CNN’s Attempt to Link the Singapore Airlines’ Turbulence to Climate Change Is Disgusting
 
By
H. Sterling Burnett
May 24, 2024
 

Less than 24 hours after likely air turbulence caused injuries and even a death on a Singapore bound, Singapore Airlines fight, CNN reporter, Jacopo Prisco, was quick to raise the specter of climate change as the cause. There is no real-world connection between long-term climate change and trends in air turbulence or in air injuries. There is no data whatsoever indicating climate change threatens to cause an increase in unstable air currents, and the data that does exist shows that even as the planet has slightly warmed, in-flight injuries from turbulence have declined or remained relatively flat, even as the number of fliers and miles flown have increased dramatically.

The reader might notice the phrase “likely air turbulence” in the paragraph above. That’s because, although from the experience of the aircraft and the testimony of the passengers and flight crew, turbulence was the most likely cause of the deadly mishap, until the flight recorders are checked, and plane examined we can’t know for certain their were no other issues contributing to or causing the jet’s unexpected sharp drop in altitude and erratic flight for a short period thereafter.

Despite its title, most of CNN’s story, “Climate change could be about to make flight turbulence a lot worse,” is a straight forward discussion of the various type and degrees of turbulence, how it can affect flights and cause injuries, and how many people experience in-flight turbulence and injuries each year. So far so good, straight reporting in the aftermath of a horrific, ultimately deadly, air incident.

https://climaterealism.com/2024/05/cnns-attempt-to-link-the-singapore-airlines-turbulence-to-climate-change-is-disgusting/

We have World Class windless weather: Today 95% of wind turbines on the continent of Australia are failing
By Jo Nova

There is no saving the Australian grid from a high pressure cell.

Right now 19 out of 20 wind turbines are essentially towers of fiberglass waste

Australia has built 11.5 GW of theoretical total wind power capacity on the National Energy Market (NEM) spread across 80 locations on the Eastern Seaboard, and at one point today only 4.1% of it was working.  Another gigawatt of generation on the Western side is only generating at 3 – 5% capacity.

The green bar below represents total wind generation today compared to the total power consumed (the black line).

NEM Wind generation May 27, 2024. Australia.
Total wind generation for the NEM in Australia.

The Australian government is dismissing comparisons with costs of running grids based on unreliable wind and solar power overseas because we supposedly have “world-class resources” and “natural advantages in renewables“. But we also have world-class high pressure cells that stop wind generation across the entire nation simultaneously.

https://joannenova.com.au/2024/05/we-have-world-class-windless-weather-today-95-of-wind-turbines-on-the-continent-of-australia-are-failing/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=we-have-world-class-windless-weather-today-95-of-wind-turbines-on-the-continent-of-australia-are-failing

What’s better for the climate: A paper book, or an e-reader?
MAY 25, 20245:00 AM ET
 
Chloe Veltman

 
The summer reading season is here.

Some people will opt for paperbacks because they're easy to borrow and share. Others will go for e-readers, or audiobooks streamed on a phone.

But which is the more environmentally sustainable option? Reading's carbon footprint is not large compared to other things people do, like travel, and it isn’t something most people consider when choosing how to read a book. But for those looking for small changes in their lives to reduce their impact on the climate, it might be worth exploring how the ways we choose to read books affect the planet.

A complicated question to answer
Whether it's better to read books in print or on a device is complicated, because of the complex interplay of the resources involved across the entire lifecycle of a published work: how books and devices are shipped, what energy they use to run, if they can be recycled.

Digital reading is on the rise — especially audiobooks. According to the Association of American Publishers, they now capture about the same share of the total US book market as e-books — roughly 15%. But print is still by far the most popular format.

https://www.npr.org/2024/05/25/1252930557/book-e-reader-kindle-climate

Of Heat Engines and Refrigerators
21 hours ago Guest Blogger 
 

Kevin Kilty


Weather is made possible because transfer of heat also makes available some amount of mechanical work. The view of the atmosphere being akin to a Carnot heat engine has a long history involving many famous names in atmospheric science – Sverdrup, Brunt, Oort, and Lorenz. To say that the literature around this topic is vast is an understatement.

Related views, rarely mentioned, hold the atmosphere’s working to be a refrigerator or a thermostat or even air-conditioning. WUWT guest blogger, Willis Eschenbach, often makes reference to these ideas, as he did here recently and even more recently here. The Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis belongs here, too.

Two simple models, heat engine and refrigerator, compliment one another. If, for example, one is interested in how heat transfer produces the observed weather, a heat engine is a good place to begin. If, on the other hand, one’s focus is how the atmosphere works to produce a stable climate, free of CO2 terror, then perhaps the refrigerator makes a better starting place.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/05/26/of-heat-engines-and-refrigerators/

Biden Goes All-In With War on Coal
9 hours ago Guest Blogger 

By Emily Arthun

May 21, 2024

The Biden administration’s war on coal came out of the shadows recently, with the release of a new series of regulations that have the clear intent of locking up millions of acres of federal land from coal mining and drilling for oil and natural gas, as well as shutting down the nation’s remaining coal-fired power generation fleet.

The Bureau of Land Management released a new rule that will effectively make it impossible to continue to mine coal or drill for oil and gas anywhere on federally owned lands. This will cripple coal mining in the Powder River Basin and other western reserves, which provide most of the nation’s thermal coal used for energy production. This action alone would have been devastating, but it was just part of a much larger and far-reaching series of regulatory actions.

The new tranche of regulations was an 11th hour assault, issued literally days before the close of a window of time allowing a new President to reverse the decision by executive order. With this announcement, any reversal will have to come through action by both houses of Congress or by litigation in court.

These actions come despite the clear warnings by some of the Biden Administration’s own electric utility regulators that further closures of baseload energy capacity (such as coal) could result in the failure of the nation’s electric grid.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/05/26/biden-goes-all-in-with-war-on-coal/