawsuit, filed December 30 in California’s Supreme Court by the Sierra Club, alleges that state regulators improperly approved the plant, known as the Calico Solar Project.
The suit, obtained by Reuters, charges that regulators failed to fully mitigate the project’s impact on rare plant and animal species, and asks the court to void approval and permits for the plant………. Conflicts between solar proponents and foes are taking on growing importance as the industry experiences a boom, particularly for California. The lawsuit is the latest in a string of suits targeting planned solar plants, potentially setting back the development of solar energy and derailing state and federal commitments to lessening dependence on fossil fuels.
Last week, a group called La Cuna de Aztlan, which represents Native American groups such as the Chemehuevi and the Apache, filed a challenge in federal court to the federal government’s approval of six big solar plants.
In December, the Quechan Indian tribe won an injunction blocking construction of the Imperial Valley solar project, under development near California’s border with Mexico by NTR’s Tessera Solar. The Calico plant was also under development by Tessera until the company sold the plant last month to K Road Sun, a subsidiary of New York investment firm K Road Power. Tessera has been struggling to find funding for its plants, which cost about $2 billion.
Tags: Calico Project, California, California Energy Commission, Sierra Club sues solar approvals, solar energy, Tessera Solar
Posted in Energy, Environment, Renewable Energy, Wildlife | 1 Comment »
January 5, 2011
The UK Met Office is busy spinning the story that it actually did forecast the coldest December in the UK in a 100 years but secretly informed only the cabinet of the UK government about this in October 2010. Secret forecasts for fear of being wrong! After all kings of old also had their own private soothsayers to study the entrails but they were usually executed if they could not spin their way out of wrong forecasts. But the Met Office story does not stand up and their credibility is in tatters.
The UK Met office (as an institution) is one of the most ardent supporters of Global Warming dogma which is concerned with climate not weather. This can only be a “political” choice or an act of faith since climate trends are of little significance for their main task of weather forecasting. While weather is only a subset of climate I find it difficult to believe that poor weather forecasting can be a sound bottom-up basis for forecasting climate.
I say that climate trends are of little significance for detailed weather forecasting because climate change considers temperature changes of about one degree per century or less whereas the daily variation at any particular location is typically 10 to 15 degrees, seasonal variations at any location are around 40 – 50°C over a year and geographical variation around the globe is also upto 50 °C at any moment in time. Any climate trends of the order of 1°C per century are then immaterial for the immediate weather forecast.
At a cost of some £200 million per year they do forecast the weather with some accuracy for upto about 5 days ahead but are notoriously poor with their long range forecasts (but I note that even their short term forecasts are not more accurate – statistically – than the simple statement that “the weather tomorrow will be the same as today”). As recently as October 2010 the Met Office published weather maps showing warm expectations for November, December and January – but they insist they did not make any long range forecasts. We are told by Harrabin of the BBC that this was because of their sensitivity to the ridicule poured on them after their forecasts of a “barbecue summer” in 2009 and a mild 2009/2010 winter proved spectacularly wrong. But , we are assured by Harrabin, they actually did forecast – correctly – a cold and snowy winter but only informed the UK cabinet secretly.
Presumably any future ridicule or budget cuts by the cabinet of the UK Government for being wrong would be preferable to any public ridicule!!
In any event the cabinet did not do very much with this confidential information (perhaps it was anonymous) and all the counties were woefully unprepared.
Sources:
Tags: Forecasting, global warming, Met Office, weather
Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Weather | Comments Off on UK Met Office fears ridicule from public more than from their paymasters!
January 5, 2011
Icebreakers Admiral Makarov and Moskva: Image via Wikipedia
The icebreaker Admiral Makarov has reached its destination in the Sea of Okhotsk and the rescue operation to free the ships trapped in the ice has begun. One trawler has been escorted to safety. But there are “hummocks” in the ice which is upto 2 m thick in places. The second icebreaker Magadan is now itself stuck in the ice and the Admiral Makarov is racing to its rescue.
Itar-Tass reports:
VLADIVOSTOK, January 5 (Itar-Tass)The Admiral Makarov icebreaker that took the Mys Yelizavety to the clear waters is now moving at full tilt to help the icebreaker Magadan, which took part in the escorting effort but got stuck in the ice itself. Given that the Magadan, too, has stuck in the thick ice filling the spaces of the Sakhalin Bay, the number of ships drifting amid ice floes towards the shore has again increased to five.
A total of three ships – the Sodruzhetsvo floating factory, the Bereg Nadezhny refrigerating ship, and the Professor Kizivetter, all of them registered in the port of Vladivostok – found themselves stranded in the ice December 30. They are located at a distance of eleven to twelve nautical miles away from Sakhalin’s shore. One more ship, the Anton Gurin trawler registered in St Petersburg, joined the trapped ships January 3.
The Magadan, a port area icebreaker, has the technical characteristics largely inferior to those of the Admiral Makarov. It has a length of 88 meters and a capacity of 13,000 horse-powers. The Admiral Makarov has the length of 135 meters and the capacity for 12,000 horse-powers.
A mass of ice floes has been driven into the Sakhalin Bay by northern winds. The ice is covered with hummocks and its thickness reaches 2 meters in some spots. The total number of seamen trapped by the ice at present stands at around 500. The Sodruzhestvo floating factory has the largest crew of 340 persons.
Tags: Icebreaker Admiral Makarov, icebreaker stuck in ice, Magadan, Okhotsk Sea, Sea of Okhotsk rescue
Posted in Engineering, Environment, Russia, Technology, Winter | 1 Comment »
January 5, 2011
Following the thousands of red winged blackbirds falling dead out of the sky in Arkansas, there are now further reports of dead birds in Louisiana and Sweden and dead fish in N. Zealand the US and Brazil.
Examiner.com
Dead birds in Louisiana; dead fish in Maryland, Brazil and New Zealand
After reports over the weekend of thousands of dead birds falling from the sky in Arkansas and around 100,000 dead fish washing up on the shores of the Arkansas River, more mysteries abound with hundreds of birds dying in Louisiana, dead fish in Maryland, dead sardines on Brazil’s beaches, and hundreds of snapper floating in New Zealand waters.
The Advocate in Baton Rouge reports that around 500 small birds, some of them starlings, have fallen out of the sky on Louisiana Highway 1 near Pointe Coupee Parish. Spokesperson for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, Bo Boehringer, told the New York Daily News “We have sent bird carcasses to two individual labs to obtain toxicology reports.”
Expressen: (free translation)
Mysterious bird deaths in Falköping
About 40 dead birds covered the ground last night at an intersection.
– It was a horrible sight, “said a resident who discovered the birds on his
evening walk. The police did not know what the mass death could depend on.
Both emergency services and the county administration are investigating the case.
New Zealand Herald:
Hundreds of snapper dead on beaches
Fisheries officials are investigating the death of hundreds of snapper washed up on Coromandel Peninsula beaches. Beachgoers at Little Bay and Waikawau Bay found the fish – many with their eyes missing – dead on the sand yesterday.
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/220958-Brazil-100-tons-of-dead-fish-wash-up-on-shore
A survey conducted by the Federation of Fishermen’s Colony of Paraná, Paranaguá on the coast of the state, indicates that at least 100 tons of fish
(sardine, croaker and catfish) have turned up dead since last Thursday off the coast of Parana.
Probably just coincidence and with ready and natural explanations, but ……….
Tags: Dead birds, dead blackbirds, dead fish
Posted in Trivia, Wildlife | 3 Comments »
January 5, 2011
While Qantas had restarted flying its A380 aircraft with Rolls Royce Trent 900 engines on 27th November after the engine failure on 4th November, its flights to Los Angeles remained grounded since the engines had not been cleared for operating at the higher thrust levels necessary for reaching LA.
Reuters reports that flights to LA could now resume on 17th January:
Qantas said on Wednesday it hoped to resume normal A380 operations from January 17 but it would still need the go-ahead from Australia’s aviation regulator before flying the superjumbo aircraft on the lucrative route……. Qantas said on Wednesday it expected to have eight A380 aircraft in the air by early February, up from five currently. The airline is scheduled to take delivery of a new A380 aircraft in mid-January and another new aircraft by early February. A third A380 currently grounded in Sydney was also due to be operating by mid-January……. Analysts estimate damages to Qantas could reach $60 million, although forecasts vary. The LA route is one of Qantas’ most profitable.
For Rolls Royce, getting Qantas back to full operation is critical to bringing this chapter to a close and to limiting at least one part of the inevitable claims that will come. They will also face claims from Airbus who announced a few days ago that they would only deliver 18 A380’s during 2010 and would not reach their already reduced target of 20 planes. This delay is put down to the extra inspections caused by the fault in Rolls Royce engines. No doubt Singapore Airlines and Lufthansa will also have claims on Rolls Royce. I still estimate that the total costs to Rolls Royce will reach $300 million.
Tags: Airbus A380, flights to Los Angeles, Qantas, Rolls Royce, Rolls Royce costs, Trent 900, Trent 900 failure
Posted in Australia, Aviation, Engineering, Technology | 3 Comments »
January 4, 2011
Ageing Japan is becoming a lonely Japan.
By 2030 living in Japan will be a lonely experience according to the Asahi Shimbun:
- One in three men and one in 5 women would have never married by age 50
- 25% of men and over 40% of the total population between 50 and 70 will be living alone
- Single-member households will be especially pronounced among men who were the children of the baby-boomer generation and who will enter middle age in 2030.
- Single person households exceed multi-person households already and this trend will continue
- Among women born in 1990, it is estimated that more than one-third will not bear children and that half will not have grandchildren
- Fertility rate which was at the sustainable level of 2.1 in 1960 has been below this level since 1976 reaching a low of 1.26 in 2005
- There will be over 300,000 people aged 100 and over
- The ratio of just under 3 working age population for each retired person will decrease to less than 2
- Working age population will decline by about 14 million
Japanese population development: graphic marketoracle.co.uk
Japan has few options except to open up its borders to immigration but this seems to be a subject that no political party or politician is prepared to face squarely. Instead the discussion veers off into trade alliances instead or restricting immigration to just skilled workers and only very specialised skills at that. The European experiences are often quoted as examples of the dangers of allowing immigration from Muslim countries. The extremely difficult (but flexible) residency and naturalisation regulations continue to be used to prevent the millions of immigrants from the Philippines, S. Korea, China, Indonesia and Malaysia already in the country from ever really settling in Japan. This even though all are aware that the functioning of Japanese society is already critically dependent upon these “less-skilled” workers.
That Japan needs a real leader as Prime Minister who can get the majority to face up to the difficult choices and carry them with him is apparent. There was a hope that Koizumi Jun’ichirō might be such a person when he was PM (3 times between 2001 and 2006) but he too drowned in the political quicksand. Perhaps it is a task for the Emperor together with the right Prime Minister. But it would need an Emperor prepared to appeal directly to his people and not be stifled by those of his Court.
Tags: Aging Japan, demographics 2030, immigration, Japan, lonely Japan
Posted in Demographics, Japan | 1 Comment »
January 4, 2011
Munich Re – like all insurance companies – is in the business of alarmism. The insurance business relies on the total risk perceived by all the buyers of insurance products being significantly higher than the actual risk that materialises. The bigger this difference the greater the insurance company’s profits.
In a new press release Munich Re presents its overall picture of natural catastrophes in 2010.
Several major catastrophes in 2010 resulted in substantial losses and an exceptionally high number of fatalities. The overall picture last year was dominated by an accumulation of severe earthquakes to an extent seldom experienced in recent decades.
The facts are not in doubt but Munich Re’s opinionated conclusion and the introduction of global warming into the same breath as earthquakes and extreme weather is intellectually bankrupt and blatantly self-serving:
The high number of weather-related natural catastrophes and record temperatures both globally and in different regions of the world provide further indications of advancing climate change.
Munich Re’s business is best served if the perception of risk is very high, the actual risk is much lower than than that perceived and more and more people take to insuring these exaggerated risks. Munich Re – as other insurance companies – have become expert at taking real data, blending it with unjustified opinions and then applying a totally bogus “pondus” to exaggerating the perceived risk.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Alarmism, climate change, earthquakes, global warming, hurricanes, Insurance, maximisation of risk perception, Munich Re
Posted in Alarmism, Business, Climate, Natural Disasters | 4 Comments »
