There's a nasty shock in store for the British householder when a new 'carbon' tax comes into force
Fast approaching, if largely unnoticed, is yet another massive shock the Government has in store for us with its weirdly distorted energy policy. It is surprising to see what an abnormally high proportion of the electricity needed to keep our lights on has lately been coming from coal-fired power stations. Last Wednesday evening, for instance, this was over 50 per cent, with only 1.3 per cent coming from wind power. Yet by next March, we learn, five of our largest coal-fired plants, capable of supplying a fifth of our average power needs, are to be shut down, much earlier than expected, under an EU anti-pollution directive.
One reason why these plants are being hammered through their remaining quota of hours allowed by the EU is that a new UK tax comes into force next April, which aims to make fossil-fuel power significantly more expensive. In 2010, George Osborne announced his intention to impose, from April 2013, a “carbon floor price” of £16 on every tonne of CO2 emitted by British industry, rising to £30 a tonne by 2020 and £70 a tonne by 2030.
Antarctic Sea Ice is now only 10,652.5 sq km from breaking the all-time, end of the world, a new ice age is coming , CO2 is making the world freeze record!!!!!
The current sea ice is 2,126,841 sq km higher than the lowest amount on this day which occurred in 1986. The record is 16.23238 million sq km and todays sea ice is oh so close at 16.22173 million sq km.
Graphed are 2012, 2007 and the median for 1979-2008.
Antarctica gained 140,000 km² of ice overnight, to reach the sixth highest daily area ever recorded. Another day like today, and tomorrow will break the all-time record for most sea ice ever measured at either pole.
This week probably saw the Arctic Ocean's sea ice reach its minimum extent for the year and begin to expand again, as it usually does in mid-September. Given that the retreat of Arctic ice has become a key piece of evidence for those who take a more alarmed view of global warming, it's newsworthy that 2012's melt was the greatest since records began in 1979, with sea ice in the Northern Hemisphere shrinking to about 1.3 million square miles, or about half the 1979-2008 average.
As this column has sometimes pointed out ways in which the effects of global warming are happening more slowly than predicted, it is fair to record that this rate of decline in Arctic sea ice is faster than many predicted. Although an entirely ice-free Arctic Ocean during at least one week a year is still several decades away at this rate, we are halfway there after just three decades.
Arctic melts on this scale have happened before, however. Svend Funder of the Danish Museum of Natural History and his colleagues recently studied the northern coast of Greenland, where the land-fast sea ice never breaks up, even in a year like this. Yet evidence of wave action in the past (indicating open waters) and waterlogged driftwood show that for 2,500 years in the "Holocene Optimum" period, when Arctic summer temperatures were two to four degrees Celsius warmer than today, the summer melt of the Arctic Ocean routinely left half as much ice as this year.
THE DRASTIC melting of Arctic sea ice has finally ended for the year but not before demolishing the previous record – and setting off new warnings about the rapid pace of change in the region.
The apparent low point for 2012 was reached on Sunday, according to the US National Snow and Ice Data Center, which said that sea ice that day covered about 1.32 million square miles, or 24 per cent, of the surface of the Arctic Ocean. The previous low, set in 2007, was 29 per cent.
When satellite tracking began in the late 1970s, sea ice at its lowest point in the summer typically covered about half the Arctic Ocean, but it has been declining in fits and starts over the decades.
“The Arctic is the Earth’s air-conditioner,” said Walt Meier, a research scientist at the snow and ice centre, an agency sponsored by the government. “We’re losing that. It’s not just that polar bears might go extinct, or that native communities might have to adapt, which we’re already seeing – there are larger climate effects.”
I noticed yesterday that the Arctic Sea Ice Extent Is Increasing at very fast rate, my take on this is that the overall impact from the large area of the broken icepack from the "massive cyclone that blew over the central Arctic Ocean" during August, looks to be coming to a very fast (maybe a record) end.
We will have to see in the next week or so if I am correct on this forecast, but one thing is clear from that location, come December the IcePack would have returned to a normal level...more to follow.
Environment: For many across the U.S., it was a cruel, cruel summer. Al Gore said listening to the news was like "taking a nature hike through the book of Revelation." But how does he explain record sea ice in the Antarctic?
The summer of 2012 was a scorcher for many across the country. Naturally the global warming alarmists couldn't contain themselves.
James Hansen, whose politicized ravings are primarily responsible for the climate change scare, wrote in August that the summer was "the kind of future that climate change would bring to us and our planet."
Gore lamented the "dirty weather" created by "dirty energy" and declared on his web site that "a lot of people are saying out loud, 'I'm too hot!'"
"The storm definitely seems to have played a role in this year's unusually large retreat of the ice,"
A few weeks ago Piers Corbyn made a point about the "massive cyclone that blew over the central Arctic Ocean" during August and its effect that it would have on the Jet Stream over the UK and Northern Europe, also in a recent blog, Joe Bastardi also made this point. This then may well be a key factor as to why the Actic IcePack is now at a lower then average amount.
I'm glad to see that NASA/NOAA have taken time out on this event and put together the following YouTube and blog.
A powerful storm wreaked havoc on the Arctic sea ice cover in August 2012. This visualization shows the strength and direction of the winds and their impact on the ice: the red vectors represent the fastest winds, while blue vectors stand for slower winds. Credit: NASA/Goddard Science Visualization Studio
There has been a wave of triumphal announcements by climate change proponents recently, almost giddy over the summer shrinkage of the Arctic ice sheet. “Lowest level ever!” they proclaim, thought that is not quite true. Nonetheless, The Arctic pack ice has been receding over the last decade or so, but that is only natural. You see, there is a well known, if poorly understood, linkage between the ice at the north pole and the ice in and around Antarctica—and the ice around Antarctica is doing quite well. Satellite radar altimetry measurements indicate that the East Antarctic ice sheet interior increased in mass by 45±7 billion metric tons per year from 1992 to 2003. This trend continues today, reinforcing recent scientific investigations into this millennial scale oscillation between the poles. According to studies, this is how things have been for hundreds of thousands of years.
By now everyone who pays attention to climate matters has heard the news, the Nations Ice and Snow Data Center (NSIDC) has proclaimed a new record low for the Arctic ice sheet. The dweebs over at RealClimate are beside themselves with joy, smugly celebrating the impending ecological doom of all mankind. “Take to the lifeboats, the seas are a risin'.” Ok, maybe they are not quite that ecstatic, but this “record” is being used as a see-I-told-you-so to prop up anthropogenic global warming. Here is what the NSIDC had to say in their press release:
Arctic sea ice cover melted to its lowest extent in the satellite record yesterday, breaking the previous record low observed in 2007. Sea ice extent fell to 4.10 million square kilometers (1.58 million square miles) on August 26, 2012. This was 70,000 square kilometers (27,000 square miles) below the September 18, 2007 daily extent of 4.17 million square kilometers (1.61 million square miles).
Click source to read FULL report from Doug. L Hoffman
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