Since 1984 humans have gushed forth 64% of our entire emissions from fossil fuels. (Fully 282,000 megatons of deplorable carbon “pollution”.)
During this time, satellite images show that 24% of our beaches shrank, while 28% grew. Thus we can say that thanks to the carbon apocalypse there are 3,660 sq kms more global beaches now than there were thirty years ago. Yes. It’s that bad.
The encroachment of beaches would mean there is less ocean for fishes. Thankfully sea levels have risen too, so it looks like it will all work out.
This study also produced a handy map of where the sandiest beaches are. Clearly Africa wins (unless you prefer rocks and cliffs).
h/t GWPF
Sandy beaches (yellow) versus Rocky beaches (black). Percentages indicate the proportion of sandy beaches. Source
Presumbly the paradox of how seas can rise unprecedentedly fast at the same time as beaches are growing will be explained through global currents shifting ominously due to rising CO2 levels. Either that, or the paradox and the study will vanish into a subterranean library — like the deeper Asthenosphere Archive, where they will be converted to magma.
Seriously, though, this study appears to be the first to use automated detection with satellite images (nearly 2 million of them) to assess global beaches. Previous studies did things manually, or just interviewed people.
A few outlets have reported this, mainly with the predictable focus on the disappearing beaches and prophecies that “good beaches can’t last”.
When beaches shrink it is climate change, but if they grow, it’s due to nature or activists.
The Times of India suggests that Marine Reserves are not reserving the beach:
Life’s a beach, but only for the time being
Bad stuff is always just about to hit:
But while reclaiming land from the sea might be one factor helping boost beaches overall, around 70,000km of sandy coastlines are being washed away and erosion in marine reserves may point to a bleaker future for beach lovers.
A quarter of the world’s beaches are being eroded at a rate of more than half a meter (20 inches) a year, said the researchers, who found beaches make up around 30% of the world’s coastline. Some 6,000 kms of beaches are retreating at an even faster rate of 5 meters per year, said Luijendijk, who also works at Deltares, a research institute based in the Netherlands.
However, the United States is home to four of the seven fastest eroding beaches, with some coastal areas in Texas and Louisiana receding by up to 15 metres a year, with Mississippi river damming affecting the amount of sand reaching the coast.
Will Earth run out of sand….
“The main question for the future is whether there will be enough sand available to maintain all beaches,” said a statement from Deltares on the report. — SBS (AAP)
Not my “main” question.
You might not hear about this on CNN or the ABC/BBC/CBC.
Factoids
- In 1984 CO2 levels were 344ppm. Today 406ppm.
- Cumulative human emissions were calculated from CDIAC.
REFERENCE
Luijendijk et al (2018) The State of the World’s Beaches, Nature, Scientific Reports, volume 8, Article number: 6641, doi:10.1038/s41598-018-24630-6
Changes in beaches probably have more to do with the supply of sand than anything else. Dams reduce the sediment load reaching the oceans and Man interrupts the long-shore transport of sand with wharves, jetties, and artificial harbors. There’s nothing related to climate to see here. Move along.
151
I can opine about my local coastline only, and assume the rest is similar. We’ve fished from the shore to 1 mile out and the ocean floor is mostly sand, with the odd bommy, or rocky outgrowth if you like. During large seas the sand gets washed out, during calm years the sand goes back onto the beaches.
The little contribution that comes from the rivers and runoff are truly minor, miniscule compared to what is sitting on the ocean floor just off shore.
151
I agree Greg,
A local beach at Somers, Victoria saw a lot of sand erosion through the 1980-2000 period but now it is coming back. The sand did not go far. It formed a large sand bar about 100m offshore.
I am not sure if the changes are/were due to storms but they could be.
20
Yes, that’s exactly what happens and it goes to prove that extreme weather is happening less often too.
When storms and cyclones abate the beaches reform and rebuild.
Not only are sea levels not rising [on the Gold Coast Qld., king tides are lower than they were 50 years ago when many of the sea walls were built to AHD 100] but beaches are bigger and wider than they have been for years.
50
Gold coast was a few steps to the water, now you need to prepare a lunch for the journey
30
Peter C,
That beach might finish up like the GBR – NEVER TO RECOVER< TERMINALLY ILL or whatever else the ABD wretched can dream up.
20
California beaches, with which I’m most familiar personally, have significant seasonal changes. That is, during Winter, with high energy waves impinging on the coast, the beaches retreat and steepen. Much of the sand is, however, only moved off shore as sand bars. In the Summer, the beaches re-build and the slopes become more gentle. However, along with the perpendicular movement to the beach face, there is a well-documented long-shore transport of sand. When that is interrupted by, say, jetties, there is a buildup of sand ‘upstream,’ and a loss of sand ‘downstream.’ It is hard for the layman to understand the dynamic relationship because one sand grain looks just like another sand grain. However, believe me, the dynamics of beaches have been well-studied because of their importance to recreation and shoreline dwellers, and the economic importance of sand for construction.
20
Maybe the Himalayan Glaciers are growing again? Other glaciers may have also been growing.
New Zealand’s Franz Josef glacier shrinks and grows seemingly at whim. It grew a bit over the early 1990s then relieved NIWA enormously by shrinking for a few years around the middle of the decade before growing again up to about 2008. It doesn’t seem to know what to do … NIWA crows with delight when it shrinks, then stays Silent when it grows … that poor glacier, it doesn’t know what to do.
If the glaciers are growing again, That could explain why all that “accelerating rate of sea level rise has gone and why sea level hasn’t been rising. In some places, it could have been shrinking, although opinion seems to vary.
But there is still all that extra sandy beach strand 🙂
90
All sorts of assumptions and suppositions made in that article: “Glaciers advancing is very unusual—especially in this period when the vast majority of glaciers worldwide shrank in size as a result of our warming world.” Are the vast majority of glaciers worldwide really shrinking because of a warming world? Could there be other factors involved? Has anyone even looked for other possible factors? That these glaciers are growing does suggest that global temperatures may not be as influential on glaciers are supposed.
“… in spite of human-induced climate change.” /facepalm
00
That’s a lot of marinas in Africa. Julie Bishop will be happy our aid money is helping them out and combating sea level rise (it’s worse than we thought) as well. 🙂
60
Julie Bishop leaks like a sieve.
Accordingly, she’s adding to sea-level rise.
30
Have to agree with Clyde, I also wondered if I was missing something. More just topographical change if you as me.
Mind you there will be man made changes as you say, but these would come under real time ‘physical’ change.
GeoffW
10
Above should of course be ‘ask me’.
GeoffW
10
Julie Bishops leaks like a sieve.
Accordingly, she’s adding to sea-level rise.
10
Oops. Please pull the plug on this one. It was meant for 1.3.1 above.
10
I blame the French. Postmodernism and their “Nude beaches became popular in the 1950s along the French coast[4]” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nude_beach
10
I suspect the real panic is that the beaches owned by the green blob are shrinking. Perhaps there is a small modicum of justice in this world. At the very least it would be a large dose of irony.
221
Hmmm….more space to relax on the beach…i just cant see a problem 🙂
40
OS
Don’t you recognise a disaster? Room for more of those “too-many-people” on the beach! (/s)
60
All this increase and decline of beaches wouldn’t have anything to do with seasonal sand movement and wave energy would it?
130
I’ll just leave it at,
and say that beach is more than enough to cope with, if you get my meaning same as Jo’s. Let the experts argue about how much sand is caused by what. I’ve seen too much sand come and then go, only to come again and then sometimes go again. It’s the weather, stupid. Or the other way around, it’s the stupid weather you experts should know.
I drove the Pacific Coast highway for 12 years through storm and sunshine and I was witness to it all.
80
Same here in Newcastle Roy.
Beautiful golden sand.
But it can disappear for 6 months and leave all those black rocks showing.
KK
50
Keith, we have fabulous beaches here in Australia. We are very lucky to be able to walk on golden sands and in the sunshine.
I come from Wales and there the beaches are extraordinary. Tidal movements can reveal half a mile or more of sandy beach.
And despite offshore sand dredging for the building and construction industry, most of the beaches are mostly unchanged. However in places there aresigns of beach sand depletion. But as I point out to the whingers over there, every thing comes at a cost.
GeoffW
30
KK,
Not much on Earth is permanent or solid, is it? The Santa Monica Mountains are a good case study. Those with more money than good judgment have built in some strange places, including on stilts with the house mostly supported by whatever is 30, 40 or even 50 feet or more down the hill from the road. It gives them a spectacular view, at least until heavy rain comes and all the sandstone those hillsides are made of is well lubricated again and then down comes the house. One such collapse was caught by a camera team from a local TV station and it makes a spectacular failure when broadcast to the world. Unfortunately the homeowner is losing everything when that happens.
All along the beach through a part of Malibu where the highway is close to the cliff people have built out over the beach. Nice spot in fair weather but then along comes the storm with waves that batter their houses, destroying more than one in the process.
I remember one guy who built on the very top of a peak complaining after his house slid down the hill, “My geologist told me that was solid bedrock.” But any self respecting geologist would recognize the danger of sandstone when it gets wet. It’s exactly like shale where the layers slide against each other except that there are no layers and the individual grains of the sandstone begin to be unable to support the weight and they give way under the load. The stuff almost dissolves when saturated with water.
Why the lesson in these events isn’t learned is beyond me to understand. There have been plenty of opportunities going clear back to a long time before I was born.
40
Interesting points about sandstone Roy.
I guess the evidence for the weak binding in sandstone is sitting there on all of our beaches.
It’s possible that the geologist mentioned was encouraged to say that the bedrock was stable. It’s amazing how reality can be bent under the weight of a few one hundred dollar notes.
KK
00
I have to suspect that the geologist was either incompetent or he wanted to insure that his consulting fee was paid by his client without any questions. And maybe it was both?
I don’t know who the geologist was so I can only say what I would suspect from the available information and my own study of both physical and historical geology. The first course has been invaluable to me and the second was largely forgotten because I haven’t had an opportunity to put what I learned to good use since I passed the course.
Neither course or the 2 together made me a geologist but the right basic understanding can go a long way.
10
A couple of years ago beaches at Narrabeen and Collaroy took a hit from east coast lows and king tide.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-10/sydney-storm-before-after-northern-beaches/7500844
The general impression from the warmest zealots is that this will become the norm in the future, but I couldn’t find a connection between rising CO2, ECL and tides.
40
El G
There are photos of our local beach, completely scoured of sand and only bedrock visible.
The photos were from a time in the 1930s.
In the 85 years since there has never been anything like that in scale.
All I can think of is that they must have been producing a lot of CO2 to cause that.
Still, as any geologist will suggest, all this will be just a funny recollection in about 15,000 years when the next ice age hits.
At the peak of the last ice age New York was under a mile of ice, neatly stored over Central Park.
At that time the local inhabitants would have enjoyed the beach front an extra 19 km out from the current location.
Too bad we won’t be around for the next unveiling.
KK
101
I see your 15,000 and raise.
‘A new model that predicts the solar cycles more accurately than ever before has suggested that solar magnetic activity will drop by 60 percent between 2030 and 2040, which means in just 15 years’ time, Earth could sink into what researchers are calling a mini ice age.’
Science Alert
100
Prof Valentina Zharkova’s paper.
But wait! There’s more!
… from about 3 minutes in. Very interesting about the Local Bubble… the cosmic ray chilling/cooling may last a century or two or more.
40
El gordo the next Mini Ice Age is due in Solar Cycle 26 – late next decade. So no need to reincarnate to observe if you are a young lad like I (mid 60’s).
50
El Gordo’s the cautious kind 🙂
20
Only when it comes to climate change, on every other subject I throw caution to the wind.
10
A man’s gotta have some fun sometime I guess 🙂
10
There wasn’t much sea level fall during the LIA, so I expect the same this time around, nevertheless anecdotal reports on beach growth at the Maunder Minimum would confirm the solar influence.
The other point worth noting is that full glaciation cannot be reached from here, we have to go way back to the end of the Eemian Interglacial and come forward. This involves 400 years of arid conditions, which may have already started.
Bondi Beach at the Last Glacial Maximum was 20 kilometres to the east and the city of Sydney was overlooking a sunken river valley. Humans lived there and survived.
20
And the shoreline off Perth during the peak of the last Ice Age (when SL was 130m lower than present) was ~ 10km west of Rottnest Island’s western most point (West End), ie ~ 29km west of the current mainland shoreline. During the next Ice Age expect Cottesloe Beach Real Estate to plummet in value (zero ocean views). No one seems to know when the next Ice Age will commence which is worrying – it could be very imminent but not before the next Mini Ice Age predicted late next decade (? SC26).
30
A mini ice age won’t have a huge impact on sea level, but a repeat of the 1300 AD Event in the Pacific might be a tourism disaster.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1931-0846.2007.tb00277.x
10
That is a fall of two feet six inches in rapid time and I would like to know where the water went?
20
You’ve heard of Antarctica? You could look there.
30
If I try hard I might be able to last long enough to see that.
10
KK if you were a Hindu or Buddhist you could be reincarnated in 15,000 years and visit the Central Park Ice Sheet. Like the Terminator (“I will be back”). Maybe the Ice Sheets will return much earlier than 15,000 years – the last Interglacial lasted ~ 15,000 years and the current Holocene Interglacial has been with us for 11,700 years – maybe you will only have to wait 4,000 years. My level of interest in the next IA is high so maybe I will convert to Hinduism or Buddhism. I believe Hinduism and Buddhism are more believable than the “Theory of AGW”.
30
Watch out, you could be reincarnated as a lower form of life depending on your current life style, e.g. A cockroach or if you have been truly evil as a Greenie.
40
abc: Climate change a ‘toxic brand’
Macquarie University geographer Donna Houston:
“Her research found that when local councillors or community members were trying to gain support for climate action, they sometimes gave it a different label, such as “sustainability“.
“It was often easier not to refer to climate change,” she said.
Professor Hulme — who used to work for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), who once evaluated climate models and scenario construction, now a human geographer at the University of Cambridge, claimed better politics was the only way to reduce the vitriol around climate change that has made it a divisive and “toxic brand” in some countries.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-05-02/why-science-cant-solve-climate-change/9711364
70
The ABC climate expert predicted I’m writing my comment under 20 metres of water, I don’t recall growing gills
60
Is your computer waterproof for the ultimate test?
50
They should try “greenhouse warming”, as people really go for that one.
30
Life is a beach and the political tide maybe going out as the green blob branch stack.
‘Tony Abbott’s political future could be under threat from a group of activists who have been organising environmentally conscious voters to join Liberal party branches on Sydney’s north shore – a move that could unseat the former prime minister.’
Guardian
30
How many times do we have to say it to those brain leftists? Correlation does not imply causation. During the same period of increasing CO2 the world’s population increased dramatically. Does that mean more CO2 was the cause? Of course not. Countless other similar examples can be provided.
90
You’ve nailed it, co2 causes population growth, LOL
20
More CO2 = More blackouts
More blackouts = More hanky panky
30
Then you get the volcanic islands through the Pacific. Jet black very fine rutile, black sand. Sticks to everything. Ugly. No sand as we know it. The same with the rocky coastlines around much of the world, some of the best Riviera and Italian beaches are just rocks, pebbles.
Where they do have sand, it comes from coral through the agency of waves breaking or even the Crown of Thorn starfish which eats the coral which becomes the sand. Scarborough beach in Perth seems to be made from broken shells, razor sharp, not quartz or broken coral. It is well named if you get dumped on the alleged sand.
So sandy beaches are far more rare than Australians understand where clay, rutile or rocky beaches are not the norm but yellow sand, even brilliant white quartz like some in Perth at Cottersloe, blinding and burning in the summer sun. Australians would be appalled at many of the so called beaches in the Agean, rock, pebbles, red minerals or black, hard underfoot. It’s nearly impossible to get out of the water at Nice, faced with a wall of collapsing pebbles where you need rubber shoes to protect your feet.
Then there’s the subject of CO2. We all know all fish breathe. Oxygen in, CO2 out. The fact that aerial CO2 has risen is due entirely to warming ocean surfaces, more sunshine, nothing else. My point is that we accept O2 dissolves continuously in water and is recreated continuously from CO2 by plants, but I had wondered about the solubility of other gases.
So using the power of the internet
Nitrogen 78% Solubility at 20C. 0.0019
Oxygen 22% Solubility at 20C. 0.0043
Carbon Dioxide 0.04% Solubility at 20C. 0.169
Carbon dioxide is 40x as soluble as Oxygen. 80x as soluble as Nitrogen. Fish breathe and the oceans are are stuffed with it, 98% of free CO2 is dissolved in the huge oceans. They are carbonated.
What that means is that with even slight surface heating, aerial CO2 goes up.
Why does anyone suggest that increased CO2 in the air is causing warming of the oceans? Isn’t it really obvious that warming of the ocean surface and this alone causes increased CO2?
These calculations, this imputation that mankind has increased CO2 by 50% with motor cars is just rubbish. This is quite apart from my absolute proof that it is not true.
Still we have to put up with the notion that warm beer absorbs CO2 from the air and is thus acidified, at least according to our CSIRO.
130
I was dumped at Scarborough Beach in Perth some years ago! It was rather unpleasant…that sand is sharp and sticks. Many years ago our then three-year old son managed to dump himself into a deep puddle in the sand at Scarborough in England. Managing a sopping wet, miserable child in the freezing wind wasn’t a lot of fun either! Nice sounds like Brighton in England, steeply shelving pebbles, not my idea of an attractive beach.
Dubai is another story. I was mystified by the description of ‘reclaimed’ land. I was rather under the impression that ‘new’ land had been built up by the employment of vast numbers of trucks bringing in material from the desert they built the Jumeirah Palm first and followed it up by the Jebel Ali Palm and The World. The scale of the work is amazing. I’d better look into it more!
41
I still have the scar on my brow. Those sharp shells scooped a piece. I don’t know if it is the relationship to Scarborough or the damage done by the sharp shells which gave rise to the name, but unpleasant is a good word. The waves are all dumpers.
30
I hadn’t thought of that as a reason for the name TdeF; I assumed that it was named by a homesick Pom who came from the original Scarborough.
21
The point with beaches I was making was that Australians have this view of a beach, even a 100mile beach.
In much of the world, easpecially without a Continental shelf such as makes the 15 metre tides at St. Malo to Mont St. Michel to the UK, there is no beach. The mountain goes straight to the bottom of the ocean, 4km down. Lake Baikal is like that, 1200 km long and with 20% of all the fresh water in the world it is an inland Fjord as the rocks go straight to the bottom, up to 9km down. There is the occasional prized shelf a the end of a valley where you can walk out a little, but really no beaches.
The Sounds (larger Fjords) of NZ too. In the volcanic islands, protected by coral reefs built on the slopes of the volcano, a lagoon can develop of sand made from the coral, but not for example on Papeete. It is also possible we have to thank the coral eaters like the despised Crown of Thorns Starfish for much of the lagoon sand and the refreshing of the reef. While there are those who think hard pruning is a disaster, in most cases it encourages new, fresh growth. Views of the COT starfish is changing rapidly as we learn from those who have lived there for a millenium, before scientists had opinions.
Australia is amazing with nearly 37,000km of beaches and we take them for granted when so many coastlines have no beach at all. As for rapid erosion areas like the East Coast of England, the sand ends up somewhere else. For example the silting of the port of Ostia in Rome, now 40km inland. It is why Catholics eat fish on Friday, to support inland fishing. There is also the port of Ephesus now in Turkey, once a great city and again some kilometers from the sea.
So we can agonize about long term geologic changes, blame someone and blame climate change but in reality, it is all quite normal. Until you listen to the Greens.
60
It is estimated that about 30% of the sand found around tropical coral reefs are the results of excretment by Parrot Fish.
Parrot fish graze on the coral and grind it up so as to extract the algae from the coral before excreting it as ground up coral /sand .
There has been some concern that scuba divers in some areas are reducing the numbers of Parrot fish down to levels where the coral begins to be overwhelmed by algal growth which the Parrot fish control in normal circumstances through their grazing habits.
40
Precisely. The Crown of Thorns starfish apparently does the same thing in concert with the parrot fish. Plus the benefits of pruning and maintenance. Symbiosis. Governments stop things, like Parrot fish and Crown of Thorns. Perversely stopping natural things does the damage. So the concern with $500million to ‘rescue’ the Great Barrier Reef, a clearly self sustaining long term structure which has survived thousands of years and even the 232 years since people with boats arrived. The real danger to our ecosystems are the ecologist with primitive zero level logic who want to stop everything. Just like CO2 and temperature. No real thinking about natural cycles.
You get the same approach in England where the official policy is to allow the canals which drained the marshes and stopped the flooding to be overgrown and clog up and now the flooding is back. Of course Climate Change is blamed when flooding houses is now official government policy. All to preserve the quality of life and expand the territory of water fowl. At what point did water fowl become more important than people?
50
Lack of proper dredging of rivers and streams has caused an enormous amount of flood damage in England…witness floods in Cockermouth for example with its confluence of two rivers. It was decided that a few salamanders were more important than people’s homes and livlihoods. The Somerset Levels were another place….many examples in fact. The extra reservoirs for water storage were cancelled and houses built instead…but those places were chosen for their water-holdibg possibilities, so guess what?
31
Annie.
Even in Newcastle there is evidence of greenie influence on the local council causing the only suburban flooding in 60 years.
Councils obsession with leaving nature to “be natural” and look after itself meant that local drains were left to clog up with dirt and vegetation.
Surprisingly, rain water eventually couldn’t get through the “nature” in the way and flooded the surroundings.
Like the local bushfires, totally preventable.
No doubt the money saved on leaving the drain clearance for later was used for a greener purpose, like attending an important eco conference.
So, green gifts to humanity now include:
Higher electricity prices.
Suburban floods.
More vicious bushfires.
And more trees growing amongst the electricity supply lines.
Green progress?
Or maybe sabotage.
KK
30
Hopefully not long term sustaining but $500 mil will sustain the troughers for a while.
The reef on the other hand – –
20
Thankfully the sand I have enjoyed all my life at Bar Beach and Merewether is golden silica, definitely not Parrot Poop.
Across the harbour mouth is Stockton night, about 19 miles of golden silica sand and if I remember correctly, some of this was taken to Hawaii to cover over that awful, sharp corral sand.
KK
20
Bight
20
The majority of coral sand beach is pooped out by parrot fish. Think about that next time you see a beautiful turquoise lagoon, it’s a fish sewer.
30
Nope, it’s the sand on our west coast beaches. Come over to New Zealand and check those western beaches out. Auckland’s west coast beaches are very good examples. We call the black sand iron sand. because it is (full of iron oxides and some titanium) and it sticks to everything.
HMNZGovt incorporated NZ Steel which built a refinery at Glenbrook (the Glenbrook Steel Mill) then sold it to the Japanese. The Mill uses a modified Bessemer process (because of the titanium content) so it requires big gobs of continuous reliable electricity. Windmills and PVs need not apply.
Just ignore all the “sustainable” cr@p: when the ironsand runs out, it goes. (that could take a very long time).
20
Nailed it TdeF. How come nobody else mentions this? Too straightforward for New Dark Age understanding I guess.
10
It beaches are growing, sea levels are likely not rising.
This Data supports Nils Axel Morner
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/12/are-sea-levels-rising-nils-axel-morner-documents-a-decided-lack-of-rising-seas/
40
Here come those tired old dunes again.
Sea level rise is real…faster or slower or reversed, depending on effects of post-glacial rebound where you live. So the sea levels are actually falling in Juneau and Stockholm. A total so-what, of course.
Away from all that, a mere dribble since the 1700s. Don’t like it? Have an ice age.
50
Interesting, but imho another futile exercise. I once spent some time trying to model the sand bar patterns in Halifax Bay NQ, for which I had collected a surprising amount of photogrammetry. Some evidence of a cyclical pattern, eg the outer trough stays more or less the same, but the inner bars appear to move with the longshore drift. I also considered looking at tide gauge records. 42 tide gauges in Queensland. All produce slightly different results. None are necessarily wrong. Some evidence of El Nino /La Nina effects, but since I realised there was no evidence of sea level rise due to CAGW/CACC I didn’t bother looking for a grant.
Beaches are the product of erosion, locally or from somewhere else. Sediment plumes from North Queensland rivers are often large enough to be seen from space, so are breathlessly denounced by the usual suspects as being caused by agriculture and being damaging to the reef. There is of course evidence of massive plumes having occurred well before colonisation, as well as more ominous evidence, eg the occasion when the mighty Burdekin River did not discharge into the ocean for a number of years.
60
Much of the sand probably got flushed out of Black River, on 10th of Jan 1998. Next morning Halifax bay was litered with cars, caravans and houses. 760 mm fell in under 6 hours.
There are some eye-opening before ‘n after air photos of Magnetic Island and Halifax Bay after Cat-4 Cyclone Althea crossed there in Dec 1973. Terra-formed the place.
20
Adelaide fronts the Gulf of St. Vincent with many sandy beaches. White sand as it has been going up and down the Gulf for many years (except during the Ice age when the lower ocean levels then meant there would have been a 60 kilometre wide beach). Storms push the sand northwards and bring it back again. Occasionally a local Council decides to truck a few millions of tons back south again, but they have largely stopped wasting money doing that (so they can spend it on Climate Action). If anyone wants a bigger beach then the answer is to build a jetty, a groin or an entrance to a boat harbour and let nature take its course. In the latter case it may be necessary to truck a few millions of tons away every so often. (the penalty of ignoring those who warned them in advance).
40
top story at Climate Depot:
2 May: CFACT: Meteorologist allegedly assaulted by NWS Director Uccellini
Did National Weather Service Director Louis Uccellini push and threaten a 40 year veteran meteorologist? Data manipulation and a culture of fear.
by Adam Houser
A veteran Ph.D. meteorologist with the National Weather Service (NWS) was physically assaulted by NWS Director Louis Uccellini for mentioning “cooling” during a talk about the Earth’s climate in 2014 according to an account provided to CFACT.
“Don’t ever mention the word cooling again,” the agency’s Director warned.
The Director allegedly put his hand on the meteorologist’s chest as a warning, and pushed the employee against the wall. The whistleblower, who spoke to CFACT on the condition of anonymity, described a culture of fear and ostracism at NWS and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) against those who dissent from the “global warming” narrative.
The meteorologist has peer-reviewed dozens of articles, has authored several peer-reviewed articles, and has over 40 years of meteorology experience.
“I was giving a talk to fellow NWS staff about the jet stream flow in the upper atmosphere. What it showed was large amplitude waves in both the northern and southern hemispheres. I explained that the only way the jet stream could get to be high amplitude is if the atmosphere was actually cooling.”
Director Uccellini told CFACT through his spokesperson, Susan Buchanan, that “this alleged incident never happened” and that he “has never had a physical altercation with anyone in his 40-year career. For this particular topic, both cooling and warming need to occur for the jet to intensify, not one versus the other. So the alleged disagreement doesn’t make sense from a scientific perspective.”
However, the veteran meteorologist backed up the assertion with details…ETC
The meteorologist made clear that this was not an isolated incident.
“One coworker who is a fellow ‘skeptic’ and I have to be careful about what we talk about at our desks or the break room,” the NWS employee explained. “We can’t let the word get out that we aren’t buying into the whole ‘the climate is warming’ narrative.”
“It is an almost Orwellian, nasty-type society.”
The meteorologist further stated that climate data is altered at NWS and NOAA for political purposes: “It is an incredibly well-oiled propaganda machine. I read the reports that come out, and they either have no science in it, or its completely false.”
“Take the work on sea surface temperatures. This has been falsified. A few years ago, an article came out that NOAA and NWS were going to recalibrate sea surface temperature measurements from ocean buoys deployed across the globe to match sea surface temperature measurements at engine intake rooms of ships.”…
The whistleblower further detailed inherent flaws in climate computer modeling…READ ON
http://www.cfact.org/2018/05/02/meteorologist-allegedly-assaulted-by-nws-director-uccellini/
2 May: Daily Caller: Michael Bastasch: National Weather Service Head Is Accused Of Assaulting An Employee. He Denies It
CFACT’s source echoed allegations made by former NOAA scientist John Bates that government climate scientists rushed a key study that purported to eliminate the global warming “pause” from the temperature record.
Bates said the Karl study, referring to lead author NOAA’s Tom Karl, had not been archived in accordance with NOAA policy and study authors were “mostly subtly but sometimes not, pushing choices to emphasize warming.”
Bates’ allegations sparked a congressional investigation and a review at NOAA. NOAA has yet to disclose the results, if any, of its review.
CFACT did not respond in time for publication.
http://dailycaller.com/2018/05/02/national-weather-service-head-accused-assault/
30
comment in moderation re: 2 May: CFACT: Meteorologist allegedly assaulted by NWS Director Uccellini
“Don’t ever mention the word cooling again,” the agency’s Director warned…
20
Marcio gets quite a bit of MSM coverage. searched for terms “climate change” & “sea level rise” and they never came up in the English-language stories I checked. fun video:
VIDEO: 1min59secs: 2 May: Quartz: For one Brazilian, home is a sandcastle on the beach
By Meghan McDonough
For Rio de Janeiro native Marcio Mizael Matolias, home is a sandcastle that he built on the beach. He has lived there full-time for the past 22 years.
The fantastical appearance of the 10-square-foot castle was inspired by architects Antoni Gaudi and Oscar Niemeyer. It also houses a used bookshop that he runs to fund his living expenses…
https://qz.com/1268063/this-brazilian-lives-full-time-in-a-sandcastle-he-built-on-the-beach/
30
Regarding sand erosion and sea levels, at Stockton Beach on the northern side of Newcastle Harbour during January this year there was a heavy swell that cut the beach “escarpment” back to 1960’s levels (we can date it because of inappropriate development that took place there later).
What should pop up but a line of concrete dragon’s tooth WWII tank traps with the date 23 Feb 1942 stamped into them, placed there to ward off imminent Japanese invasion. After 76 years to bury themselves in the sand under wave action, they were still in place and standing at full height at low tide. They had been covered in sand and forgotten for years until nature intervened and swept away the sand. Apparently the beach front in 1942 was similar to what it was this year after the heavy seas.
60
Back in 1974 after the big cyclone we found the remains of the schooner “Coolangatta” newly exposed at the mouth of Coolangatta Creek at Kirra beach on the Gold Coast. She had been wrecked there in a cyclone in 1846 while waiting to enter the Tweed River to pick up timber. She was named after Coolangatta in NSW and the Qld town was named likewise after the wreck. I believe the wreck was also exposed after a cyclone in 1936.
So many people collected souvenirs from the remaining timbers that there probably won’t be much left to expose in future.
But car and truck bodies that we dumped into the sea to protect high rise building foundations during cyclones have likewise been buried and may pop up again in the future.
The interesting thing is, those big cyclones have been MIA for the last 42 years.
50
Anyone have a list of Alarmist names that have beach front property ? I know Suzuki and Flim flam do also DiCaprio and I think Gore .
But hey if the scientists are to be believed we might have a beach out the front soon I’m about 100 odd feet above sea level where I am .
40
Apparently the russians have cobalt based nukes that in the right conditions can generate 300′ tsunami waves as city killers. As long as nothing like that happens, at 100′ above sea level, you should be fine 🙂
10
http://www.news.com.au/technology/pentagon-confirms-existence-of-russian-doomsday-weapon/news-story/16ef0f8642b1699f805f324489942345
10
Alarmists continue to preach,
That sands, for most tides, out of reach,
Could by man’s CO2,
Cause a surge to pass through,
And form, down the coast, a new beach.
90
Link for paper “The State of the World’s Beaches” here:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-24630-6
10
Quotede from Jo’s headline post;
It is with deep regret and contrary to the level of sarcasm exhibited by Jo in that statement that according to the United Nations Environment Program “Sand is rarer than you think!”
In fact according to the ENEP, the world is using Sand and gravel otherwise known as aggregates twice as fast as they are being produced by Nature.
To quote from the UNEP article on this rather disturbing trend in the use of scarce global resources by mankind —
End;
——————————-
To any Main Stream Media Editors who read this above post of mine, this is an example of the level of commentary that I am prepared to write if employed by yourselves as a journalist, a commentary which exemplifies the catastrophic impact that mankind is having upon the planet.
A subject which I am sure could satisfy any MSM editor with sufficient public alarmism who wishes to increase circulation by bring these serious manmade impacts on the planet and the fact that we are running out of global resources such as sand and gravel.
A most serious situation as outlined in the report by a highly recognised source, the United Nations Environment Program which outlines the impact of such sand and gravel mining activities have on the planet to the public in the most lurid and alarmist terms.
SARC/ x 2
60
ROM I’ve been exporting sand to the Middle East for years and until recently I was also exporting ice to the North Pole , unfortunately there was a fire at my ice factory and we lost the recipe .
61
Re exporting sand!
On a more serious note, Fracking shales for oil and gas requires quite specific sand qualities, depending on the characteristics of the shale deposits.
The sand is injected into the well under high pressure and is used to hold open the pores in the shale after the shale has been fracked or cracked and broken up by explosives or water pressures of some thousands of PSI’s.
Holding open the pores and cracks in the shale ie; fracked shales, allows the numerous channels and conduits opened up by the frakking process right through the tens of metres of shale surrounding the perforated drill pipe, to flow to the low pressures of the drill pipe and thence be pumped to the surface .
Exporting Sand from sites and sources that have the quite specific qualities of size and shape and density and etc to the shale frakking companies and sites is already quite a large business in the USA.
As frakking spreads worldwide and it will as the drawcard of fossil fuel independence will drive governments to promoting frakking [ UK right here and now ] within their own borders, the demand for sands of those specific qualities from sources and sites often remote from the frakking sites will lead to a significant and important frakking sand export /import industry.
30
Yeah, right, not like Australia’s interior is litered with mind bogglingly vast sand dune fields or nuthin.
20
Don’t listen to them, ‘Limits to Growth,’ … Club of Rome, Ehrich
et big AL. They’ve a history of failed predictions.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/19/great-moments-in-failed-predictions/
If Hammurabi ruled they’d be kaput.
50
I want to be a scarab on the wall when Oceanlinx is explaining their wave gen problems to ol’ Hammurabi. Then he could ask Timmy about about certain costs and difficulties associated with Geothermia and desal plants and grid failures.
“Well, you see, Great One…I…I…was misled by…Actually, Great One, I was just reading scripts the ABC gave me. It’s like when you’re doing ads for Panasonic or Toyota…”
30
if i put water into a soft plastic bowl and then push the sides in a bit the waterline rises …
10
follow-up to el gordo’s comment #7 – all the details:
3 May: Guardian: Liberal activists target Tony Abbott’s seat over climate change policy
Sydneysiders urged to join party in former PM’s seat to ‘shift the politics’ and speak up for the environment
by Anne Davies (ex-Fairfax)
Tony Abbott’s political future could be under threat from a group of activists who have been organising environmentally ***conscious voters to join Liberal party branches on Sydney’s north shore – a move that could unseat the former prime minister.
Billing themselves as “the counterweight” to the pro-coal power Monash Forum, the North Shore Environmental Stewards have held at least two recruitment functions at which attendees were urged to tap into their networks of environmentally conscious people to join the Liberal party branches in Abbott’s seat of Warringah and on the lower north shore.
The NSES has a Facebook page (LINK) that says the group “supports clean energy and a healthy environment, and believes in traditional Liberal party values of environmental stewardship”…
Exactly who is involved in the group remains a matter of conjecture.
Certainly, Liberals have attended. Several high-profile figures in the moderate faction of the Liberal party, including the powerbroker Michael Photios and his wife, Kristina, attended the lunchtime gathering of the NSES at Seaforth in March…
Also attending were the New South Wales MP for North Shore, Felicity Wilson, and David Begg, a longtime Liberal party member who ran against Abbott for preselection in the 1990s.
Photios addressed the meeting and, according to one attendee, put the case that the Liberals were the party that would tackle climate change – and that they should join. He highlighted his own record of defending the environment when in state parliament…
Photios told Guardian Australia he had attended the Seaforth meeting because his wife, a passionate environmentalist, had been asked to speak. She ultimately didn’t speak but Photios did and was the main speaker at the event…
A year ago, the Photios couple formed a spinoff from Photios’s lobbying firm, Premier State, to represent clean energy companies. The firm, Clean Energy Strategies (LINK), describes itself as “a boutique corporate advisory firm specialising in energy”…
Several members of NSES are also members of the activist group GetUp. A GetUp spokeswoman said the NSES “was definitely not a GetUp project but the environmental justice team knows of it … and think they’re great”…
The official organiser of NSES, Rob Grant, told Guardian Australia the group was no more than “a group of like-minded people on the north shore who want to see action on climate change, and who believe in driving change from inside the tent”.
Grant, a businessman who had a company in the renewables sector and was a chairman of the Clean Energy Council, is also a member of the Liberal party’s Neutral Bay branch…
The official organiser of NSES, Rob Grant, told Guardian Australia the group was no more than “a group of like-minded people on the north shore who want to see action on climate change, and who believe in driving change from inside the tent”.
Senior figures in the moderates scoffed at the idea that Abbott was in any danger of losing his northern beaches seat in a preselection…
But figures closer to the machinations in Warringah warned the seat could be vulnerable to an attack by Young Liberals, whom they described as marauding across NSW.
This is because the geographic rules that require members to join their local federal branch do not apply for members under the age of 30. Young Liberals can therefore vote in preselections outside where they live…
PIC: NSES: caption: The clean energy revolution is happening and we’re missing out on the new investment, growth and industries it could bring to NSW. This would be jobs for rural communities and in our cities. It’s time to get on renewables!
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/may/03/environmentally-conscious-liberals-urged
10
Ah, how to describe Michael Photios. If Sam Dastyari had a love child with Julia Gillard…
20
Ms Nova know plenty about beach. She always has head sruck in sand. Beach weather in May like beach in April. More records in many places today..No cold records. Temps going up. Cannot deny.
110
Hey Adolf you need to improve your English. Boy only the 3rd day of May and it was rather chilly in Perth where Jo lives, less than 8c over night and lucky to make 20c today. Still might duck down for a beach swim later
21
Ms Nova Tarzan. You Jane.
30
I think that he would be Cheetah if he was a bit more intelligent.
20
He’s ba-ack. Hey Tony what happened to that 38 degree record for Sydney in April you claimed here a couple of weeks ago? You never did admit that it was only 35.4 degrees, like all of your other warming fantasies. Temps not going anywhere. We DO deny.
21
According to the satellite record the lower troposphere T trend is falling outside the yellow 5% – 95% confidence range of the CMIP-5 climate model simulations, the recent El Nino not withstanding.
That is either good news or bad news depending on your preference, to many here it’s not news at all.
21
Also if there had not been a massive up-adjustment in the RSS trend after May 2015 it would have been well outside the model confidence range.
11
Cold in Northern Vic Tony .
21
Best to have head stuck in sand than up ones own ?? Rhymes with grass .
11
(…) In 1984, carbon dioxide levels were 344 ppm. Today 406ppm. (…)
ALL is balanced. All ! If there is more carbon dioxide there is more oxygen! Less carbon dioxide = less oxygen.
There is NO more or less water for billions of years. They only moved. For example: take a large plastic tarpaulin, spread it on the ground and throw water on it. Now, if you slide more or less bulky objects under, will create ‘mountains’ and: the water has moved between its elevations. If you move the volumes: the water will also move.
This is what happens and has arrived on Earth for billions of years. When America was stuck to Europe and Africa, there was still no Atlantic Ocean. Then, earthquakes, the water spread in the channel. Then America and Europe / Africa moved away, creating a vast lake, then a sea, then an ocean over the millennia.
If the water goes up somewhere, it’s only the fault that underwater or submarine earthquakes create mountains in the depths. Elevations that will become islands as soon as they emerge. Hence the rise in water levels whose volume (in liquid or ice form) has remained constant ever since.
————————
Every second, 1.6 million tons of rocks, sands, pebbles are moved and drained by the oceans and rivers of the planet, an erosion of 53 billion tons per year. In other words, soil erosion due to rivers and oceans accounts for 1,680 tons per second.
http://www.planetoscope.com/sols/1478-volume-de-roches-affecte-par-l-erosion-des-fleuves-et-oceans.html
30
???
2 May: EnvironmentalResearchLetters: Global predictability of temperature extremes
Abstract
Extreme temperatures are one of the leading causes of death and disease in both developed and developing countries, and heat extremes are projected to rise in many regions. To reduce risk, heatwave plans and cold weather plans have been effectively implemented around the world. However, much of the world’s population is not yet protected by such systems, including many data-scarce but also highly vulnerable regions…
Using both the NOAA and ECMWF weather forecast models, we develop global maps indicating a first approximation of the locations that are likely to benefit from the development of seasonal preparedness plans and/or short-term early warning systems for extreme temperature. The extratropics generally show both short-term skill as well as strong seasonality; in the tropics, most locations do also demonstrate one or both.
In fact, almost 5 billion people live in regions that have seasonality and predictability of heatwaves and/or coldwaves. Climate adaptation investments in these regions can take advantage of seasonality and predictability to reduce risks to vulnerable populations…READ ON
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aab94a/meta
10
It isn’t hard to figure out how to live in cold, or the heat, is it? We’ve been doing this for how many thousands of years? Do we need a special study to tell us to wear more clothes or a coat in the winter, stay inside in bad weather? Or to take the coat off in the summer, open the windows, maybe run a fan, or find a tree to sit under until the sun starts to set? And you rarely hear of hundreds – or any – Brazilians dying of a hot day – only people from, say, Glasgow, or Chicago. And it isn’t because the heat is so bad – it is because they can’t afford a fan or A/C.
What we need is reliable and cheap electricity so the interior of homes – houses, apartments, trailers, whatever the home may be – can be heated or cooled as needed without worry. People die in extreme weather/temperature (mostly the very old or very young) because they can’t afford the electricity or fuel to cool or heat their homes – and far more die because of cold than heat. (Tsunamis, hurricanes, blizzards, etc., aside.)
In the tropics there is a reason native peoples (and ex-pats) appear “lazy” and under-dressed – it’s too hot and humid in the middle of the day to wear much or do much other than sit around. It’s the newly arrived from colder climes who have the harsh learning curve – learn the rules or be miserable and sick – or die of heat-stroke. Ditto the far north and south, near the poles or on the tops of mountains – learn to dress appropriately and pay attention to when going outside is not a good idea, and pray the fuel holds out. It is a lot easier to die from the cold, we are not seals with nice layers of fat and fur. That’s why some learned to wear seal skins.
Those who live in areas where hot and cold seasons are the norm know how to prepare for each – and (usually) enjoy each season as well. Adapting a home/lifestyle to seasonal patterns isn’t a secret kept by mystic masters or difficult to figure out. Why is this such a big deal for some to understand? Ditto those who live in extreme cold or heat – dry or wet – it isn’t a secret or rocket science.
And beyond season there is the day/night swing of temps and cooling because of storms or cloud cover. Tropics, deserts, everywhere. In fact, the only places that regularly show a lack of temperature extremes are the poles – going from freezing to well below freezing is a change, sure, but it is still freezing (aka cold.)
I wonder if any of these writers/scientists have ever been outside for more than a few moments as they rush from building to building or car to office or across the hot tarmac at airports in tropical resorts?
10
not available for free, but am sure you will be missing nothing of importance once you read the Abstract:
1 May: EnvironmentalCommunication: Between Guilt and Obligation: Debating the Responsibility for Climate Change and Climate Politics in the Media
Authors: Senja Post, Katharina Kleinen-von Königslöw & Mike S. Schäfer
ABSTRACT
The “common but differentiated responsibility” of developed and developing countries to mitigate climate change is a core principle of international climate politics—but there is disagreement about what this “differentiated responsibility” amounts to. We investigate how newspapers in developed countries (Australia, Germany, United States) and emerging economies (Brazil, India) covered this debate during the UN climate summits in 2004, 2009, and 2014. Newspapers in both types of countries attributed more responsibility to developed than to developing countries. In line with social identity theory, however, media in developed countries attributed less causal responsibility (blame) to other developed countries than media in emerging economies. The latter countries’ media, in turn, attributed less responsibility to other developing countries than media in developed countries. At the same time, in line with the “differentiated responsibility”, media in developed countries attributed more responsibility to their own countries than media in emerging economies…
Funding
This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung (SNSF)) under [Grant number 100018-153651].
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17524032.2018.1446037?af=R&journalCode=renc20
10
1 May: Reuters: Icebergs could float to the rescue of Cape Town water crisis
by Tanisha Heiberg
Marine salvage experts are floating a plan to tug icebergs from Antarctica to South Africa’s drought-hit Cape Town to help solve the region’s worst water shortage in a century.
Salvage master Nick Sloane told Reuters he was looking for government and private investors for a scheme to guide huge chunks of ice across the ocean, chop them into a slurry and melt them down into millions of liters of drinking water.
“We want to show that if there is no other source to solve the water crisis, we have another idea no one else has thought of yet,” said Sloane, who led the refloating of the capsized Italian passenger liner Costa Concordia in 2014…
Cape Town-based Sloane said his team could wrap passing icebergs in fabric skirts to protect them and reduce evaporation. Large tankers could then guide the blocks into the Benguela Current that flows along the west coast of southern Africa…
A single iceberg “could produce about 150 million liters per day for about a year,” around 30 percent of the city’s needs, said Sloane, a director at the U.S. marine salvage firm Resolve Marine.
He said he was planning to hold a conference later this month to try and sell the $130 million project to city officials and investors. The city council was not immediately available for comment.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-safrica-drought-iceberg/icebergs-could-float-to-the-rescue-of-cape-town-water-crisis-idUKKBN1I11NF
10
Not new, but maybe could be better executed than past schemes to haul icebergs around. I thought I remembered a scheme to haul icebergs to San Francisco, but maybe had it confused with a South American haul. Which did work, at least for a little while.
It’s a long trip from Antarctica to S Africa, though.
https://books.google.com/books?id=fRJtB2MNdJMC&pg=PA525&lpg=PA525&dq=iceberg+towing+chile#v=onepage&q=iceberg%20towing%20chile&f=false
00
2 May: AP: Trump proposes easing oil, gas leasing restrictions in West
By MATTHEW BROWN
The Trump administration wants to ease restrictions on oil and gas leasing and other activities across a huge swath of the American West that were put in place to protect an imperiled bird.
The move involves conservation plans for greater sage grouse approved in 2015 under former President Barack Obama. Trump has vowed to increase U.S. energy production and open more lands to drilling.
Conservation groups critical of Trump’s energy policies warned Wednesday’s proposal could unravel a years-long effort to shore up the bird’s struggling population…
Sage grouse are ground-dwelling, chicken-sized birds known for an elaborate mating ritual in which males strut around breeding grounds with large, puffed-out air sacs protruding from their chests…
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/APFN_US_SAGE_GROUSE_ENERGY_LEASES?SITE=FLWIN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2018-05-02-19-12-12
no such concern from CAGW mob about birds when it comes to wind:
1 May: BattleboroReformer Vermont: Letter: Why are we afraid of wind power?
I was shocked by what I found on my recent trip to visit family in Denmark, and it is something that I hope all Vermonters will find out about…
Two times when the windmills were very close to the road I asked my hosts to pull off so that I could approach and hear the sound that the turbines produced, the subject of much controversy in Vermont. A stone’s throw away from the towers, I expected a loud and annoying noise, but found to my amazement that I could hear nothing but the wind itself. I asked the others in my family what they could hear and they experienced exactly what I did.
Moreover, one of my Danish relatives assured me that the killings of birds by these modern towers was negligible…
Now the question I have been asking myself is, why are some Vermonters fighting so hard against wind-produced electricity when the sound is not even noticeable and the rotation of the blades is so slow as to not present a threat to birds? Some argue that these people are swayed by the Koch Brothers and their ilk who want to continue the path to hell that is the continued use of fossil fuels leading us to global warming…
Rich Geidel,Putney
besides, we can always devise ways to get around the problem when it involves “wind”, but not fossil fuels!
3 May: KGW8: ‘Air dancers’ could protect eagles from wind turbines, OSU researchers say
Researchers at Oregon State University have come up with a colorful, and perhaps unusual, way to protect eagles from those huge winds turbines that dot our landscape.
by Keely Chalmers
Oregon is home to more than 1,000 wind turbines which offer a clean, green alternative to fossil fuel.
The problem: Studies have shown those huge turbine blades kill hundreds of thousands of birds every year. Many of those birds are endangered eagles.
“The speed at the tip of the blade is about 200 miles per hour, so it can be very dangerous for flying animals,” said Roberto Albertani, Boeing professor of mechanical engineering design at Oregon State University.
Here’s how their system works:
Special cameras are mounted on the wind turbines. When they detect a bird flying toward them, they kick into gear.
“The footage is streamed from the camera to a computer. That computer then runs an algorithm which allows for the detection of eagles in the air space,” said Will Maurer, a mechanical engineering graduate student.
If an endangered eagle is detected, the computer then triggers a mechanism to scare the bird away.
Albertani said finding something that would scare an eagle was not easy to do.
“It is very difficult to scare eagles when they are in flight, but it turns out eagles have kind of an aversion to human figures,” he said.
So the team is using giant inflatable tube characters, also known as air dancers, as the visual deterrents. The same ones you often see waving around at car dealerships.
Once the eagle flies away, the air dancers sink back down.
It’s a solution, the researchers say, will save eagle’s lives as wind energy grows…
Albertani said he’s already getting calls from wind energy companies interested in using the technology.
https://www.kgw.com/article/news/education/air-dancers-could-protect-eagles-from-wind-turbines-osu-researchers-say/283-548320501
00
I am assuming these “air dancer” are on the down wind side or they would be blown through the turbine.
20
2 May: ClimateChangeNews: Bonn morning brief: Mayday
By Megan Darby, Karl Mathiesen and Soila Apparicio
May Day in Bonn and this sleepy town in North Rhine-Westphalia is practically comatose…
The Talanoa Dialogue could be a springboard to stronger action on climate change, or just another talking shop. Here are the discussions to watch…
More than 400 submissions have been made, which give a flavour of the discussions to come. Come the COP24 climate summit in Katowice this December, these will bubble up to the political level.
Here are 11 of the key themes…
1. 1.5C v 2C
It may be academic, given emissions trends put us on course for 3-4C of warming, to note that there is still some ambiguity around the Paris Agreement temperature target.
Small island states cleave to the tougher 1.5C limit – essential, they say, to their survival. China, meanwhile, mentions only the 2C goal, noting development priorities such as energy access, food security and poverty eradication “could not be overridden” by climate targets.
The EU walks a line between them…
2. The blame game
It is particularly blatant in Saudi Arabia’s input on behalf of the Arab Group, which adds its own question: why are we here? Their answer, of course, is the historic emissions of industrialised economies, with no mention of the oil exporting countries profiting from their energy use. Despite being ranked as high income by the World Bank, Saudi Arabia harks back to its 1990s classification as a developing country…
China too emphasises the principle of “common but differentiated responsibility” – citing research by UK-headquartered NGO Oxfam to argue developed countries need to deliver more climate finance…
3. Money, money, money…
5. Passive aggression
The US government has not made a submission. Maybe they forgot?…
Despite president Donald Trump’s threat to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, the US is technically still in the deal and accountable for its promises…
6. Focus on fossils
One of the most targeted country-led submissions comes from Switzerland, Costa Rica, Finland, New Zealand and Sweden, making the case for scrapping fossil fuel subsidies…
More contentious, but gathering force, are policies to limit production of fossil fuels. The Stockholm Environment Institute outlines how blocking oil exploration, new coal mines and fuel pipelines can complement efforts to curb demand…
7. Eat your greens
How can we feed a growing population on a warming planet, while cutting the food sector’s greenhouse gas emissions?…
A kilo of beef generates 16-30 times the carbon dioxide of a kilo of tofu.
ProVeg International calls for policies to encourage a shift towards eating grains, pulses and vegetables instead. If the world went vegan, they claim it could slash food-based emissions 70% by 2050.
8. Have faith
The Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation reaches a similar conclusion on vegetarian eating, based on faith rather than statistics from UN reports.
“The insatiable greed of humanity is seriously damaging our precious Mother Earth,” it says…
Quakers add education of girls and family planning to the mix, an oblique reference to the strain population growth puts on efforts to secure the climate…
9. Price carbon
Others take a more pragmatic attitude: you can pollute as long as you pay for it.
The International Emissions Trading Association (Ieta) highlights the provision in the Paris Agreement for cross-border emissions trading, saying this can allow countries to meet their obligations more “cost-effectively” and raise ambition in the long run.
Today though, “polluting is too cheap”, says Carbon Market Watch, calling for a more inclusive discussion on how to price carbon…
10. Embrace clean technology
The International Renewable Energy Agency estimates $1.7 trillion of investment is needed between 2015 and 2030 to meet countries’ renewable energy targets…
11. Beware false saviours
The European Academies Science Advisory Council warns against excessive optimism, outlining some of the risks associated with negative emissions options…
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/05/02/bonn-morning-brief-mayday/
20
wrong headline and url. it should be:
1 May: ClimateChangeNews: Megan Darby: 11 key themes as countries take stock of Paris Agreement progress
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/05/01/11-key-themes-countries-take-stock-paris-agreement-progress/
20
wow!
3 May: ClimateChangeNews: German renewables meet 100% of power demand for second time ever
Preliminary data suggests that renewable supply alone met demand for about two and a half hours on a sunny, windy public holiday on Tuesday…
By Clean Energy Wire
Germany briefly covered 100% of its power demand with renewables on 1 January, another public holiday…
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/05/03/german-renewables-meet-100-power-demand-second-time-ever/
40
Can’t beat a KPI like that, imagine being able cook a piece of toast anytime you like.
10
huh?
2 May: Newcastle Herald: Zero carbon benefits ours to lose: Garnaut
by Karen Sweeney
Australia could be the world’s biggest beneficiary of the transition to a zero-carbon economy but the country is making hard work of the opportunity, Ross Garnaut says.
The leading economist, who forecast the advantages on offer a decade ago in his groundbreaking climate change report, says the benefits have only become clearer.
No other developed country in the world has the combination of natural resources for zero emissions energy that Australia has.
“We’re making rather heavy weather of utilising that huge natural advantage,” he told an emissions reduction summit in Melbourne…
There needs to be a comprehensive carbon price, incentives for innovation, compensation for financial system inadequacies and an institution for long-term financing.
While some of those are in place, all are needed for Australia to become a low-cost country of the low-carbon world economy.
That in turn will make Australia a natural exporter of old and new energy products and a natural location for businesses using intensive energy.
“It’s there for us to lose. Australia has the super power of the low carbon world economy, let’s hope that we don’t actually continue to lose it,” he said.
https://www.theherald.com.au/story/5377931/zero-carbon-benefits-ours-to-lose-garnaut/
10
Always temps going up. Not down. Ms Nova too busy about pelectricity industry to notice. And she needs a lot of electrical appliance. She never set foot in okaces like Penrith today. Too warm fir heroutside.
28
Tunnel vision. Appropriate to those
who do not wish to understand. Context’s
the thing, naychur’s complex inter-actions,
human-politico logic of situations.
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Hey Adolf, the only thing hot in Penrith at the moment is there footy team
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oops their footy team doh
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who is the nastier? Parkinson or McKibben?
3 May: RenewEconomy: Giles Parkinson: Malcolm Turnbull has become a de-facto climate denier
Prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has been delivered two home truths this week about his failure to act on climate change, and his refusal to tackle his party’s right-wing ideologues.
The first was a speech, more a thinly disguised lecture, from visiting France president Emmanuel Macron, who eviscerated Turnbull in front of a big audience at the Sydney Opera House on Tuesday night…
The second moment came the next day, at Kirribilli House, and again in the company of Macron, at the signing of a deal between Sanjeev Gupta, arguably one of the country’s leading industrialists, and the head of French renewable group Neoen.
The deal was for a solar farm to supply Gupta’s steel plant in Victoria, and so dramatically reduce its costs, and the message to Turnbull could not have been any clearer…
here is now no doubt that Turnbull’s refusal to act on climate change, and his refusal to embrace Australia’s renewable energy riches, is driven by his Faustian bargain with the far right that both denies the science of climate change, and is sworn to defend coal…
Yet what were the major policy initiatives of the Turnbull government in the days before the Macron visit? Two programs that highlight its willingness to spend money to “adapt” to the impacts of the climate change that much of the government insists is not happening.
First was the $500 million to be spent on the Great Barrier Reef…
Why do they need new species of coral to be able to cope with warmer waters? Climate change of course. What are we doing about climate change? Not much.
Ditto the announcement a day earlier from agriculture minister David Littleproud about an agreement with state ministers to help farmers adapt to climate change.
Why was this needed? Because the climate is changing. What are we doing about it? Not much…
Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org…visited the reef last weekend as part of his latest tour of Australia.
“It was a weird feeling being up on the reef and reading news that the government was going to save the reef by not doing anything about the problem that the reef is actually facing. It was quite disorientating,” McKibben told RenewEconomy.
“It’s like coming across someone who has been mugged in a dark alley and you offer them a cholesterol test. It doesn’t address the problem.”
McKibben laments the fact that all around the world, nearly every leader – apart from Trump, who doesn’t care – wants to be perceived as doing something about the environmental problems we face.
“But they refuse to do the things that might actually help,” and this is despite the fact that right now – as Gupta and Neoen pointed out to Turnbull on Tuesday – it would actually be quite easy to achieve significant emissions reductions, given the falling cost of renewables and the emergence of battery storage…
McKibben: “For years we listened to people saying (renewable energy) was too expensive, then it was too unreliable. Now it’s cheap, and Musk has built the biggest freaking battery in the world, and it’s working like a charm…
The problem is that it needs to happen a lot quicker, and the small bump of momentum that occurred with the signing of the Paris climate treaty has been squashed by the election of Trump.
“One of the overlooked problems with Trump is that he sets the bar so low by being such a grotesque buffoon, and that makes it easier for others to look statesmanlike.”…
“Turnbull knows everything there is not know about climate change, but doesn’t do anything about it. I don’t know if that if that makes him worse than Trump or better.”…
It begs an interesting question. Has Malcolm Turnbull, he who crossed the floor to vote against his party’s bill to scrap the carbon price, become a de-facto climate denier?
Not a denier of the science, because it would seem he accepts that, but a denier of the need to act…
https://reneweconomy.com.au/malcolm-turnbull-has-become-a-de-facto-climate-denier-83415/
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Amazing. All beach growth occurring in areas already overloaded with sand: Australia, Sahara, Arabia et al.
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Gee, they missed a lot of good beaches in NSW and the 90 Mile Beach has disappeared.
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thanks for including me
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1 t 3 mm per year X 30 years involves 30 to 90 mm per year.
1 mm = 4/100 of one inch, so 30 years increases sea level by one to three inches, perhaps a bit more.
That extra earth surface water would have favored only the tiniest fish. (however, big fish eat little fish, and some little fish, if not eaten and have the right DNA also grow)
Is it possible to get a grant for this climate change study?
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For those of you that understand this stuff better than I do and are willing to respond, why is the distribution of “sandier” beaches near/around the tropic of cancer and capricorn, and the “rockiest” beaches are nearest to the poles and the equator??
Does it have to do with ocean currents, and surface winds??
Thank you
Scott
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“Presumbly the paradox of how seas can rise unprecedentedly fast at the same time as beaches are growing will be explained through global currents shifting ominously due to rising CO2 levels.”
What if the way global data is handled results in everything growing or the possibility that everything is growing. https://youtu.be/oJfBSc6e7QQ
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