New finding: Phytoplankton are much bigger players in CO2 levels than realized

Mysterious CO2 activity in New Zealand shows Phytoplankton at work

Tom Quirk both finds a mystery and solves it.

Emiliania huxleyi coccolithophore | Alison Taylor.

Carbon dioxide is a “well mixed gas” yet CO2 levels over New Zealand start rising there each year in March — a whole month before we see it CO2 start to rise over Tasmania. Air over Cape Grim in Tasmania will be blown by the prevailing wind over to New Zealand about five days later. So these two stations should be showing similar numbers throughout the year. Instead some process in NZ is pushing up CO2 early. Levels also peak earlier in New Zealand, and by September, in early spring, some process around NZ is pulling the CO2 out of the sky. Both NZ and Tasmania share large forested areas, so that wouldn’t explain the difference.

Quirk wondered if it had something do with phytoplankton, so he searched for satellite data that measures chlorophyll in the ocean and shows, voila, that there is major activity right around the Baring Head station at the same time as CO2 levels are falling. Indeed, the station is smack in the middle of a mass phytoplankton bloom.

He […]

June 2nd, 2019 | Tags: , , , , | Category: Biology, Global Warming, Marine | Print This Post Print This Post | |

The soul-searching continues: ABC finds some Greens in election denial

Two weeks later, and the excuses are still flowing.

The left lost because: a/ their policies were stupidly ambitious and unfundable, or 2/ Tasmanian greens went too far north.

The ABC says “2”.

If only Bob Brown had got some Queenslanders to do the Adani protest instead, Bill Shorten would be PM:

Environment leaders reflect on their role in the ‘climate election’

Michael Slezak, ABC Enviroment and Science Ad Writer:

Like many Australians, green groups were surprised by the federal election result.

Underlying much of their campaigning was the belief that the majority of voters wanted stronger climate action.

But the results did not seem to bear that out.

Did environmental groups fail to read public sentiment? And did they, in fact, help the Coalition to victory?

It’s all so easy in hindsight:

One of Australia’s leading social researchers, Rebecca Huntley, said the Stop Adani Convoy strategy was bound to fail.

“People from outside the area coming in — that just pisses people off,” said Dr Huntley, who heads up Vox Populi Research.

ABC Staff can always find someone to say what the journalists […]

June 2nd, 2019 | Tags: , | Category: Global Warming, Media-matters | Print This Post Print This Post | |

Weekend Unthreaded

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10 out of 10 based on 8 ratings

June 2nd, 2019 | Tags: | Category: Uncategorized | Print This Post Print This Post | |

18 years of Renewable Energy Target means an expensive and unstable grid, and still 75% coal

A big new study by electricity grid nerds (and I mean that in the nicest possible way) shows that after all the money and pain of 20 years of forced transition Australia’s electricity has shifted from 85% coal powered to 75% coal powered, which cost billions and as a bonus, made electricity more expensive and unstable. We drove out some brown coal, but swapped it for black coal. Instead of ousting coal power, the extra solar and wind power replaced some gas and hydro.

The authors are genuine independent experts, and the report is incredibly detailed — so this is rare — but still suffers from serious drawbacks:

The team doesn’t question the need for an artificial expensive transition. Almost all the problems they describe are caused by government policies that task our grid with changing the climate as well as producing cheap and reliable electricity. In a grid being ruined by inept policy, the implied solutions almost all involve more regulation and government policy. If our gas prices are too high we could ban sales overseas, but then we lose the export income. The left hand steals from the right. The free market solution is to use another fuel, […]

June 1st, 2019 | Tags: , , | Category: Big-Government, Cost, Free markets, Global Warming, Renewable | Print This Post Print This Post | |
 
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