“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. – J Robert Oppenheimer.
Paul,
Your article on Reykjavik prompted me to look at many arctic stations for which I had stored data last year. May i use the comparison figure in your article in mine? I will be putting it on TheNoTricksZone. I didn’t happen to store Raykjavik.
Hello Mr Homewood,
Apologies for ‘butting in’ here but I do not know how to contact you otherwise. I wish to donate but I refuse to use PayPal (long before their recent ructions with the Free Speech Union!)
Can you please let me know what other methods are available?
Many thanks,
Robin Humphreys robinhumphreys@btconnect.com
a.k.a. devonblueboy
Paul, have you heard of the ‘Trusted News Initiative’ founded by BBC in 2019 and now includes Google, facebook, twitter, and others including Aussie ABC.
There is an anti trust case (link below) due to them suppressing ‘news’ they disagree with. So it doesn’t matter what you say here the rest of the world will never hear it!
Have you ever seen or created – or do you know where the data is to do it – a scatter plot of power generated by wind (or % of capacity) against winter temperature? I assume the dynamics could well be different in summer.
The whole idea of a power generation technology which does not actually produce power when it is most needed is fascinating.
I have created this site http://www.ukpowergeneration.info/ which shows demand compared to all power sources. My next step is too add CET as a clickable option to the graphs
I combined power output and temperature into plots which clearly show that you get more demand for power on cold winter days, but you also get less power from wind on colder days – in some cases close to zero.
Great stuff, always useful. Have you seen the NIPCC site? This is not spam, I’ve been reading along and forwarding your pertinent (and often “pert”) questions to my AGW zombie friends. NIPCC generally has some pretty interesting links along similar lines culled from science publications. Great that there are places to find polite but serious questions about catastrophic AGW.
ClimateDepot.com links to your site’s Feb 8 blog. If I may, please allow me to point one other largely unreported facet of AGW, namely the baseless accusation that skeptic climate scientists are paid by the fossil fuel industry to lie about the issue. I wrote an exclusive for ClimateDepot nearly two years ago titled “Climate Depot Exclusive: “Smearing Skeptic Scientists: What did Gore know and when did he know it?” ( http://ow.ly/hC4C6 ), and the rest of my pieces on this narrow topic are here: “The ’96-to-present smear of skeptic scientists” http://tinyurl.com/cjn9tv6
Folks like me having no science background at all can contribute to a wider understanding of the politics surrounding the issue, at least.
Is there a “tutorial” for lay people (albeit with an appreciation for science) that explores the AGW/CAGW controversy? My thought is an easily followed map that, step by step, follows the scientific method and general principles. One that shows how the science has been corrupted through each step of the scientific method and associated principles and continues to be supported with unfounded assertions and logical fallacies. Perhaps a tutorial that has citations and proof statements to support the assertions. I have a big file of papers/blogs etc on various positions on AGW/CAGW, I can grasp much of it but have limited capability to discuss it other than in generalities. Does such a tutorial exist or can someone write it up–again for the lay person with a grasp of scientific method.
Regards and Thanks
From the scientific point of view, the debate seems to revolve around two main issues:-
1) What will feedbacks be?
2) What will be the effects of a slightly warmer planet?
There are certainly wide disagreements between scientists themselves about both these questions, but I am not aware of any write up that summarises everything.
I recommend http://appinsys.com/globalwarming/GW_History.htm, UN and UNEP websites, and the Club of Rome 1991 report “The First Global Revolution” as precursors to science. A step by step “procedure” to demonstrate how the scientific method would be used by researchers to determine the cause(s) of an observed climate change is a great idea, and an excellent way to highlight the contrast between scientific research and the propaganda we’re being inundated with . A compendium of the various methods that have been used to distort and misrepresent the science would be helpful, too.
The most important issue in the AGW/CAGW controversy is that the concept that anthropogenic CO2 was affecting climate was proposed as a method to achieve political and economic goals. The corruption of the science and unfounded assertions and logical fallacies Ebeni mentions, as well as the severe weather events; earthquakes, typhoons and hurricanes of unusual magnitude, created or exacerbated by HAARP ELF and chemical dumps (Chemtrails) shown in satellite photos and radar, are essential means of achieving these goals. The major controversy is based on the fact that AGW isn’t science. Japan’s gosat satellite (greenhouse gas observing satellite) in 2009 showed that most CO2 was evolved from the ocean, sparsely populated vegetated areas in Africa, the Middle East, China, and northeast Asia, titled something like “need for economic justice from third world nations”.
Feedbacks alone are an issue, since nearly all feedback in natural systems is negative and maintains stability in the system, and IPCC predictions unaccountably assume positive feedback.
The problem from any field geology or archaeology scientist’s point of the current science of climate appears to make no serious effort to determine what the geohistorical effects of similar or greater changes in the past were. There is quite literally no reliable empirical, field evidence that CO2 has any long term correlation to planetary temperature. At shorter, but still geological scales of time, the field evidence supports only the idea that warming oceans degas CO2. Warmer oceans CAUSE higher atmospheric CO2.
Also, and worse, no effort is made to determine how patterns observable in the past, as reflected in geological data, would be seen in the present. Throughout the last quarter of the Pleistocene it is plain that CO2 lags marine temperature – or at least d-O18 changes – by several centuries. The implication is that if this pattern continued to the present, current increases in CO2 are due to events that took place during the Medieval Warm Period. We may very well have an effect on carbon isotope balances without significantly altering the efficiency of the carbon sinks that have been operating since life appeared on the planet.
Those are important considerations, but I believe that the central issue is one of attribution, or whether there actually exists a distinct anthropogenic signal which can be isolated from natural variation. The sole argument for the anthropogenic signal comes from the models which ‘replicate’ the warming in the presence of CO2, but show a ‘flat’ line without. But the reason the line is flat is because of the working assumption that natural variation is random, not cyclic, and so the perturbations in individual model runs are smoothed out over the ensemble.
I don’t doubt that anthropogenic CO2 is having some input, but the question remains about whether it is significant to the overall result.
Ebeni, I my page “Observatorio ARVAL – Climate Change; The cyclic nature of Earth’s climate”, at http://www.oarval.org/ClimateChangeBW.htm I begin with:
After the alarm caused by Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” in 2006, these are my findings about the drivers of Earth’s global climate.
I try to present this science in this long page.
It is all about science published by well-known scientists, with links to the original works.
As you can see below, I’m not a climate scientist, far from it. That’s why I had to do this research; To find out what happened, what is happening and maybe what could most probably happen. I hope you’ll find it interesting.
Andres Valencia
Electronics Engineer, Solid State Physics
New Anthony Watts Interview Just Published: Climate Change without Catastrophe (News Tip)
Dear Shub,
I just wanted to send you a quick mail to let you know that we have just conducted a very interesting interview with the well known figure in the climate debate Anthony Watts.
It’s a very interesting chat and whether you agree or disagree with his comments I thought you and your readers would find some value in taking a look
A few of the topics we discussed are:
• The difference between “global warming” and “climate change”
• Why CO2 is partially responsible but oversold
• Why recent major weather events cannot be linked to CO2
• Why we should be more worried about another ice age
• Why carbon taxes won’t have any effect on the whims of Mother Nature
• How the climate debate has taken on religious proportions
• Why the Keystone protests are all for show
• Why Mother Nature will be the final arbiter of truth
• What we should and shouldn’t be doing to address global warming
• Why “climate change” has become a favorite bogeyman
• Why scientifically we’ve only scratched the surface of climate change
Be careful posting anything about The Environment Agency (Wrong Type of Rain etc.) – they’ve got a large calibre scatter gun to deal with uppity bloggers.
“Because if you look at satellite data at the top of the atmosphere, you clearly see we have an excess of energy, more energy going into our planetary system then what is going out.”
comment by a physicist quoted in a post on the NoTricksZone blog under the post title; Puzzled Schellnhuber: “Not At All Surprised” Short Term Models Are Wrong…But Insists Long-Term Models Are Correct!” Would you have any comments.
There is certainly much debate about whether they are right or not, but I think it shows just how far away scientists are in being able to measure and understand such things.
But the bottom line is that if Scnellhuber is right, the added heat would be measurable at the surface, which it is not.
“The more I look at climate issues, the more I realise that we cannot always rely on what the climate establishment tell us.
I hope that, in my own small way, I can help to put that right.”
Well, Paul, that’s an admirable goal, but I have a couple of questions.
1) Who are you – what are your credentials?
2) Have you published anything in any peer-reviewed scientific publication?
3) What is your academic background?
4) What professional certifications, if any, do you possess?
Don’t take this as a personal attack. It’s just that if I was going to have brain surgery, I’d really want to know that the surgeon who was going to perform the surgery was actually qualified to cut on me. It is no different with respect to the search for expertize in any field, for instance, in Climate science. And so I think you owe us a little information on your background.
Thanks for the question, Joseph, and I appreciate the reasons for it.
However, I deal in facts. If you think I have made any factual errors, or misrepresented any issues, I would be delighted to discuss them with you.
As I am sure you would agree, Climate Change is an enormously important area of public policy and debate, and I believe that the more facts that are out in the public arena, then the better.
One more point, and perhaps the most important. I always encourage people to do what I have done, and check the facts for themselves, rather than simply believe what they are told. So I usually try to provide links etc for readers to do just that.
Paul: here is an interesting discussion I had with a few folks tonight.
The hottest year in the U.S. was 1921. 1934 was second. The average temperature for the 48 contiguous states in 1921 was 55.6°F. To confirm this one can read the first paragraph of THE WEATHER OF 1940 IN THE UNITED STATES (W.W. Reed) or THE WEATHER OF 1942 IN THE UNITED STATES (J.L. Baldwin).
The average temperature in 1934 was 55.1°F. The original temperature measurements published each month for each state for those years by the U.S. Weather Bureau will add up correctly.
BTW… Two-thirds of the state record high temperatures in the U.S. were recorded before 1955. More than half were recorded from 1921-1934. Few have been recorded since 2003. Yes, it is warming today, but it also did so during the first half of the last century… and at about the same rate
OK. Here are some numbers. The first column shows weighted monthly temperatures for the 48 contiguous states (no Hawaii or Puerto Rico) derived from the original 1921 US Weather Bureau monthly reports… the Tables in the Condensed Climatological Summary. Example: http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/049/mwr-049-12-0684.pdf
The average temperature (°F) for each state is given in these official reports. Only the contiguous 48 are used. The second column gives the temperatures from the NCDC-NOAA 1895-2009 US database where, presumably, the same historical information is given for each state, each month. The third column is the amount that the NCDC has lowered each temperature.
JAN 36.0 33.8 2.2
FEB 38.5 35.9 2.6
MAR 49.5 47.5 2.0
APR 53.7 52.2 1.5
MAY 61.9 60.5 1.4
JUN 72.1 70.8 1.3
JUL 76.1 75.3 0.8
AUG 73.0 71.6 1.4
SEP 69.0 67.7 1.3
OCT 56.4 54.9 1.5
NOV 44.7 42.9 1.8
DEC 36.7 34.5 2.2
YEAR 55.6 53.9 1.6
Note that the annual average for 1921 has been lowered by 1.6°F. This lowering has the net effect of removing the year 1921 from its position as the warmest year on record in the US… as the Weather Bureau observed in several annual reports I cited earlier. The same pattern of lowering can be found in other years. I’ve checked 1934, 1938, 1940. All of the original Weather Bureau temperatures have been systematically changed and all have been lowered. The winter months have been lowered more the summer months…every time….WHY?
“The winter months have been lowered more the summer months…every time….WHY?” Lowering summer month temperatures creates the impression of recent warming. Lowing historical winter temps supports the alarmist sea-level rise, catastrophic flooding meme by making current winter temps appear unusually warm, supporting predictions of a trend toward unprecedented glacier and polar ice melts. My guess, anyway.
There is not much actual physical facts being used in climate science.
They just have been following temperature data for the last 150 years and tweaking in garbage and calling it a model.
Facts are completely irrelevant.
Hunting for any pattern to call a trend in a system that is in completely unique every moment and every place. Never to find that exact pattern. All of this is irrelevant to the many processes and material differences in play on a rotating planet that has many different velocities with many different pressure differences on an ORB.
Any mathematical equation is pure horseshit as they all assume a single point that does not interact or move. PI(3.14159) was never designed for motion and every rotation after the first distorts due to the equation being open ended.
We have NEVER measured distances of a fantastic amount of planetary data that gives some understanding to how this planet actually mechanically operates. The gas of nitrogen being 80% interacts against water vapor and does so much more to moving water vapor in creating snowflakes and keeping water vapor separated and changes density with the cold.
In simple terms…
Our planet is getting colder due to the suns inactivity which gives off great amounts of material that our atmosphere has lost catching in the last decade to insulate the planet with the gases by the thickness. We are in constant loss of material including water vapor over 4.5 billion years.
There is vast amounts material and questions to understand by pure facts. All the answers ARE here, just our scientists have gone on a different direction and will protect the garbage to the bitter end and keep the citizens ignorant.
Dear Paul,
1) thanks for your site which has become my 1st visit on most days, usurping WUWT, mainly due to your UK emphasis.
2) it may be my workstation today, but I note that comments aren’t available and also you appear to have lost your google ranking from my search protocol in that I do not get your site offered when searching on ” not a lot of..” where previously those four words initiated a direct link being offered. Hmmm – do these indicate some google-filtering? Could be worth a check.
3) I live in Morayshire, Scotland. The Scottish Government have adopted even more banzai climate madness policies than their UK/English & Welsh counterparts. Should you ever have time, it would be interesting to have a column or posting dealing with Scottish issues – especially as the looming referendum draws near.
4) Happy New Year!
Yz
Dave
Paul,
You might be interested in the text on page 156 of the linked document (in the public domain) that talks about the effect of climate change on aircraft safety. Extract: However, greater weather changes are anticipated as a result of global warming, with lightning implications.
Paul – your post about the EADT article I tipped you yesterday has created a bit of an opportunity. One of my friends has emailed the editor and linked to your article. He particularly challenged the use of “Carbon” pointing out that it was a meaningless term, that they should have used CO2, and how this was only a tiny percentage of the atmosphere.
He’s just had a response from the editor inviting him to submit a reply or article, and thinks you would be able to produce a far better answer than he could. As I can’t find a direct contact on your site, would you be good enough to email me (at the address on this post) and say if you are prepared to help? If you are, I will put you in touch with my friend and he can pass on the correspondence so far.
Paul – As you have posted regarding Kevin Anderson and Tyndall recently you may be interested in an appearance last night on an Irish television programme, Eco Eye. I think you can view the RTE player in the UK (I could in Australia, but it may be country specific. Here I can view theChannel 4 player but not the BBC player, other than for radio. The URL is http://www.rte.ie/player/ie/show/10244927/
The other main interviewee was one John Gibbons, who has earned a mention at Bishop Hill. I’ve earlier this week posted at http://oneillp.wordpress.com/2014/01/13/gibbons/ on a blatant misrepresentation of IPCC projections by him, and by An Taisce, the Irish National Trust, which has as President an IPCC AR4 lead author and review editor, who has, in my opinion, unwisely said nothing. As for John Gibbons it is nothing unexpected – I filled in someone else recently that the Irish Times allows columnists such as John Gibbons write pseudo-scientific nonsense and rarely prints corrections or dissenting opinions. (To be fair, John Gibbons does also sometimes make sense, although on those occasions I usually find myself checking if I’ve missed something. Surprisingly, he is prepared to support a nuclear option when this in anathema for virtually all Irish ‘environmentalists’. He is also thorough
when it comes to ‘disappearing’ blog posts which have become embarrassing by revealing a very poor scientific understanding, although he has not been able to purge these when reproduced elsewhere. It may help to judge the state of Irish Climate Science when you know that one of his past gems (“First, the science bit. Global average temperatures have increased by 0.8 degrees since industrialisation began. This translates to a world that has
become 6.5 per cent warmer”) is still carried without comment on the website of Professor Sweeney’s ICARUS (Irish Climate Analysis & Research Units) unit at NUI Maynooth!
H Paul
I noticed when reading your article about the bad weather in England on Anthony’s blog that
in the comments section you referred to a blogger by the name of Carbon500 who had a comment regarding your article. I would like to get in touch with this person re this as I think
he could help me in relation to ongoing battle I am having with the local FOE group. Of course
only let me have contact details if he is willing to let you release them.
Many thanks
Regards
John Craige
Your site is fascinating – thank you for all your work, and for my education.
I have a question about the recent UK rainfall articles you’ve written using Met Office data.
The articles are very clear as always, but can the data tell us anything about rainfall intensity, by which I mean lots of rain falling in a very short time?
This is always the response to the argument that rainfall totals are not all that exceptional. It’s also where the Met Office seem (to me) to be going (i.e. that the new improved models show increasing and more intense regional weather effects).
Clearly the effects of a given total of rainfall will be very different if spread over three months rather than one, but presumably a really wet year like 1929/30 must have had rainfall at least as intense as we’re now experiencing?
Is it just as simple as saying that “rainfall intensity” is directly related to the amount of rainfall in a period, therefore that it cannot really be varying as is incessantly claimed? Flash floods and local geography (Boscastle/Seaton) excepted of course.
The Met Office do keep rainday data, so you can work out daily averages. However, this only starts in 1961, which coincided with an unusually dry couple of decades. Therefore, any trends are unreliable.
I did do an exercise that used daily rainfall data on the England & Wales series, that records it since 1931. The exercise showed quite clearly the dry interlude (with fewer heavy rainfall days), and suggested that the last decade was no different to 1931-60.
Hi Paul
Had a couple of thoughts that I can’t find the answer – wondered if you might know!
1. What is the cost to maintain a wind turbine?
2. I am assuming that wind turbines are subsidized in a similar manner as solar pv and that the subsidy only lasts for 25 years. At the end of that time the wind “farmer” I presume, get the going rate per kwHour at wholesale rates (solar pv get 4.5p per kw). If so what is the actual average output of a turbine and will it be sufficient to cover the maintenance costs?
3. I just have a vision of lots of broken wind turbines in 25 years time that have become uneconomic to be fixed and that the wind farmers will just abandon them and build another turbine nearby to get the green subsidy again for another 25 years.
The subsidy for wind turbines will be for 15 yrs, under the new strike price contracts.
I don’t know mtce costs, but such marginal costs would bge fairly low – most of the cost is the upfront capital cost.
In theory, the planning process should ensure that they are properly decommissioned, but in practice what will happen if the operator just walks away?
Paul, I know your beat is weather history, so this is “off topic” a bit. I ran across information about a remarkable Englishman, a veteran of World War I. I believe I read he was England’s most decorated solider in that war. Being from the states, perhaps is why I have never heard of William Coltman before. Have you? Its just interesting. Here a couple links to biographical material. I didn’t see any books.
I do appreciate your work. No conversation about weather or climate is even coherent without a firm grasp of past observations. Its preposterous to model the future without apprehending the past.
Have been following your blog for some time now and have recommended it to numerous people.
I wonder whether you might be interested in this article discussing the potential impact of climate change on the medical profession and what their ethical response should be. I came across this in the Student BMJ (my daughter is in her third year) and here is an online link:
You need to register (for free) to read the full article.
This is a good example of the way climate change has insinuated itself into every thread of discourse in modern life and is described as fact by someone who clearly has no knowledge of the subject he is pontificating on but is driven by the collective groupthink that pervades this topic.
Doctors and nurses have enough to worry and should (and probably do already given lack of comments) ignore exhortations to take part in a phoney war on climate change.
In researching the recent Facebook psychological experiment scandal I came across this article about filter bubbles:
Nothing really surprising but in combination with the fact that Facebook have been manipulating the bubble to see the effects (without our knowledge or consent) one quickly realises the potential ramifications in terms of its misuse being able to influence what we think, buy and more scarily, vote.
Clearly none of us can escape from this if we spend any time on the internet and it does help to explain why a dangerous meme like CAGW takes hold so perniciously. A little depressing but I do wonder whether like the butterfly effect, there might sometime soon be a chaotic switch which consigns that meme to the dustbin of failed ideas. One can only hope!
I continue to share your posts with family, friends and colleagues but with little feedback. It would be interesting to know what influence your other readers have in this respect? I suspect several of my “friends” have already set their Facebook filters to quietly hide my posts!
I realise how old this comment is, but I read it just as I post the exact same thing on another site. I have tried, and now do not bother mostly, to engage friends and relations in this topic, but none has even the slightest interest, not even my own children at University.
Ok, so this website of yours is filled with information, but who, other than those that have an interest, will read it?
How do we convince people to even give a damn? Those that ignore my queries, have no interest in the other side either, it is just utter apathy for the whole subject.
AGW (or climate change as it is now) is such an influencing topic at high levels of world Government, but generates almost no interest in ordinary people.
How can we get people to care, one way or the other. I really don’t mind, so long as they choose.
Hi, an old reply to your reply! I have been concerned about this for some time and have unfortunately developed a “certain” reputation amongst my family and friends. I have had more success recently with some as the fraud has become more widespread. The issues of diesel pollution, steel plants being closed, wind farms springing everywhere despite local opposition and the sacking of Phillipe Verdier has been useful issues to bring out the general point. All these things appeal to people even if they don’t care about politics and the erosion of democracy that is required to support this fraud. I have “converted” a few people but you have to proselytise hard and be incredibly thick skinned.
I have developed something that could be of interest. It’s a way of doing temperature trend analysis that neatly avoids all the data manipulations so much discussed recently. I have built an Excel workbook for this method, and have done a study of Kansas US in order to prove the concept and the tool.
At this point I need someone with a skeptical mind to critique what I have done. If you are willing I can email you the Kansas workbook and you can see if it stands up to scrutiny.
I have started building a Canada workbook with this template, but there are many stations, and it will take time. I also want to verify that I am on the right track before making the full effort.
I can also send a text document explaining the rationale for temperature trend analysis.
Earlier this week the BBC website carried a piece by David Shukman on ‘the pause’ – as I recall, it was notable insomuch as not entirely discounting natural cycles as playing a role. It was at least questioning which surprised me given the BBC’s biased policy on the subject of anything to do with climate change. Anyway – having only initially skimmed through the article I returned to it the following day to find that it had vanished. Did you see it or did anyone else see it or was I dreaming or is it another example of BBC censorship at its ugliest?
Private Eye has a good cartoon this fortnight on p24. A dog team labelled Arctic Ice Survey, is driven by a man crying “Mush!”
You could post it. I can’t.
you may be interested in this link, commentary on the “landmark” deal between the US and China, which I had understood not to be that significant reading between the lines. However, this chap thinks it is a real step towards saving the world:
You would have thought an academic could have taken the trouble to come up with something similar to your analysis, it doesn’t bode well for our educational system.
Paul:
Had an interesting real-world demonstration of UHI yesterday. Was driving south from Green Bay, Wisconsin USA in a snow squall, temps just below freezing. Hit Milwaukee, approx. population 1 million, snow turned to light mist – temps just above freezing. Kept going same highway south of Milwaukee, snow squall again. hmm.
Some of your favourites here Paul: steam cooling image, “carbon” emission, comparing their new equation to models, no hint of reality creeping in anywhere as far as I can tell.
I think I need to cancel my subscription to this idiotic publication before I blow a gasket.
At a friend’s invitation in our climate change debate, I am reading Kathatrine Hayhoe’s “A Climate for Change” and wonder if you can point me to a good (therefore fair) review of it. Thank you.
My recommendation would be to not take anything she says on trust, but to check it out yourself. In particular, be very wary when she uses the 1960’s or 70’s as her basepoint for trends and comparisons
Thanks, Paul. I (a layperson re climate studies) intend to read carefully and check what I can. I think I followed links to you regarding her Figure 14 “Carbon Dioxide and Temperature: An Unnatural High” (in the glossy sheets tipped in halfway through the book). it gets hammered by critics for minimizing (I guess) both temperature and CO2 highs some seem to know of within the last 6000 years (the span of her Figure). If you can point me to a more accurate historical reconstruction of those, I’d be grateful.
Ice core studies in Greenland are also quite clear about much warmer periods then, and more recently. Indeed, the 19thC was probably the coldest period there since the Ice Age
For a long time I’ve been concerned about the scientific method used in climate science (and indeed all endeavours that aim to call themselve sciences but are not.) Rather than comment myself, here are some relevant quotes from probably the greatest philosopher of science in the 20th century, Karl Popper:
“Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.”
“True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.”
“But the secret of intellectual excellence is the spirit of criticism ; it is intellectual independence. And this leads to difficulties which must prove insurmountable for any kind of authoritarianism. The authoritarian will in general select those who obey, who believe, who respond to his influence. But in doing so, he is bound to select mediocrities. For he excludes those who revolt, who doubt, who dare to resist his influence. Never can an authority admit that the intellectually courageous, i.e. those who dare to defy his authority, may be the most valuable type. Of course, the authorities will always remain convinced of their ability to detect initiative. But what they mean by this is only a quick grasp of their intentions, and they will remain for ever incapable of seeing the difference.”
― Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Volume 1 : The Spell of Plato
“The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific, and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know; our knowledge of our ignorance. For this indeed, is the main source of our ignorance – the fact that our knowledge can be only finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.”
“The game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game.”
“In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable: and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality.”
― Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery
“The discovery of instances which confirm a theory means very little if we have not tried, and failed, to discover refutations. For if we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmation, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories. In this way it is only too easy to obtain what appears to be overwhelming evidence in favour of a theory which, if approached critically, would have been refuted.”
― Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism
“With the idol of certainty (including that of degrees of imperfect certainty or probability) there falls one of the defences of obscurantism which bar the way of scientific advance. For the worship of this idol hampers not only the boldness of our questions, but also the rigour and the integrity of our tests. The wrong view of science betrays itself in the craving to be right; for it is not his possession of knowledge, of irrefutable truth, that makes the man of science, but his persistent and recklessly critical quest for truth.”
― Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery
“We all have an unscientific weakness for being always in the right, and this weakness seems to be particularly common among professional and amateur politicians. But the only way to apply something like scientific method in politics is to proceed on the assumption that there can be no political move which has no drawbacks, no undesirable consequences. To look out for these mistakes, to find them, to bring them into the open, to analyse them, and to learn from them, this is what a scientific politician as well as a political scientist must do. Scientific method in politics means that the great art of convincing ourselves that we have not made any mistakes, of ignoring them, of hiding them, and of blaming others from them, is replaced by the greater art of accepting the responsibility for them, of trying to learn from them, and of applying this knowledge so that we may avoid them in future.”
― Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism
Linked to the manipulation of the climate change agenda is the need for its supporters (now including all meteorological services and nearly all politicians) to convince the public of its supposed impact. Over the last year or two (at least in the UK) I’ve noticed an escalation in the language used in weather bulletins. Two examples spring to mind: “Weatherbombs” and “Embedded Thunderstorms,” both of which have connotations with terrorism, and lead to the thought: “Who or what is responsible?”
Paul, The Canadian Newspaper, the globe and mail, has an informative article re the honest volunteers across Canada who record temperatures from their Stevenson screens daily. Do you know if Canadian temperatures are manipulated like the ones from S. America and Iceland that you recently reported?
You may be interested in developments in Australia. A group of us has for some time been concerned about the homogenization of the very good raw temperature record for many parts of Australia. Late last year, after much disquiet, the government finally established a panel to oversee what out Bureau of Meteorology has been up to with all the ‘adjustments’.
So far this new panel has not asked for our opinions, but we have nevertheless made unsolicited submissions. You can read them here…
It includes this from leading Yale researcher Anthony Leiserowitz: “Indeed, many people were a bit surprised to find that global warming was not, in fact, a myth; and more importantly, that the state of global warming was nearing critical mass and we are now in a place where we must make drastic changes or face equally dire consequences.
The Yale Project on Climate Change Communication lead researcher continues, “There have been a number of studies that have shown that some people will change their views of climate change based on extreme weather. It’s not enough to simply experience a heat wave — it then needs to be contextualized. It needs to be interpreted by thought leaders and trusted people in a community and by the media and scientists saying, ‘This is an indication of global warming.’”
So dismiss the fact that it is just a theory, not fact, and use any extreme weather event to support the theory. Dishonest or what?
When will our academics understand that scepticism, rigour and honesty are the foundations of science?
I’m not sure if you picked this up: http://www.zmescience.com/research/discoveries/deepest-marine-drill-finds-life-0423432/
Penultimate paragraph:
There’s much to learn from extremophiles living deep below Earth’s surface or seabed. For one, because these organisms feed on hydrocarbons, they produce methane as a byproduct which is a greenhouse gas thousands of times more potent than CO2 at trapping heat. How many of these organisms are there below the oceans? Billions, trillions, billions of billions? We need to know if we’re to build a solid model that faithfully assess their impact on the climate.
We can’t even model the global economy and get it right, and that’s a human construct orders of magnitude simpler than the climate system
Meteorologist Joe Bastardi posted this letter from Dr. Bill Gray on Weatherbell.com. Joe works for Weatherbell. Its a pay site. I think he would be happy if you read it. Its the best explanation of why the climate model feedback loops are completely unhinged from reality.
Dr Gray sent this out today to alot of people. I am of the impression he wants to make it clear to as many people as possible how he feels about the AGW situation, so I think its worthwhile sharing it with you. I think alot of the younger generation out there ought to listen to Dr Gray, because when I was freezing at PSU he was warning ( loudly) about the cyclical nature of climate and the coming uptick in hurricanes linked with warming overall. He also made clear that by 2020 we would be out of that cycle. So call me naive, but I listen to people who have proven themselves to be right, not Johny come lately Climate heroes that explain things after the fact, and in a way where nothing they said is accountable and is claimed to be right anyway
to the letter:
This is for your general information.
I am appalled that scientific objectivity has been so blatantly disregarded by our government and the world’s environmentalists who would use erroneous climate model results to justify their faulty AGW pronouncement which are injurious to humanity.
Gray’s View on AGW. We AGW skeptics need to be able to offer two basic plausible physical explanations in order to negate the AGW hypothesis.
1. Why projected CO2 increases over the next 50-100 years will only be able to bring about very small amounts (0.2-0.4°C) of global mean temperature rise.
2. Why there is natural climate change unrelated to CO2 variations? We need a believable physical explanation for the global climate changes over the last few thousand years (Little Ice Age, Medieval Warm Period, etc.) and in particular the apparent quite modest global warming of the last century. We also need an explanation of the shorter time-scale multi-decadal global warming periods (1910-1940, 1975-1999) and of the global cooling or neutral periods (1880-1910, 1940-1974, and 1999-2015).
Explanation #1 can be understood as a result of CO2 increases causing more global precipitation and associated increase in the globe’s deep cumulonimbus (Cb) convective clouds. These CO2 induced precipitation increases bring about upper tropospheric drying which allows more infrared (IR) flux to space – a negative water-vapor feedback. This extra rainfall enhances surface evaporation cooling which acts to balance out most of the expected global warming resulting from CO2’s increasing blockage of IR to space (3.7 Wm-2 for a CO2 doubling). This prevents CO2 increases from bringing about any significant global warming. Only minimal warming (0.2-0.4°C) is going to occur with a doubling of CO2. The main effect of CO2 increases will be an enhancement of global average precipitation of about 3 percent. This enhanced global rainfall will occur in regions where it is already raining and should be hardly noticed.
Explanation #2 can be explained by the multi-decadal and multi-century variations in the globe’s deep ocean circulations (or Meridional Overturning Circulation – MOC) which are primarily driven by space and time variations of oceanic salinity. Salinity changes occur in ocean areas where there are long period differences in surface evaporation minus precipitation. This is especially the situation of the Atlantic where ocean evaporation is 10-20 percent greater than precipitation. Salinity driven ocean changes bring about alterations in the strength of the Atlantic Ocean Thermohaline Circulation (THC), and through Pacific basin upwelling response variations to variation in the Pacific multi-decadal oscillation (PDO) as well. There is also salinity driven ocean subsidence around the Antarctic continent. All these factors influence the strength of the MOC.
Most of the globe’s last century weak global warming has, in my view, been a consequence of a modest slowdown of the global oceans MOC. This last century long MOC slowdown is also detected in an associated weak increase (in milliseconds) in the earth’s rate of rotation.
Lack of Ability of Other Suggested Non-ocean Climate Change Mechanisms to Rival or be Superior to Coming CO2 Influences. The many other non-ocean proposed physical ideas for climate change (where orbital parameters do not play a role) such as
1. Solar variability
2. Sun-spot changes
3. Cosmic ray variability
4. Aerosol changes
5. Human land use changes
6. Volcanic activity
may each play a minor role in some aspects of the globe’s climate alteration. But the individual physical influence of each of these suggested mechanisms is too small to be used as a dominant physical argument against the CO2 change hypothesis.
None of the above proposed climate change mechanisms well match the observed past changes in global temperature. In addition, the magnitude of potential energy change from these above non-ocean physical mechanisms does not have the power to come close to producing the climate changes which the variations of the deep ocean circulations are capable of bringing about.
We AGW skeptics who have proposed non-ocean climate change mechanisms as an alternate to CO2 induced climate changes will continue to have difficulty in rebutting the CO2 advocates. These alternate physical hypothesizes do not have enough supporting observational evidence to allow any one of them or a combination of them to be judged to be more dominant than the changes which future CO2 increases will be able to bring about.
We critics of the AGW CO2 warming hypothesis need a more dominant alternate physical hypothesis which is stronger and which better conforms in time with the global observations. Changes in the ocean’s deep circulation currents appears to be, by far, the best physical explanation for the observed global surface temperature changes (see Gray 2009, 2011, 2012, 2012). It seems ridiculous to me for both the AGW advocates and us skeptics to so closely monitor current weather and short-time climate change as indication of CO2’s influence on our climate. This assumes that the much more dominant natural climate changes that have always occurred are no longer in operation or have relevance.
Cumulus Convection Influences. Most cumulus convection is organized in meso-scale cloud clusters containing 10 to 20 individual Cb convective elements which are typically concentrated in areas of 200-500 km wide. The individual deep Cb convective cells within these cloud-cluster systems are often arranged in lines and new convective elements are continuously being formed and dissipated. Each new Cb convective element goes through a typical lifecycles of an hour or so. The strong downdrafts from the late stages of these dying Cb elements typically contribute to the low-level mass forcing needed for the initiating of other new adjacent Cb clouds. This is why multiple Cb clouds tend to cluster together.
Cb clouds penetrate well into the middle and upper troposphere. The excess mass within the weakening upper-level Cb elements diverge and spread out as cirrus clouds. This higher level extra mass and cirrus cloudiness then begins to undergo sinking so as to make space and satisfy mass balance for the new emerging upper tropospheric Cb penetrating elements.
Subsidence Drying. Cumulonimbus updraft elements have very high rainfall efficiency as they weaken and die in the very cold upper troposphere. The very cold air at these upper tropospheric levels can hold (even at saturation) very little water-vapor (only about 1% of the low-level moisture content by mass and 0.1 of 1% by volume) compared to the middle and lower tropospheric moisture contents. This very low water-vapor content air from the upper Cb outflow then sinks, evaporates its cloud particles, and arrives at lower levels where the saturated water-vapor contents are much higher. The original upper-level dry air then mixes with the lower level air. This mixture of air at the lower level becomes drier than the air at this level was before any of the upper-level air mixed into it.
A saturated air parcel from a dying Cb cloud which sinks from the 200 mb (12 km height) level to the lower pressure height of 300 mb (10 km ht.) will arrive at this lower-level with a RH of only 10-12 percent of the lower level air. These unusually large upper-level subsidence drying amounts are a consequence of the very large gradient of saturated vapor pressure in the upper troposphere. Vertical gradients of saturated vapor pressure at middle and lower tropospheric levels are, percentage wise, much smaller.
An increase in global deep convective (Cb) activity as a result of CO2 increases will thus bring drying (not moistening) to the upper troposphere, just the opposite of the climate models projections. This upper tropospheric drying acts to lower the infrared (IR) radiation emission level (EL) to a lower height and a warmer temperature where larger amounts of IR energy (σT4) are able to be fluxed to space. Increases in net global Cb convective activity results in higher amounts of IR energy being fluxed to space, not lower amounts as all the climate modelers and their fellow AGW advocates believe.
Our extensive analysis of the ISCCP data well shows the degree to which the broad upper-level sinking air from the global rain areas have had their RH reduced when an enhancement of the global rainfall rate (and accompanied increase in Cb convection) occurs. Please see the attached short write-up “Crux of AGWs Flawed Science” for more detailed discussion and clarifying figures and tables.
How Global Temperature Will Change as CO2 Increases. The rise of CO2 gas occurs very slowly. By contrast, the troposphere’s hydrologic cycle and its energy dissipation cycle operate on a time-scale of only around 10 days. Any CO2 radiational induced warming will be quickly felt by the earth’s surface and will immediately act to enhance surface evaporation. The more surface evaporation, the less the surface will warm.
A doubling of CO2 gas in the atmosphere will cause an alteration of our global climate but not in the same way as envisioned by the climate modelers or by the majority of scientists studying this topic. Most researchers concentrate only on the direct radiation influences which CO2 increases bring about. They tend not to consider the other related feedback mechanisms which will be simultaneously activated as CO2 amounts increase. The increased global evaporation from CO2 increase will extract energy from the earth’s surface and enhance surface cooling. This will act to reduce the pure radiation assumed 1°C warming through both enhanced IR energy flux to space and enhanced surface evaporation. The more evaporation from a doubling of CO2 will act to further reduce the 1°C direct radiation only temperature response. As the CO2’s induced speed-up of the globe’s hydrologic cycle continues the cooling influences of the enhanced surface evaporation-precipitation will greatly suppress any pure radiation assumed rise of 1°C. Doubling CO2 will thus be able to bring about only a quite modest global warming. The main influence of a doubling of CO2 will be to increase average global precipitation.
Basic Flaw of the AGW Hypothesis. It is the climate models parameterization schemes for cumulus convection (particularly the deep cumulonimbus (Cb) convection) which are grossly unrealistic and which completely negates the global modeler’s projections of 2-5°C warming for a doubling of CO2. This does not mean that the globe won’t be measurably influenced from CO2 doubling. But this CO2 influence will occur primarily as an enhancement of the global hydrologic cycle (precipitation) and only minimally from a rise in global surface temperature.
The AGW hypothesis that warming from increased CO2 will enhance global rainfall is correct. But the assumption that this added rainfall and added tropospheric condensation warming will greatly increase upper tropospheric temperature and water-vapor (through the assumption of constancy of relative humidity) is not at all valid. The opposite occurs. Increased deep Cb convection causes dryness to the upper troposphere. The climate modeler’s large increase in upper tropospheric water-vapor and temperature from added CO2 does not agree with the physics of how real-world deep Cb convection functions. And the additional positive feedback doubling of the upper troposphere warming and moistening which they add to the direct CO2 radiation blockage is completely bogus. This additional feedback assumption greatly increases the divergence of their model simulations from reality.
Summary. The global climate modelers assumed that CO2 enhanced global rainfall will bring about large upper-tropospheric water-vapor and temperature increases. These upper-level water-vapor increases are then projected to bring about even larger temperature increases and additional water-vapor (positive water-vapor feedback) amounts which add twice as much additional blockage of infrared (IR) energy to space than the initial influence of the CO2 blockage alone. Such large water-vapor and temperature increases are not at all realistic. This is the Achilles-heel of the whole AGW theory.
Comment. None of the global climate modelers or other AGW advocates seem to know that the globe’s deep cumulonimbus (Cb) convection processes act, not to increase upper level water-vapor, but in an opposite sense to reduce the globe’s upper tropospheric water-vapor content. The global climate modelers live in a very isolated Ivory Tower world. Their positive water-vapor feedback schemes in their doubling of CO2 simulations shows that they know next to nothing about how the atmosphere’s cumulus convective and moisture processes really function.
Gray Research Project. I and my Colorado State University (CSU) research project have a long background in studying cumulus convection, and particularly deep and intense cumulonimbus (Cb) convection of the tropics associated with meso-scale rain systems and tropical cyclones. We have published a lot of material on this subject over many years. These convective studies appear to provide crucial background information fundamental to establishing the invalidity of the AGW hypothesis. My CSU project’s over 50 years of tropical meteorology research has, by necessity, had to make the study of cumulus cloud convection a priority item for the understanding of tropical circulations and tropical cyclones. Our information has been gained from my project’s extensive involvement in many field experiments and from rawinsonde compositing activities over many years and recently through extensive analysis of ISCCP and NOAA Reanalysis data. To my knowledge, none of the AGW proponents have ever referred to any of my project’s many published papers and project reports.
Any scientist having advanced and detailed knowledge and working level experience of the globe’s deep cumulus convection process can completely negate the scientific validity of the AGW hypothesis. This could have been done decades ago if there had been an open and honest debate and further research on how changes in cumulus convective dynamics are related to CO2 increase. This greatly needed open and objective debate on cumulus convection process began and was taking place during the late 1960s and 1970s. But these studies were discontinued during the 1980s-1990s when the global models began to show useful results which the politicians, environmentalists, and the world government advocates could use to back up their desired AGW hypothesis. They did not want any further tampering with the models and the earlier momentum build-up for cumulus-moist process research did not go forward. The AGW advocates needed to utilize the unrealistic CO2 doubling climate model warming results as a scare mechanism to advance their agendas. And the CO2 global climate modeling community was quite happy to provide this justification and be well rewarded for their efforts.
Please see the attached paper “Crux of AGW’s Flawed Science” for full background discussion with figures and tables.
Best regards,
Bill Gray
Here is Grays paper on the Meridional Overturning Circulation ( MOC)
As a new commer trawling the archives, is there any chance you could put the whole months’ archive on 1 page please? Every time I have to “show more” to get the next article, and that after going “Back” (maybe a “Next/Previous Article” button could be found at the bottom of each page.
Maybe it is my browser (Firefox), but each month has more than a page worth of articles (something each day more or less, GREAT), so when I read articles not on page 1, I have to go back, then “Older posts”, at the end of the month I can be doing this 5-6 times each article. Maybe it is the way it is, but if it can be fixed, all to the good.
… I ask because the obvious question ” Do they think we have stopped ice ages forever?” is never asked, or even posited.
The article itself seems ludicrous as it claims that a few hundred thousand farmers produced enough GHG (ok ok they didn’t. But the article says ….) to stop a cycle of climate change that is shown to have been in place for at least 2 million years.
Where the Hell did some one come up with this from?
The BBC are very good at overstating Mann-made effects!
My reaction is that the ice age was already ending then anyway. Certainly, farming did not really take off till maybe around 5000BC.
If farmimg was increasing emissions, then why are temperatures lower now than in most of the Holocene?
We know that when global temperatures rise, as at the end of the ice age, CO2 levels rise as the oceans release it. Any influence from man would pale into insignificance in comparison.
California mandates oxygenated fuels. It is supposed to clean the air. It is lower in energy than HC based fuels and you must burn more of it. Since we have to burn more the only winner is the state in selling more fuel. Oxygenated fuel is another environmental scam. Thanks for what you do.
Downloaded it last night, Wow have they have got the ‘marketing’ right !!
“telling human stories about the people affected by climate change (and how they are responding to it) is crucial – shifting climate change from a scientific to a social reality.”
“One strategy is to create a vivid ‘mental model’ of climate change in people’s minds. A visual artist can capture the concept of sea level rise better than any graph”
“But flip the statement around — using an ‘uncertain time’ framing — and suddenly it is clear that the question is when not if sea levels will rise by 50cm.”
I love these bits –
on pg5 – “ Emphasise that science is an ongoing debate, and just because scientists don’t know everything about a subject, they do know something.” BUT on pg6 – “the science is effectively settled. Communicators should not shy away from stating that clearly.”
We should ALL download it & learn the techniques from it.
“Recent temperatures have once again broken all records for a British July. We are now approaching the 370th month in succession that global temperatures have been above the 20th-century average.”
UNEP miscounting the number of trees planted just came up.
In response to a poster that Canadian Oil corps planted 12million trees and Greenpeace zero, you’d expect GP just to fire back with the ‘huge’ number of trees Green NGOs as a group plant… but when I checked UNEP it seems there is something fishy with the stats ?
When that poster came out in April their lot just posted the same old angry snarly nasty comments against oil companies. With valid credible comments being overshadowed
like : that those oil trees might be monoculture, that some seedlings might have died.
I can actually see a UNEP page whose target makes that 12million look like a speck ie its 250,000 times bigger at 14billion PER country but so far AFTER 8 YEARS they are at 14billion total ie 0.4% of their target (at rate it’ll take 2,000years)
However you know Green groups have a terrible reputation for flaky figures.
If 14 billion trees have already been planted then as one of the world biggest tree areas, you’d expect Canada to have planted at least 1 biilion maybe 4 billion but the top two for Canada are reforest corps that planted
100 million in 2010
and another that planted 12.4 million in 2011
with the next 10 biggest totalling about 19million
– The entire Canada total listed there cannot be more than about 150 million. As someone says “Itdoesn’tAddUp”. http://www.plant-for-the-planet-billiontreecampaign.org/Getinvolved/SeeLatest.aspx
I reproduced a screenshot of top Canada planting stats on The Galileo Movement’s FB post
Of course they actually mean 14 billion total target for the world … The wording “GOAL 14,000,000,000 PLANTED TREES PER COUNTRY” is faulty page layout on their part… but even with the target 250 times smaller
..their listed total of Canada planting less than 1% of the worlds trees seems fishy.
like where were the other 99% planetd ..I can’t imagine net gains in countries like Russia/China/India.
I don’t know, Penny. It is the first time I have seen it.
Polar bears, as all wild animals, commonly die of starvation when they get old. This is probably the main cause of death for older animals, as they no longer have the strength to compete for food.
For a proper analysis of polar bears, Susan Crockford, who is a biological expert on them, is definitely worth a read.
Paul, as part of my research I have been collecting comprehensive daily weather data since Oct 1998. I was wondering if you might like to use it? My contact no. is on my website
With the recent suggestion from Sir Paul Drayson that diesel cars should be subject to a scrappage scheme to encourage drivers to switch to electric or hybrid vehicles, I started to wonder what the emissions of an electric vehicle might be when power generation emissions are taken into account.
Coal is around 900Kg/Mwh, while gas is around 500. Then there is nuclear, and of course solar, wind and biomass account for around 25%. Lets be generous and assume that biomass is indeed carbon neutral.
Lets assume the average CO2 emissions from generating 1 Mwh is 500Kg (=500g/Kwh). The best power consumption figure I’ve seen is for a Nissan Leaf at 34Kwh/100 miles. This means that the Leaf would indirectly cause CO2 emissions of at least 106g/km. However any dramatic increase in electric vehicle usage is likely to come largely from traditional (non-green, non-nuclear) generating capacity which has a higher emissions content. So taking these factors into account, together with real life consumption of say 120% of the quoted figure, we could easily end up with a real life emissions figure approaching 200g/km.
I suggest he is careful what he wishes for!
On the biomass subject, has anyone calculated the acreage of woodland required to ‘sustainably’ produce one ton of material per annum?
I try to steer clear of science!
But it is obvious to anyone who studies climate history that the Earth has natural mechanisms which prevent runaway cooling or heating.
Paul,
Just completed the BBC survey … wasn’t able to submit it because I live outside UK (though, of course, am UK citizen). Mentioning this so that others in same position don’t waste their time.
Best wishes,
Niall
Miranda Devine: Perth electrical engineer’s discovery will change climate change debate
Photo: AustralianClimateMadness
A MATHEMATICAL discovery by Perth-based electrical engineer Dr David Evans may change everything about the climate debate, on the eve of the UN climate change conference in Paris next month.
A former climate modeller for the Government’s Australian Greenhouse Office, with six degrees in applied mathematics, Dr Evans has unpacked the architecture of the basic climate model which underpins all climate science.
He has found that, while the underlying physics of the model is correct, it had been applied incorrectly.
He has fixed two errors and the new corrected model finds the climate’s sensitivity to carbon dioxide (CO2) is much lower than was thought.
It turns out the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has over-estimated future global warming by as much as 10 times, he says…
The series of posts flows under the tag: “Climate Research 2015″
The University of Nebraska invited me to a meeting, (seminar) about Climate Change and its coming impact on forestry in Nebraska. (They will undoubtedly regret inviting me.) I have been collecting your ‘extreme’ rainfall charts and graphs (Holland and Texas) and it has occurred to me how much I would like to have the same type data for Nebraska. The meeting is on October 14th. If you can’t do it in the time frame — You have already given me great ammunition. Nothing speaks truth to power like data.
*** Albedo regulation of Ice Ages, with no CO2 feedbacks ***
My analysis of Ice Age initiation and propagation is now up on the Warwick Hughes site. It speculates that the primary feedback for Ice Ages was actually albedo, not CO2. The overwhelming power of albedo was only overcome when CO2 dropped to dangerously low levels, resulting in widespread plant dieback and several millenia of dust storms. These dust storms reduced the albedo of the ice sheets, and allowed the Interglacial warming periods.
But Interglacial warming only happened when the precessional Great Year’s summer season increased insolation in the northern hemisphere. So several components are necessary for an Interglacial — very low Co2, plant dieback, dust storms, low ice albedo, and a Great Year summer season. So CO2 does falicitate Interglacial warming, but only by getting so low that all the plants die !!
This is similar to the way the developed world has exported its greenhouse gas emissions from consumer goods production to the developing world. We still consume just as much if not more than we did; the CO2 isn’t produced here any longer, but it is still produced, and arguably in greater volume and with more pollution than if it had remained onshore in a more tightly regulated environment.
Anyone here seen November’s “Focus” magazine from the BBC? In the first paragraph in a story about Conspiracy Theories (non-existent moon landings, JFK, 9/11 etc etc) it adds “Global Warming is a hoax”.
Now I know we all disagree with AGW (as a major like, thing), and accept GW up to the late 1990’s, but does anyone call GW “a hoax”?
This seems to be just a part of BBCs attempts at discrediting the whole AGW debate, or worse, putting a spin on the whole thing, after all, who wants to be associated with Conspiracy Theorists. They even do the whole “Tin Hat” meme, with pictures.
(BTW, I do not get Focus, but my father in law has received a free copy somehow)
Have you seen the latest Met Office blog reviewing October’s weather?
The headline reads ‘Warm, sunny and dry October’, and the introductory paragraph reads ‘Sunshine and temperatures were above normal in most places’.
However, this is grossly misleading, for the so-called warmth of the headline is not reflected in the mean temperature record, which shows them to have been ‘near average’ (their words later in the blog): the Met’s own records show an anomaly of only 0.3 to the 29th).
Interestingly, the blog does not show the anomaly map of mean temperatures for this month, only those for sunshine and rainfall; I suggest that the mean temperature map would not look ‘warm’ at all.
Next, the headline says ‘sunny’, but the sunshine map tells quite a different story, with only Scotland and parts of Northern Ireland showing above-average sunshine for the month.
Finally, why publish this three days before the month has ended?
25th Oct JoNova covered it http://joannenova.com.au/2015/10/french-society-of-mathematicians-global-warming-crusade-is-aburd-and-pointless/
Be careful and check if is the official French Maths academy (it isn’t)
It sounds as if it is a private company run by Bernard Beauzamy
\\But, in 1995, I decided to leave my Professor position at the University and to start a company, named “Société de Calcul Mathématique, SA” (in short, SCM). What this company sells, and how it sells it, is the topic of the present talk. We have four branches: defense, environment, statistics and operations research.//
If you wade thru jonova’s commenters there’s more info
“Seems to be a 20 year old group, 10 staff. Central Paris. Assets of $500K. Profitable. Specializing in mathematics and mathematical modelling in the natural sciences field. A few books published and other works. Qualified people. It seems to be outside academia, competing in the commercial world of mathematical modelling”
Dear Poul
I have followed your checking of the temperature compilations and got more and more in doubt. Ole Humlum has also grown more sceptic to the main temperature series.
As usefull it is to do just an anomaly, it is so much easier to introduce a bias that’s very hard to check.
In theory the anomaly is computed for every station and then the anomalies are averaged.
So long so good, but as they do that, you can’t se if the reference for the anomaly changes or the recent temperature has changed. All anomalies back to 1900 or before is calculated every time, so you can not see if the anomaly for say 2000 changes when you update from 2014 to 2015. (Unless you have saved it). Everybody thinks it must stay constant, but it dos’nt.
The anomaly way to do it means, they can change stations at will, take some out or put others in, it is anyway “just” anomalies they average. Every station comes with its own reference, so you can not check how the references changes with station changes.
The history of changes to old temperatures is strange, but it seems just as strange, that they have to change the way to calculate these averages nearly once every year, and every time the changes goes the same way.
What are the reasons for updating the way to make those averages? What new information have they got between 2008 and 2014 of the old data from 2000 or 1900, that could justify these changes that Ole Humlum has saved?
I have not the skills to dig into these matters, but i hope you will follow up.
Regards
Svend
Teflon Tim the Trougher Trashed. He lied in libel trial !!!
Tim Yeo Ex-chairman of the energy and climate change select committee lied in his libel trial
His ‘Evidence was untrue & dishonest’ (no change there then )
Dismissing the case, Mr Justice Warby said he was unable to accept Mr Yeo’s evidence that he was unable to remember an email which mentioned a “generous remuneration package”.
“I can think of none who convincingly claim to have no interest in money, yet end up with an annual income in excess of £200,000,” the judge said.
“I do not consider that Mr Yeo is such a person. In my judgment this evidence was untrue.
“I am not persuaded that it was honest either.”
Yeo has agreed to pay legal fees of £411,000 within 28 days, with any further costs to be assessed.
He spent most of his life lying & bullying, shame its taken so long to get him in court, Gummer, Davey, Hune & Milliband need a trip there as well.
Paul, have you caught any of the current BBC series “Power to the People”?
Lots of inside information about Ferrybridge in the first episode and interesting to hear what some of the workers think about wind turbines and climate change
£375,000 of public money, & the potential maximum saving a year was only £3,600, do the maths = 104 years
(the life of solar systems is ~ 25yrs).
Looks like a bean counter needs sacking
“2005 in a project led by North Devon Council and thanks to a grant from the Department of Trade and Industry.
In 2011 the Gazette reported how the system was not working due to inactive panels.
DCC said at the time the potential maximum saving a year was £3,600, depending on electricity costs, so over 10 years it will not have paid for itself.”
…Steps back in amazement, Your Devon Council people are good at maths !
A £375K projects savingmaxm £3.6K/year didn’t pay for itself in 10 years ..wow
Meanwhile near my village
#2 £63m power station joy for South Humber Bank Grimsby Telegraph
being refitted prior to 2017 re-opening
“guaranteeing the future of the site up to 2027, while creating 10 more jobs.” 1.3GW
Meanwhile Keady is ALREADY switched on now
The Nov 1st story :Keadby Power Station to re-open two years after being mothballed
“The gas-fired plant will reopen on Monday, November 9, more than two years after it was mothballed in March 2013.”
They’ll move workers from Ferrybridge coal PS (closing sometime)
(early 2015 I listed other local gas PS which were scheduled for closure like Killingholme and Brigg)
oh hangon – South Bank power station (Brigg) saved from closure
I guess the windfarm engineers are still flying in on their special daily flights from Denmark to Humberside Airport . No, no they ran for 6 months and got cancelled.
direct link to 39th minute . First Talking about Commonwealth of Dominica on 27th August “lost about 35 people”.
And then “Sir David King talks about the damage here in the UK”, “I’ve a cottage at just outside Witney, at village called Asthall. We were flooded to about 5 foot”
blah bhah : “keep if to one point five”
presenter :”so a tougher target than even the two PER CENT that people say is not achievable”
“We all ahve to set our own priorities” ..Yeh check her carbon footprint
..I’ve told her a million times not to exaggerate !
A news report with her about Storm Erika but she gets a kicking in the comments :
“sounded like she did not know much about Dominica. Before the interview she should have done some research or maybe read a good book about Dominica, especially about hurricane David. “…
“In her interview she said Tropical storm Erika killed 31 people and many more are still missing. Then she went on to say that Erika killed more people than David. I mean is 31 greater than 56 Ms. Scotland?”
Paul, given your profession you may find the following opinion piece in ‘The Actuary’ to be of interest:-
‘A climate of doubt’
……..Perhaps the first task of the Climate Change Working Party should be to investigate the assumptions, derivation and validity of the climate models, which have, to date, failed so decisively. With their mathematical and statistical knowledge, actuaries are better qualified than most to perform this task.
I’m afraid George Monbiot made mincemeat of Jane Collins MEP (UKIP) on today’s Any Questions today.
Monbiot was allowed to get away with statements like “climate change is a remarkably mild term for what we are facing, what we are looking at, ladies and gentlemen, what we are facing is climate breakdown, unless major action is taken.
Of course it would have taken more of an expert to take him on, and she probably shouldn’t have tried especially taking into account that she was in a minority of one on the panel.
She and UKIP need to be better briefed in future.
Paul, BBC Pension fund 2015 has a smidge : news of new Green investment but no $$ amount “Extracts from B.B.C. ‘Pensions Report and Accounts 2015’
“the Scheme has committed to an investment in UK renewable
energy assets with BlackRock” (page 8).” See WUWT comment
I see the MO web forecasts have gone to 7 days now.
Given that only about 1 in 3 of the hourly forecasts for the first day are entirely accurate, this seems like an exercise in futility.
Paul, did you see this post on the “Real Science” blog?
The PDF file to which it links, makes reference to the “EMID” (East Midlands) dataset, which seems to start in the early 1700’s, i.e. earlier than the MO HadUPP series.
Have you encountered this dataset before?
I was just perusing the 2016 New Year Honours List, and it appears that there has been a gross omission in the section titled; Bringing some sanity to the Climate Change debate.
Oh, well, maybe next year 🙂
Happy New Year, and keep up the fantastic work that you do, highlighting the truth behind the facile reporting from the BBC and the Met Office, et al.
Great website! You will be interested in Spectator leading article today:
UK spend on river and sea defenses this financial year: £695 milllion
UK spend on subsidising ‘green energy’ : £4300 million
In Holland, with quarter population of UK, river defences this year,spend £1900 million
Source: http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/01/why-cant-we-go-dutch-on-flood-defence/
Dear Paul
I have been following your story about mashed temperature records. I have looked at several of our local sites, and been suitably horrified. However, I have been trying to find the metadata, and repeated requests to NASA have met with no success? Any idea how to access?
Re: Modulation of Ice Ages via Precession and Dust-Albedo Feedbacks
A new paper proving that CO2 is a minor player in the drama that is the Earth’s climate.
Abstract
We present here a simple and novel proposal for the modulation and rhythm of ice ages and interglacials during the late Pleistocene. While the standard Milankovitch-precession theory fails to explain the long intervals between interglacials, these can be accounted for by a novel forcing and feedback system involving CO2, dust and albedo. During the glacial period, the high albedo of the northern ice sheets drives down global temperatures and CO2 concentrations, despite subsequent precessional forcing maxima. Over the following millennia CO2 is sequestered in the oceans and atmospheric concentrations eventually reach a critical minima of about 200 ppm, which causes a die-back of temperate and boreal forests and grasslands, especially at high altitude. The ensuing soil erosion generates dust storms, resulting in increased dust deposition and lower albedo on the northern ice sheets. As northern hemisphere insolation increases during the next Milankovitch cycle, the dust-laden ice-sheets absorb considerably more insolation and undergo rapid melting, which forces the climate into an interglacial period. The proposed mechanism is simple, robust, and comprehensive in its scope, and its key elements are well supported by empirical evidence.
New to this blog – stumbled on it from WUWT. Nice to see a UK based balanced view on the scam of climate change.
I have been trying to find out why solar farm panels are at around 30 degrees from the horizontal rather than a much steeper and efficient angle? Any posts/discussions on this?
Welcome Brian,
I don’t know but you can go into the search box
(RH column, above best European Blog box & Archives)
or,
use the blue search words in the list
Below Recent Comments.
If the panels were steeper, tops would be higher so rows would need to be further apart to prevent shadowing ??? just a guess.
This really puts the science of CO2 emissions into perspective! http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/climatechange/12098431/Global-warming-delays-next-ice-age-by-50000-years.html. So we’ll only need to wait 100,000 years to test this theory! One ace quote: “The carbon emissions produced by humans burning fossil fuels would be sufficient to radically delay the timing of the next ice age, they predicted.” Maybe there’s a greater risk of nuclear annihilation or pandemics that threaten the human race in that timeframe, yet we use this as a justification to worry about CO2.
Even more exciting is the fact that they are saying that this is why the pumps in the York Foss Barrier (which they operate) were “overwhelmed” leading to 600 properties being flooded on 26/27 December.
They are less forthcoming about the fact that they took fright at the water entering the electric/ control house, raised the barrier (ensuring the lower end of the Foss catchment would certainly be flooded) and turned off the pumps, for good measure.
They also don’t point out that Bainbridge is nowhere near the Foss catchment area.
Can you suggest how I can get hold of rainfall records (if any) relevant to the Foss, both for the period up to 26 December and any historical figures?
After some calculations on raw and homogenised data sets from the KNMI, I have visualized the temperature corrections for KNMI’s main station de Bilt. Main conclusion is that the corrections clearly cool pre-1950 summers, and that the correction for urban heat effects is cancelled from 2006 onwards, for undisclosed reasons.
Full story with all graphs can be found on my new blog: tradingmagicforfact.wordpress.com. Feel free to share the story if you think it’s interesting!
Paul, Stats on BBC mentions of FoE, WWF, Greenpeace for the last 16 years collected by BH commenters would make an interesting graph.
The rising curves might be a result of :
#1 possible insider connections
#2 The large PR spending of these trans-global mammoth NGOs
put
Confusion reigns as UK scientists face government ‘gagging’ clause
into google – comes up as first hit, 2nd hit is Junk science carrying the story.
Paul, did you spot the article in the Sunday Telegraph linking abrupt weather changes during pregnancy to ‘smaller’ babies. No direct mention of agw but now I tend to see it even when it’s not there.
Another arctic expedition rescued, perhaps there is a need for a roll of costly rescues. 🙂
“Two British adventurers had to be rescued by American coastguards after getting stranded in Alaska.
Neil Laughton and James Bingham were attempting to cross a remote area from Little Wales to Little Diomede on cross country skis and by kayak.
But the ice became too thin to walk on and too thick to continue in kayaks, leaving the pair stranded.
Two British adventurers had to be rescued by American coastguards after getting stranded in Alaska.
Pic: Bering Strait 2016 Facebook
They were eventually winched to safety by US Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak air crews.”
Just listened to a BBC program on fraud in science –
‘Saving science from the scientists’ 1 of 2 programs.
Listen again – http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b072jdqm
with Alok Jha – Science Correspondent at The Guardian & ITV
Alok graduated from MSc Science Communication in 1999, after completing a physics degree at Imperial http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0742nzq/broadcasts/upcoming
Surprisingly even handed for the BBC, I’m amazed Horrid Harrabin allowed it to go out.
Right Now on You are yours R4 Fairbourne The Welsh Sea Level rise village about 12:20 around 20minns from the end
(Sea defence maintenance will end in 40 years time ‘managed retreat’ due to extreme sea rise predictions made in old IPCC reports of 50cm for 50 years later ..which were actually later revised down to 20cm )
Villagers are set to sue the council for drop in property prices.
FT article “Two of the country’s largest coal plants have been saved in recent weeks thanks to back-up contracts from the grid and government. ”
– Fiddlers Ferry in Cheshire, SSE One of its four boilers is being mothballed, while the other three will be kept open. Subsidy via “capacity mechanism”
– Eggborough in Yorkshire announced last month it would be just mothballed, after securing new payments from the grid to remain available as emergency back-up.
– Longannet + Ferrybridge, in West Yorkshire, 3.4GW closed last week.
Article quotes stats from Sandbag – why do that on the day the official figs came out ?
.. and then quotes Doug Parr, Greenpeace’s chief scientist, then IPPR
– NPower guy says “hand direct subsidies to energy companies to build new gas plant.”
– Other expert says all this uncertainty puts people off building new FF plant
There is a new posting at http://www.ecofascism.com containing a list of 356 climate sceptical and enviro-critical websites plus additional info on the enviro-critic community and its funders.
Paul I am catching the BBC making all kinds of FREE adverts for the Greens
– This weekend 2 slots for Tesla promotion – yet the new model by their own admission is not much cop..At the End of the TechTent item they explained the flaws : No new tech, not deliverable until 2015 and £25,000 is not really entry level car.
yesterdays 10pm R4 news mocked up an advertising page by inviting a Tesla supporter.
//////////////////////
Solar Corps bankruptcies etc. I found some negatives of the Morocco Noor project
– While the news media has a love-in with GreenDream it’s difficult to find critical stories before the corps collapse.
..eg all stuff about Morocco’s Noor project is treated optimistically despite it being 3 months late before it started
Green grabbing is defined as the appropriation of land and resources for purportedly environmental ends
“One noted that “the project people talk about this as a desert that is not used, but to the people here it is not desert, it is a pasture. It is their territory and their future is in the land”
He claims local wealth is being expropriated and handed over to big guys who call themselves Green biz
“the duped local population were surprised to find out that the money from the sale was not going to be handed to them, but that it would be deposited into the tribe’s account at the Ministry of Interior.”
Hey this thing uses a LOT of water
“The biggest issue with this technology is the extensive use of water that comes with the wet cooling stage. Unlike photovoltaic (PV) technology, CSP needs cooling.”
“Morocco will host the climate talks (COP22) this year in November …
For this purpose, the Ouarzazate solar complex will be used as a flagship ”
” If the Moroccan state was really serious about its green credentials, why …Why is it also ignoring the devastating environmental and social effects of the mining industry in the country?”
Yes I see spin that article
“When… asked councils to provide figures for bus passenger occupancy per kilometre, only two did so. One, Sheffield City Council, revealed that during the morning rush hour (7-10am) its buses carried only 2.3 passengers per kilometre. The average bus occupancy was a shade under 12 people.”
*** OK what was the other council ? and what were their figures ?
… I suspect Sheffield has been cherrypicked as a low example.
and anyway one area one area is too low a sample size for a whole country.
Otherwise the article may have good points.
Same points were made in 2009 : bus are geared to peak , so rest of time empty
On Bus Occupancy Data The EU pages says
“This indicator is discontinued. No more assessments will be produced.”
“Bus and coach data is difficult to obtain as it is rarely made publicly available due to the increasingly privatised nature of national public bus services. The result of privatisation has been the closure of less profitable bus routes (those with low occupancy rates) and a shift to smaller sized buses.”
Tip : I see a “front page editor for BBC News” is quite enthusiastic about a training workshop they did
: “How could you help people take collective action on climate change? Friday 03 July 2015,”
not organised by the BBC but by the Global Editors Network conference in Barcelona,
..See the link and highlights over on BishopHill Unthreaded
Tip : Another BBC advert for a subsidy farming Green Corp here on this page
In cahoots with Newsquest regional newspapers who are big on pushing green news and censoring comments
This morning BBC Farming Today featured a report on one of the winners of the Northern Farmer Magazine awards. (Coincidentally owned by Newsquest)
Which category did BBC pick out off 10 ?
………………….That’s right ‘Green Farmer of the year” …He lives in Cheshire
He talked about his Hydrogen project : They use electrolysis to split water into hydrogen which they then burn to heat the house ..surely there is a lot of waste in those steps. Why not just use solar hot water ?
He claims he does it to save money..subsidies were not mentioned , but surely that the only way he can be quids in is if he has subsidies.
MacKay had been diagnosed with terminal cancer last year and documented his illness on a personal blog. In his most recent blog post, he thanked those who had offered to visit him in hospital
On Sunday 10 April he blogged “I’d like my posts to have an ending, so I’m going to make this my final one”
There are now about 30 comments of memorial there
Tip : Words from their Bob Ward’s own petition
“This is an attack on academic freedom as it would stop grants for university research being used to influence policy-makers.”
The creator of the petition is the PR guy for Big Green hedge-fund founder Jeremy Grantham.. and basically works full time as a fully time time UK Climate Policy lobbyist .
He is not a scientist, although the BBC have in some of frequent media on air appearances , mistakenly introduced him as one.
I have just been watching the South Today lunchtime news on the BBC which carried a story about an embankment land slip on Farnham to Alton railway line. It was reported this was due to last weeks heavy rain. However, what nearly made me choke on my lunch was when the reporter went on to say that Southampton University are blaming it on “climate change” and that we should all expect a lot more land slips delaying trains!
I’m afraid that to propagandists there is now no distinction between weather and “climate change”.
Even though erosion due to weather has been going on since the beginning of time and there is no evidence to support the belief that it is increasing.
Paul, what’s going on at your 2015 How To Complain To The BBC thread ?..comments have started again one year later ..and they’re a bit strange : Like one guy thinks the BBC are out to get Corbyn etc.
I wonder if it’s been used to test bots, or young guardian cyber disruptors in training
This from a Metro article on Lake Whillans. ‘It is exciting to see such a rich dataset from the lake, and these new data are helping us understand how lakes function as part of the ice-sheet system.’
The latest research also showed that the lake’s waters periodically drain through channels to the ocean.
Researchers are hoping to use this information to help assess the contribution that subglacial lakes may have to the flow of water from the continent to the ocean, and therefore to sea-level rise.
DECC directly lied in their news release today.
“It is driving down costs and securing electricity at the lowest possible price for bill-payers.” Securing the UK’s electricity supply h/t Phillip Bratby
BBC Costing The Earth managed to do a new episode The Sun King of China lionising Huang Ming, he employs 3000 people in solar research
Maybe someone can listen and check if the prog mentioned the giant failing Chinese solar corps Hanergy and Yingli Green Energy Holding who employed more people
(news for Yingli from 1 hour ago Yingli Green Says It Probably Can’t Repay Debts Due Thursday )
“Unprofitable since 2011, Yingli has breached its debt covenants for more than a year and has been kept alive by state-backed institutions led by the China Development Bank “
BBC News acting as a FREE ADVERTISER forclimate porn from a charity again
“A British aid charity is warning that by 2060 more than a billion people worldwide will live in cities at risk of catastrophic flooding as a result of climate change.”
The article is just full on cutnpaste quotes
What the hell is the point in running a news item off a press release unless you challenge it or add a third voice ?
I guess someone like Paul Homewood will tear it apart soon
Technical note re China/HK renewable bankruptcies.
– US : stock gets overblown, shortsellers come in and market corrects , even if stock gets suspended the closure limit is 10 days.
– Hong Kong : stock gets overblown, shortsellers WANT TO come in but the market self correction doesn’t work ..e.g. Hanergy shortsellers can’t cash out cos the stock is still suspended after 1 year
ideally they would buy now at a low price and hand the certificate over to their customers, who will hand them the cash for the OLD higher price
So Shortsellers are being deterred in China/HK and markets getting overblown
An extraordinary claim, I wonder if an analyser blogger has had a good look ?
#1 warmists show a gloating graph showing renewables just touch demand
whereas
#2 @Gareth says At the data source Agorameter ” Set the start date for 15.05.2016 and the end date for 15.05.2016 and you’ll see the data has been revised” and shows renewables supply doesn’t get close and maxes out at 10GW below demand.
Are they the same graph and data ?
Bloomberg’s is labelled : “Germany’s power supply by hour” and shows 3am
Agorameter’s is labelled : “Power Generation and Consumption”
BH May 25, 2016 at 7:10 PM | Gareth
ah I found a quote elsewhere “No, it was reported by Bloomberg e.a. on the basis of provisional data, which turned out to be wrong.”
We know Warmists go for PR over truth every time..these links are doing the rounds
Yes a there is a debunk .. it was indeeed faulty provisional data Reports of 100% renewable power in Germany vastly overstated
The wamist Blog posts will not get corrected cos with then ..It’s not about truth , it’s about PR
…No TrickZone dont have the story yet
Today’s Climate crap the Greenblob have made for the BBC to air to scare the public
is a UNESCO report saying all heritage sites are at risk #WorldHeritage and Tourism in a Changing Climate.
..Over on BH-U I quoted the BBC dialogue
France. If they continue with worker disputes, and the striking Nuclear workers eventually lead to the closure of plants;
What would the loss of our “French Connectors”, mean to UK power supplies?
Trumps new Energy speech is amazing
..whoever wrote it seems pretty sensible
– There is a script, but Trump adds extensively Bismarck, North Dakota (5-26-16)
(NPR has decided it’s listeners must have a filtered version)
This guy doesn’t seem that he is a normal politician.
The speech is filled with policies eg “We are going to cancel the Paris Climate Agreement
..and stop all payments of US tax dollars to UN Global Warming programs” point in video
Priorities “clean Air and Clean Water” for Americans
“This [Paris] agreement gives foreign bureaucrats control over how much our energy and how much we use, right here, in America. So, foreign bureaucrats are going to be controlling what we’re using and what we’re doing on our land in our country. No way. No way.” … point in video
eg BIG LIE “green power is now the leading source of electricity, providing 44% of total EU capacity in 2015.”
CAPACITY is not PRODUCTION or source
..Solar/wind have rubbish capacity factors so a large capacity produces much less that conventionals.
5.03am ..Ah now Matt was doing his item on BBC WS news
Type Renewables REN21 into the Twitter search box and you’ll see that Matt McGrath is just parroting REN21 (LOBBY ORGANISATION of the biz) without challenging their assertions or mentioning #SUBSIDIES paid by poor to rich. (solarpanel/windfarm owners, electric car buyers etc) h/t PhilBradby
Meanwhile on the Greenpeace website : Cooling technologies set to become red hot sector is a fawning report after reading a report on “the Cold Economy”/
It wouldn’t have been written by IMPARTIAL BBC enviro reporter like McGrath\s stablemate RHarrabin cos he would have challenged and tested assertions like a proper journalist /sarc
Strange how i get BBCEnviro and Greenpeace pages mixed up
#BBCFreeGreenAds
I wonder who supplied the cutNpaste this time doesn’t look like DECC
If Emily was writing at article about solar do you think she’d select every photo to be of black sky with no blue? There is so much black in the 2 photos she uses here.
Chile Renewables Fantasy : Anyone got any light on this ? : Chile is 100% renewables is a story in Green echo chamber Reddit
The guy who told was unaware that Reddit bans skeptical comments
Wiki – Total installed nominal capacity in April 2010 was 15.94 GW.[1] Of the installed capacity, 64.9% is thermal,[1] 34% hydroelectric[1] and nearly 1% wind power,[1]
Yes Chile is exporting free electricity, but not cos it has fulfilled 100%, but rather cos the connections means excess solar can’t get to Chilean customers Bloomberg
Seems this cock-up story is being spun as a success
Seems my green PhD friend has got his page set up for his favourites like Green Topics
So his homepage shows such happy Green headlines
… and he only sometimes checks deeper
This time the initial poster has CREATED a happy clickbait headline and thousands of Greens have leapt in to upvote it
Thread 1: 6117pts Chile Has So Much Solar Energy It’s Giving It Away for Free
Then someone else has copied it
Thread 2: 4414pts Chile Has So Much Solar Energy It’s Giving It Away for Free
but some sensible people manage to get a sensible comment buried in about 200 wacky ones
Misleading headlines to grab attention. The obvious problem is the lack of transmission infrastructure to deliver all of this power. But sensational media finds that free electricity from solar farms is much better sounding.
I will probably hear about this from all of my friends who won’t care to read the whole topic and don’t understand how the electrical power market works anyway. This is how false myths are born.
I have followed the “Reynolds SST Analysis” for a few years and was recently a little irritated by the change in the colour charts, that was maybe intended to give the overall appearance of a rather warmer N Atlantic. I was just getting used to the change and rather enjoying seeing most of the N Atlantic turn blue (negative anomaly), but then this last week, the ocean has “turned” almost completely yellow, showing a supposed a rise in temp of around 2deg on the East coast of the US and an almost unbelievable rise of up to 4deg in a couple of the Great Lakes. Surely this temp rise isn’t possible in just one week? What on Earth is happening? http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/sst/
Climate scientists* urged President Obama to rule out drilling in the Arctic in the new five-year leasing programme from the Bureau or Ocean Energy Management, which is expected to be published in final form in November.
* Em which ones ?…he probably reading off a Greenpeace PR paper
…
In the past, shifts from one energy source to another have taken many decades, as shown in this chart from Spencer Dale, BP’s chief economist. David Roberts of Vox suggested the transition to smaller-scale distributed energy resources could be faster.**
** and Fred Blogs of the Beano said it could be way slower
oh another bit
>>The world will within a decade reach “peak fossil fuels” for power generation, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance June 13.<<
..seems a pretty trashy item
Tesla bubble still on path to bursting
#1 When their autopilot mode resulted in an owner death, which could easily have been a bystander death, they held the news for 8 weeks until the holiday weekend.
#2 Well at least they have stormed back to make delivery targets…NO NO only joking they are even further behind than last time.
FT >>The number of vehicle deliveries fell 15 per cent short of the company’s forecast and was even lower than the first quarter of this year, a period when Tesla blamed its own “hubris” in being too ambitious with the vehicle design.<<
Look across at the other cars and pray that none of them are a Tesla on Autopilot mode.
Do you think Tesla will survive when a car in autopilot mode kills a thirdparty ? Or that its cars will be insurable
BBC and other media reported that a Tesla ‘self driving’ car had crashed the driver was killed.
BUT BUT It was NOT ‘Self-Driving’ but rather a NORMAL car of a normal person in self-drive mode ..something Tesla stupidly call Autopilot. BBC video foolishly use the title “Self Driving technology” and then “”Self Driving” interchangeably In the first one you CANNNOT take your hands away from the wheel cos you are supposed to be able take over immediately.
The Tesla Autopilot is basically cruise-control-plus ie extra tech collision detection it can’t detect kids jumping out ..so it is unbelievable it is legal on some US roads BBC news-story Similar non fatal accidents have happened in the past. The dumb guy had Youtubed last month about the car preventing a near miss
I keep seeing reporters writing that Google cars are safer than humans..Actually that is NOT provably true humans driverscause a death every 100 million miles, and Google has only driven 1.5 million miles.
Tesla claim 130 million miles before this death New software update planned
A US Exec recently said why self driving is not coming soon
>>Self-driving cars are getting better, but there’s a long way between now and the world that is promised, because safety is a complex phenomenon,” he writes. “You can’t just extrapolate Google cars driving ~1.5 million miles under specific conditions (weather, topology, construction, traffic, accidents around it, etc.) to usurping the ~3 trillion miles/year under all conditions in the US. 1.09 fatalities per 100 million miles is the current non-self-driving numbers.”<< link
The NHTSA plans to release federal regulations in July and states will add additional regulations on top.link
Hangon “The crash happened on 7 May, but we learned of it 56 days later—on the Thursday evening that inaugurated the long holiday weekend in the United States ending in 4 July. ” IEEE
Autopilot used in the UK, In Today’s Times the journalist talks about letting it take over on the M4.
his argument was in’s no more dangerous than cruise control cos he kept his hand on the wheel..but the thing is letting the autopilot make the decisions could be habit forming..until it crashes you.
Paul, I have in my possession a booklet that was printed in 1960 to raise funds for those affected by flooding in East Devon in that year. It was printed quickly in order to aid the needy and therefore reused blocks donated by local newspapers. Along with much interesting detail, it has a refreshingly phlegmatic approach to the risk of flooding in an area constrained by geography and tides. If you are interested in having it, I will gladly post it on to you, the quality of the print making copying and email unlikely to be worthwhile. Please advise.
We’ve go theanti frackers 2 miles down the road even tho there’s going to be no proper fracking, cos it’s just a new well like the local Gainsborough ones protest meet
There is another meet the public day next week.
Local paper just said the full permit is in. site website
Permit doesn’t talk about fracking just Proppant Squeeze a kind on mini-frac that has been used many times around here
“Unlike hydraulic fracturing, a proppant squeeze requires the use of only a small volume
of proppant and carrier fluid as it seeks to only bypass the formation damage rather than specifically to enhance the natural permeability of the formation.”
Green self-sufficiency…… 58% powered by diesel !!!
Another Green fail – Gapa Island South Korea
The project to bring energy self-sufficiency to South Korean’s Gapa Island was launched in 2011. The reason that the island was selected for the trial project is because of its small size (0.85 square kilometers), its plentiful wind power and solar energy.
The population of the island is 178 people; the electricity powers the 97 households on the island, four electric cars and a desalination plant.
After 5 yrs, the island is meeting 32% of its energy needs from wind power and 10% from solar power. The other 58% of energy is still supplied by 450kW diesel generators.
A total of 14.3 billion won (US$12.49 million) was invested in the project. Two 250kW wind turbines were installed, along with 174kW solar panels in 49 locations, plus an energy storage device, a system control center, power conversion equipment and remotely controlled power meters. http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/752623.html
Capital expenditure spread over 20 yr life is –
$12.49 million / 178 = $70,168 / 20 = $3,508 per yr per capita
or
$12.49 million / 97 = $128,763 / 20 = $6,438 per yr per household
for just 42% green energy
A 450kW 562kva Cummins GTA28, 2006 model Genset is $59,950….
Lets allow a just a 10 yr life & lets buy 3 for ‘energy security’ – $180,000 / 178 / 10 = $101 per yr per capita
for 100% energy
But what about the fuel ???….
Well, I doubt each single person is going to use $3,407 worth of diesel per yr.
Not Climate Science, but Big Physics… the Large Hadron Collider hasn’t discovered anything beyond the Higgs.
Juicy quote from the Sabine Hossenfelder a
Research Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies:
“We’ve maneuvered ourselves into a dead end by relying on aesthetic guidance to decide which experiments are the most promising.”
“I hope that this latest null result will send a clear message that you can’t trust the judgement of scientists whose future funding depends on their continued optimism.”
Good evening, I discovered your website and liked the Oppenheimer and Eisenhower quotes advocating freedom for scientific inquiry and also the advisory to remain alert to large federal funding influencing group think. I am not a climatologist but just joe citizen trying to self educate. Thank you for creating this blog. Question at the moment – can you direct me to references providing insights to the past few decades of receding ice and resulting warm temps (or vice versa) near Barrow, Alaska. Most sites I sought interpret as prima facie evidence of apocalypse yada yada, however I am looking for actual rational science. Lots more questions but am interested in this for the moment. thanks and hope to study more, jm, wash dc
Also if you search for Alaska, there are some posts on glaciers. In particular how the remains of medieval forests are now emerging from receding glaciers
My favorite reply to the “settled science” crowd.
The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there’s no place for it in the endeavor of science. We do not know beforehand where fundamental insights will arise from about our mysterious and lovely solar system. The history of our study of our solar system shows us clearly that accepted and conventional ideas are often wrong, and that fundamental insights can arise from the most unexpected sources. -Carl Sagan
Hello…in your pursuit of ‘climate sanity’ I think you might enjoy my new semi-popular book ‘Climate Chaos’. Apart from trying to put current ‘changes’ into a 4.5 billion year context I compare published high resolution spectral ‘fingerprints’ of a dozen regional climate series with published spectra of several solar activity proxies…but allowing the possibility of simple non-linear relationships which generate well known harmonics and interaction frequencies. The bottom line is that much of climate series (such as El Nino, PDO and AMO) spectral power, in some cases over millennia, is down to solar variation. With solar activity in decline (according to recent astrophysical research) I would expect cooling to swamp the current modest CO2 warming for some decades. If so the crap will soon hit the fan!
The book is also on Amazon (under Green Man Books).
Temperature adjustment:
See here how the maximum temperature for the period 1901-1950 is drastically changed down for the main location De Bilt with up to 1.9 degrees celsius. Tx = old, TX_H is new.
16 of the 40 official heat waves about 1901-2015 are thereby deleted.All in the 1901-1951 https://cdn.knmi.nl/knmi/map/page/klimatologie/gegevens/daggegevens/temp_260.txt
Overestimated global warming over the past 20 years
John C. Fyfe, Nathan P. Gillett and Francis W. Zwiers
NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE | VOL 3 | SEPTEMBER 2013 | pg 767-769
Recent observed global warming is significantly less than that simulated by climate models.
“The inconsistency between observed and simulated global warming is even more striking for temperature trends computed over the past fifteen years (1998–2012). For this period, the observed trend of 0.05 ± 0.08 °C per decade is more than four times smaller than the average simulated trend of 0.21 ± 0.03 °C per decade (Fig. 1b). It is worth noting that the observed trend over this period — not significantly different from zero — suggests a temporary ‘hiatus’ in global warming2–4. The divergence between observed and CMIP5-simulated global warming begins in the early 1990s, as can be seen when comparing observed and simulated running trends from 1970–2012”
Our Local paper has info about local biz constructing a new 43MW waste CHP powerplant attached to a paper mill in Kent. The operator is called Wheelabrator and it says the corp has 20 such plants across the UK/USA..I just wonder how much subsidy money is going in to all these types of projects, cos I keep finding about such small power plants I never though existed. 40MW would be 1/30th the size of a proper gas fueled power station.
More info at wtikemsley.co.uk ..Green Investment Bank money is going into Wheelabrator projects eg £80m at Sittingbourne in Kent
In the past 12 mths the UKs 6,867 wind turbines produced only 7.7% of our electricity demand •
Coal 14.9%, Nuclear 23.4%, Gas 38.6%; another 7.7% came from Nuclear & Gas via the European interconnectors & 1.3% from hydro, the other 6.4% came from sewage gas, biomass, solar & diesel.
Over 50% of UK It’s a breezy day; UKs Wind capacity is ~ 14GW but wind is currently supplying less than less than 1GW….where’s the other 13GW we’ve paid so much in subsidies for ??
Burning rubbish was always the largest renewable
..while the publicity is always about wind/solar while hyping the 25% claim
Much of that 25% must be new biomass then
Quite, I generally use http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ for a quick view of the wind follies frequent lack of contribution. Gridwatch includes a biomass dial which guessing by similarity of output values might be the contribution classed as “other” at the site you list. Otherwise a useful looking site, easier to read history graphs compared to gridwatch.
Sky disabled their comments following Brexit, maybe because many of the comments were negative to the way Sky cover that event and others including energy. Shame, now they can plaster the “wisdom” of Black without being exposed to clarification by comments on their own website.
Tip : Today’s Times Pg 27 Surprising debunk of Ashton Hayes magic eco-village story
: Eco village turns a paler shade of green”
Progess is slowing in one community’s drive to go carbon neutral
400 homes in Cheshire
– Camera crews from all over world flew in
– Eco claims are made by resident – Roy Alexander ..prof of Eco- &Sus @Chester
– Claim was 21.4% fall from 2006-10 ..the number reached 24% by 2015 (claim that newer villagers are big barn converter types with profligate lifestyles)
(higher figures are claimed by discounting the villagers most frequent flyers)
– Received a £400K grant for solar panels and Nissan Leaf ….But that didn’t work cos villagers already have own cars, so the charging point has been “disused for years”
– Villagers say there are 2 electric cars in the village
– The people with the greenest-house go to Mexico and will be there 3 months this year.
Peter Wadhams solves the Climate Change Catastrophe on the BBC ‘today program’
He gets 6mns repeating Catastrophic Climate Change at ~08:50
“This year sea ice in the Arctic has been melting at one of the highest rates on record. Peter Wadhams is professor of Ocean Physics at the University of Cambridge and author of A Farewell To Ice.”
That the land was completely naked and barren in the ice-free corridor and incapable of supporting plant, animal and in turn human life, is not surprising – because there was not enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to support the plant life that is the base for human and animal nutrition.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The advancing ice sheets increase the Earth’s albedo, reflecting sunlight and resisting natural cyclic warming. As the ice sheets grow and the seas cool, CO2 in the atmosphere reduces as it is absorbed by the oceans. Most plants suffer severe stress at 190 ppm CO2 and die at 150 ppm, because CO2 is a primary plant-food. The concentration finally reaches the critical 190 ppm level where world flora begins to die and the Gobi steppe-lands turn into a true sand desert. The ensuing dust storms dump thousands of tonnes of dust onto the northern ice sheets each year. Ice core data shows that every interglacial warming period is preceded by about 10,000 years of intense dust storms. The dust on the ice absorbs solar radiation. When the next natural warming (or Great Summer) comes along, the dusty polar ice sheets can warm and melt and the next interglacial is born. Low concentrations of CO2 near the end of an ice age causes a die-off of plants leading to dust storms, reducing the ice sheet albedo, resulting in warming and the initiation of the next interglacial period……. see:
Modulation of ice ages via precession and dust-albedo …
Meanwhile the high amount of carbon dioxide dissolved in sea water was able to sustain the entire aquatic food chain based on photosynthetic phytoplankton so that fish and other sea creatures were available to sustain migrating peoples as they made their way south along the west coast of North America.
Hi Paul,
Andrew Simms and 100 months to save the world.
Andrew began this in The Guardian on the 1st of August 2008 so the time is up on the 1st of Dec 2016. It might be interesting to have a look at the actual changes that have taken place in this 8 years+?
Ed.
a fascinating insight into the thought processes of DECC at the time on Cutting the cost of keeping warm – a fuel poverty strategy for England. Includes the following howler from the Ed Davey”
” We need to get to grips with this problem once and for all, so people don’t have to pay such large electricity and gas bills, so people’s health doesn’t suffer from lack of warmth and so we aren’t making climate change worse as our fellow citizens shiver.”
Not quite sure how he could write this with a straight face.
More seriously, the paper describes many convoluted methods to achieve the goal, many requiring extensive research by DECC, but not one includes repealing the Climate Change Act or opening up a competitive open market in energy like what we had once.
Hi Paul, Paul Matthews on BH Unthreaded has mentioned a paper on ethics from Neil Lavery which is over at the Conversation
It’s just toto hilarious for words – considering it’s supposed to be a serious commentary. You’ll love the idea of how the consensus supposedly works, oh, and the fact that Lavery thinks climate scientists do not have to use common sense, just the assessment of experts. Priceless.
It is a bit hilarious Paul the (scientist writer) turns out to have been funded by one of the orgs listed on one of the pages he claims is a list of orgs who “fund deniers”
He’s just doubled down by saying “It’s a false flag operation”
So that’s a second unevidenced conspiracy theory from him
..Mail Paul and he’ll fill you in on the details
Hi Paul, are you or any of your readers aware of any onshore wind specific targets within the overall CO2 reduction targets for 2050 under the climate change act or other policy directives? Thanks, Steve
Hi Paul et al, has anyone checked how many lead-acid batteries of the type in a car would be required to store a day’s worth of energy, say for a wind farm operating at an average power generation capacity of 11MW (i.e. not the name plate capacity but the actual average generated power)?
Piece on Weds Newsnight about the lack of evidence to support shaken baby syndrome. It seems the BBC is capable of arguing against the scientific consensus when they want to.
“National Grid will pay for 10 coal and gas-fired plants to keep spare capacity on standby, with further sums to be paid if they are called into action. These include coal plants at Eggborough in Yorkshire and Fiddlers Ferry in Cheshire that had previously been earmarked for closure.” FT ..sign up for free account
“It shows how the segue from old, fossil fuel power stations to a system based on renewables and increased flexibility is taking place without the need for large capacity surpluses, which represent wasted investment,” said Jonathan Marshall, at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, a think-tank.
FOFL
Important story Paul “Big Green admitted Lying” Oct 10 Page 3 of the Times …shows the Eden project is based on a LIE valued at £56m
The Dutch man who founded it Tim Smit found he wasn’t getting any money from the Millennium Commission
“faced with the “car crash” of being turned down for public funding, he decided that it “was surely the time to LIE”.(thats a quote)
so he set up a fake press conference in a tent saying that they actually had ..So the Times wrote a glowing leader saying the how insightful the Millennium Commission was ..and they came round over the next 6 weeks
\\He told the festival that fibbing was the “telling of future truths”//
Other stories say “ah but Eden has contributed £1bn to local economy” but that’s BS there’s no source and that works out at £50 for every man/woman/child
I’ve got a BBC page here that says “Eden received more than £132m from 2001-2009” well that works out at £14.7 to 16.5m/year ..which is about the same as the damn turnover. (avg about £16m)
What kind of business receives grants that are the same as its turnover ?
By the way the Alton Towers parent company has a £250m annual turnover from just a few themeparks
You see what is happening there ? you pay £60 to get a family in but another £60 comes from grants .
My free beer business could just take the £60 grant, give free beer to guests and argue it’s bringing cash to the local area, like Eden argue.
[Ed: HTF do I post this as a discussion topic?]
NANNY-STATISM & THE ENVIRONMENT:
Nanny-Statism is rampant in the modern world (Canada included). But the reality is that the primary beneficiaries are not the babies but the State, ever keen to superimpose its command and control instincts & methodology, and empower itself, its bureaucrats, and its influence-peddling, profit-seeking, grant-receiving sycophants who back-feed the Party by way of indirect funding & promotion. We proles are *nowhere* in this game of the rich & powerful.
Nanny-Statism reduces to the: “We’re in charge, don’t worry, be Happy!” To which I reply: “Don’t Happy, be very, very Worried lest the State takes over your life in-toto.” for which, read Totalinarianism.
So, in this perspective, the State is the Enemy of the People and their Individual Freedoms. Do we want to go the way of Communist China? Russia? Etc.? “Toe the Party-Line or else?!”
And driven by a cunning agenda of supposedly catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, albeit a fallacious & self-serving one at worst, and — objectively — very questionable at best, the U.N. is militating to ascend to a position of Global Power. Some would say, “High time”, but not on this tendentious, ‘gravy-train-riding’ agenda.
Only real outcome I can see (apart from Aviva’s Mark Wilson’s warm feeling inside, presumably) is that it is now impossible to obtain even Public Liability insurance (let alone Professional Indemnity) for any inspections / reports / expert advice on anything to do with Coal Mining.
No doubt they will still happily accept insurance premiums from the largest consultancy practices (who, however, mostly lack any practical experience in this field.)
No doubt other fossil fuel companies / experts have similar problems.
I’m watching Sunday’s Horizon episode, ‘The wildest weather in the universe.’ Interesting that they say that Death Valley’s high temps (and by extension Venus’) are due to the high atmospheric pressure and not the composition.
BTW that BBC WWF species decline piece actually doubly debunks it’s own headline
“World wildlife ‘falls by 58% in 40 years'”
cos buried in the text is
“This analysis looked at 3,700 different species of birds, fish, mammals, amphibians and reptiles – about 6% of the total number of vertebrate species in the world.”
#1 It’s only vertebrates
#2 They didn’t include 94% of vertebrates species in the survey..just 6%
WE get 7% of our electricity via the inter-connectors
But no matter, Dick Ed Davey’s ‘renewables’ will save us…as long as we get the hottest, sunniest, windiest winter ever …start praying (if that’s your bag), but stock up.
Have you seen the article in today’s FT http://on.ft.com/2fBweC9, by Martin Wolf. He is an economist, but has clearly been fed a story by the AGW camp and has not bothered to check his facts.
Paul, the Telegraph is putting some content behind a Premium pay wall
I wonder if Booker can wangle some free accounts for us stringers ? Introducing Telegraph Premium
Free 30-day trial then £2 per week billed as £8.67 per month or £90 for 12 Months
plus a free Amazon Echo Dot worth £49.99 (UK only)
The good news comments are being reintroduced (not just premium I think.)
“You need to register for a free account with the Telegraph in order to post comments.”
I wonder how much the BBC spends on Guardian subscriptions ? FOIA ?
I don’t pay for my access, but it means I’m limited to a certain number of articles per week(ten I think). It just means I’m more choosy which links I click on.
To be clear this is the brand new Premium service which just launched.Guido just mentioned teething troubles
The main thing is you can comment on articles
A Free account gives : One Premium article per week, Comment on articles
It’s different from the old system cos now most items are free..but special commentators are in the Premium section
I was considering a response to the letter from Hugh McNeal. the chief executive of Renewables UK, in today’s Sunday Telegraph. His claim that they ‘are not asking for special treatment- just a chance to compete’ seems open to dispute. As your understanding of the system is no doubt more solid than mine, maybe you might be persuaded to give a refutation?
8:30pm R4 Future of the car
Evan Davis with the BBC giving a free plug for his Tesla mate
2 other guests
#1 Gett | NYC’s Black Car App
#2 Bloke from Driverless car software lab
So BBC admit making basic Climate Science error, in a news post which is intended to show that the BBC know more about Climate Science that Dumb Donald Trump
I say “admit”, cos they admitted it by making a stealth correction 7 hours after publication
Southampton, Soton Cafe Scientifique event @the Pub Southwestern Arms, 36 Adelaide Road
November 14 Monday, 7 :00 PM mingle then 7:30pm-9pm Talk/break/Q&A The use of satellites to monitor sea levels
Paul, do you have any explanation as to why the DMI’s Arctic temp plot is running so much warmer than usual? http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php Is it just weather, or could there be a technical reason? Even in recent low ice years the temp stayed closer to the mean.
PR not news ?
“More than half of electricity low carbon” in Yorkshire Post also here
Comes out of a Report from Imperial and Drax
“Between July and September 2016, the contribution of nuclear, biomass, hydro, wind, solar and low-carbon electricity imports from France peaked at 50.2%, up from just 20% in 2010 – demonstrating the scale and impact of Britain’s renewable energy revolution over the last six years, and the unprecedented changes taking place in the UK energy sector.”
“According to this quarter’s report, nuclear energy provided the largest share of low-carbon energy over the last three months, generating over a quarter of the UK’s electricity (26%), followed by on-shore and off-shore wind (10%), solar (5%), biomass (4%), low-carbon energy imports from France (4%) and hydro (1%).”
Hmm ..You can’t just assume all French imports are low-carbon, as it comes from a whole network , which is currently using a lot of coal cos of nuclear repairs
– hydro seems low
– Technically you can’t say “more than half” cos that 0.2% is probably within the margin of error.
– that a solar seems suspiciously high
– I wonder if the wind total has had the electricity USED by wind turbines deducted ?
– Biomass has basically been burning rubbish in the past and has been higher
Drax isn’t doing vwery welll if their bio is included within that 4%
– again has transport CO2 been deducted from biomass ?
So a network without all the big subsidies for solar/wind would have only 15% less electricity
I like the photo on the main BBC website accompanying the headline “2016 ‘very likely’ to be world’s warmest year”: http://www.bbc.co.uk/
The implication is that a higher global temp. would mean hotter summers in UK, which isn’t necessarily the case.
I wonder why they didn’t use the same photo as on the actual article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-37949877
Although, that one is probably no more relevant and is all part of the “Marrakech” propaganda campaign.
Paul Bill McKibben is tweeting a ridiculous ..world ice coverage graph
no one has debunked him yet ..I would guess instead of adding Antarctic and Antarctic together itr’s subtracting one from the other …or something
A study conducted by scientists at Reading University has concluded that the ice around the Antarctic has barely changed in a century. Sammie Buzzard is a climate researcher at the University of Reading.
News : I can tell European Environment Agency and Client Earth have put out a press release today about NO2
Each news org has put its spin on it …Here’s a Google news list
see more on BH unthreaded : Nov 24, 2016 at 11:30 AM stewgreen
note the slippage :NO2 certainly doesn’t 100% come from diesel cars, their is aircraft for a start.
Price pressure on OUR and French electricity due to French nuclear repairs/checks being given 1 more more month for 2 reactors
“The reactors had been due to restart on November 30, but further checks will be required to satisfy ASN, the French nuclear safety regulator, that they are safe.
Another EDF reactor, Saint-Laurent 2, has been given permission to restart three days earlier than expected, on November 24.” Times
How much would you pay for a Scottish Aluminium smelter including 2 hydroelectic dams ?
Lochaber 82MW and Kinlochleven 24MW Liberty house just paid £330m
That seems reasonably cheap to me ..you could shut the smelter and still make a profit running the dams… depends the debts I guess
Dear Paul, Thank you for the recent link to GWPF Lords select committee article. I listened with interest to the meeting. I have to say that I didn’t quite see Mr Nolan from Ofgem as a consumer’s champion, although he does appear to have a grasp of the renewables subsidy problem. I was more encouraged by the select committee’s general scepticism towards renewables. Hopefully, this might spread to the other chamber.
An interesting point that arose in the course of the interviews was the comparative size of the UK gas grid to the electricity grid. Mr Sheppard from Nation Grid mentioned that the gas grid carries 5 to 6 times more energy than the electricity grid. Later, Mr Nolan mentioned that the gas grid was 3 to 4 times larger than the electricity grid; I assumed he was referring to capacity. He also mentioned the planned switch from gas to electricity for heating (2030’s), which made me think: The infrastructure required to expand the electricity generation and supply over the next 10 to 15 years would seem to be a huge undertaking. I’m no expert, but I can’t imagine this is cheap? Especially when one adds in all those electric cars that will need charging. Any thoughts?
Paul, this article by David Whitehouse of GWPF http://www.thegwpf.com/satellite-data-reinstates-temperature-pause/ , has been getting quite a lot of attention recently. One query I have with it though is that it uses land only and highlights the big drop in temperature since the middle of the year. As most of the land is concentrated in the northern half of the globe, which has gone from summer in to winter,isn’t this only to be expected, or am I missing the point?
For another very thorough treatment of interesting data and explanations go to:
https://friendsofscience.org / /click on CLIMATE SCIENCE on the left side of the page that comes up a virtual library on climate change / / which features a wealth of realistic climate history and information.
Paul 6pm news be prepared for BBC PR onslaught from Doctors Against Diesel
#1 Yesterday they did not exist
#2 Bottomline $$ spent on gas stoves for Indians save more LifeDays
than $$ spent on electricTaxi subsidies for Londoners
#VirtueSignalling + #EVsubsidyMafia My notes
Paul here is something not even the mighty minds that run our lives have pondered before.
Where do lekky and hybrid cars get heat to keep you toasty on a typical uk day, rather than a Californian one.
Latter have to run engine just to warm you. Former bye bye actually moving
Another point is look at the actual mpg in this case. Or should I say the total inadequacy of the ‘official’ testing.
Just a thought because it’s such a fundamental part of my driving experience. OK I live in the Highlands but I don’t recall it being a lot better down south.
‘Let It Snow, London, 2015’ ‘Sledging on London’s hills at Christmas hasn’t been possible for many years due to lack of snow. Once the tree was dismantled all the sledges were given away to local people, or sold to raise money for charity.’ Simply not true that there has been no sledging for ‘many years’ and why give away sledges to Londoners if there is no snow? It snowed at The Oval on 26 April 2016.
My impression is that there have been better than average sledging conditions in London in the last few years but I don’t live there now. Your research skills would probably back this up. The BBC text was taken more or less straight off the PR puff of course, typical BBC churnalism. They changed ‘recent years’ to ‘many years’ for added eschatological effect.
Reply from BBC, note that ‘climate’ becomes ‘weather’ as the opening savo of the tissue of lies and evasions. All too depressingly familiar of course but a Happy New Year to all despite that!
Dear Mr S
Reference CAS-4150811-3C6H1Q
Thanks for getting in touch with us.
I understand that you feel the article contained an inaccuracy with regard to the weather.
The main focus of the article which asked “Do you wish your Christmas tree had just a little more artistic credibility?” was with regard to the artistic creativity involved in making the trees that were “a little different” and not climate change or the weather.
Nevertheless we acknowledge that you feel this was an inaccuracy and we appreciate that you have taken the time to bring this to our attention.
I have made sure to record your complaint on our daily Audience Feedback Report that is compiled and circulated right across the BBC.
These reports can be used to inform future broadcasting and policy decisions so please be assured that your complaint has been sent to the right people.
Thanks once again for taking the time to contact us.
NB This is sent from an outgoing account only which is not monitored. You cannot reply to this email address but if necessary please contact us via our webform quoting any case number we provided.
On BBC Radio 4 at 8pm tonight:
“Climate Change: the Trump Card”
A year on from the Paris climate change talks, Roger Harrabin asks if the world can limit the global temperature rise to under 2c.
(or as the Today programme put it, can we “save the planet” !)?
Nice story in today’s Daily Mail about the DeltaStream tidal turbine project that failed within weeks of being commissioned. The operator, Tidal Energy Ltd, has gone into Administration and the Welsh government is now searching for a buyer, claiming the project had achieved its objectives and ‘helped make Wales a key player in the industry’. A waste of £8.5M public funding.
Times
Front page : Ski Holiday ruin : Alps drought zone
Article is speculative “if there is no snow by the weekend” : Twitter shows me it did snow around Annecy on Jan 4th
and Ski resort forecast is snow this week https://www.j2ski.com/ski_resorts/Airports/Annecy_snow_reports.html
The question of Climate Change came up on this week’s Any Questions on BBC R4.
Lucie Green, unfortunately, demonstrated closed mind (for a scientist) and couldn’t resist challenging Owen Paterson, putting forward the “scientific consensus” argument, when he expressed the point of view that a rise of 0.5 degrees in 50 years did not frighten him.
Incredibly, Margaret Beckett argued that the temperature had risen 2c since the last ice age.
It’s a pity that Paterson didn’t ask her if she would have preferred that hadn’t happened and we still under miles of ice in Britain.
BBC had a Horizon programme Sun 22/01/17 addressing recent changes in global weather patterns. It was a very objective presentation, largely focussed on jet stream and supra tropospheric influences on weather patterns at terrestrial levels. At no point was there blame on mankind’s influences leading to ‘global warming’ and the accompanying link to carbon emissions that we normally see with BBC presentations.
Most of the statements were uncontroversial but a few slightly dubious ones crept in. However they did not take away the impact of a programme looking at factors that are only recently coming to light through proper scientific research. There was none of the wild speculation derived from suppositions made by pundits who project beyond the facts presented by a particular scientific study. Can it be that the BBC are learning to present science factually? If so let us have more programmes like this. Scientific debate is needed.
There is hope yet for the so called sceptic who says that while the world has been getting warmer over the past 10,000 years man’s influence by producing carbon dioxide as being the cause has not been proved.
That programme was a repeat, although I don’t remember when it was first broadcast.
It was probably discussed here at the time.
I don’t recall that the programme was particularly objective.
I doubt if the BBC is changing it’s attitude to “climate change”.
Not sure what the Telegraph are up to today. Reporting on Hurricane Gustav flooding Cuba and threatening to increase to Cat 5 before hitting Florida. Apart from fact that hurricane season ended in November, Hurricane Gustav was a 2008 hurricane. Gustav is not even a name to be allocated in the 2016-2020 name list. Maybe the NOAA is planting ‘false news’!
Paul, I would very much like to make contact with you directly in connection with your truly masterful review of Prince Charles’ recently published Lady-book on climate change. I have an idea which may be of interest to you. Best regards, David Cosserat, Oxfordshire, England. Email: cosserat@gmail.com
Paul
impartiality has for the first time been enshrined in the BBC’s mission
BBC impartial…that’ll be a novelty
The Charter has given the BBC a new public mission, which is
To act in the public interest, serving all audiences with impartial, high-quality and distinctive media content and services that inform, educate and entertain.
The BBC is required to deliver duly impartial news by the Royal Charter and Agreement, and impartiality has for the first time been enshrined in the BBC’s mission in the new Charter. The government agrees that it is vitally important that accurate and impartial news is at the centre of the BBC’s output.
A new series of “Costing the Earth”, begins on Radio 4 on Tuesday (15.30) with a programme about wildfires, which it will no doubt blame on “climate change”.
Paul last night Science In Action began with a report how GHG science isn’t working on Mars but there’s a lot of irony cos the previous Stephen Sackur prog had just spent half an hour telling Ebell the science is settled.
My notes are on BH unthreaded.
Feb 10, 2017 at 9:59 AM
I’ve been watching the NASA press conference about the exo planets around Trapiste 1.
They say that there are three Earth sized planets in the habitable zone where they receive about the same energy as we do. However because their sun is a red dwarf, most of that energy is at the infrared end of the spectrum, so the question is, would that energy penetrate the atmosphere enough to raise the temperature?
If the Earth had experienced an uneventful developmental history — its geographic poles / axis would be vertical and the world would be without seasons.
There are suggestions in the literature that external forces such as those generated by a passing highly charged comet/ asteroid could easily interact with the Earth pulling the geographical axis away from its default vertical position and shift its rotation axis to a tilted position — and that over time with no interference the Earth’s axis of rotation will SLOWLY move toward its default vertical position (because of the inertia of the gyroscope that is the planet Earth).
A highly charged comet passing close is thought to be able to exert an even greater electro-gravitational force sufficient to tilt the Earth’s rotation axis than the mechanical consequences resulting from a direct impact.
The observations of Inuit elders deserve careful consideration.
Hi paul – Just read this quote in Quillette online mag from a Professor Clay Routledge and thought it might interest you and your readers.
‘The important point is that people are biased and this influences scientific work. I and others have written about the problem of ideological bias in the empirical sciences. However, postmodernists horribly misdiagnose the problem. Science isn’t the problem. People are the problem. Scientists are people, so they can be biased. And this undercuts our ability to develop an objective understanding of the world. This means we need to increase our efforts to remove human bias. Postmodernists oddly go the opposite direction. They increase potential bias by rejecting the methods that help reduce bias. They put their faith, and I use the term faith purposely, in subjective human experiences instead of trying to remove subjectivity from research.’
NOT A GUEST ESSAY — but the following observation by Inuit about the tilt of the Earth having shifted that I thought your readers may find interesting:
Earth axis shift influencing the climate(No subject)
PS peter salonius [https://boomerangoutlook.baydin.com/static/img/icons/ribbon/boomerang_64_blue.png]
If the Earth had experienced an uneventful developmental history — its geographic poles / axis would be vertical and the world would be without seasons.
There are suggestions in the literature that external forces such as those generated by a passing highly charged comet/ asteroid could easily interact with the Earth pulling the geographical axis away from its default vertical position and shift its rotation axis to a tilted position — and that over time with no interference the Earth’s axis of rotation will SLOWLY move toward its default vertical position (because of the inertia of the gyroscope that is the planet Earth).
A highly charged comet passing close is thought to be able to exert an even greater electro-gravitational force sufficient to tilt the Earth’s rotation axis than the mechanical consequences resulting from a direct impact.
The observations of Inuit elders deserve careful consideration.
I think that if this had happened within living memory, we would have ALL noticed!
The motion of the stars relative to one another (proper motion) is known about but is very small.
It wouldn’t cause the sun to set in a different place or the other changes the inuit were talking about.
He is talking about social sciences but I think this is the fundamental problem with Climate Change.
‘I have been at talks where people present very poorly conducted research related to ideas that failed to replicate or were never well-supported to begin with and watched as hardly anyone in the audience offered even the slightest challenge. It is very strange to see well-trained scientists so blatantly ignore fundamental research flaws because they find the conclusion ideologically affirming. This is precisely why we need to make our methods more rigorous, fight for an academic culture that challenges groupthink and prioritizes the pursuit of truth over tribal loyalty, and encourage diversity of thought.’
I don’t see any suggested solutions, i.e how do we increase yields without carbon emissions?
I wonder if they took into account the fact that c02 is plant food?
True but it is much deeper. Essentially during all of their learning years they have been told the world is going to burn up (despite the rising seas!). We older ones are more amenable to changing our viewpoint given we had previously been subjected to the previous new ice age scare. I am guessing for them it would be akin to finding out they were adopted, their whole view view would be skewed.
If melting glaciers does cause an increase in volcanic activity, there may be a feedback mechanism in the eruptions which would have a long term negative effect on temperatures.
I also notice that according to the scientist in the video, Iceland was covered by glaciers 1-2 km thick 12000 years ago. If I am not mistaken that was during the glacial period, when the British Isles and most of Northern Europe was also covered by glaciers. The melting of the glaciers 12,000 years ago was not caused by CO2 emissions.
Paul 3 Things
PR experts are clearly backing off the Global Warming narrative
And regrouping around air pollution narrative as a strategy.
Now I bet The BBC has been some secret #SoICanBreathe meeting with the NGO PR guys again like 28gate ?
Today the BBC started a campaign saying that the diesel cars is the new paedophile & directed the baying mob to them.
Every live program me throughout the day had PR tricks stirring up hate against them.
Stuff like getting children to stand in front of school with placards etc.
This is wrong !
I have no objection to the Green Party participating in political campaigns, but the BBC is unelected and undemocratic it should not be driving politics.
Here is a graph showing the official UK trend
Completely predictable there would need to be another scare to take its place. The fact that reacting to the previous scare was what to great extent caused this one is not lost on the shameless BBC.
Paul,
Not sure how best to contact you, so posting a link here to an article by Richard Black (yes, ex BBC) titled, “We need electricity to be our flexible friend”.
The intriguing thing is that he advocates markets to deliver best price, though he rather spoils that with this, ” If we want the overall amount of electricity to come from the cheapest form of generation, that would inevitably be onshore wind – but the Government has effectively decided to ban it.”
You and your more expert readers might well have something to say.
Regards
David Bishop
Paul,
Here is another example of “consensus” science at work –
35 yrs as a Pariah .
Prevailing archeological thought was that humans crossed from Siberia to Alaska and the Americas over a land bridge approximately 13,000 years ago ( they became known as the Clovis people).
In the 1970s a French-Canadian archeologist Jacques Cinq-Mars and his team found evidence of human activities much earlier & between 1979 and 2001, he published a number of papers arguing for his original theory, this went against the consensus so he was viewed as a pariah in the archaeological community for ~ 35yrs.
Another archaeological team in oxford confirmed in Jan 2017 that people were in the area ~24,000 yrs ago; now, the Clovis people theory has been set aside vindicating Cinq-Mars.
So what do you have to say about this report in the Daily Telegraph then? Sounds pretty conclusive to me – human influenced climate change is real and should not be ignored..
I thought I had already posted this once and so does “WordPress”, but I can’t see it.
I can’t tell from you post what your attitude is to the article but it is base on a biased source (WMO) which takes extreme examples of weather and calls them “climate change”.
For example the “wettest winter on record in Scotland”, is actually only the wettest since 1910 (because the records don’t go back any further) and winter 2017 rainfall has been below normal.
Each example used is probably an outlier and no mention is made of the “normal” weather experienced in most places, a sure sign of confirmaton bias. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
As for temperature, you have to trust the source of the data and as many of the figures are estimated and continually being upwardly adjusted retrospectively, I don’t.
I’m sure it sounds pretty conclusive to you…but that doesn’t make it fact.
Same as you convinced me to read something from the Daily Telegraph….then linked me to the Independent.
You may find this info site useful – http://www.use-due-diligence-on-climate.org/
Laid out as simple bullet points, simple explanations, through to full scientific papers & stuff you’ve never heard of; plus loads of charts, links & refs. Work your way through; It’s well researched & is fairly easy to navigate.
The programme on iPlayer with the report at about 25 minutes.
The report is by Nick Bryant, the BBC’s “New York” correspondent, so what is he doing reporting on Miami!
There’s more to Miami than vice & sea level rise…start with geology, years of water abstraction & geography.
They had the answer 2,000yrs ago –
Matthew 7:24-27.
And they shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:
And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.
According to this report, referring to Miami, “water levels here are rising at nearly 10 times the average world wide rate”.
Yet according to Wikipedia, global sea levels are rising at an average rate of 1.8mm p.a., and according to NOAA the rate at Miami Beach is 2.39mm +/- 0.43mm p.a.
So where does Bryant get his figure from?
According to this page, he is the BBC’s “New York correspondent”, although I must admit I don’t recall hearing much from him.
I am sure it was him who mentioned the “nearly 10 times” figure.
Maybe “climate change” isn’t his speciality and he was taken in by the propagandists.
It doesn’t seem to have made it on to the telly yet.
On “Outside Source” last night, Christiana Figures was making some claims in relation to President Trumps Executive Order and Climate Change. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08l5mkp/outside-source-28032017
They sounded pretty suspect to be but I haven’t had a change to check their veracity yet.
Theres this
“Mar 28 Alicia Trujillo @aliciatrujillo
@CFigueres hi I work for the BBC and we are interested in talking to you about the EPA. pls DM me your contact.”
Then this
Can Trump save the coal industry? @CFigueres says 'It has exited the economy, it has entered the books of history' https://t.co/6r4EridOwN
It is not hard to see here the formation of a plan; Charge power stations more for their water use (cooling etc) to make them less competitive.
It is also mind-boggling that a Manchester University (where it rains 12 days a month they tell us) has a rainwater harvesting/treatment system to reduce costs. It seems very unlikely that it is cheaper for the University to harvest rainwater and treat it for human use (showers and toilets; who showers in water not suitable to drink?) than it is to simply use the vast supplies of the Lake District.
the future does not seem bright,
On a recent “Breakfast”. Samantha Franks, of the BTO, cited “climate change” along with habitat (loss of?) and predators, as a cause of some species being in decline, but offered no examples.
I have requested a single example, but have so far received no reply.
I have no doubt that weather is a factor, but climate change????
Just another example of where the obligatory cc has to be mentioned, with no evidence whatsoever.
Thanks,
“climate change doesn’t produce good picture for wind-supported migration of honey-buzzards”
What does that even mean?
What is she saying?
I’m afraid I am not into twitter!
If you search Twitter for BTO climate
You find some comfirmation bias type claims
Their latest blogpost is about migration getting delayed due to variation in cold weather. http://btomigrationblog.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/still-waiting.html?m=1
Theyve had series of similar posts since March 20
After earlier March 3 excitement of early migration/spring
An item on “Breakfast” yesterday about native bluebells, similar to the one about birds the day before. This time apparently bluebells are flowering LATER than last year (when earlier flowering was of course due to climate change), and again the main threats were to “habitat loss, climate change and trampling”, with again no evidence for climate change.
Why do naturalists have to damage their case (IMHO), by mentioning climate change without any evidence, when the other threats are so much greater? Is it a standard script which they are obliged to use? I thought it was ironic that “trampling” was put forward as a threat, in an item which was encouraging people to go into the countryside and no doubt do a lot of trampling themselves.
Hi Paul,
Would it be ok by you if I collated your excellent rebuttal series of Nat Geos climate hyperbole into one post on my site https://climatism.wordpress.com ?
Cheers,
Jamie
Strange, that’s not what I am seeing.
Mine says:
“Climate change makes Canada river vanish.
I suspect they mean “a river in the Yukon”, rather than the actual river Yukon.
Danish Wind Mafia demand subsidy money or else….
“When we see how few turbines it takes to replace the present ones, we really feel that it is a good way to preserve the Danish landscape”
“We face the huge challenge that support for onshore turbines expires on February 21 next year, and that means that onshore turbines won’t be erected after that date – at least, it certainly appears that way, given the amount you can earn under current market conditions,”
Because of this, electric companies are holding back from investing in new clean energy technology for as much as 5 billion kroner. http://cphpost.dk/news/business/new-wind-turbines-for-old-theyll-be-larger-but-far-fewer-are-required.html
See, the wind industry really does care about preserving the landscape….of its bank balance.
In the Times20/4/17
“plugging in 6 electric cars may cause local power cuts”
Emily Gosden quotes ‘The green Alliance’ the government must mandate ‘smart meters’; Solar Panels threatening grid stability;…..
Latest from the independant “March breaks new global Warming record despite lack of El Nino” according to NOAA. I assume that they are using the “corrected” readings.
The more I think about this survey, the more I feel it is a measure of the success of “climate cnange” propaganda than of the way people would actually think in the real world.
How many people would really be concerned about the forecasted effects of “climate change” on wildlife (or anything else for that matter), if they were not told to be concerned by organizations such as WWF in the first place?
Went to a meeting of the local science café a few months ago & the conversation turned to photosynthesis, more than 50% of the university students wanted to have ALL CO2 removed from the atmosphere (because it was “the major pollutant” [yet most of them admitted to smoking] ) & didn’t know CO2 was a plant food.
A few thought CO2 was the main component of the atmosphere (up to 95%), & remember these are people at a science café….presumably with an interest in science.
Regarding Drax and biomass fuelled power generation, there is a complaint that was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last year. The complaint document is very interesting, detailed and illuminating as it exposes in some depth the misinformation and misdirected policy initiatives assiciated with this project. Although some of these points have been mentioned here before, it is worth highlighting a few of them:
1. Dorothy Thompson (CEO of Drax) also heads up the body appointed to monitor biomass power generation!
2. The USA (where the deforestation to produce pellets for Drax takes place) is not part of the deforestation control arrangements under the Kyoto protocol – which means deforestation in the USA is not counted as such!
3.The DECC itself produced a report dealing with the carbon cost of deforestation, which is to be found on p.23 of the complaint. Here is a paragraph: “A modeling study from the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is particularly significant to Enviva and its main customer, Drax. The model compared net emissions under scenarios where trees are cut for pellets that are burned in a power plant, versus scenarios where forests are left to grow or are harvested for other products, and fossil fuels are burned for energy. The model “cuts” and “grows” the forest under the different scenarios, treating losses in forest carbon as an emission of carbon to the atmosphere, and gains in forest carbon as a negative emission where carbon is taken out of the atmosphere. While data from Drax show the facility’s 2013 CO2 emission rate for biomass was 2,128 lb/MWh (Figure 1), this is just what is coming out the stack and does not reflect net emissions over time, which including the loss in forest carbon uptake following harvesting (since reducing a sink for carbon has the same effect on atmospheric CO2 concentration as increasing a source). The DECC report concluded that for pellets made largely from naturally-regenerated hardwood forests, the net emissions rate remains high for decades, at 2,800 to 8,792 lb CO2e/MWh52 when analyzed over a time horizon of 40 years, and 1,689 to 11,407 lb CO2e/MWh when analyzed over 100 years.53 As we show below, naturally regenerated hardwood forests are already a main source of Enviva’s pellet feedstock, thus the scenario is directly relevant to Enviva’s current harvesting practices.”
The BBC are reporting a “study” by the RHS, which suggests that:
“Climate change could transform gardens” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39710313
Haven’t we heard all this before?
“The key thing is that the south of England is going to be hotter and drier throughout the year with some heavy rain showers and then the north of England is going to be certainly milder but it is also going to be wetter in the summer and in the winter.”
Not much sign of wetter weather last summer in the NE of England! http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/summaries/anomacts
Some slightly contradictory statements on BBC news reporting of this.
The husband in one couple said, “there’s less rain every year (really?), while the wife said they had to cut the grass more often. Surely with less rain the grass won’t grow as quickly?
Paul remember BBC Head of Editorial Partnerships and Special Projects ?
You might have got to her
She appeared on a 7 min bbcWS Radio segment
to recap the SoICabBreeathe season
And emphasised 2 things
– It wasn’t a campaign (well it looked like it)
– ‘It was about just offering solutions ..look one prog debunked the idea that trees help against pollution’ (..em I listened to that prog and the presenters still seemed to be true believers)
Despite tweeting this “Important to show up in rooms where people are sceptical. And listen”
She failed to respond to my 3rd request for info on what NGO’s she met for the project
I should FOIA the info I guess.
Interesting programme available from BBC World Service, “What’s Wrong with Science?”
Panel discussion by eminent scientists. “…some of science’s keenest advocates fear that there is a problem with science, that there is something wrong with the way it is currently practiced…”
Readers here will most likely recognise just about all problems discussed as being relevant to Climate Science.
I’ve been doing a series on climate change alarmism and am sure you’d be great (if you do voice interviews). Please contact me at adammala@themalacast.com if you’re interested. Thanks for the blog.
Anyone in Southampton ? next week 15,16,17 Southampton Pint of Science
– 3 nights of 18 different talks in 6 pubs across the town
The blurb from a lecture on Monday says
“there has been a recent shift in the denialist community away from flat out denial to instead questioning the accuracy of predictions made by climate models. ”
and
“Coastal flooding is a growing threat due to sea-level rise and changes in weather patterns associated with climate change. “
on our topic is also Climate Change: Cultural links and societal impact
17 MAY 19:00-21:30
Art and Science in the Arctic
Liveable Cities – Future UK Cities Patrick James
What will it be like to live in world of green energy and low carbon emissions?
Latest thing on the Greenpeace* website Arctic summit: Alaskan fears amid the vanishing ice
“”The winters are colder and a little bit shorter and spring is coming earlier and a lot warmer, which we love. Summers are longer instead of shorter,” says Ms Olanna.”
talk about laying on thick …*BBC I meant
Can someone explain when they put a map of Alaska the corner inset is a map of Europe ?
“Can someone explain when they put a map of Alaska the corner inset is a map of Europe ?”
CO2 driven tectonic plate movement (feel the earth move for you)
This mornings BBC ‘The Life Scientific’, plant biologist Ottoline Leyser actually said we should remove politics from science & scientists should be less aloof, no mention of climate change !! http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08q5wxx
BBC4 Green Energy propaganda show ..next week or week after
“The Great Village Green War for BBC Four,
follows green energy enthusiast Robert Llewellyn’s year-long campaign to persuade the residents of a Cotswolds village to generate their own power”
.. It’s in Frome local newspaper
Rich Cotswold village gets green energy subsidised by unicorns and poor grannies in rest of county
\\.Frome’s ground-breaking plans are also supported by the former President Nasheed of the Maldives who visited the town recently. He said, “My country has no future if we continue to use energy the way we currently do. The whole island will become flooded by rising sea levels. Even in Frome increased flooding means that 720 homes are at risk. We need to work together to urgently tackle this crucial issue.”//
more https://biasedbbc.org/blog/2017/05/15/start-the-week-open-thread-125/comment-page-3/#comment-835920
One month ago why would Guardian claim Climate Change causes river to vanish rivers sometimes
Cos it’s better than saying that sometimes mountain rivers CHANGE DIRECTION. …due to land slips etc.
BEFORE August 3, 2015 ..river flows north
AFTER July 4, 2016 ..river flows east
…Guess which photo shows far more ice coverage ?… yep 2016
#1 As it was it ended on a squib. They’d hyped all the possible renewables up and all came to nought. They were too far up river for tidal flow etc. But the big deal came after 65 mins when they found their substation was not big enough for all the houses to start feeding into the grid.
So they end with just a 20KW community solar array on the barn of Cotswold Farm Park which will use the power and pay back the community “hundreds of pounds per year”
#2 Problem with the maths
– Show commences saying the village is “62 homes using 341MWh/yr”
I make that 5.5MWh each
– End of show they say “20KW barn solar offsets 5-6 homes”
Lets check that 365x24x20*0.097CapFactor =17MWh/yr
hangon thats Only 4 homes at UK av of 4.152MWh
but of this village @5.5 only 3 homes!
(And that assumes that CFP uses all the elec generated)
BTW turns out CFP have their own 50MWh array so even less likey to use all the power
#3 Interesting thing is when you look up Cotswold Farm Park.
guess who owns it …It’s actually titled Adam Henson’s
Cotswold Farm Park.
Yes the only reason they can do any green energy scheme at all is cos BBC luvvie is playing along.
OK 3 Things about BBC luvvie Robert Llewellyn’s BBC4 Green Power show last night
I expected 90 mins of propaganda ending a rigged but amazing success of powering his village greenly
#1 As it was it ended on a squib. They’d hyped all the possible renewables up and all came to nought. They were too far up river for tidal flow etc. But the big deal came after 65 mins when they found their substation was not big enough for all the houses to start feeding into the grid.
So they end with just a 20KW community solar array on the barn of Cotswold Farm Park which will use the power and pay back the community “hundreds of pounds per year”
#2 Problem with the maths
– Show commences saying the village is “62 homes using 341MWh/yr”
I make that 5.5MWh each
– End of show they say “20KW barn solar offsets 5-6 homes”
Lets check that 365x24x20*0.097CapFactor =17MWh/yr
hangon thats Only 4 homes at UK av of 4.152MWh
but of this village @5.5 only 3 homes!
(And that assumes that CFP uses all the elec generated)
BTW turns out CFP have their own 50MWh array so even less likey to use all the power
#3 Interesting thing is when you look up Cotswold Farm Park.
guess who owns it …It’s actually titled Adam Henson’s
Cotswold Farm Park.
Yes the only reason they can do any green energy scheme at all is cos BBC luvvie is playing along.
Yes, I suppose that having made the film, they couldn’t actually bring themselves to say they had failed, so achieving less than 10% of their objectives had to be called a success.
I also thought that the claim that Las Vegas powered 100% of its municipal buildings, fire stations, parks and street lights from “green” and renewable energy was misleading, implying that this represented all of the power consumed by the city.
I’ve just finished watching BBC Horizon programme about the moving of the British Antarctic Survey Research station which was threatened by a crack in the ice shelf. During the whole programme there was not one mention of climate change despite there being several about the ozone hole. Are we seeing the beginning of something new?
Could you review the Finkel report into Australia’s energy market handed down today. My home electricity bill in Adelaide is about to rise 20% next month. SOuth Australia already has the highest prices in the country. Gas prices like fuel are linked to international index’s in this country. In a blackout approx 2 months ago in Adelaide, a gas turbine wasn’t started because the gas has been presold for export and it also gave AEMO volatility to drive up the spot price of electricity. Two coal fired power stations have just closed. One in both Sth Aust and Victoria. No new coal fired power stations slated. Green energy has been built on the back of coal. The green energy is only being propped up by governments. The Sth Aust gov’t has been micro sleeping on energy security. I think it has fallen asleep at the wheel now in relation to RET renewable energy target. The COAG meeting Finkel report session today sounded like a love-in to take more profit and coal is not getting a look in. Austalia has so much coal its ludicrous. It is if some lobby group is writing cheques to bouycot coal, to COAG
Hello Paul,
you probably will not have seen this as it is in our local press but the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England have commissioned a report which has concluded the renewable energy industry in the South West “has been entirely dependent on subsidies for its growth and its survival”
You may have already thought of this, if so then sorry I’m so slow. But, like you I get p.ssed off with met office picking whichever extreme temp to ‘prove’ their preconceptions etc, hottest March the 23rd in Weasleton for 56 yrs or whatever shite. However it is obvious for all hot extremes there are cold extremes on the same day, coldest 23rd june in inverarnie for 80 yrs or whatever, both equally important, or not, but it is a perfect counter to the ‘well what about the hottest day then’ umm ‘it was the coldest for.. yrs.
To recap some history, my original Communication against the EU led to a decision of non-compliance in International Law by the EU (Decision V/9g) adopted by the 2014 Meeting of the Parties:
There are 47 Parties (46 countries and the EU), which have ratified the UNECE Aarhus Convention and this Treaty Convention (Meeting of the Parties) is held on a three year cycle. While the Compliance Committee can adopt findings and recommendations, it is only following endorsement at the subsequent Meeting of the Parties that they become, as appropriate, decisions of non-compliance in International Law and part of the ‘case law’ of the interpretation of the Convention. This usually is a formality, with matters agreed behind the scenes in the run-up to the Meeting of the Parties, will practically no changes made to the Committee’s original findings and recommendations.
However, what has happened in the last two weeks shows that the EU and UNECE are on a major collision course with respect to the forthcoming Meeting of the Parties to be held in September in Montenegro. First of all the following is the draft decision of non-compliance against the EU to be agreed at that meeting:
The first part of it reiterates Decision V/9g above in that the EU has not complied with those requirements over the last three years and clearly is intending not to comply with the Convention with respect to its post 2020 renewable programme. However, the real issue of contention is the recent findings on a long drawn out case on Communication C/32. EU citizens don’t have rights to challenge in the European Court of Justice in a manner, which is ‘fair, equitable, timely and not prohibitively expensive’ as the Convention requires Parties to ensure under its Articles 9(3) and 9(4). EU citizens can only challenge in their own National courts and hope that the judges might then refer the matter to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. As I know from my High Court case, this was a farce, which went on for three years and nine months, which finally ended up with an unprofessional and incompetent judge, who decided he didn’t have to decide. So the EU gets away with things, as it can’t be properly challenged, such as its gross non-compliance on the National Renewable Energy Action Plans (NREAPs), yet at the same time it is constantly dictating to us through a series of Directives, etc., the validity of which we as EU citizens cannot challenge in the European Court of Justice. In particular, as under the Treaty of Lisbon, environment is a joint responsibility between the EU and the Member States and in practice all the major environmental issues are emanations from EU legislation.
First of all it is important to realise that the EU is not a country in the normal sense, it is for the purpose of International Law, and the Aarhus Convention in particular, what is defined as a regional economic integration organisation (REIO). Therefore, competencies are shared between the REIO and its Member States and as the EU declared in its ratification of the Aarhus Convention and as has since been clarified by the Compliance Committee in Communication C-123:
“The European Community is responsible for the performance of those obligations resulting from the Convention which are covered by Community law in force.”
“89. In short, the effect of the Party concerned’s declaration is that it assumes obligations to the extent that it has EU law in force; member States remain responsible for the implementation of obligations that are not covered by EU law in force”
If the EU hasn’t brought out specific legislation in a certain area, then it has no international law obligations related to that area. However, as we know the EU has brought out a lot of environmental related legislation, so why can’t a citizen get standing in the European Court of Justice to challenge acts and omissions of this law on the environment, as the Aarhus Convention requires? One could also point out that such as the Decision V/9g of Non-Compliance by the EU on the NREAPs is automatically a breach of EU law, since the Convention is an integral part of EU law, but then we are back to the point that as an EU citizen, you and I have no means of effective access to justice to enforce it………….
Since the Compliance Committee published their findings in March 2017 on Communication C/32 on the EU’s lack of Access to Justice, what has happened since is unprecedented. Usually, all of these issues usually get resolved behind the scenes before the actual Meeting of the Parties. However, the EU is divided into several bodies and institutions and the Council is the big one in terms of political direction, etc., and was responsible back in 2005 for ratifying Aarhus, etc.
Therefore, one can only be surprised with the aggressive tone being taken by the EU Commission in its recent Communication in relation to the above Aarhus findings and in that the EU Council should use its position to refuse to endorse these findings at the upcoming Meeting of the Parties:
The Compliance Committee has since responded following its meeting last week to the above, in a very fair and balanced manner, i.e. it is by no means going to be bullied and in particular the EU has obligations as a Party and it, UNECE, cannot be giving it preferential treatment:
However, to date, the whole issue is only in the rarefied domain of environmental lawyers, although it deserves to get out to a much wider audience, as this goes to the fundamental principles of democracy and the rule of law. After all if you are being dictated to by an entity, which is pursuing an agenda which is detrimental to you outside of the rule of law and you have no means of effectively enforcing that rule of law………..
Finally, the report of the Compliance Committee on Decision V/9g from last week is now also published on the relevant UNECE webpage, as part of the background information to be adopted at this Meeting of the Parties:
Critical information on S wansea tidal power! Buried reference in Roman concrete article is Prof. Jackson says it will take 120 years to amortize/pay out project!
Is it just me, or does anyone else think that the Met. Office warning system is not fit for purpose?
There is currently a yellow warning for rain covering most of eastern England between 06:00 on June 6th to 06:00 on June 7th.
The area covers Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the north, but the only rain forecasted there is occasional light rain, with a maximum probability of precipitation of 40% for a short period.
On the other hand, yesterday there was blanket heavy rain over most of the north east with heavy rain recorded at Albemarle, but there was no warning in place.
I can’t make the Met. Office understand that such warnings (and lack of them), which bear no relationship to the weather forecast for a location are worse than useless. I get replies from them, explaining why the forecasts don’t match the warnings but with no indication that they are going to do anything about it.
It seems to me that with the resources at their disposal, they should be able to do something to correct this.
Thanks, I am not sure exactly what his attitude to the warning system but it seems similar to mine. I might log onto his site and post some comments there.
Have you ever logged into/posted anything on the xmetman site?
I am trying to log in using my WordPress details, but it doesn’t seem to work.
Also I can’t see any comments from anyone else.
Thanks,
Do you mean the “leave a comment” link?
I clicked on that and says I have to log in to comment.
When I click on that, I get the option to either log in with WordPress log, or Log in with user name and password.
When I try the former it says it can’t find my account and when I try logging in with either my email or user name, it either says they or my password are invalid even though they are the same as I use for this blog.
I am following xmetman on WordPress but for some reason I can’t post.
It may be because I haven’t registered separately with xmetman but I can’t see any option to do that. Is it different to the “leave a comment” link?
Oops, i have just spotted the “subscribe” option.
It was off the right side of the screen.
Why can’t people get everything on one screen without having to scroll????
When I just looked at the settings for my blog, it seems that the ‘Membership – anyone can register’ option had become unchecked!
My apologies, hopefully that should now fix it.
What a numpty!
Well it looks like the forecast was correct and the warning was wrong for the North East.
A light shower at about 07:30 and none since. Certainly no heavy rain or thunderstorms.
You mean July (not June)
eg Mablethorpe ..for Thursday it says ” Increasing risk of thunderstorms arriving or developing, probably becoming locally severe with hail and large amounts of rainfall.”
Hence yellow warning
Oops, I still haven’t caught up with the calendar!
The “explanation” still does’t explain why for some locations, the warnings and the forecast don’t match. At least there are thunderstorms forecast for Mablethorp, but not for Newcastle.
More BBC alarmism: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40099384
Apparently Sout African apple growers are going to have to shade the apples in future, because they get sunburnt.
Sigh
I recently unintentionally caught part of an interview with author Neel Mukhajee (not an author I have read or intend to waste time reading), on BBC’s “Meet the Author”.
During the interview, there is the following conversation:
Mukherjee: “At this moment in my life, I am not hopeful about our species.”
Naughtie: “You think we’re done for?”
Mukherjee: “I think we’re done for, yes.”
Naughtie: “Why?”
Mukherjee: “Well I mean, you know, climate change is one very obvious reason why I think we’re done for, I think we have run out of time.”
I find it incredible that someone so apparently well educated, can come to such a conclusion.
It is an indication of how pervasive the propaganda has become.
There may be many reasons why the human species is “done for” , but “climate change” is not one of them, although erroneous belief in “climate change” may be.
I wonder whether he even knows what he means when he uses that term.
In wordpress “Simply go to Settings » Discussion. Under the Other comment settings, you will find the option, Comments should be displayed with the older comments at the top of each page. Click on the drop down menu and select Newer.”
Bu that’s a problem cos it changes the order on all pages
And on Paul’s site the best comments come in first.
Maybe the about page could be changed to New About page2.
I’ve discussed this with Paul before. The about page is hard to use with oldest first. Few brand new visitors will bother scrolling to the bottom, for example.
None of the other posts have anything like the same number of comments, so scrolling to the best ones shouldn’t be that much of a problem. Perhaps try it for a month and see what people think?
I don’t think it is Stu, at least not without a plugin. Case in point though, to respond to your reply in context of the thread to date means I have to scroll for a long time on my mobile.
I have a trick, cos I once checked the reply box bit that says
“Notify me of new posts via email”
thus your last comment entered my email box,
… and when I just click the reply link in the email.. it takes me direct to the BOTTOM of the page
I recommend using https://www.inoreader.com to monitor new posts in forum since you last looked.
Click “add new content”, post in this URL https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/about
and click subscribe, click on the new link on left of screen
You’ll see Inoreader then gives you comments with latest at the top.
another telling insight by Matt Ridley on his blog, this time on on ‘beloved’ EV’s, and the comparison with £3Bn wasted when the country was compelled by big government to abandon incandescent light bulbs.
I mean Jeremy Vine only commands a salary of £700,000 for doing a 2 hour show, 5 days a week. Oh! I forgot, he does Egg Heads as well, trundled out to justify his eye watering salary.
And when challenged on his salary by a listener, he refused to engage in the discussion.
And Chris Evans, who is on £2M a year, justified it by telling everyone he spoke to his Mum on the subjects and she told him to say that he should earn as much as he could, when he could, for as long as he could.
She was, by his account, a nurse So that’s OK then. Oh! I also believe part of that salary is for Top Gear, which lasted for all of several months.
The recently posted UK sea level data again shows the awful mess that our government’s scientific advisers have got us in to. Good on Donald Trump for having the sense to walk away from the flawed Paris agreement. But how do we get the message over to our MP’s and ministers so they can make some sensible decisions?
#BiasedBBC’s enviro correspondent @BBCMarshall uncritically retweets GreenPeace propagandist Doug Parr on on Musk’s solar propaganda
Is that IMPARTIAL?
She also just said this on R4 FooC at 11:40am about Alaskan Inuit
“The Arctic is melting twice as fast as the rest of the planet”
‘Here we are in an Inuit cellar storage area and it’s melting, and it’s never done that before’
The old man says ‘all the old signs we used to read the ice can’t be trust any more’
CM ‘Down the road is a lab, the scientist likens climate change to a runaway car’ Direct link to segment
I guess this tweet is the guy she got her contacts from
@BBCMarshall Craig George said you were wanting to talk with someone about northern Alaska climate change. He suggested we get in touch
Paul, I’ve got her banged to rights for #1 confirmation bias by cherrypicking and #2 Deception by omission.
#1 She’s lifted her main line straight from the opening line of his last blog http://cooperisland.org/june-2017-the-arctic-continues-to-surprise/
“JULY 18, 2017 GEORGE DIVOKY
The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world.”
Yet you get a massive shock when you look at the photo cos snow is MUCH LATER this year
#2 So that’s her Deception by omission.as the blog post is titled “SURPRISE” cos he eventually says
“However, unlike the past two years, snowmelt in Barrow was not early —it was extremely late. ”
“Snow at the NOAA station just outside Barrow was the latest since 1988, with snow disappearing on June 18th – compared to 2016 when melt occurred on May 15th.”
(for more summary see BH Unthreaded Jul 22, 2017 at 7:55 PM)
Paul I’ve had a surprising ‘tweet from the stars’ about your post.
Harra himself just tweeted me something , and since I had not addressed him, but merely explained the maths of the paradox that the £40bn saving is more that total annual household leccy bills , I’m guessing what has miffed him is that you sub headed it
“Another grossly one sided report from RH:”
hence his strange reply to me
“Calling yourself the open-minded questioner may be more persuasive”
I am not sure entirely what he means .
but what it does mean that he or one of his minions has read your post.
So it might knock some sense into them.
Hi Paul , I would be interested in an off line conversation about your dealings with Ecotricity planning. We are near Stroud want to destroy 100 acres of meadows to build a football stadium and business park that is not in the local plan and is not very green
I see @rich_yorks posted this
\\ Replying to @Eco_MarkJeff @ecotricity @Natures_Voice
Beautiful scene, much like meadows you plan to destroy for a biz park stadium complex creating 1 million car journeys #greenwash //
and then go blocked by the Ecotricity exec @Eco_MarkJeff
“Ofgem said last week that it will relax licensing in order to let tech firms introduce the new gas and electric tariffs which will have more control over appliances in people’s homes than traditional arrangements.
The plans will reward households for turning lights off at night and heat off in the winter, letting technology firms like Google and Amazon provide energy to British Homes.”
Just what I have always wanted, being rewarded for freezing to death in the winter.
And WTF are Google and Amazon doing providing energy in the first place?
In case you haven’t seen it – Scientific American July 28, 2017
“Since the release of An Inconvenient Truth in 2006, more polar ice has disappeared, and global temperature and carbon dioxide levels have climbed even higher. Hurricanes are growing stronger, droughts more intense and flooding more extensive.”
In a review of “An Inconvenient Sequel”, on BBC’s “Film Review”, Jason Solomons, who obviously believes in “climate change”, never-the-less said he found the film “very boring” and a “cure for insomnia”, and that it “looked like propaganda for the people who believed in climate change”, while generally supporting the premise of the film. It’s difficult to understand what else he wanted from a documentary unless it was even more exaggeration and hyperbole.
Sadly I am a follower rather than a leader. When I read the scholarly pronouncements here on your site I am embarrassed at the specious observations that I feel enjoined to make. In defence of my ignorance, I note that much of science is observation. Seeing something pernicious, such as the refusal in our society to embody all witness, enrages me to such a degree (a pertinent word) that I am more angered by the process than the fact.
This year has been a miserable one as far as weather is concerned (I live in the same latitude as you). Rain, low temperature and then more rain. I have had one evening when I have been able to sit in my lovely garden at twilight and enjoy the world. Recently, in the past few weeks, I have had to resort to central heating to make relaxation inside my home comfortable.
The weather pattern is one of a wintry aspect with the low pressures, that I was taught were centred over Iceland in our summer, a near permanent feature over our islands. If it is that this compression of the weather is taking place, the warmth ushered southwards away from us, then may it not be the fact that summer heat is being concentrated in a narrower band away from these dismal, and seemingly endless succession of lows? Could it be that temperature readings in areas away from these cold winds and rain are being boosted by the limitations that the weather systems we are experiencing impose?
As I say, I am a bear of little brain. I would hate to think that man’s purpose is to be handed over to the puritans or that scientific method, which up to this point has been scrupulous and reliable, given us a life of riches and hopefulness, should be subverted by people in bubbles who have only rhetoric as their understanding, a national broadcaster who is not beyond mocking reason and showing itself averse to that which is not fashion.
I was just sent the following link to an article in which various executives in the automotive parts industry express their views on the future of EVs. Very interesting.
Don’t know whether you aware of this ultra-alarmist and ultra-unscientific thing of Schroders. Free access through Citywire & no doubt other financial portals. Schroders are no doubt aware that there are megabucks beyond the dreams of avarice to be made. .schroders.com/en/insights/economics/climate-progress-dashboard-forecasts-global-warming-of-more-than-4c/?utm_source=Citywire_Money&utm_medium=Content&utm_campaign=UKInvInsights
It’s been around a month
I’ve not seen a debunk
Seems the same idea a Grantham’s Green hedgefund
Like who is going to be against more green subsidies ?
…”think of the children” and other catchphrases.
Paul, I found your recent article on wind power in Northern Ireland very interesting. Does anyone know where I could find financial figures of the subsidies, constraints payments etc that have been paid out.
There’s something interesting NE electricity prices have just gone up by 6% after 4 year hiatus
The BBC NI podcast blamed the rise of FF
“There has been a 10% rise in gas prices and similar rise in the price of coal”
This raises the question over what period is this 10% gas price rise, where does NI power station coal come from etc. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05clffl
The BBC had a news item on the Today programme this morning about food production in Africa.
Of course they had to say claim that crop yields were being cut by “climate change”, by which they meant “drought”, without producing any evidence that this was not just caused be normal weather variation.
I suspect that the fact that the population in Africa is expected to double by 2050 in a part of the world which already has difficulty feeding itself may be the major problem. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b091s7zl
About 44 minutes into the programme.
Makes big claim
“This is the first time a link with climate change has been shown at a large, continental scale using observations alone, as opposed to using computer simulation models.”
Yet almost no one bit
cos that URL was only tweeted twice
and no one replied to the tweets
Just one thing URL back searches on Twitter are not comprehensive if people decide to use a short URL in their tweet
(short URL’s are not really necessary cos Twitter automatically shortens long URLS anyway now)
Hang on searching on “Climate link to European floods” yields about 30 tweets cos that was used in an IrishTimes article on Aug 10th the same day that Science Mag published the article
However little traction gained no retweets
Off Topic slightly, but an article in the Guardian today by Jon Snow relative to Grenfell Tower.
Jon states that the MSM are part of the liberal elite and disconnected from the public (now there’s a surprise) and goes on to describe how they all missed the Grenfell tower residents blog which stated the building was a fire risk.
He says the MSM should be taking more notice of the voices of the small people and investigating their causes.
Perhaps there’s hope for us yet when he comes to the aid of climate sceptics, on his white charger, with their numerous blogs pointing out the self same issues, except of course, they claim the world isn’t going to burn.
The latest edition of “Weather World”, on the BBC News Channel, discussed the Urban Heat Island effect, although not much detail on how much effect it had on temperatures either at a local or global level.
Lots of examples of “extreme weather” in the rest of the programme however. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b093twx4/weather-world-26082017
Benny Peiser was on the BBC news channel this morning, discussing the EU legislation limiting the power of vacuum cleaners to reduce carbon emissions.
Unfortunately they didn’t get his name right, spelling it “Paiser”
Actually, while I welcome the appearance of the Director of the GWPF on the BBC, I didn’t think he got his point across very well, concentrating on the use of new technology, whereas a simple “if you make cleaners less powerful, people will probably have to use them more, negating any reduction in carbon emissions”, would have sufficed.
I’m an ex pat sweaty sock (does living in Kent qualify me as an ex pat?) retiring back to Scotland (Dumfries and Galloway being my first choice) in 4 or 5 years.
This is what I’m looking forward to. Truly stunning countryside plagued by windfarms so the landowners can cash in on government subsidies.
The SNP have made some insane decisions in the past, but contaminating the country with these monstrosities has to be up there with Alex Salmond as first minister.
In a new documentary, “The Search for a New Earth.” on BBC2 on Monday, Stephen Hawking puts forward the opinion that “I am convinced humans need to leave Earth and make a new home on another planet.”, citing “a new virus, nuclear war, artificial intelligence gone rogue”, and (you guessed it) “climate change”, as possible reasons.
The Radio Times says it is a two part documentary but my EPG only says it is a single part, albeit 90 minutes long.
I have now seen the programme which was IMHO frankly ludicrous.
Apparently the problems of sending a viable population to another solar system are easier than solving the problems on earth.
I’m looking at novel ways to build an extension to our listed cottage and am looking at ICF’s (Insulated Concrete Forms) and stumbled on this.
“The requirement to restrict solar gain limits the demands on energy for cooling the dwelling
or building. The UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP)3.28 has indicated that the UK
annual temperatures could increase by between 2°C to 3.5°C by the 2080s. The summer
increase will be roughly twice that seen in winter, giving an increase of approximately
6°C. Overheating is already an issue in many buildings and this will worsen and become
more widespread3.29, increasing the demand for air conditioning, and thus energy for
cooling. Designers will therefore be required in the future to pay much more attention to
heat gains through windows and the rest of the building fabric. In addition to design of
the fabric to limit heat fl ow into the building, the structure itself can be used to control
internal temperature rises by making use of fabric energy storage (FES). This can reduce
or even eliminate the need for air conditioning, and thus lower energy requirement and,
consequently, CO2 emissions3.30.”
The second, and possibly more important issue is raised in this article I found when I followed a link from here, to repealtheact.org.uk.
I’m too dense to read between the lines, but when it appears Judith Curry acknowledges this, it might be something to consider.
Maybe they have allowed for this, but I would have thought higher crop yields, for whatever reason, would tend to restrict uptake of minerals, as there is more crop per acre.
It may even be that soils are now being depleted of minerals as they over farmed more and more.
West: Art project needs funding so they bang together buzzwords of Renewable Energy and Bitcoin.
They build a wind turbine that goes on the ground which is inefficient for generating energy and use software implementations of bitcoin mining protocol which is ineffiicent for mining bitcoin. They spend what remains of the grant money on publicising that any tiny amount of bitcoins mined will go towards green causes.
East: Chinese Commercial Bitcoin miners build directly next to coal stations which are efficient for making energy ( and occassionaly a hydroelectic dam. )
They have custom built ASIC circuits to mine bitcoin, which is the most efficient mechanism.
“The world has warmed more slowly than had been predicted by computer models, which were “on the hot side” and overstated the impact of emissions on average temperature, research has found.”
Some of us knew that, without being told!
The opportunity arose to discuss this in the “papers” section of BBC Breakfast, but the airheads preferred other important topics such as Boris Johnson, Rio Ferdinand and London Fashion Week.
Hi Paul, I am interested in using an extract from your article the CCA for a briefing to MPs – is the okay? Contact me fay@repealtheact.org.uk
Paul,
Your article on Reykjavik prompted me to look at many arctic stations for which I had stored data last year. May i use the comparison figure in your article in mine? I will be putting it on TheNoTricksZone. I didn’t happen to store Raykjavik.
Please do, Ed.
I’ll watch out for.
Coming soon!
Thank you.
Hello Mr Homewood,
Apologies for ‘butting in’ here but I do not know how to contact you otherwise. I wish to donate but I refuse to use PayPal (long before their recent ructions with the Free Speech Union!)
Can you please let me know what other methods are available?
Many thanks,
Robin Humphreys
robinhumphreys@btconnect.com
a.k.a. devonblueboy
Paul, have you heard of the ‘Trusted News Initiative’ founded by BBC in 2019 and now includes Google, facebook, twitter, and others including Aussie ABC.
There is an anti trust case (link below) due to them suppressing ‘news’ they disagree with. So it doesn’t matter what you say here the rest of the world will never hear it!
Click to access TNI-Complaint-1.10.22.pdf
Interesting climate blog!
rob de vos
One of the very best.
Look forward to seeing you again.
Do you have an RSS feed enabled on your site?
Don’t worry worked it out.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/feed/
If you enable “meta” info in your side panel the RSS feed will be listed there. See an example here – http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/comparison-temperatures/
Cheers
Phil
Hi Paul,
Have you ever seen or created – or do you know where the data is to do it – a scatter plot of power generated by wind (or % of capacity) against winter temperature? I assume the dynamics could well be different in summer.
The whole idea of a power generation technology which does not actually produce power when it is most needed is fascinating.
I only know of this site which gives daily electric stats.
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
You can get daily CET data from the Met, here.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/cet_info_mean.html
Let me know how you go on. Might be worth a post!!
Thanks
Paul
Thanks – will have a look at those sites
It does look interesting – how can I email you a spreadsheet?
I’ll email you.
Thanks
On its way
I have created this site http://www.ukpowergeneration.info/ which shows demand compared to all power sources. My next step is too add CET as a clickable option to the graphs
I combined power output and temperature into plots which clearly show that you get more demand for power on cold winter days, but you also get less power from wind on colder days – in some cases close to zero.
Paul,
Great stuff, always useful. Have you seen the NIPCC site? This is not spam, I’ve been reading along and forwarding your pertinent (and often “pert”) questions to my AGW zombie friends. NIPCC generally has some pretty interesting links along similar lines culled from science publications. Great that there are places to find polite but serious questions about catastrophic AGW.
http://nipccreport.org/
Thanks. I’ve just subscribed!
ClimateDepot.com links to your site’s Feb 8 blog. If I may, please allow me to point one other largely unreported facet of AGW, namely the baseless accusation that skeptic climate scientists are paid by the fossil fuel industry to lie about the issue. I wrote an exclusive for ClimateDepot nearly two years ago titled “Climate Depot Exclusive: “Smearing Skeptic Scientists: What did Gore know and when did he know it?” ( http://ow.ly/hC4C6 ), and the rest of my pieces on this narrow topic are here: “The ’96-to-present smear of skeptic scientists” http://tinyurl.com/cjn9tv6
Folks like me having no science background at all can contribute to a wider understanding of the politics surrounding the issue, at least.
Is there a “tutorial” for lay people (albeit with an appreciation for science) that explores the AGW/CAGW controversy? My thought is an easily followed map that, step by step, follows the scientific method and general principles. One that shows how the science has been corrupted through each step of the scientific method and associated principles and continues to be supported with unfounded assertions and logical fallacies. Perhaps a tutorial that has citations and proof statements to support the assertions. I have a big file of papers/blogs etc on various positions on AGW/CAGW, I can grasp much of it but have limited capability to discuss it other than in generalities. Does such a tutorial exist or can someone write it up–again for the lay person with a grasp of scientific method.
Regards and Thanks
From the scientific point of view, the debate seems to revolve around two main issues:-
1) What will feedbacks be?
2) What will be the effects of a slightly warmer planet?
There are certainly wide disagreements between scientists themselves about both these questions, but I am not aware of any write up that summarises everything.
I recommend http://appinsys.com/globalwarming/GW_History.htm, UN and UNEP websites, and the Club of Rome 1991 report “The First Global Revolution” as precursors to science. A step by step “procedure” to demonstrate how the scientific method would be used by researchers to determine the cause(s) of an observed climate change is a great idea, and an excellent way to highlight the contrast between scientific research and the propaganda we’re being inundated with . A compendium of the various methods that have been used to distort and misrepresent the science would be helpful, too.
The most important issue in the AGW/CAGW controversy is that the concept that anthropogenic CO2 was affecting climate was proposed as a method to achieve political and economic goals. The corruption of the science and unfounded assertions and logical fallacies Ebeni mentions, as well as the severe weather events; earthquakes, typhoons and hurricanes of unusual magnitude, created or exacerbated by HAARP ELF and chemical dumps (Chemtrails) shown in satellite photos and radar, are essential means of achieving these goals. The major controversy is based on the fact that AGW isn’t science. Japan’s gosat satellite (greenhouse gas observing satellite) in 2009 showed that most CO2 was evolved from the ocean, sparsely populated vegetated areas in Africa, the Middle East, China, and northeast Asia, titled something like “need for economic justice from third world nations”.
Feedbacks alone are an issue, since nearly all feedback in natural systems is negative and maintains stability in the system, and IPCC predictions unaccountably assume positive feedback.
The problem from any field geology or archaeology scientist’s point of the current science of climate appears to make no serious effort to determine what the geohistorical effects of similar or greater changes in the past were. There is quite literally no reliable empirical, field evidence that CO2 has any long term correlation to planetary temperature. At shorter, but still geological scales of time, the field evidence supports only the idea that warming oceans degas CO2. Warmer oceans CAUSE higher atmospheric CO2.
Also, and worse, no effort is made to determine how patterns observable in the past, as reflected in geological data, would be seen in the present. Throughout the last quarter of the Pleistocene it is plain that CO2 lags marine temperature – or at least d-O18 changes – by several centuries. The implication is that if this pattern continued to the present, current increases in CO2 are due to events that took place during the Medieval Warm Period. We may very well have an effect on carbon isotope balances without significantly altering the efficiency of the carbon sinks that have been operating since life appeared on the planet.
Those are important considerations, but I believe that the central issue is one of attribution, or whether there actually exists a distinct anthropogenic signal which can be isolated from natural variation. The sole argument for the anthropogenic signal comes from the models which ‘replicate’ the warming in the presence of CO2, but show a ‘flat’ line without. But the reason the line is flat is because of the working assumption that natural variation is random, not cyclic, and so the perturbations in individual model runs are smoothed out over the ensemble.
I don’t doubt that anthropogenic CO2 is having some input, but the question remains about whether it is significant to the overall result.
Ebeni, I my page “Observatorio ARVAL – Climate Change; The cyclic nature of Earth’s climate”, at http://www.oarval.org/ClimateChangeBW.htm I begin with:
After the alarm caused by Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” in 2006, these are my findings about the drivers of Earth’s global climate.
I try to present this science in this long page.
It is all about science published by well-known scientists, with links to the original works.
As you can see below, I’m not a climate scientist, far from it. That’s why I had to do this research; To find out what happened, what is happening and maybe what could most probably happen. I hope you’ll find it interesting.
Andres Valencia
Electronics Engineer, Solid State Physics
I meant to write; Ebeni, in my page …..
New Anthony Watts Interview Just Published: Climate Change without Catastrophe (News Tip)
Dear Shub,
I just wanted to send you a quick mail to let you know that we have just conducted a very interesting interview with the well known figure in the climate debate Anthony Watts.
It’s a very interesting chat and whether you agree or disagree with his comments I thought you and your readers would find some value in taking a look
A few of the topics we discussed are:
• The difference between “global warming” and “climate change”
• Why CO2 is partially responsible but oversold
• Why recent major weather events cannot be linked to CO2
• Why we should be more worried about another ice age
• Why carbon taxes won’t have any effect on the whims of Mother Nature
• How the climate debate has taken on religious proportions
• Why the Keystone protests are all for show
• Why Mother Nature will be the final arbiter of truth
• What we should and shouldn’t be doing to address global warming
• Why “climate change” has become a favorite bogeyman
• Why scientifically we’ve only scratched the surface of climate change
You can read the full interview at: http://oilprice.com/Interviews/Climate-Change-without-Catastrophe-Interview-with-Anthony-Watts.html
I hope you find the interview interesting.
Best regards,
James Stafford
Be careful posting anything about The Environment Agency (Wrong Type of Rain etc.) – they’ve got a large calibre scatter gun to deal with uppity bloggers.
We were just missed by one blast that hit of all places Narrowboat World and prompted us to investigate how much media control a single UK government agency indulges in
“Because if you look at satellite data at the top of the atmosphere, you clearly see we have an excess of energy, more energy going into our planetary system then what is going out.”
comment by a physicist quoted in a post on the NoTricksZone blog under the post title; Puzzled Schellnhuber: “Not At All Surprised” Short Term Models Are Wrong…But Insists Long-Term Models Are Correct!” Would you have any comments.
alf
Have you got the link?
Hello Mr. Homewood,
I did some datamining on a few British coastal weatherstations to see if the Atlantic Ocean is still warming.
I’ve written an article about that subject on my own blog:
http://cassandraclub.wordpress.com/2013/06/02/hoe-zit-het-met-de-opwarming-van-de-atlantische-oceaan-deel-2/
It is in Dutch, but the graphs speak for themselves.
http://notrickszone.com/2013/06/02/puzzled-schellnhuber-not-at-all-surprised-short-term-models-are-wrong-but-insists-long-term-models-are-correct/
here is the link –just wondering if in fact the above statement is true.
alf
Thanks.
I don’t know where he gets his data from, but Lindzen & Choi came to the opposite conclusion.
Click to access Lindzen-and-Choi-GRL-2009.pdf
There is certainly much debate about whether they are right or not, but I think it shows just how far away scientists are in being able to measure and understand such things.
But the bottom line is that if Scnellhuber is right, the added heat would be measurable at the surface, which it is not.
I would assume that it is easier to measure outgoing radiation then incoming due to cloud cover and other factors. thanks for the link
alf
“The more I look at climate issues, the more I realise that we cannot always rely on what the climate establishment tell us.
I hope that, in my own small way, I can help to put that right.”
Well, Paul, that’s an admirable goal, but I have a couple of questions.
1) Who are you – what are your credentials?
2) Have you published anything in any peer-reviewed scientific publication?
3) What is your academic background?
4) What professional certifications, if any, do you possess?
Don’t take this as a personal attack. It’s just that if I was going to have brain surgery, I’d really want to know that the surgeon who was going to perform the surgery was actually qualified to cut on me. It is no different with respect to the search for expertize in any field, for instance, in Climate science. And so I think you owe us a little information on your background.
Thanks for the question, Joseph, and I appreciate the reasons for it.
However, I deal in facts. If you think I have made any factual errors, or misrepresented any issues, I would be delighted to discuss them with you.
As I am sure you would agree, Climate Change is an enormously important area of public policy and debate, and I believe that the more facts that are out in the public arena, then the better.
One more point, and perhaps the most important. I always encourage people to do what I have done, and check the facts for themselves, rather than simply believe what they are told. So I usually try to provide links etc for readers to do just that.
(BTW – I am an accountant)
Paul: here is an interesting discussion I had with a few folks tonight.
The hottest year in the U.S. was 1921. 1934 was second. The average temperature for the 48 contiguous states in 1921 was 55.6°F. To confirm this one can read the first paragraph of THE WEATHER OF 1940 IN THE UNITED STATES (W.W. Reed) or THE WEATHER OF 1942 IN THE UNITED STATES (J.L. Baldwin).
Click to access mwr-069-02-0049.pdf
Click to access mwr-070-12-0271.pdf
The average temperature in 1934 was 55.1°F. The original temperature measurements published each month for each state for those years by the U.S. Weather Bureau will add up correctly.
BTW… Two-thirds of the state record high temperatures in the U.S. were recorded before 1955. More than half were recorded from 1921-1934. Few have been recorded since 2003. Yes, it is warming today, but it also did so during the first half of the last century… and at about the same rate
OK. Here are some numbers. The first column shows weighted monthly temperatures for the 48 contiguous states (no Hawaii or Puerto Rico) derived from the original 1921 US Weather Bureau monthly reports… the Tables in the Condensed Climatological Summary. Example: http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/049/mwr-049-12-0684.pdf
The average temperature (°F) for each state is given in these official reports. Only the contiguous 48 are used. The second column gives the temperatures from the NCDC-NOAA 1895-2009 US database where, presumably, the same historical information is given for each state, each month. The third column is the amount that the NCDC has lowered each temperature.
JAN 36.0 33.8 2.2
FEB 38.5 35.9 2.6
MAR 49.5 47.5 2.0
APR 53.7 52.2 1.5
MAY 61.9 60.5 1.4
JUN 72.1 70.8 1.3
JUL 76.1 75.3 0.8
AUG 73.0 71.6 1.4
SEP 69.0 67.7 1.3
OCT 56.4 54.9 1.5
NOV 44.7 42.9 1.8
DEC 36.7 34.5 2.2
YEAR 55.6 53.9 1.6
Note that the annual average for 1921 has been lowered by 1.6°F. This lowering has the net effect of removing the year 1921 from its position as the warmest year on record in the US… as the Weather Bureau observed in several annual reports I cited earlier. The same pattern of lowering can be found in other years. I’ve checked 1934, 1938, 1940. All of the original Weather Bureau temperatures have been systematically changed and all have been lowered. The winter months have been lowered more the summer months…every time….WHY?
“The winter months have been lowered more the summer months…every time….WHY?” Lowering summer month temperatures creates the impression of recent warming. Lowing historical winter temps supports the alarmist sea-level rise, catastrophic flooding meme by making current winter temps appear unusually warm, supporting predictions of a trend toward unprecedented glacier and polar ice melts. My guess, anyway.
Paul,
There is not much actual physical facts being used in climate science.
They just have been following temperature data for the last 150 years and tweaking in garbage and calling it a model.
Facts are completely irrelevant.
Hunting for any pattern to call a trend in a system that is in completely unique every moment and every place. Never to find that exact pattern. All of this is irrelevant to the many processes and material differences in play on a rotating planet that has many different velocities with many different pressure differences on an ORB.
Any mathematical equation is pure horseshit as they all assume a single point that does not interact or move. PI(3.14159) was never designed for motion and every rotation after the first distorts due to the equation being open ended.
We have NEVER measured distances of a fantastic amount of planetary data that gives some understanding to how this planet actually mechanically operates. The gas of nitrogen being 80% interacts against water vapor and does so much more to moving water vapor in creating snowflakes and keeping water vapor separated and changes density with the cold.
In simple terms…
Our planet is getting colder due to the suns inactivity which gives off great amounts of material that our atmosphere has lost catching in the last decade to insulate the planet with the gases by the thickness. We are in constant loss of material including water vapor over 4.5 billion years.
There is vast amounts material and questions to understand by pure facts. All the answers ARE here, just our scientists have gone on a different direction and will protect the garbage to the bitter end and keep the citizens ignorant.
Paul,
Your graphic on 97% and 52% about the AMS survey is great. May I use in in presentations, citing you of course?
By the way, I would like to connect with you. Please send me an email.
Steve Goreham
Please do, Steve.
BTW – the graphic came from Anthony’s, not sure where he got it from!
Dear Paul,
1) thanks for your site which has become my 1st visit on most days, usurping WUWT, mainly due to your UK emphasis.
2) it may be my workstation today, but I note that comments aren’t available and also you appear to have lost your google ranking from my search protocol in that I do not get your site offered when searching on ” not a lot of..” where previously those four words initiated a direct link being offered. Hmmm – do these indicate some google-filtering? Could be worth a check.
3) I live in Morayshire, Scotland. The Scottish Government have adopted even more banzai climate madness policies than their UK/English & Welsh counterparts. Should you ever have time, it would be interesting to have a column or posting dealing with Scottish issues – especially as the looming referendum draws near.
4) Happy New Year!
Yz
Dave
Thanks Dave
I use Yahoo search and that works fine. I have just tried Google , and it finds it typing the full “Not a lot of people know that” in.
Even comes top of the list! So there’s probably nothing to worry about.
I have had other comments today, but please let me know if you still get problems.
Thanks
Paul
Paul,
You might be interested in the text on page 156 of the linked document (in the public domain) that talks about the effect of climate change on aircraft safety. Extract: However, greater weather changes are anticipated as a result of global warming, with lightning implications.
Click to access 2011_03.pdf
Regards
Steve
Paul – your post about the EADT article I tipped you yesterday has created a bit of an opportunity. One of my friends has emailed the editor and linked to your article. He particularly challenged the use of “Carbon” pointing out that it was a meaningless term, that they should have used CO2, and how this was only a tiny percentage of the atmosphere.
He’s just had a response from the editor inviting him to submit a reply or article, and thinks you would be able to produce a far better answer than he could. As I can’t find a direct contact on your site, would you be good enough to email me (at the address on this post) and say if you are prepared to help? If you are, I will put you in touch with my friend and he can pass on the correspondence so far.
Many thanks in anticipation.
Sorry – I meant at the email address you should have from my comment in your logs. I don’t wish to post it in public, to avoid being hit by spammers!
Paul – As you have posted regarding Kevin Anderson and Tyndall recently you may be interested in an appearance last night on an Irish television programme, Eco Eye. I think you can view the RTE player in the UK (I could in Australia, but it may be country specific. Here I can view theChannel 4 player but not the BBC player, other than for radio. The URL is http://www.rte.ie/player/ie/show/10244927/
The other main interviewee was one John Gibbons, who has earned a mention at Bishop Hill. I’ve earlier this week posted at http://oneillp.wordpress.com/2014/01/13/gibbons/ on a blatant misrepresentation of IPCC projections by him, and by An Taisce, the Irish National Trust, which has as President an IPCC AR4 lead author and review editor, who has, in my opinion, unwisely said nothing. As for John Gibbons it is nothing unexpected – I filled in someone else recently that the Irish Times allows columnists such as John Gibbons write pseudo-scientific nonsense and rarely prints corrections or dissenting opinions. (To be fair, John Gibbons does also sometimes make sense, although on those occasions I usually find myself checking if I’ve missed something. Surprisingly, he is prepared to support a nuclear option when this in anathema for virtually all Irish ‘environmentalists’. He is also thorough
when it comes to ‘disappearing’ blog posts which have become embarrassing by revealing a very poor scientific understanding, although he has not been able to purge these when reproduced elsewhere. It may help to judge the state of Irish Climate Science when you know that one of his past gems (“First, the science bit. Global average temperatures have increased by 0.8 degrees since industrialisation began. This translates to a world that has
become 6.5 per cent warmer”) is still carried without comment on the website of Professor Sweeney’s ICARUS (Irish Climate Analysis & Research Units) unit at NUI Maynooth!
H Paul
I noticed when reading your article about the bad weather in England on Anthony’s blog that
in the comments section you referred to a blogger by the name of Carbon500 who had a comment regarding your article. I would like to get in touch with this person re this as I think
he could help me in relation to ongoing battle I am having with the local FOE group. Of course
only let me have contact details if he is willing to let you release them.
Many thanks
Regards
John Craige
I’ve asked Anthony if he could pass the request on, John.
Dear Paul,
Your site is fascinating – thank you for all your work, and for my education.
I have a question about the recent UK rainfall articles you’ve written using Met Office data.
The articles are very clear as always, but can the data tell us anything about rainfall intensity, by which I mean lots of rain falling in a very short time?
This is always the response to the argument that rainfall totals are not all that exceptional. It’s also where the Met Office seem (to me) to be going (i.e. that the new improved models show increasing and more intense regional weather effects).
Clearly the effects of a given total of rainfall will be very different if spread over three months rather than one, but presumably a really wet year like 1929/30 must have had rainfall at least as intense as we’re now experiencing?
Is it just as simple as saying that “rainfall intensity” is directly related to the amount of rainfall in a period, therefore that it cannot really be varying as is incessantly claimed? Flash floods and local geography (Boscastle/Seaton) excepted of course.
Regards,
Steve Brown
The Met Office do keep rainday data, so you can work out daily averages. However, this only starts in 1961, which coincided with an unusually dry couple of decades. Therefore, any trends are unreliable.
I did do an exercise that used daily rainfall data on the England & Wales series, that records it since 1931. The exercise showed quite clearly the dry interlude (with fewer heavy rainfall days), and suggested that the last decade was no different to 1931-60.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/01/24/corinne/
Hi Paul
Had a couple of thoughts that I can’t find the answer – wondered if you might know!
1. What is the cost to maintain a wind turbine?
2. I am assuming that wind turbines are subsidized in a similar manner as solar pv and that the subsidy only lasts for 25 years. At the end of that time the wind “farmer” I presume, get the going rate per kwHour at wholesale rates (solar pv get 4.5p per kw). If so what is the actual average output of a turbine and will it be sufficient to cover the maintenance costs?
3. I just have a vision of lots of broken wind turbines in 25 years time that have become uneconomic to be fixed and that the wind farmers will just abandon them and build another turbine nearby to get the green subsidy again for another 25 years.
Wouldappreciate your thoughts/figures?
Alec
The subsidy for wind turbines will be for 15 yrs, under the new strike price contracts.
I don’t know mtce costs, but such marginal costs would bge fairly low – most of the cost is the upfront capital cost.
In theory, the planning process should ensure that they are properly decommissioned, but in practice what will happen if the operator just walks away?
Paul, I know your beat is weather history, so this is “off topic” a bit. I ran across information about a remarkable Englishman, a veteran of World War I. I believe I read he was England’s most decorated solider in that war. Being from the states, perhaps is why I have never heard of William Coltman before. Have you? Its just interesting. Here a couple links to biographical material. I didn’t see any books.
I do appreciate your work. No conversation about weather or climate is even coherent without a firm grasp of past observations. Its preposterous to model the future without apprehending the past.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Harold_Coltman
http://www.oxforddnb.com/templates/article.jsp?articleid=93495&back=
Paul, You’re going to love this one. Report on The Register http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/06/us_national_climate_assessment/
Apologies Paul, You have already referred to it in one of your earlier posts. Note to self: Use the scroll bar more often…
Hi Paul,
Have been following your blog for some time now and have recommended it to numerous people.
I wonder whether you might be interested in this article discussing the potential impact of climate change on the medical profession and what their ethical response should be. I came across this in the Student BMJ (my daughter is in her third year) and here is an online link:
http://student.bmj.com/student/view-article.html?id=sbmj.g2691&locale=en_US
You need to register (for free) to read the full article.
This is a good example of the way climate change has insinuated itself into every thread of discourse in modern life and is described as fact by someone who clearly has no knowledge of the subject he is pontificating on but is driven by the collective groupthink that pervades this topic.
Doctors and nurses have enough to worry and should (and probably do already given lack of comments) ignore exhortations to take part in a phoney war on climate change.
Steve Davison
So far you have avoided commenting on steven goddards claims about data tampering. Is he really that far off the mark?
I’m working on a post now!
Thanks; I have followed Steve’s blog for some time and dispite his personality he seems to be on to something.
Hi Paul,
In researching the recent Facebook psychological experiment scandal I came across this article about filter bubbles:
Nothing really surprising but in combination with the fact that Facebook have been manipulating the bubble to see the effects (without our knowledge or consent) one quickly realises the potential ramifications in terms of its misuse being able to influence what we think, buy and more scarily, vote.
Clearly none of us can escape from this if we spend any time on the internet and it does help to explain why a dangerous meme like CAGW takes hold so perniciously. A little depressing but I do wonder whether like the butterfly effect, there might sometime soon be a chaotic switch which consigns that meme to the dustbin of failed ideas. One can only hope!
I continue to share your posts with family, friends and colleagues but with little feedback. It would be interesting to know what influence your other readers have in this respect? I suspect several of my “friends” have already set their Facebook filters to quietly hide my posts!
Best wishes
Steve
I realise how old this comment is, but I read it just as I post the exact same thing on another site. I have tried, and now do not bother mostly, to engage friends and relations in this topic, but none has even the slightest interest, not even my own children at University.
Ok, so this website of yours is filled with information, but who, other than those that have an interest, will read it?
How do we convince people to even give a damn? Those that ignore my queries, have no interest in the other side either, it is just utter apathy for the whole subject.
AGW (or climate change as it is now) is such an influencing topic at high levels of world Government, but generates almost no interest in ordinary people.
How can we get people to care, one way or the other. I really don’t mind, so long as they choose.
Hi, an old reply to your reply! I have been concerned about this for some time and have unfortunately developed a “certain” reputation amongst my family and friends. I have had more success recently with some as the fraud has become more widespread. The issues of diesel pollution, steel plants being closed, wind farms springing everywhere despite local opposition and the sacking of Phillipe Verdier has been useful issues to bring out the general point. All these things appeal to people even if they don’t care about politics and the erosion of democracy that is required to support this fraud. I have “converted” a few people but you have to proselytise hard and be incredibly thick skinned.
Paul,
I have developed something that could be of interest. It’s a way of doing temperature trend analysis that neatly avoids all the data manipulations so much discussed recently. I have built an Excel workbook for this method, and have done a study of Kansas US in order to prove the concept and the tool.
At this point I need someone with a skeptical mind to critique what I have done. If you are willing I can email you the Kansas workbook and you can see if it stands up to scrutiny.
I have started building a Canada workbook with this template, but there are many stations, and it will take time. I also want to verify that I am on the right track before making the full effort.
I can also send a text document explaining the rationale for temperature trend analysis.
Please let me know what you think..
Thanks, I would be interested Ron.
I’ll email you.
Thanks. I have sent the material to you by return emails.
Paul – you may like to publicise this…
Or you may not! However, I thought I’d bring it to your attention
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/61879
Classify the terms “denier” , “climate denier” or variants thereof as hate speech.
Cheers
Jeremy
Paul. See if you can access Sheffield Weston Park Weather Station records. You might have to make a trip to the museum…..
http://www.museums-sheffield.org.uk/blog/2012/9/130-years-of-weston-park-weather-station
130 Years of history
Its situated at almost exactly the same position for that time.
It MUST be one of the longest sited class A weather stations in the world.
There isn’t much development around the site which would change the conditions.
It would make a cracking blog post.
I bet you ANY money it doesn’t show dangerous warming.
Then see how this raw data compares with NASA, GISS and the like. There should be any adjustments really at all on it.
Hi Paul
Earlier this week the BBC website carried a piece by David Shukman on ‘the pause’ – as I recall, it was notable insomuch as not entirely discounting natural cycles as playing a role. It was at least questioning which surprised me given the BBC’s biased policy on the subject of anything to do with climate change. Anyway – having only initially skimmed through the article I returned to it the following day to find that it had vanished. Did you see it or did anyone else see it or was I dreaming or is it another example of BBC censorship at its ugliest?
Regards
Paul
No I did not see it.
Hi Paul,
Have just put up my first personal blog post with a link to yours here:
http://wolsten.wordpress.com/2014/08/22/saving-polar-bears-from-climate-change/
Hope you like it.
Best wishes
Steve
Private Eye has a good cartoon this fortnight on p24. A dog team labelled Arctic Ice Survey, is driven by a man crying “Mush!”
You could post it. I can’t.
Paul – image now missing https://sp.yimg.com/ib/th?id=HN.608050417455075281&pid=15.1&P=0
on your blog page https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/10/10/the-green-jobs-mirage/
..your blog is nearly at 1 million hits I see ..965K so far
Thanks
It was just a pic of some windmills.
Hi Paul,
you may be interested in this link, commentary on the “landmark” deal between the US and China, which I had understood not to be that significant reading between the lines. However, this chap thinks it is a real step towards saving the world:
http://theconversation.com/us-china-deal-shows-all-that-effort-to-tackle-climate-change-might-actually-be-worth-it-34163
See if you can keep your face straight reading it.
They’re as deluded as Obama!
Just posted my analysis
You would have thought an academic could have taken the trouble to come up with something similar to your analysis, it doesn’t bode well for our educational system.
Hi Paul please read
http://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/2014/09/24/renewable-energy-solar-and-wind-power-compared-with-gas-fired-generation-usa-germany-uk/
and / or
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/11/21/renewable-energy-solar-and-wind-power-capital-costs-and-effectiveness-compared/
as well as
http://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/about/
for other articles
Hi Paul,
I have just added a comment to this funding notice here for a CCS projects – you get a mention, hope you don’t mind.
https://connect.innovateuk.org/web/energyktn/article-view/-/blogs/opportunity-alert-new-funding-for-carbon-capture-and-storage-ccs-innovation
Best wishes
Steve
Paul:
Had an interesting real-world demonstration of UHI yesterday. Was driving south from Green Bay, Wisconsin USA in a snow squall, temps just below freezing. Hit Milwaukee, approx. population 1 million, snow turned to light mist – temps just above freezing. Kept going same highway south of Milwaukee, snow squall again. hmm.
More cobblers from the Conversation:
https://theconversation.com/our-equation-proves-climate-change-is-linked-to-emissions-34897
Some of your favourites here Paul: steam cooling image, “carbon” emission, comparing their new equation to models, no hint of reality creeping in anywhere as far as I can tell.
I think I need to cancel my subscription to this idiotic publication before I blow a gasket.
I see they both receive NERC funding!
At a friend’s invitation in our climate change debate, I am reading Kathatrine Hayhoe’s “A Climate for Change” and wonder if you can point me to a good (therefore fair) review of it. Thank you.
I am not aware of any reviews, but much of what Hayhoe writes cannot be trusted.
e.g.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/01/02/katherine-hayhoe-explains/
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2012/03/28/katharine-hayhoes-global-weirding/
My recommendation would be to not take anything she says on trust, but to check it out yourself. In particular, be very wary when she uses the 1960’s or 70’s as her basepoint for trends and comparisons
BTW Mark
If you want me check out some of her claims, I would be more than happy.
Anyone been to Ireland recently?
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/northern-ireland/massive-wind-turbine-collapses-in-co-tyrone-one-local-said-it-sounded-like-bomb-exploding-30879574.html
Thanks, Paul. I (a layperson re climate studies) intend to read carefully and check what I can. I think I followed links to you regarding her Figure 14 “Carbon Dioxide and Temperature: An Unnatural High” (in the glossy sheets tipped in halfway through the book). it gets hammered by critics for minimizing (I guess) both temperature and CO2 highs some seem to know of within the last 6000 years (the span of her Figure). If you can point me to a more accurate historical reconstruction of those, I’d be grateful.
There is a wealth of evidence that global temperatures were higher than now till about 3000BC. HH Lamb summarises many of these:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/07/20/hh-lamb-the-early-holocene/
Ice core studies in Greenland are also quite clear about much warmer periods then, and more recently. Indeed, the 19thC was probably the coldest period there since the Ice Age
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/04/04/the-little-ice-age-was-the-coldest-period-for-10000-years/
There is plenty more on my Holocene page
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/tag/holocene/
I’ll leave the MWP till later!
Paul, I think my comment went to the “spam” folder (probably because it has lots of links):
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/01/13/hillarys-drought/#comment-35680
Sorry to post this here; I couldn’t find contact info for you. Would you mind sending me an email, so that I can email you privately next time?
Thanks.
For a long time I’ve been concerned about the scientific method used in climate science (and indeed all endeavours that aim to call themselve sciences but are not.) Rather than comment myself, here are some relevant quotes from probably the greatest philosopher of science in the 20th century, Karl Popper:
“Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.”
“True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.”
“But the secret of intellectual excellence is the spirit of criticism ; it is intellectual independence. And this leads to difficulties which must prove insurmountable for any kind of authoritarianism. The authoritarian will in general select those who obey, who believe, who respond to his influence. But in doing so, he is bound to select mediocrities. For he excludes those who revolt, who doubt, who dare to resist his influence. Never can an authority admit that the intellectually courageous, i.e. those who dare to defy his authority, may be the most valuable type. Of course, the authorities will always remain convinced of their ability to detect initiative. But what they mean by this is only a quick grasp of their intentions, and they will remain for ever incapable of seeing the difference.”
― Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Volume 1 : The Spell of Plato
“The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific, and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know; our knowledge of our ignorance. For this indeed, is the main source of our ignorance – the fact that our knowledge can be only finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.”
“The game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game.”
“In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable: and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality.”
― Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery
“The discovery of instances which confirm a theory means very little if we have not tried, and failed, to discover refutations. For if we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmation, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories. In this way it is only too easy to obtain what appears to be overwhelming evidence in favour of a theory which, if approached critically, would have been refuted.”
― Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism
“With the idol of certainty (including that of degrees of imperfect certainty or probability) there falls one of the defences of obscurantism which bar the way of scientific advance. For the worship of this idol hampers not only the boldness of our questions, but also the rigour and the integrity of our tests. The wrong view of science betrays itself in the craving to be right; for it is not his possession of knowledge, of irrefutable truth, that makes the man of science, but his persistent and recklessly critical quest for truth.”
― Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery
“We all have an unscientific weakness for being always in the right, and this weakness seems to be particularly common among professional and amateur politicians. But the only way to apply something like scientific method in politics is to proceed on the assumption that there can be no political move which has no drawbacks, no undesirable consequences. To look out for these mistakes, to find them, to bring them into the open, to analyse them, and to learn from them, this is what a scientific politician as well as a political scientist must do. Scientific method in politics means that the great art of convincing ourselves that we have not made any mistakes, of ignoring them, of hiding them, and of blaming others from them, is replaced by the greater art of accepting the responsibility for them, of trying to learn from them, and of applying this knowledge so that we may avoid them in future.”
― Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism
Linked to the manipulation of the climate change agenda is the need for its supporters (now including all meteorological services and nearly all politicians) to convince the public of its supposed impact. Over the last year or two (at least in the UK) I’ve noticed an escalation in the language used in weather bulletins. Two examples spring to mind: “Weatherbombs” and “Embedded Thunderstorms,” both of which have connotations with terrorism, and lead to the thought: “Who or what is responsible?”
The answer is easy – climate change of course!!
Paul, The Canadian Newspaper, the globe and mail, has an informative article re the honest volunteers across Canada who record temperatures from their Stevenson screens daily. Do you know if Canadian temperatures are manipulated like the ones from S. America and Iceland that you recently reported?
Hi Paul,
Hot off the press from the BBC web site: http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-31604953 . Talking about 128mm rise in sea level north of New York city.
Hi Paul,
You may be interested in developments in Australia. A group of us has for some time been concerned about the homogenization of the very good raw temperature record for many parts of Australia. Late last year, after much disquiet, the government finally established a panel to oversee what out Bureau of Meteorology has been up to with all the ‘adjustments’.
So far this new panel has not asked for our opinions, but we have nevertheless made unsolicited submissions. You can read them here…
http://jennifermarohasy.com/temperatures/submissions-to-the-panel/
And you will get some idea of the extent of the problem with the official Australian temp. record.
You might also be inclined to make a submission to this panel, and if you do, please send me a copy so I can upload to this page.
Indeed it would be good if the panel was given some idea of the extent of the problem internationally.
Cheers, Jennifer Marohasy
Have you seen this report?
http://www.piercepioneer.com/officials-warn-global-warming-slowdown-actually-quite-misleading/38352
It includes this from leading Yale researcher Anthony Leiserowitz: “Indeed, many people were a bit surprised to find that global warming was not, in fact, a myth; and more importantly, that the state of global warming was nearing critical mass and we are now in a place where we must make drastic changes or face equally dire consequences.
The Yale Project on Climate Change Communication lead researcher continues, “There have been a number of studies that have shown that some people will change their views of climate change based on extreme weather. It’s not enough to simply experience a heat wave — it then needs to be contextualized. It needs to be interpreted by thought leaders and trusted people in a community and by the media and scientists saying, ‘This is an indication of global warming.’”
So dismiss the fact that it is just a theory, not fact, and use any extreme weather event to support the theory. Dishonest or what?
When will our academics understand that scepticism, rigour and honesty are the foundations of science?
Hi Paul,
A new post on my blog with a couple of links to your good self:
https://wolsten.wordpress.com/2015/03/04/better-a-pleb-than-a-denier/
If you think there are better links for the hiatus and dodgy data manipulation please let me know.
Steve
Mr Homewood,
What is the utility of Benford’s Law in evaluating climate data sets? Is it applicable?
Never heard of it! Tell me more.
I’m not sure if you picked this up:
http://www.zmescience.com/research/discoveries/deepest-marine-drill-finds-life-0423432/
Penultimate paragraph:
There’s much to learn from extremophiles living deep below Earth’s surface or seabed. For one, because these organisms feed on hydrocarbons, they produce methane as a byproduct which is a greenhouse gas thousands of times more potent than CO2 at trapping heat. How many of these organisms are there below the oceans? Billions, trillions, billions of billions? We need to know if we’re to build a solid model that faithfully assess their impact on the climate.
We can’t even model the global economy and get it right, and that’s a human construct orders of magnitude simpler than the climate system
OMG now Naomi Klein’s on the bandwagon linking up everything she doesn’t like with climate change:
http://www.theguardian.com/business/video/2015/mar/06/this-changes-everything-naomi-klein-oil-video
Hi Paul
Any comments on this article in today’s Australian press. The Age newspaper is a major climate change supporter.
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/record-seasurface-temperatures-in-pacific-point-to-record-warmth-in-2015-and-2016-20150413-1mjooh.html
You mentioned something about warming oceans in the southern hemisphere in the past few weeks I think.
Regards
John
May 7 07:03 PM
Paul,
Meteorologist Joe Bastardi posted this letter from Dr. Bill Gray on Weatherbell.com. Joe works for Weatherbell. Its a pay site. I think he would be happy if you read it. Its the best explanation of why the climate model feedback loops are completely unhinged from reality.
Dr Gray sent this out today to alot of people. I am of the impression he wants to make it clear to as many people as possible how he feels about the AGW situation, so I think its worthwhile sharing it with you. I think alot of the younger generation out there ought to listen to Dr Gray, because when I was freezing at PSU he was warning ( loudly) about the cyclical nature of climate and the coming uptick in hurricanes linked with warming overall. He also made clear that by 2020 we would be out of that cycle. So call me naive, but I listen to people who have proven themselves to be right, not Johny come lately Climate heroes that explain things after the fact, and in a way where nothing they said is accountable and is claimed to be right anyway
to the letter:
This is for your general information.
I am appalled that scientific objectivity has been so blatantly disregarded by our government and the world’s environmentalists who would use erroneous climate model results to justify their faulty AGW pronouncement which are injurious to humanity.
Gray’s View on AGW. We AGW skeptics need to be able to offer two basic plausible physical explanations in order to negate the AGW hypothesis.
1. Why projected CO2 increases over the next 50-100 years will only be able to bring about very small amounts (0.2-0.4°C) of global mean temperature rise.
2. Why there is natural climate change unrelated to CO2 variations? We need a believable physical explanation for the global climate changes over the last few thousand years (Little Ice Age, Medieval Warm Period, etc.) and in particular the apparent quite modest global warming of the last century. We also need an explanation of the shorter time-scale multi-decadal global warming periods (1910-1940, 1975-1999) and of the global cooling or neutral periods (1880-1910, 1940-1974, and 1999-2015).
Explanation #1 can be understood as a result of CO2 increases causing more global precipitation and associated increase in the globe’s deep cumulonimbus (Cb) convective clouds. These CO2 induced precipitation increases bring about upper tropospheric drying which allows more infrared (IR) flux to space – a negative water-vapor feedback. This extra rainfall enhances surface evaporation cooling which acts to balance out most of the expected global warming resulting from CO2’s increasing blockage of IR to space (3.7 Wm-2 for a CO2 doubling). This prevents CO2 increases from bringing about any significant global warming. Only minimal warming (0.2-0.4°C) is going to occur with a doubling of CO2. The main effect of CO2 increases will be an enhancement of global average precipitation of about 3 percent. This enhanced global rainfall will occur in regions where it is already raining and should be hardly noticed.
Explanation #2 can be explained by the multi-decadal and multi-century variations in the globe’s deep ocean circulations (or Meridional Overturning Circulation – MOC) which are primarily driven by space and time variations of oceanic salinity. Salinity changes occur in ocean areas where there are long period differences in surface evaporation minus precipitation. This is especially the situation of the Atlantic where ocean evaporation is 10-20 percent greater than precipitation. Salinity driven ocean changes bring about alterations in the strength of the Atlantic Ocean Thermohaline Circulation (THC), and through Pacific basin upwelling response variations to variation in the Pacific multi-decadal oscillation (PDO) as well. There is also salinity driven ocean subsidence around the Antarctic continent. All these factors influence the strength of the MOC.
Most of the globe’s last century weak global warming has, in my view, been a consequence of a modest slowdown of the global oceans MOC. This last century long MOC slowdown is also detected in an associated weak increase (in milliseconds) in the earth’s rate of rotation.
Lack of Ability of Other Suggested Non-ocean Climate Change Mechanisms to Rival or be Superior to Coming CO2 Influences. The many other non-ocean proposed physical ideas for climate change (where orbital parameters do not play a role) such as
1. Solar variability
2. Sun-spot changes
3. Cosmic ray variability
4. Aerosol changes
5. Human land use changes
6. Volcanic activity
may each play a minor role in some aspects of the globe’s climate alteration. But the individual physical influence of each of these suggested mechanisms is too small to be used as a dominant physical argument against the CO2 change hypothesis.
None of the above proposed climate change mechanisms well match the observed past changes in global temperature. In addition, the magnitude of potential energy change from these above non-ocean physical mechanisms does not have the power to come close to producing the climate changes which the variations of the deep ocean circulations are capable of bringing about.
We AGW skeptics who have proposed non-ocean climate change mechanisms as an alternate to CO2 induced climate changes will continue to have difficulty in rebutting the CO2 advocates. These alternate physical hypothesizes do not have enough supporting observational evidence to allow any one of them or a combination of them to be judged to be more dominant than the changes which future CO2 increases will be able to bring about.
We critics of the AGW CO2 warming hypothesis need a more dominant alternate physical hypothesis which is stronger and which better conforms in time with the global observations. Changes in the ocean’s deep circulation currents appears to be, by far, the best physical explanation for the observed global surface temperature changes (see Gray 2009, 2011, 2012, 2012). It seems ridiculous to me for both the AGW advocates and us skeptics to so closely monitor current weather and short-time climate change as indication of CO2’s influence on our climate. This assumes that the much more dominant natural climate changes that have always occurred are no longer in operation or have relevance.
Cumulus Convection Influences. Most cumulus convection is organized in meso-scale cloud clusters containing 10 to 20 individual Cb convective elements which are typically concentrated in areas of 200-500 km wide. The individual deep Cb convective cells within these cloud-cluster systems are often arranged in lines and new convective elements are continuously being formed and dissipated. Each new Cb convective element goes through a typical lifecycles of an hour or so. The strong downdrafts from the late stages of these dying Cb elements typically contribute to the low-level mass forcing needed for the initiating of other new adjacent Cb clouds. This is why multiple Cb clouds tend to cluster together.
Cb clouds penetrate well into the middle and upper troposphere. The excess mass within the weakening upper-level Cb elements diverge and spread out as cirrus clouds. This higher level extra mass and cirrus cloudiness then begins to undergo sinking so as to make space and satisfy mass balance for the new emerging upper tropospheric Cb penetrating elements.
Subsidence Drying. Cumulonimbus updraft elements have very high rainfall efficiency as they weaken and die in the very cold upper troposphere. The very cold air at these upper tropospheric levels can hold (even at saturation) very little water-vapor (only about 1% of the low-level moisture content by mass and 0.1 of 1% by volume) compared to the middle and lower tropospheric moisture contents. This very low water-vapor content air from the upper Cb outflow then sinks, evaporates its cloud particles, and arrives at lower levels where the saturated water-vapor contents are much higher. The original upper-level dry air then mixes with the lower level air. This mixture of air at the lower level becomes drier than the air at this level was before any of the upper-level air mixed into it.
A saturated air parcel from a dying Cb cloud which sinks from the 200 mb (12 km height) level to the lower pressure height of 300 mb (10 km ht.) will arrive at this lower-level with a RH of only 10-12 percent of the lower level air. These unusually large upper-level subsidence drying amounts are a consequence of the very large gradient of saturated vapor pressure in the upper troposphere. Vertical gradients of saturated vapor pressure at middle and lower tropospheric levels are, percentage wise, much smaller.
An increase in global deep convective (Cb) activity as a result of CO2 increases will thus bring drying (not moistening) to the upper troposphere, just the opposite of the climate models projections. This upper tropospheric drying acts to lower the infrared (IR) radiation emission level (EL) to a lower height and a warmer temperature where larger amounts of IR energy (σT4) are able to be fluxed to space. Increases in net global Cb convective activity results in higher amounts of IR energy being fluxed to space, not lower amounts as all the climate modelers and their fellow AGW advocates believe.
Our extensive analysis of the ISCCP data well shows the degree to which the broad upper-level sinking air from the global rain areas have had their RH reduced when an enhancement of the global rainfall rate (and accompanied increase in Cb convection) occurs. Please see the attached short write-up “Crux of AGWs Flawed Science” for more detailed discussion and clarifying figures and tables.
How Global Temperature Will Change as CO2 Increases. The rise of CO2 gas occurs very slowly. By contrast, the troposphere’s hydrologic cycle and its energy dissipation cycle operate on a time-scale of only around 10 days. Any CO2 radiational induced warming will be quickly felt by the earth’s surface and will immediately act to enhance surface evaporation. The more surface evaporation, the less the surface will warm.
A doubling of CO2 gas in the atmosphere will cause an alteration of our global climate but not in the same way as envisioned by the climate modelers or by the majority of scientists studying this topic. Most researchers concentrate only on the direct radiation influences which CO2 increases bring about. They tend not to consider the other related feedback mechanisms which will be simultaneously activated as CO2 amounts increase. The increased global evaporation from CO2 increase will extract energy from the earth’s surface and enhance surface cooling. This will act to reduce the pure radiation assumed 1°C warming through both enhanced IR energy flux to space and enhanced surface evaporation. The more evaporation from a doubling of CO2 will act to further reduce the 1°C direct radiation only temperature response. As the CO2’s induced speed-up of the globe’s hydrologic cycle continues the cooling influences of the enhanced surface evaporation-precipitation will greatly suppress any pure radiation assumed rise of 1°C. Doubling CO2 will thus be able to bring about only a quite modest global warming. The main influence of a doubling of CO2 will be to increase average global precipitation.
Basic Flaw of the AGW Hypothesis. It is the climate models parameterization schemes for cumulus convection (particularly the deep cumulonimbus (Cb) convection) which are grossly unrealistic and which completely negates the global modeler’s projections of 2-5°C warming for a doubling of CO2. This does not mean that the globe won’t be measurably influenced from CO2 doubling. But this CO2 influence will occur primarily as an enhancement of the global hydrologic cycle (precipitation) and only minimally from a rise in global surface temperature.
The AGW hypothesis that warming from increased CO2 will enhance global rainfall is correct. But the assumption that this added rainfall and added tropospheric condensation warming will greatly increase upper tropospheric temperature and water-vapor (through the assumption of constancy of relative humidity) is not at all valid. The opposite occurs. Increased deep Cb convection causes dryness to the upper troposphere. The climate modeler’s large increase in upper tropospheric water-vapor and temperature from added CO2 does not agree with the physics of how real-world deep Cb convection functions. And the additional positive feedback doubling of the upper troposphere warming and moistening which they add to the direct CO2 radiation blockage is completely bogus. This additional feedback assumption greatly increases the divergence of their model simulations from reality.
Summary. The global climate modelers assumed that CO2 enhanced global rainfall will bring about large upper-tropospheric water-vapor and temperature increases. These upper-level water-vapor increases are then projected to bring about even larger temperature increases and additional water-vapor (positive water-vapor feedback) amounts which add twice as much additional blockage of infrared (IR) energy to space than the initial influence of the CO2 blockage alone. Such large water-vapor and temperature increases are not at all realistic. This is the Achilles-heel of the whole AGW theory.
Comment. None of the global climate modelers or other AGW advocates seem to know that the globe’s deep cumulonimbus (Cb) convection processes act, not to increase upper level water-vapor, but in an opposite sense to reduce the globe’s upper tropospheric water-vapor content. The global climate modelers live in a very isolated Ivory Tower world. Their positive water-vapor feedback schemes in their doubling of CO2 simulations shows that they know next to nothing about how the atmosphere’s cumulus convective and moisture processes really function.
Gray Research Project. I and my Colorado State University (CSU) research project have a long background in studying cumulus convection, and particularly deep and intense cumulonimbus (Cb) convection of the tropics associated with meso-scale rain systems and tropical cyclones. We have published a lot of material on this subject over many years. These convective studies appear to provide crucial background information fundamental to establishing the invalidity of the AGW hypothesis. My CSU project’s over 50 years of tropical meteorology research has, by necessity, had to make the study of cumulus cloud convection a priority item for the understanding of tropical circulations and tropical cyclones. Our information has been gained from my project’s extensive involvement in many field experiments and from rawinsonde compositing activities over many years and recently through extensive analysis of ISCCP and NOAA Reanalysis data. To my knowledge, none of the AGW proponents have ever referred to any of my project’s many published papers and project reports.
Any scientist having advanced and detailed knowledge and working level experience of the globe’s deep cumulus convection process can completely negate the scientific validity of the AGW hypothesis. This could have been done decades ago if there had been an open and honest debate and further research on how changes in cumulus convective dynamics are related to CO2 increase. This greatly needed open and objective debate on cumulus convection process began and was taking place during the late 1960s and 1970s. But these studies were discontinued during the 1980s-1990s when the global models began to show useful results which the politicians, environmentalists, and the world government advocates could use to back up their desired AGW hypothesis. They did not want any further tampering with the models and the earlier momentum build-up for cumulus-moist process research did not go forward. The AGW advocates needed to utilize the unrealistic CO2 doubling climate model warming results as a scare mechanism to advance their agendas. And the CO2 global climate modeling community was quite happy to provide this justification and be well rewarded for their efforts.
Please see the attached paper “Crux of AGW’s Flawed Science” for full background discussion with figures and tables.
Best regards,
Bill Gray
Here is Grays paper on the Meridional Overturning Circulation ( MOC)
Click to access gray2012.pdf
As a new commer trawling the archives, is there any chance you could put the whole months’ archive on 1 page please? Every time I have to “show more” to get the next article, and that after going “Back” (maybe a “Next/Previous Article” button could be found at the bottom of each page.
If you scroll down the right side bar, you’ll see the monthly archives.
Maybe it is my browser (Firefox), but each month has more than a page worth of articles (something each day more or less, GREAT), so when I read articles not on page 1, I have to go back, then “Older posts”, at the end of the month I can be doing this 5-6 times each article. Maybe it is the way it is, but if it can be fixed, all to the good.
Can I ask opinion on this (if already covered ok).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/earth/water_and_ice/ice_age#p00gtnlg
… I ask because the obvious question ” Do they think we have stopped ice ages forever?” is never asked, or even posited.
The article itself seems ludicrous as it claims that a few hundred thousand farmers produced enough GHG (ok ok they didn’t. But the article says ….) to stop a cycle of climate change that is shown to have been in place for at least 2 million years.
Where the Hell did some one come up with this from?
The BBC are very good at overstating Mann-made effects!
My reaction is that the ice age was already ending then anyway. Certainly, farming did not really take off till maybe around 5000BC.
If farmimg was increasing emissions, then why are temperatures lower now than in most of the Holocene?
We know that when global temperatures rise, as at the end of the ice age, CO2 levels rise as the oceans release it. Any influence from man would pale into insignificance in comparison.
First the BBC have a Uni Bristol story of Antarctic peninsular glacier catastrophe, now we have this:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2015/05/19/updated-nasa-data-polar-ice-not-receding-after-all/
Now we have cli-fi novels being written specifically to indoctrinate the young: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/hay-festival/11624736/Climate-activists-targeting-children-with-range-of-cli-fi-novels.html
The operative word/contraction here is “fiction”.
California mandates oxygenated fuels. It is supposed to clean the air. It is lower in energy than HC based fuels and you must burn more of it. Since we have to burn more the only winner is the state in selling more fuel. Oxygenated fuel is another environmental scam. Thanks for what you do.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33315125
Paul: NY Times on Greenland glaciers: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/07/03/greenlands-iceberg-factory-where-the-empire-state-building-is-too-short-a-yardstick/?emc=edit_tnt_20150704&nlid=4912725&tntemail0=y
This article appears today, without comment or analysis in a UK tech farming blog. As per usual the original paper PIK is paywalled
http://www.farmingfutures.org.uk/blog/record-breaking-heavy-rainfall-events-increased-under-global-warming
Stunning new scientific discovery! Planes only fly into the wind. Look at this drivel:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3159421/Vicious-cycle-Extreme-weather-FUELS-global-warming-planes-spend-longer-air-battling-strong-winds.html
Hi… has anyone else had a look at this so-called ‘Handbook’ for dealing with we dreadful ‘Deniers’. Seems that their main defence lies in just finessing their presentations, nothing as straightforward as relying on properly stated science – that’d be too easy for us to counter! Take a look…
http://oncf.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8effb1ec23802aa40a449cc4c&id=e1239d2913&e=325ac1bffd
Or if you can’t download it look at the COIN website.
Cheers
Downloaded it last night, Wow have they have got the ‘marketing’ right !!
“telling human stories about the people affected by climate change (and how they are responding to it) is crucial – shifting climate change from a scientific to a social reality.”
“One strategy is to create a vivid ‘mental model’ of climate change in people’s minds. A visual artist can capture the concept of sea level rise better than any graph”
“But flip the statement around — using an ‘uncertain time’ framing — and suddenly it is clear that the question is when not if sea levels will rise by 50cm.”
I love these bits –
on pg5 – “ Emphasise that science is an ongoing debate, and just because scientists don’t know everything about a subject, they do know something.” BUT on pg6 – “the science is effectively settled. Communicators should not shy away from stating that clearly.”
We should ALL download it & learn the techniques from it.
“Recent temperatures have once again broken all records for a British July. We are now approaching the 370th month in succession that global temperatures have been above the 20th-century average.”
Staggering claims still abound:
http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2015/07/why-are-we-still-waiting-solution-climate-change-because-it-s-hard
On top of climate change models we now have ‘thought experiments!’
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/aug/03/stop-burning-fossil-fuels-now-no-co2-technofix-climate-change-oceans
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-33818276
BBC quotes “hottest temperatures ever”
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/08/07/before-the-century-ends-it-may-be-too-hot-for-people-to-work-outside/ – bless!
Where’s the electricity going to come from? http://www.theengineer.co.uk/automotive/uk-to-trial-on-the-go-charging-for-electric-vehicles/1020900.article
BBC once more come out with a “story”, complete with Global Warming
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33690694
I read this story a few weeks ago;
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/6/e1500157
BBC comes to the party a month late at least. (and uses odd language in the article to boot)
UNEP miscounting the number of trees planted just came up.
In response to a poster that Canadian Oil corps planted 12million trees and Greenpeace zero, you’d expect GP just to fire back with the ‘huge’ number of trees Green NGOs as a group plant… but when I checked UNEP it seems there is something fishy with the stats ?
When that poster came out in April their lot just posted the same old angry snarly nasty comments against oil companies. With valid credible comments being overshadowed
like : that those oil trees might be monoculture, that some seedlings might have died.
I can actually see a UNEP page whose target makes that 12million look like a speck ie its 250,000 times bigger at 14billion PER country but so far AFTER 8 YEARS they are at 14billion total ie 0.4% of their target (at rate it’ll take 2,000years)
However you know Green groups have a terrible reputation for flaky figures.
If 14 billion trees have already been planted then as one of the world biggest tree areas, you’d expect Canada to have planted at least 1 biilion maybe 4 billion but the top two for Canada are reforest corps that planted
100 million in 2010
and another that planted 12.4 million in 2011
with the next 10 biggest totalling about 19million
– The entire Canada total listed there cannot be more than about 150 million. As someone says “Itdoesn’tAddUp”.
http://www.plant-for-the-planet-billiontreecampaign.org/Getinvolved/SeeLatest.aspx
I reproduced a screenshot of top Canada planting stats on The Galileo Movement’s FB post
Of course they actually mean 14 billion total target for the world … The wording “GOAL 14,000,000,000 PLANTED TREES PER COUNTRY” is faulty page layout on their part… but even with the target 250 times smaller
..their listed total of Canada planting less than 1% of the worlds trees seems fishy.
like where were the other 99% planetd ..I can’t imagine net gains in countries like Russia/China/India.
“There has been an exponential increase in weather-related natural disasters” – really?
http://www.farmingfutures.org.uk/blog/future-shocks-how-resilient-uk-food-system-extreme-global-weather-events
http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/08/27/sea-levels-are-rising-3-feet-unavoidable?cmpid=ait-fb
Latest catastropic warming claims being passed around on the internet. . .
Watch out extremes/worst ever
“These heavy rains are unprecedented. We can say this is an abnormal situation ”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-34205879
Met Office and BBC; another “could be” story: hottest years evah!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-34226178
But it must be true, Horrid Harrabin says so !!
http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/one-image-captures-shocking-potential-future-polar-bears
Please what is the real source of this story as it is spreading fast on Facebook Thank you.
I don’t know, Penny. It is the first time I have seen it.
Polar bears, as all wild animals, commonly die of starvation when they get old. This is probably the main cause of death for older animals, as they no longer have the strength to compete for food.
For a proper analysis of polar bears, Susan Crockford, who is a biological expert on them, is definitely worth a read.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/06/08/the-polar-bear-fallacy/
In reality, polar bear populations are thriving in most regions.
8.3 earthquake 11.30 last night • possible 2m tsunami •
full details –
http://earthquake-report.com/2015/09/16/massive-earthquake-near-coast-of-central-chile-on-september-16-2015/
Paul you need to check out the stats from the Indonesia haze, every year for more than 20 years now, but 2015 is a mega year, which must be having HUGE health and global temp effects NOW
see my post http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2015/9/16/the-monsoon-variability-climate-change-cartoon-sketchnotes-b.html?lastPage=true#comment21421135
Paul, as part of my research I have been collecting comprehensive daily weather data since Oct 1998. I was wondering if you might like to use it? My contact no. is on my website
With the recent suggestion from Sir Paul Drayson that diesel cars should be subject to a scrappage scheme to encourage drivers to switch to electric or hybrid vehicles, I started to wonder what the emissions of an electric vehicle might be when power generation emissions are taken into account.
Coal is around 900Kg/Mwh, while gas is around 500. Then there is nuclear, and of course solar, wind and biomass account for around 25%. Lets be generous and assume that biomass is indeed carbon neutral.
Lets assume the average CO2 emissions from generating 1 Mwh is 500Kg (=500g/Kwh). The best power consumption figure I’ve seen is for a Nissan Leaf at 34Kwh/100 miles. This means that the Leaf would indirectly cause CO2 emissions of at least 106g/km. However any dramatic increase in electric vehicle usage is likely to come largely from traditional (non-green, non-nuclear) generating capacity which has a higher emissions content. So taking these factors into account, together with real life consumption of say 120% of the quoted figure, we could easily end up with a real life emissions figure approaching 200g/km.
I suggest he is careful what he wishes for!
On the biomass subject, has anyone calculated the acreage of woodland required to ‘sustainably’ produce one ton of material per annum?
Richard
PS any corrections to my schoolboy maths welcome!
Transmission loses? I believe they are about 30%. Are you figures for power generated or power at the domestic socket?
The figures are for power generated, not at the socket so that makes the emissions equivalent higher.
Hurrah!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-west-wales-34420631
Have you seen this yet Paul?
http://www.thegwpf.com/australian-mathematician-develops-new-climate-model-predicts-global-cooling-soon/
Paul,
I see Scientific American is re-promoting a 2012 E-book – ‘Storm Warnings: Climate Change and Extreme Weather’
( “Hurricanes. Blizzards. Flooding. Drought. Extreme events like these seem to be on the rise….. The likelihood of these extreme weather events are increasingly being tied to anthropogenic—or manmade, mostly through overproduction of carbon dioxide—global warming.”)
http://books.scientificamerican.com/sa-ebooks/books/storm-warnings-climate-change-extreme-weather/?WT.mc_id=SA_ebook_StormWarnings_standalone_hero
Presumably foreplay to get the troops aroused for the Paris orgasm.!!
Paul
Do you have any thoughts on this article?
http://www.thegwpf.com/australian-mathematician-develops-new-climate-model-predicts-global-cooling-soon/
Regards
John
I try to steer clear of science!
But it is obvious to anyone who studies climate history that the Earth has natural mechanisms which prevent runaway cooling or heating.
Paul,
Just completed the BBC survey … wasn’t able to submit it because I live outside UK (though, of course, am UK citizen). Mentioning this so that others in same position don’t waste their time.
Best wishes,
Niall
Thanks Niall
I’ve added a footnote
Have you seen this?
Good news, a spot of media coverage.
Perth Edition, The Sunday Times
Miranda Devine: Perth electrical engineer’s discovery will change climate change debate
Photo: AustralianClimateMadness
A MATHEMATICAL discovery by Perth-based electrical engineer Dr David Evans may change everything about the climate debate, on the eve of the UN climate change conference in Paris next month.
A former climate modeller for the Government’s Australian Greenhouse Office, with six degrees in applied mathematics, Dr Evans has unpacked the architecture of the basic climate model which underpins all climate science.
He has found that, while the underlying physics of the model is correct, it had been applied incorrectly.
He has fixed two errors and the new corrected model finds the climate’s sensitivity to carbon dioxide (CO2) is much lower than was thought.
It turns out the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has over-estimated future global warming by as much as 10 times, he says…
The series of posts flows under the tag: “Climate Research 2015″
Rating: 8.9/10 (153 votes cast)
All the links to the Sunday Times story are on JoNova’s page here
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/10/miranda-devine-perth-electrical-engineers-discovery-will-change-climate-change-debate/
except that someone at the Sunday Times decided the original title was too strong “Originally published as Climate change debate cracks”
You must go back to the original article to see the 800 comments
http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/opinion/miranda-devine-perth-electrical-engineers-discovery-will-change-climate-change-debate/news-story/d1fe0f22a737e8d67e75a5014d0519c6#
Paul,
The University of Nebraska invited me to a meeting, (seminar) about Climate Change and its coming impact on forestry in Nebraska. (They will undoubtedly regret inviting me.) I have been collecting your ‘extreme’ rainfall charts and graphs (Holland and Texas) and it has occurred to me how much I would like to have the same type data for Nebraska. The meeting is on October 14th. If you can’t do it in the time frame — You have already given me great ammunition. Nothing speaks truth to power like data.
from ‘Real Science’
“AndyG55 says:
October 8, 2015 at 6:58 am
For those that haven’t seen it..
This is TRULY UGLY for the AGW scammers..
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/cruz_vs_warmist_its_ugly/
Sit back and have a good laugh.. avoid coffee on keyboard etc etc
I really would ask that everybody PLASTER this video URL far and wide.
Twit it, Faceplant it, whatever. 🙂
If it “disappears”… I have a copy of the video.”
I concur ( at least 97% of me does, my left knee is uncertain), spread it far & wide, pure gold from a warmister top gun !!!
An article in the Guardian this week that would have been enhanced by some evidence to support the assertions of the journalist.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/08/are-we-killing-our-rivers
Well Blogged. Many thanks.
*** Albedo regulation of Ice Ages, with no CO2 feedbacks ***
My analysis of Ice Age initiation and propagation is now up on the Warwick Hughes site. It speculates that the primary feedback for Ice Ages was actually albedo, not CO2. The overwhelming power of albedo was only overcome when CO2 dropped to dangerously low levels, resulting in widespread plant dieback and several millenia of dust storms. These dust storms reduced the albedo of the ice sheets, and allowed the Interglacial warming periods.
But Interglacial warming only happened when the precessional Great Year’s summer season increased insolation in the northern hemisphere. So several components are necessary for an Interglacial — very low Co2, plant dieback, dust storms, low ice albedo, and a Great Year summer season. So CO2 does falicitate Interglacial warming, but only by getting so low that all the plants die !!
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=4019
http://www.warwickhughes.com/agri15/ralph_ellis_oct15.html
Ralph
From the Washington Post: U.S. Exports its Greenhouse Gas Emissions as Coal
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/us-exports-its-greenhouse-gas-emissions–as-coal-profitable-coal/2015/10/08/05711c92-65fc-11e5-bdb6-6861f4521205_story.html
This is similar to the way the developed world has exported its greenhouse gas emissions from consumer goods production to the developing world. We still consume just as much if not more than we did; the CO2 isn’t produced here any longer, but it is still produced, and arguably in greater volume and with more pollution than if it had remained onshore in a more tightly regulated environment.
Anyone here seen November’s “Focus” magazine from the BBC? In the first paragraph in a story about Conspiracy Theories (non-existent moon landings, JFK, 9/11 etc etc) it adds “Global Warming is a hoax”.
Now I know we all disagree with AGW (as a major like, thing), and accept GW up to the late 1990’s, but does anyone call GW “a hoax”?
This seems to be just a part of BBCs attempts at discrediting the whole AGW debate, or worse, putting a spin on the whole thing, after all, who wants to be associated with Conspiracy Theorists. They even do the whole “Tin Hat” meme, with pictures.
(BTW, I do not get Focus, but my father in law has received a free copy somehow)
BBC Goes all Permafrost/methane gooey.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-34540414
Hurricane Patricia: Mexico awaits ‘strongest ever’ storm.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-34614864
Have the Alarmists finally got what they have waited almost a decade for?
Hi Paul
Have you seen the latest Met Office blog reviewing October’s weather?
The headline reads ‘Warm, sunny and dry October’, and the introductory paragraph reads ‘Sunshine and temperatures were above normal in most places’.
However, this is grossly misleading, for the so-called warmth of the headline is not reflected in the mean temperature record, which shows them to have been ‘near average’ (their words later in the blog): the Met’s own records show an anomaly of only 0.3 to the 29th).
Interestingly, the blog does not show the anomaly map of mean temperatures for this month, only those for sunshine and rainfall; I suggest that the mean temperature map would not look ‘warm’ at all.
Next, the headline says ‘sunny’, but the sunshine map tells quite a different story, with only Scotland and parts of Northern Ireland showing above-average sunshine for the month.
Finally, why publish this three days before the month has ended?
Look here!
Oct. 30, 2015
NASA Study: Mass Gains of Antarctic Ice Sheet Greater than Losses
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-of-antarctic-ice-sheet-greater-than-losses
Any one noticed this: http://www.scmsa.eu/archives/SCM_RC_2015_08_24_EN.pdf
(I saw it on Ice Age Now: http://iceagenow.info/ )
25th Oct JoNova covered it
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/10/french-society-of-mathematicians-global-warming-crusade-is-aburd-and-pointless/
Be careful and check if is the official French Maths academy (it isn’t)
It sounds as if it is a private company run by Bernard Beauzamy
\\But, in 1995, I decided to leave my Professor position at the University and to start a company, named “Société de Calcul Mathématique, SA” (in short, SCM). What this company sells, and how it sells it, is the topic of the present talk. We have four branches: defense, environment, statistics and operations research.//
If you wade thru jonova’s commenters there’s more info
“Seems to be a 20 year old group, 10 staff. Central Paris. Assets of $500K. Profitable. Specializing in mathematics and mathematical modelling in the natural sciences field. A few books published and other works. Qualified people. It seems to be outside academia, competing in the commercial world of mathematical modelling”
When it was like that then I know w lot of it when it is the best reason to always tell someone about it and it is a lot with loads me people there
Hi Paul, not sure about this but there is an intriguing comment at WUWT:-
http://wattsupwiththat.com/tips-notes-2/#comment-2077424
Dear Poul
I have followed your checking of the temperature compilations and got more and more in doubt. Ole Humlum has also grown more sceptic to the main temperature series.
As usefull it is to do just an anomaly, it is so much easier to introduce a bias that’s very hard to check.
In theory the anomaly is computed for every station and then the anomalies are averaged.
So long so good, but as they do that, you can’t se if the reference for the anomaly changes or the recent temperature has changed. All anomalies back to 1900 or before is calculated every time, so you can not see if the anomaly for say 2000 changes when you update from 2014 to 2015. (Unless you have saved it). Everybody thinks it must stay constant, but it dos’nt.
The anomaly way to do it means, they can change stations at will, take some out or put others in, it is anyway “just” anomalies they average. Every station comes with its own reference, so you can not check how the references changes with station changes.
The history of changes to old temperatures is strange, but it seems just as strange, that they have to change the way to calculate these averages nearly once every year, and every time the changes goes the same way.
What are the reasons for updating the way to make those averages? What new information have they got between 2008 and 2014 of the old data from 2000 or 1900, that could justify these changes that Ole Humlum has saved?
I have not the skills to dig into these matters, but i hope you will follow up.
Regards
Svend
Teflon Tim the Trougher Trashed. He lied in libel trial !!!
Tim Yeo Ex-chairman of the energy and climate change select committee lied in his libel trial
His ‘Evidence was untrue & dishonest’ (no change there then )
Dismissing the case, Mr Justice Warby said he was unable to accept Mr Yeo’s evidence that he was unable to remember an email which mentioned a “generous remuneration package”.
“I can think of none who convincingly claim to have no interest in money, yet end up with an annual income in excess of £200,000,” the judge said.
“I do not consider that Mr Yeo is such a person. In my judgment this evidence was untrue.
“I am not persuaded that it was honest either.”
Yeo has agreed to pay legal fees of £411,000 within 28 days, with any further costs to be assessed.
He spent most of his life lying & bullying, shame its taken so long to get him in court, Gummer, Davey, Hune & Milliband need a trip there as well.
Sorry missed the link
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/12014863/Ex-MP-Tim-Yeo-loses-High-Court-libel-action-over-lobbying-claims.html
Paul, have you caught any of the current BBC series “Power to the People”?
Lots of inside information about Ferrybridge in the first episode and interesting to hear what some of the workers think about wind turbines and climate change
A statement at the end of the second programme stated:
“In spring 2015, renewables generated more electricity than coal, or nuclear, for the first time.”
I am not sure what “or” means. i.e. does it mean either coal or nuclear but not both?
My recollection is that it was for a short period of time (24 hours) but not the entire spring.
Incly hydro and bio, renewables are slightly than coal or nuclear, but not both.
Wind and solar on their own only reached 15%, less than coal’s 20% and nuclear’s 21%.
Also conveniently ignores gas leading the way with 30%
You may find these UK energy sites useful –
http://nationalgrid.stephenmorley.org/
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
The DECC data is also here
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/electricity-statistics
I usually use the “Quarterly & Monthly Data”
Yup, DUKES is required bedtime reading in this house too !
note to self must get out more (:-))
Thanks, I’ll have a look.
A pretty damning story from the North Devon gazette:
http://www.northdevongazette.co.uk/news/barnstaple_civic_centre_solar_panels_to_be_binned_1_4324946
£375,000 of public money, & the potential maximum saving a year was only £3,600, do the maths = 104 years
(the life of solar systems is ~ 25yrs).
Looks like a bean counter needs sacking
“2005 in a project led by North Devon Council and thanks to a grant from the Department of Trade and Industry.
In 2011 the Gazette reported how the system was not working due to inactive panels.
DCC said at the time the potential maximum saving a year was £3,600, depending on electricity costs, so over 10 years it will not have paid for itself.”
…Steps back in amazement, Your Devon Council people are good at maths !
A £375K projects savingmaxm £3.6K/year didn’t pay for itself in 10 years ..wow
Thanks, I thought the information was misleading.
Sorry, my previous replies haven’t appeared where I expected them to.
Hot News #1 , Swansea redundancies,
#2 Humber mothballed gas plants reopening
#1 Tidal Lagoon Power axes 17 jobs after Swansea Bay project delay
Meanwhile near my village
#2 £63m power station joy for South Humber Bank Grimsby Telegraph
being refitted prior to 2017 re-opening
“guaranteeing the future of the site up to 2027, while creating 10 more jobs.” 1.3GW
Meanwhile Keady is ALREADY switched on now
The Nov 1st story :Keadby Power Station to re-open two years after being mothballed
“The gas-fired plant will reopen on Monday, November 9, more than two years after it was mothballed in March 2013.”
They’ll move workers from Ferrybridge coal PS (closing sometime)
(early 2015 I listed other local gas PS which were scheduled for closure like Killingholme and Brigg)
oh hangon – South Bank power station (Brigg) saved from closure
70Km south Sutton Bridge was given permission in September to build new 1.8GW (awaiting corp final decision
I guess the windfarm engineers are still flying in on their special daily flights from Denmark to Humberside Airport . No, no they ran for 6 months and got cancelled.
Thanks Stew.
That answers a question that DECC could not tell me!
All these mothballed plants are still in DECC’s list of current power stations, which I based my capacity load scenarios on a week or two ago.
Hmmm ….
Click to access nt164-forecast-changeable-report-17.pdf
Baroness Scotland claimed today that tropical storm Erika (and the flooding in her cottage) were caused by “climate change”.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06qkl13
(approx. 39 minutes in)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p039wmhq
I don’t know whether there is anything in her claim that “nobody knew it was coming” and her claim about it;s effect on Dominica’s economy.
direct link to 39th minute . First Talking about Commonwealth of Dominica on 27th August “lost about 35 people”.
And then “Sir David King talks about the damage here in the UK”, “I’ve a cottage at just outside Witney, at village called Asthall. We were flooded to about 5 foot”
blah bhah : “keep if to one point five”
presenter :”so a tougher target than even the two PER CENT that people say is not achievable”
“We all ahve to set our own priorities” ..Yeh check her carbon footprint
..I’ve told her a million times not to exaggerate !
A news report with her about Storm Erika but she gets a kicking in the comments :
“sounded like she did not know much about Dominica. Before the interview she should have done some research or maybe read a good book about Dominica, especially about hurricane David. “…
“In her interview she said Tropical storm Erika killed 31 people and many more are still missing. Then she went on to say that Erika killed more people than David. I mean is 31 greater than 56 Ms. Scotland?”
Paul, given your profession you may find the following opinion piece in ‘The Actuary’ to be of interest:-
‘A climate of doubt’
‘Climate Change Working Party’
Why do I have problems posting links on this site?
‘A climate of doubt’ should have linked to:-
http://www.theactuary.com/opinion/2015/12/a-climate-of-doubt/#sthash.7u056wuL.dpuf
‘Climate Change Working Party’ should have linked to:-
https://www.actuaries.org.uk/practice-areas/resource-and-environment/research-working-parties/climate-change
works elsewhere, why not here? What am I doing wrong?
I’m afraid George Monbiot made mincemeat of Jane Collins MEP (UKIP) on today’s Any Questions today.
Monbiot was allowed to get away with statements like “climate change is a remarkably mild term for what we are facing, what we are looking at, ladies and gentlemen, what we are facing is climate breakdown, unless major action is taken.
Of course it would have taken more of an expert to take him on, and she probably shouldn’t have tried especially taking into account that she was in a minority of one on the panel.
She and UKIP need to be better briefed in future.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06qmyyl#play
It seems the warmists are now trying to prove the Medieval Warm Period was little more than a few good summers enjoyed only by Europe.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/12/151204145919.htm
Paul, BBC Pension fund 2015 has a smidge : news of new Green investment but no $$ amount “Extracts from B.B.C. ‘Pensions Report and Accounts 2015’
“the Scheme has committed to an investment in UK renewable
energy assets with BlackRock” (page 8).”
See WUWT comment
I see the MO web forecasts have gone to 7 days now.
Given that only about 1 in 3 of the hourly forecasts for the first day are entirely accurate, this seems like an exercise in futility.
I see that in the excitement of COP21, I missed you breaking the 2,500,000 hits mark. Congratulations and BZ
Thanks, and yes I did miss it!
well done Paul….shame it’s not ££s
Paul, did you see this post on the “Real Science” blog?
The PDF file to which it links, makes reference to the “EMID” (East Midlands) dataset, which seems to start in the early 1700’s, i.e. earlier than the MO HadUPP series.
Have you encountered this dataset before?
Click to access scho1206blsm-e-e.pdf
BBC and M.O. at it again.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35121340
Paul,
I was just perusing the 2016 New Year Honours List, and it appears that there has been a gross omission in the section titled; Bringing some sanity to the Climate Change debate.
Oh, well, maybe next year 🙂
Happy New Year, and keep up the fantastic work that you do, highlighting the truth behind the facile reporting from the BBC and the Met Office, et al.
Great website! You will be interested in Spectator leading article today:
UK spend on river and sea defenses this financial year: £695 milllion
UK spend on subsidising ‘green energy’ : £4300 million
In Holland, with quarter population of UK, river defences this year,spend £1900 million
Source:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/01/why-cant-we-go-dutch-on-flood-defence/
Dear Paul,
I have a comment I want to send (nothing terrible) but it is not for publication … can I post it here
I’ll email you if you like, Niall
Dear Paul
I have been following your story about mashed temperature records. I have looked at several of our local sites, and been suitably horrified. However, I have been trying to find the metadata, and repeated requests to NASA have met with no success? Any idea how to access?
Whereabouts are you, philip?
Re: Modulation of Ice Ages via Precession and Dust-Albedo Feedbacks
A new paper proving that CO2 is a minor player in the drama that is the Earth’s climate.
Abstract
We present here a simple and novel proposal for the modulation and rhythm of ice ages and interglacials during the late Pleistocene. While the standard Milankovitch-precession theory fails to explain the long intervals between interglacials, these can be accounted for by a novel forcing and feedback system involving CO2, dust and albedo. During the glacial period, the high albedo of the northern ice sheets drives down global temperatures and CO2 concentrations, despite subsequent precessional forcing maxima. Over the following millennia CO2 is sequestered in the oceans and atmospheric concentrations eventually reach a critical minima of about 200 ppm, which causes a die-back of temperate and boreal forests and grasslands, especially at high altitude. The ensuing soil erosion generates dust storms, resulting in increased dust deposition and lower albedo on the northern ice sheets. As northern hemisphere insolation increases during the next Milankovitch cycle, the dust-laden ice-sheets absorb considerably more insolation and undergo rapid melting, which forces the climate into an interglacial period. The proposed mechanism is simple, robust, and comprehensive in its scope, and its key elements are well supported by empirical evidence.
https://www.academia.edu/20051643/Modulation_of_Ice_Ages_via_Precession_and_Dust-Albedo_Feedbacks
Sincerely,
Ralph Ellis
New to this blog – stumbled on it from WUWT. Nice to see a UK based balanced view on the scam of climate change.
I have been trying to find out why solar farm panels are at around 30 degrees from the horizontal rather than a much steeper and efficient angle? Any posts/discussions on this?
Cheers
Skyman
Welcome Brian,
I don’t know but you can go into the search box
(RH column, above best European Blog box & Archives)
or,
use the blue search words in the list
Below Recent Comments.
If the panels were steeper, tops would be higher so rows would need to be further apart to prevent shadowing ??? just a guess.
This really puts the science of CO2 emissions into perspective! http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/climatechange/12098431/Global-warming-delays-next-ice-age-by-50000-years.html. So we’ll only need to wait 100,000 years to test this theory! One ace quote: “The carbon emissions produced by humans burning fossil fuels would be sufficient to radically delay the timing of the next ice age, they predicted.” Maybe there’s a greater risk of nuclear annihilation or pandemics that threaten the human race in that timeframe, yet we use this as a justification to worry about CO2.
Bainbridge – the new Honister?
The Beeb and MET office are getting excited about readings from Bainbridge:-
http://blog.metoffice.gov.uk/2015/12/28/record-breaking-december-rainfall/
claiming 496.2mm rainfall in December (previous 327.2mm in 2006).
Even more exciting is the fact that they are saying that this is why the pumps in the York Foss Barrier (which they operate) were “overwhelmed” leading to 600 properties being flooded on 26/27 December.
They are less forthcoming about the fact that they took fright at the water entering the electric/ control house, raised the barrier (ensuring the lower end of the Foss catchment would certainly be flooded) and turned off the pumps, for good measure.
They also don’t point out that Bainbridge is nowhere near the Foss catchment area.
Can you suggest how I can get hold of rainfall records (if any) relevant to the Foss, both for the period up to 26 December and any historical figures?
You’d need to contact the Met Office
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/contact
Is Peter Stanford in the Telegraph getting his years mixed up?
Dear Paul,
After some calculations on raw and homogenised data sets from the KNMI, I have visualized the temperature corrections for KNMI’s main station de Bilt. Main conclusion is that the corrections clearly cool pre-1950 summers, and that the correction for urban heat effects is cancelled from 2006 onwards, for undisclosed reasons.
Full story with all graphs can be found on my new blog: tradingmagicforfact.wordpress.com. Feel free to share the story if you think it’s interesting!
Best regards,
Laurens
This looks interesting …..Gravity Maps
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=87276
Didn’t know where to stick it !!
john
Strangely reassuring – Piers Corbyn, the climate sceptic – that is, scientist!
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/24/piers-corbyn-other-rebel-in-the-family-jeremy-corbyn-climate-change
Paul
fyi – https://consult.defra.gov.uk/water-and-flood-risk-management/national-flood-resilience-review-call-for-evidence
Paul, here is an update from Dec. on the EPA’s spill into the CO Animas River.
http://dailysignal.com/2015/12/11/government-report-highlights-epas-involvement-in-colorado-river-spill/
Thanks for the update. Its a disgrace that the EPA clearly considers itself above the law. A regime change is sorely needed in the USA.
Forecast sea level rise of 1m in next 100 years is being used as an excuse to abandon the village of Fairbourne in Wales by ceasing to maintain sea defences: http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/residents-living-village-damned-consider-10879413
The next carriage on the gravy train ??
New Scientist sucks on CO2
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2077540-the-big-carbon-clean-up-2-steps-to-stop-global-warming-at-1-5c/?cmpid=NLC|NSNS|2016-1802-GLOB&utm_medium=NLC&utm_source=NSNSAL
Green eco-warriors spend 10 mins protesting that we must be carbon free….
then rush into a carbon fueled building to get warm !!
Bless.
http://www.thecornellreview.org/cornell-climate-action-plan-rally-a-dud-students-complain-of-cold-and-retreat-into-fossil-fuel-heated-building/
If you missed today’s Infinite Monkey Cage on BBC R4, it’s a must listen.
The climate change guest was so appalling bad – and unchallenged.
The boy Cox stated that a sceptic denies the climate changes.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-35641766
At disused station, maybe during demolition?
Paul, Stats on BBC mentions of FoE, WWF, Greenpeace for the last 16 years collected by BH commenters would make an interesting graph.
The rising curves might be a result of :
#1 possible insider connections
#2 The large PR spending of these trans-global mammoth NGOs
Another hockeystick ??
Paul
I’d like to beg a HUGE favour. At least I’m honest.
Any chance you could email me.
Thanks
Adrian
UK government gagging scientists….again
http://www.nature.com/news/confusion-reigns-as-uk-scientists-face-government-gagging-clause-1.19454
I get an error message
Hi Paul
I just tried it –
http://www.nature.com/news/confusion-reigns-as-uk-scientists-face-government-gagging-clause-1.19454
worked OK for me in firefox
I still get “Internal Server Error” (On firefox)
Strangely, I get it when I go on Nature’s home page too!
put
Confusion reigns as UK scientists face government ‘gagging’ clause
into google – comes up as first hit, 2nd hit is Junk science carrying the story.
Paul, did you spot the article in the Sunday Telegraph linking abrupt weather changes during pregnancy to ‘smaller’ babies. No direct mention of agw but now I tend to see it even when it’s not there.
Another arctic expedition rescued, perhaps there is a need for a roll of costly rescues. 🙂
“Two British adventurers had to be rescued by American coastguards after getting stranded in Alaska.
Neil Laughton and James Bingham were attempting to cross a remote area from Little Wales to Little Diomede on cross country skis and by kayak.
But the ice became too thin to walk on and too thick to continue in kayaks, leaving the pair stranded.
Two British adventurers had to be rescued by American coastguards after getting stranded in Alaska.
Pic: Bering Strait 2016 Facebook
They were eventually winched to safety by US Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak air crews.”
http://news.sky.com/story/1654494/stranded-british-adventurers-rescued-in-alaska
Cato.org, in the U.S. has a relevant article on the political nature of ‘science’ re climate change.
Any links?
I thought this was quite illuminating – no talk back from Kirsty
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b072ht0p
Just listened to a BBC program on fraud in science –
‘Saving science from the scientists’ 1 of 2 programs.
Listen again – http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b072jdqm
with Alok Jha – Science Correspondent at The Guardian & ITV
Alok graduated from MSc Science Communication in 1999, after completing a physics degree at Imperial
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0742nzq/broadcasts/upcoming
Surprisingly even handed for the BBC, I’m amazed Horrid Harrabin allowed it to go out.
Geoffrey Lean has new article about fracking in the Independant http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/fracking-to-prompt-sharp-rise-in-greenhouse-gas-emissions-study-says-a6928126.html
More baloney
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13669877.2016.1153506
Paul Re your piece of less extreme precipitation see:
Click to access trends-in-extreme-weather-events-since-1900–an-enduring-conundrum-for-wise-policy-advice-2167-0587-1000155.pdf
MJK
Did the MOD’s desire to make our warships green lead to failures in the power systems?
http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/naval/ships/2016/03/23/destroyer-royal-navy-uk-power-plant/82167048/
Right Now on You are yours R4 Fairbourne The Welsh Sea Level rise village about 12:20 around 20minns from the end
(Sea defence maintenance will end in 40 years time ‘managed retreat’ due to extreme sea rise predictions made in old IPCC reports of 50cm for 50 years later ..which were actually later revised down to 20cm )
Villagers are set to sue the council for drop in property prices.
Matt Ridley points this out. http://freepressstandard.com/university-of-cincinnati-study-finds-frackings-bad-rap-is-not-supported/
FT article “Two of the country’s largest coal plants have been saved in recent weeks thanks to back-up contracts from the grid and government. ”
– Fiddlers Ferry in Cheshire, SSE One of its four boilers is being mothballed, while the other three will be kept open. Subsidy via “capacity mechanism”
– Eggborough in Yorkshire announced last month it would be just mothballed, after securing new payments from the grid to remain available as emergency back-up.
– Longannet + Ferrybridge, in West Yorkshire, 3.4GW closed last week.
Article quotes stats from Sandbag – why do that on the day the official figs came out ?
.. and then quotes Doug Parr, Greenpeace’s chief scientist, then IPPR
– NPower guy says “hand direct subsidies to energy companies to build new gas plant.”
– Other expert says all this uncertainty puts people off building new FF plant
Thanks Stew
Unfortunately it’s paywalled!
I’ll try and dig out elsewhere
Just sign up for a free FT account . I can see about 10 free articles/month.
Strangely I could see that page without logging in but an hour later it was behind the paywall, but i could still login an see it.
Help the climate …..Have more sex !!!
Ever thought of having more environmentally friendly sex?
Well you could soon be giving your bedroom a green tinge of eroticism thanks to a new invention.
http://www.energylivenews.com/2016/04/01/adult-fun-gets-a-greener-twist/
I Love the quote –
“We are passionate people and now we can have that passion anywhere and we are helping the climate too!”
There is a new posting at http://www.ecofascism.com containing a list of 356 climate sceptical and enviro-critical websites plus additional info on the enviro-critic community and its funders.
Interesting article in today’s Derby Telegraph regarding two Wind Turbines that you featured in a previous post…..
http://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/Wheels-motion-city-s-wind-turbines-turning/story-29043875-detail/story.html
Paul I am catching the BBC making all kinds of FREE adverts for the Greens
– This weekend 2 slots for Tesla promotion – yet the new model by their own admission is not much cop..At the End of the TechTent item they explained the flaws : No new tech, not deliverable until 2015 and £25,000 is not really entry level car.
yesterdays 10pm R4 news mocked up an advertising page by inviting a Tesla supporter.
//////////////////////
Meanwhile Ecofacism.com has an article on the background of sceptics online ..including leftists
whereas Alarmists are often big biz
so don’t fall for their framing of Left vs “Right wing denier”
Solar Corps bankruptcies etc. I found some negatives of the Morocco Noor project
– While the news media has a love-in with GreenDream it’s difficult to find critical stories before the corps collapse.
..eg all stuff about Morocco’s Noor project is treated optimistically despite it being 3 months late before it started
Now I find an article by a London based Algerian-anti-capitalist who has actually been there, which lists problems
He claims poor people were kicked off the land
“One noted that “the project people talk about this as a desert that is not used, but to the people here it is not desert, it is a pasture. It is their territory and their future is in the land”
He claims local wealth is being expropriated and handed over to big guys who call themselves Green biz
“the duped local population were surprised to find out that the money from the sale was not going to be handed to them, but that it would be deposited into the tribe’s account at the Ministry of Interior.”
Hey this thing uses a LOT of water
“The biggest issue with this technology is the extensive use of water that comes with the wet cooling stage. Unlike photovoltaic (PV) technology, CSP needs cooling.”
“Morocco will host the climate talks (COP22) this year in November …
For this purpose, the Ouarzazate solar complex will be used as a flagship ”
” If the Moroccan state was really serious about its green credentials, why …Why is it also ignoring the devastating environmental and social effects of the mining industry in the country?”
Hi,
You might be interested in this story.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/advice/is-it-greener-to-travel-by-bus-or-by-car/
I have the research it’s based on if needed.
Regards
Sean Corker
Thanks Sean
Is there anything on CO2 as well?
Paul
Yes I see spin that article
“When… asked councils to provide figures for bus passenger occupancy per kilometre, only two did so. One, Sheffield City Council, revealed that during the morning rush hour (7-10am) its buses carried only 2.3 passengers per kilometre. The average bus occupancy was a shade under 12 people.”
*** OK what was the other council ? and what were their figures ?
… I suspect Sheffield has been cherrypicked as a low example.
and anyway one area one area is too low a sample size for a whole country.
Otherwise the article may have good points.
Same points were made in 2009 : bus are geared to peak , so rest of time empty
On Bus Occupancy Data The EU pages says
“This indicator is discontinued. No more assessments will be produced.”
“Bus and coach data is difficult to obtain as it is rarely made publicly available due to the increasingly privatised nature of national public bus services. The result of privatisation has been the closure of less profitable bus routes (those with low occupancy rates) and a shift to smaller sized buses.”
The UK gov has stats but it’s 2004/2005 (even tho the main page is 2015
Tip : I see a “front page editor for BBC News” is quite enthusiastic about a training workshop they did
: “How could you help people take collective action on climate change? Friday 03 July 2015,”
not organised by the BBC but by the Global Editors Network conference in Barcelona,
..See the link and highlights over on BishopHill Unthreaded
BBC Green Room logo
Tip : Another BBC advert for a subsidy farming Green Corp here on this page
In cahoots with Newsquest regional newspapers who are big on pushing green news and censoring comments
This morning BBC Farming Today featured a report on one of the winners of the Northern Farmer Magazine awards. (Coincidentally owned by Newsquest)
Which category did BBC pick out off 10 ?
………………….That’s right ‘Green Farmer of the year” …He lives in Cheshire
He talked about his Hydrogen project : They use electrolysis to split water into hydrogen which they then burn to heat the house ..surely there is a lot of waste in those steps. Why not just use solar hot water ?
He claims he does it to save money..subsidies were not mentioned , but surely that the only way he can be quids in is if he has subsidies.
That Magazine has no website, but Newsquest newspapers mention the news
“Green Farmer of the Year – Sponsored by Clean Power”
That
might beis the same Clean Power Solutions who just supplied that hydrogen system which the BBC TV were on hand to film.I see David MacKay has died.
Acclaimed expert on energy and engineering Sir David MacKay dies aged 48
more on Twitter
David MacKay: A reality check on renewables | TED Talk
On Sunday 10 April he blogged “I’d like my posts to have an ending, so I’m going to make this my final one”
There are now about 30 comments of memorial there
Tip : Words from
theirBob Ward’s own petition“This is an attack on academic freedom as it would stop grants for university research being used to influence policy-makers.”
The Cabinet Office has announced that a new ‘anti-lobbying’ clause will be included in all Government grants from May 2016.
Petition :Exempt grants for academic research from new ‘anti-lobbying’ regulation
…Created by Bob Ward …………Deadline 29 August 2016
The creator of the petition is the PR guy for Big Green hedge-fund founder Jeremy Grantham.. and basically works full time as a fully time time UK Climate Policy lobbyist .
He is not a scientist, although the BBC have in some of frequent media on air appearances , mistakenly introduced him as one.
Peter Stanford’s column in the Sunday Telegraph predicting El Niño induced summer heat wave. I take it he didn’t get the memo?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/27/emma-thompson-breaks-injunction-to-stage-fracking-protest/ Farmer retaliates by turning the muck spreader on them.
I have just been watching the South Today lunchtime news on the BBC which carried a story about an embankment land slip on Farnham to Alton railway line. It was reported this was due to last weeks heavy rain. However, what nearly made me choke on my lunch was when the reporter went on to say that Southampton University are blaming it on “climate change” and that we should all expect a lot more land slips delaying trains!
I’m afraid that to propagandists there is now no distinction between weather and “climate change”.
Even though erosion due to weather has been going on since the beginning of time and there is no evidence to support the belief that it is increasing.
More on the enduring costs of wind wnergy for Danish consumers (from The Australian!) here:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/danish-consumers-pay-big-and-long-to-subsidise-wind-turbines/news-story/f325bf64189961bfd2946e305d420e5e
Paul, what’s going on at your 2015 How To Complain To The BBC thread ?..comments have started again one year later ..and they’re a bit strange : Like one guy thinks the BBC are out to get Corbyn etc.
I wonder if it’s been used to test bots, or young guardian cyber disruptors in training
I did wonder myself!
This from a Metro article on Lake Whillans.
‘It is exciting to see such a rich dataset from the lake, and these new data are helping us understand how lakes function as part of the ice-sheet system.’
The latest research also showed that the lake’s waters periodically drain through channels to the ocean.
Researchers are hoping to use this information to help assess the contribution that subglacial lakes may have to the flow of water from the continent to the ocean, and therefore to sea-level rise.
Read more: http://metro.co.uk/2016/05/03/hidden-continent-found-underneath-antarctica-5857426/#ixzz47o7xyEdb
I bet that’d have some strange impacts on the climate down there.
tip : Onsite Frack gas fueled power station vs a wind farm
see BH Unthreaded comment May 5, 2016 at 2:50 PM | Radical Rodent
Needs verifying I guess
DECC directly lied in their news release today.
“It is driving down costs and securing electricity at the lowest possible price for bill-payers.”
Securing the UK’s electricity supply h/t Phillip Bratby
BBC Costing The Earth managed to do a new episode The Sun King of China lionising Huang Ming, he employs 3000 people in solar research
Maybe someone can listen and check if the prog mentioned the giant failing Chinese solar corps Hanergy and Yingli Green Energy Holding who employed more people
(news for Yingli from 1 hour ago Yingli Green Says It Probably Can’t Repay Debts Due Thursday )
“Unprofitable since 2011, Yingli has breached its debt covenants for more than a year and has been kept alive by state-backed institutions led by the China Development Bank “
Hi stew, no mention of fails or how small solar PV is in china, did ( rightfully ) push solar hot water & mentioned it’s use in cooling
cheers
BBC News acting as a FREE ADVERTISER forclimate porn from a charity again
“A British aid charity is warning that by 2060 more than a billion people worldwide will live in cities at risk of catastrophic flooding as a result of climate change.”
The article is just full on cutnpaste quotes
What the hell is the point in running a news item off a press release unless you challenge it or add a third voice ?
I guess someone like Paul Homewood will tear it apart soon
Technical note re China/HK renewable bankruptcies.
– US : stock gets overblown, shortsellers come in and market corrects , even if stock gets suspended the closure limit is 10 days.
– Hong Kong : stock gets overblown, shortsellers WANT TO come in but the market self correction doesn’t work ..e.g. Hanergy shortsellers can’t cash out cos the stock is still suspended after 1 year
ideally they would buy now at a low price and hand the certificate over to their customers, who will hand them the cash for the OLD higher price
So Shortsellers are being deterred in China/HK and markets getting overblown
FYI
https://www.rspb.org.uk/community/ourwork/b/martinharper/archive/2016/05/24/choices-for-nature-the-rspb-s-vision-for-energy.aspx
Paul pop over to BH Unthreaded for links on RSPBs new report OKings lots of new windturbines
The man from the SUPER IMPARTIAL BBC hands out £10,000 each to 3 sets of artists for Climate Change projects”
background
An extraordinary claim, I wonder if an analyser blogger has had a good look ?
#1 warmists show a gloating graph showing renewables just touch demand
whereas
#2 @Gareth says At the data source Agorameter ” Set the start date for 15.05.2016 and the end date for 15.05.2016 and you’ll see the data has been revised” and shows renewables supply doesn’t get close and maxes out at 10GW below demand.
Are they the same graph and data ?
Bloomberg’s is labelled : “Germany’s power supply by hour” and shows 3am
Agorameter’s is labelled : “Power Generation and Consumption”
BH May 25, 2016 at 7:10 PM | Gareth
ah I found a quote elsewhere “No, it was reported by Bloomberg e.a. on the basis of provisional data, which turned out to be wrong.”
We know Warmists go for PR over truth every time..these links are doing the rounds
Notice how they immediately mislead cos they say ENERGY when they mean ELECTRICITY ONLY ..which is only a fraction of all energy a country uses
That last bit again
Notice how they immediately mislead cos they say ENERGY when they mean ELECTRICITY ONLY ..which is only a fraction of all energy a country uses
The transition to safer, cleaner and cheaper alternative energy sources continues
Germany Achieves Milestone – Renewables Supply Nearly 100 Percent Energy for a Day (copynpaste of Bloomberg BUT with open COMMENTS)
Portugal ran entirely on renewable energy for 4 consecutive days last week
…Notice how they immediately mislead cos they say ENERGY when they mean ELECTRICITY ONLY ..which is only a fraction of all energy a country uses
Yes a there is a debunk .. it was indeeed faulty provisional data
Reports of 100% renewable power in Germany vastly overstated
The wamist Blog posts will not get corrected cos with then ..It’s not about truth , it’s about PR
…No TrickZone dont have the story yet
and correction statement from Agora
..I guess further into the summer there could be sunny windy days ..and the line could be crossed.
Today’s Climate crap the Greenblob have made for the BBC to air to scare the public
is a UNESCO report saying all heritage sites are at risk #WorldHeritage and Tourism in a Changing Climate.
..Over on BH-U I quoted the BBC dialogue
Ah The Greeniverse is now full of this news “Australia lobbied its way out of any mention in a UNESCO report on grounds it could harm tourism”
ABC : Australia references stripped from UN climate change report over tourism concerns
France. If they continue with worker disputes, and the striking Nuclear workers eventually lead to the closure of plants;
What would the loss of our “French Connectors”, mean to UK power supplies?
… and if it happened mid-winter?
RS
I missed this article when it was first published.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/05/19/national-grid-profits-rise-as-uk-imports-cheap-french-power/
Trumps new Energy speech is amazing
..whoever wrote it seems pretty sensible
– There is a script, but Trump adds extensively Bismarck, North Dakota (5-26-16)
(NPR has decided it’s listeners must have a filtered version)
This guy doesn’t seem that he is a normal politician.
The speech is filled with policies eg “We are going to cancel the Paris Climate Agreement
..and stop all payments of US tax dollars to UN Global Warming programs” point in video
Priorities “clean Air and Clean Water” for Americans
“This [Paris] agreement gives foreign bureaucrats control over how much our energy and how much we use, right here, in America. So, foreign bureaucrats are going to be controlling what we’re using and what we’re doing on our land in our country. No way. No way.” … point in video
I posted tips about Trump Energy speech ..maybe in spam
cos I put 3 links in it
Same old Trash : Same old place #CrookedBBC
BBC’s Matt McGrath lionising renewables Renewable energy surges to record levels around the world
eg BIG LIE “green power is now the leading source of electricity, providing 44% of total EU capacity in 2015.”
CAPACITY is not PRODUCTION or source
..Solar/wind have rubbish capacity factors so a large capacity produces much less that conventionals.
5.03am ..Ah now Matt was doing his item on BBC WS news
Type Renewables REN21 into the Twitter search box and you’ll see that Matt McGrath is just parroting REN21 (LOBBY ORGANISATION of the biz) without challenging their assertions or mentioning #SUBSIDIES paid by poor to rich. (solarpanel/windfarm owners, electric car buyers etc) h/t PhilBradby
Meanwhile on the Greenpeace website : Cooling technologies set to become red hot sector is a fawning report after reading a report on “the Cold Economy”/
It wouldn’t have been written by IMPARTIAL BBC enviro reporter like McGrath\s stablemate RHarrabin cos he would have challenged and tested assertions like a proper journalist /sarc
Strange how i get BBCEnviro and Greenpeace pages mixed up
#BBCFreeGreenAds
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/06/01/plans-to-curb-diesel-power-could-raise-risk-of-blackouts/
Interesting what they say about diesel not being charged for network costs.
I wonder who supplied the cutNpaste this time doesn’t look like DECC
If Emily was writing at article about solar do you think she’d select every photo to be of black sky with no blue? There is so much black in the 2 photos she uses here.
http://www.davidlenigas.com/vw-lithium-redemption/
Green tech, corrupt EU bureaucrats, lobbyists and emission cheats, all in one post.
Hi Paul
I have put together a paper on the Little Ice Age Theory. It is available at http://www.breadandbutterscience.com/Little_Ice_Age_Theory.pdf
James
Thanks James.
Just posted
Portland school bans Climate Change Denying textbooks and materials
http://portlandtribune.com/sl/307848-185832-portland-school-board-bans-climate-change-denying-materials
Chile Renewables Fantasy : Anyone got any light on this ? : Chile is 100% renewables is a story in Green echo chamber Reddit
The guy who told was unaware that Reddit bans skeptical comments
I don’t rule out a solar/wind surge ontop of a big hydro base, but when a green mag recently posted
Renewables on course for 25% Chile share by 2018, says president..so claiming 100% today seems 2G2BT
Other hype is Chile introduces world’s first metro to be powered largely by renewables
Wiki – Total installed nominal capacity in April 2010 was 15.94 GW.[1] Of the installed capacity, 64.9% is thermal,[1] 34% hydroelectric[1] and nearly 1% wind power,[1]
Yes Chile is exporting free electricity, but not cos it has fulfilled 100%, but rather cos the connections means excess solar can’t get to Chilean customers Bloomberg
Seems this cock-up story is being spun as a success
Seems my green PhD friend has got his page set up for his favourites like Green Topics
So his homepage shows such happy Green headlines
… and he only sometimes checks deeper
This time the initial poster has CREATED a happy clickbait headline and thousands of Greens have leapt in to upvote it
Thread 1: 6117pts Chile Has So Much Solar Energy It’s Giving It Away for Free
Then someone else has copied it
Thread 2: 4414pts Chile Has So Much Solar Energy It’s Giving It Away for Free
but some sensible people manage to get a sensible comment buried in about 200 wacky ones
(confirms my view Reddit is crap)
The excess power was NOT exported but given away locally for free
BBC4 Storm Troupers trotting out usual bull on climate change. Repeated tomorrow (Tuesday)at 8pm.
I have followed the “Reynolds SST Analysis” for a few years and was recently a little irritated by the change in the colour charts, that was maybe intended to give the overall appearance of a rather warmer N Atlantic. I was just getting used to the change and rather enjoying seeing most of the N Atlantic turn blue (negative anomaly), but then this last week, the ocean has “turned” almost completely yellow, showing a supposed a rise in temp of around 2deg on the East coast of the US and an almost unbelievable rise of up to 4deg in a couple of the Great Lakes. Surely this temp rise isn’t possible in just one week? What on Earth is happening?
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/sst/
Deception…..again
Paul you seem to have missed this.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iranian-womens-clothing-is-causing-a-river-to-run-dry-cleric-says-a7077021.html
Well I’m convinced, don’t know about you.
Certainly as a convincing causality as agw
Iranian women’s western clothing ‘causing rivers to run dry’, says senior cleric
& the proof is in Paris…lots of hijab’s = floods
Who needs science when you have a faith
New US nuclear to come on line ..(there a huge delay in construction 1985-2007 due to change of rules etc.) The Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) Watts Bar Unit 2 was connected to the power grid on June 3, becoming the first nuclear power plant to come online since 1996 1.5GW
That’s in the FT Energy Source newsletter
….Ed Crooks of the FT seems to be a greenblob stooge often make propagandistic statements like making wildly optimistic claims about pseudo renewables etc.
oh another bit
>>The world will within a decade reach “peak fossil fuels” for power generation, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance June 13.<<
..seems a pretty trashy item
There lies wouldn’t last 5 minutes if they allowed open comments, ..but no comments are allowed
I see Crooks material is used on an ambush name website
royaldutchshellplc.com
Yoiu have to dig deep to find this
“We are not Shell, but an independent non-profit website monitoring Shell’s activities.”
This looks like a very sad state of affairs..
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/20/us/as-wind-power-lifts-wyomings-fortunes-coal-miners-are-left-in-the-dust.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0
Tesla bubble still on path to bursting
#1 When their autopilot mode resulted in an owner death, which could easily have been a bystander death, they held the news for 8 weeks until the holiday weekend.
#2 Well at least they have stormed back to make delivery targets…NO NO only joking they are even further behind than last time.
FT >>The number of vehicle deliveries fell 15 per cent short of the company’s forecast and was even lower than the first quarter of this year, a period when Tesla blamed its own “hubris” in being too ambitious with the vehicle design.<<
Look across at the other cars and pray that none of them are a Tesla on Autopilot mode.
Do you think Tesla will survive when a car in autopilot mode kills a thirdparty ? Or that its cars will be insurable
BBC and other media reported that a Tesla ‘self driving’ car had crashed the driver was killed.
BUT BUT It was NOT ‘Self-Driving’ but rather a NORMAL car of a normal person in self-drive mode ..something Tesla stupidly call Autopilot.
BBC video foolishly use the title “Self Driving technology” and then “”Self Driving” interchangeably In the first one you CANNNOT take your hands away from the wheel cos you are supposed to be able take over immediately.
The Tesla Autopilot is basically cruise-control-plus ie extra tech collision detection it can’t detect kids jumping out ..so it is unbelievable it is legal on some US roads BBC news-story
Similar non fatal accidents have happened in the past.
The dumb guy had Youtubed last month about the car preventing a near miss
I keep seeing reporters writing that Google cars are safer than humans..Actually that is NOT provably true humans driverscause a death every 100 million miles, and Google has only driven 1.5 million miles.
Tesla claim 130 million miles before this death
New software update planned
A US Exec recently said why self driving is not coming soon
>>Self-driving cars are getting better, but there’s a long way between now and the world that is promised, because safety is a complex phenomenon,” he writes. “You can’t just extrapolate Google cars driving ~1.5 million miles under specific conditions (weather, topology, construction, traffic, accidents around it, etc.) to usurping the ~3 trillion miles/year under all conditions in the US. 1.09 fatalities per 100 million miles is the current non-self-driving numbers.”<< link
The NHTSA plans to release federal regulations in July and states will add additional regulations on top.link
Hangon “The crash happened on 7 May, but we learned of it 56 days later—on the Thursday evening that inaugurated the long holiday weekend in the United States ending in 4 July. ” IEEE
Autopilot used in the UK, In Today’s Times the journalist talks about letting it take over on the M4.
his argument was in’s no more dangerous than cruise control cos he kept his hand on the wheel..but the thing is letting the autopilot make the decisions could be habit forming..until it crashes you.
Paul, I have in my possession a booklet that was printed in 1960 to raise funds for those affected by flooding in East Devon in that year. It was printed quickly in order to aid the needy and therefore reused blocks donated by local newspapers. Along with much interesting detail, it has a refreshingly phlegmatic approach to the risk of flooding in an area constrained by geography and tides. If you are interested in having it, I will gladly post it on to you, the quality of the print making copying and email unlikely to be worthwhile. Please advise.
Hi Paul, did you spot the above comment and if so, is it of interest to you?
We’ve go theanti frackers 2 miles down the road even tho there’s going to be no proper fracking, cos it’s just a new well like the local Gainsborough ones
protest meet
There is another meet the public day next week.
Local paper just said the full permit is in. site website
Permit doesn’t talk about fracking just Proppant Squeeze a kind on mini-frac that has been used many times around here
“Unlike hydraulic fracturing, a proppant squeeze requires the use of only a small volume
of proppant and carrier fluid as it seeks to only bypass the formation damage rather than specifically to enhance the natural permeability of the formation.”
Green self-sufficiency…… 58% powered by diesel !!!
Another Green fail – Gapa Island South Korea
The project to bring energy self-sufficiency to South Korean’s Gapa Island was launched in 2011. The reason that the island was selected for the trial project is because of its small size (0.85 square kilometers), its plentiful wind power and solar energy.
The population of the island is 178 people; the electricity powers the 97 households on the island, four electric cars and a desalination plant.
After 5 yrs, the island is meeting 32% of its energy needs from wind power and 10% from solar power. The other 58% of energy is still supplied by 450kW diesel generators.
A total of 14.3 billion won (US$12.49 million) was invested in the project. Two 250kW wind turbines were installed, along with 174kW solar panels in 49 locations, plus an energy storage device, a system control center, power conversion equipment and remotely controlled power meters.
http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/752623.html
Capital expenditure spread over 20 yr life is –
$12.49 million / 178 = $70,168 / 20 = $3,508 per yr per capita
or
$12.49 million / 97 = $128,763 / 20 = $6,438 per yr per household
for just 42% green energy
A 450kW 562kva Cummins GTA28, 2006 model Genset is $59,950….
Lets allow a just a 10 yr life & lets buy 3 for ‘energy security’ – $180,000 / 178 / 10 = $101 per yr per capita
for 100% energy
But what about the fuel ???….
Well, I doubt each single person is going to use $3,407 worth of diesel per yr.
As the Americans say – “Go figure”
Climate science education
An article describing the replacement of science by advocacy here: http://canadafreepress.com/article/science-or-advocacy
Knowing the speed at which the UK government works, I won’t be holding my breath.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/07/26/please-build-mini-nukes-in-wales-say-welsh-mps/
Not Climate Science, but Big Physics… the Large Hadron Collider hasn’t discovered anything beyond the Higgs.
Juicy quote from the Sabine Hossenfelder a
Research Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies:
“We’ve maneuvered ourselves into a dead end by relying on aesthetic guidance to decide which experiments are the most promising.”
“I hope that this latest null result will send a clear message that you can’t trust the judgement of scientists whose future funding depends on their continued optimism.”
http://backreaction.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/the-lhc-nightmare-scenario-has-come-true.html
Good evening, I discovered your website and liked the Oppenheimer and Eisenhower quotes advocating freedom for scientific inquiry and also the advisory to remain alert to large federal funding influencing group think. I am not a climatologist but just joe citizen trying to self educate. Thank you for creating this blog. Question at the moment – can you direct me to references providing insights to the past few decades of receding ice and resulting warm temps (or vice versa) near Barrow, Alaska. Most sites I sought interpret as prima facie evidence of apocalypse yada yada, however I am looking for actual rational science. Lots more questions but am interested in this for the moment. thanks and hope to study more, jm, wash dc
JM,
You may find useful stuff in ‘Source Guide’ at bottom of this page https://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/
Start with this post:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/09/04/president-your-pants-are-on-fire/
Note also the Uhi effect in Barrow
Also if you search for Alaska, there are some posts on glaciers. In particular how the remains of medieval forests are now emerging from receding glaciers
My favorite reply to the “settled science” crowd.
The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there’s no place for it in the endeavor of science. We do not know beforehand where fundamental insights will arise from about our mysterious and lovely solar system. The history of our study of our solar system shows us clearly that accepted and conventional ideas are often wrong, and that fundamental insights can arise from the most unexpected sources. -Carl Sagan
Paul
You might like a look at this if you haven’t already spotted it.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/10/bbc-let-emma-thompson-get-away-with-inaccurate-climate-change-cl/
Maybe there is a glimmer of hope at last!
A couple of articles in today’s Telegraph of interest. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/17/alaskan-village-votes-on-relocating-due-to-climate-change/
and A E-P gives us the benefit of his knowledge of nuclear energy, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/08/17/britain-should-leap-frog-hinkley-and-lead-21st-century-nuclear-r/
A E-P at it again. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/08/21/carbon-capture-can-drive-a-21st-century-revival-of-british-indus/
Hello…in your pursuit of ‘climate sanity’ I think you might enjoy my new semi-popular book ‘Climate Chaos’. Apart from trying to put current ‘changes’ into a 4.5 billion year context I compare published high resolution spectral ‘fingerprints’ of a dozen regional climate series with published spectra of several solar activity proxies…but allowing the possibility of simple non-linear relationships which generate well known harmonics and interaction frequencies. The bottom line is that much of climate series (such as El Nino, PDO and AMO) spectral power, in some cases over millennia, is down to solar variation. With solar activity in decline (according to recent astrophysical research) I would expect cooling to swamp the current modest CO2 warming for some decades. If so the crap will soon hit the fan!
The book is also on Amazon (under Green Man Books).
Professor David P Gregg (retired)
Temperature adjustment:
See here how the maximum temperature for the period 1901-1950 is drastically changed down for the main location De Bilt with up to 1.9 degrees celsius. Tx = old, TX_H is new.
16 of the 40 official heat waves about 1901-2015 are thereby deleted.All in the 1901-1951
https://cdn.knmi.nl/knmi/map/page/klimatologie/gegevens/daggegevens/temp_260.txt
Overestimated global warming over the past 20 years
John C. Fyfe, Nathan P. Gillett and Francis W. Zwiers
NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE | VOL 3 | SEPTEMBER 2013 | pg 767-769
Recent observed global warming is significantly less than that simulated by climate models.
“The inconsistency between observed and simulated global warming is even more striking for temperature trends computed over the past fifteen years (1998–2012). For this period, the observed trend of 0.05 ± 0.08 °C per decade is more than four times smaller than the average simulated trend of 0.21 ± 0.03 °C per decade (Fig. 1b). It is worth noting that the observed trend over this period — not significantly different from zero — suggests a temporary ‘hiatus’ in global warming2–4. The divergence between observed and CMIP5-simulated global warming begins in the early 1990s, as can be seen when comparing observed and simulated running trends from 1970–2012”
The AIS tracking on the Polar Challenge yacht Northabout appears to have been switched off as of sometime last night (24th August) and there is currently no image of their track on the website.
http://polarocean.co.uk/thankyou-sergai-deynekns-hello-wrangel-island-james-gray-hairy-mammoths/
The latest Masie ice chart of the Chukchi Sea that they are currently crossing shows a menacing tongue of ice snaking their way. There could very well be rather more ice around than they’d anticipated.
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02186/latest/4km/masie_all_r02_4km.png
Our Local paper has info about local biz constructing a new 43MW waste CHP powerplant attached to a paper mill in Kent. The operator is called Wheelabrator and it says the corp has 20 such plants across the UK/USA..I just wonder how much subsidy money is going in to all these types of projects, cos I keep finding about such small power plants I never though existed. 40MW would be 1/30th the size of a proper gas fueled power station.
More info at wtikemsley.co.uk ..Green Investment Bank money is going into Wheelabrator projects eg £80m at Sittingbourne in Kent
Windmills can replace Hinkley Point C.
http://news.sky.com/story/hinkley-point-not-essential-for-uk-energy-10552188
But only if lots of gas power stations built as well.
In the past 12 mths the UKs 6,867 wind turbines produced only 7.7% of our electricity demand •
Coal 14.9%, Nuclear 23.4%, Gas 38.6%; another 7.7% came from Nuclear & Gas via the European interconnectors & 1.3% from hydro, the other 6.4% came from sewage gas, biomass, solar & diesel.
Over 50% of UK It’s a breezy day; UKs Wind capacity is ~ 14GW but wind is currently supplying less than less than 1GW….where’s the other 13GW we’ve paid so much in subsidies for ??
Scroll down this page for more info –
http://nationalgrid.stephenmorley.org/
Burning rubbish was always the largest renewable
..while the publicity is always about wind/solar while hyping the 25% claim
Much of that 25% must be new biomass then
Quite, I generally use http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ for a quick view of the wind follies frequent lack of contribution. Gridwatch includes a biomass dial which guessing by similarity of output values might be the contribution classed as “other” at the site you list. Otherwise a useful looking site, easier to read history graphs compared to gridwatch.
Sky disabled their comments following Brexit, maybe because many of the comments were negative to the way Sky cover that event and others including energy. Shame, now they can plaster the “wisdom” of Black without being exposed to clarification by comments on their own website.
Tip : Today’s Times Pg 27 Surprising debunk of Ashton Hayes magic eco-village story
: Eco village turns a paler shade of green”
Progess is slowing in one community’s drive to go carbon neutral
400 homes in Cheshire
– Camera crews from all over world flew in
– Eco claims are made by resident – Roy Alexander ..prof of Eco- &Sus @Chester
– Claim was 21.4% fall from 2006-10 ..the number reached 24% by 2015 (claim that newer villagers are big barn converter types with profligate lifestyles)
(higher figures are claimed by discounting the villagers most frequent flyers)
– Received a £400K grant for solar panels and Nissan Leaf ….But that didn’t work cos villagers already have own cars, so the charging point has been “disused for years”
– Villagers say there are 2 electric cars in the village
– The people with the greenest-house go to Mexico and will be there 3 months this year.
Peter Wadhams solves the Climate Change Catastrophe on the BBC ‘today program’
He gets 6mns repeating Catastrophic Climate Change at ~08:50
“This year sea ice in the Arctic has been melting at one of the highest rates on record. Peter Wadhams is professor of Ocean Physics at the University of Cambridge and author of A Farewell To Ice.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07q8y2h
Arctic circumnavigation boat Northabout starts at 02:44:30 then Wadhams at 02:46:10
Post glacial climate warming not advanced enough to allow land migration southward into North America
Subject: Indians probably did not migrate down North America on land
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2016/08/12/death-bering-strait-theory-165452
That the land was completely naked and barren in the ice-free corridor and incapable of supporting plant, animal and in turn human life, is not surprising – because there was not enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to support the plant life that is the base for human and animal nutrition.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The advancing ice sheets increase the Earth’s albedo, reflecting sunlight and resisting natural cyclic warming. As the ice sheets grow and the seas cool, CO2 in the atmosphere reduces as it is absorbed by the oceans. Most plants suffer severe stress at 190 ppm CO2 and die at 150 ppm, because CO2 is a primary plant-food. The concentration finally reaches the critical 190 ppm level where world flora begins to die and the Gobi steppe-lands turn into a true sand desert. The ensuing dust storms dump thousands of tonnes of dust onto the northern ice sheets each year. Ice core data shows that every interglacial warming period is preceded by about 10,000 years of intense dust storms. The dust on the ice absorbs solar radiation. When the next natural warming (or Great Summer) comes along, the dusty polar ice sheets can warm and melt and the next interglacial is born. Low concentrations of CO2 near the end of an ice age causes a die-off of plants leading to dust storms, reducing the ice sheet albedo, resulting in warming and the initiation of the next interglacial period……. see:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1674987116300305
Modulation of ice ages via precession and dust-albedo …
Meanwhile the high amount of carbon dioxide dissolved in sea water was able to sustain the entire aquatic food chain based on photosynthetic phytoplankton so that fish and other sea creatures were available to sustain migrating peoples as they made their way south along the west coast of North America.
Peter Salonius
Wind farm industry pays for upgrade to RAF radars.
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/551614/desider_99_sept2016.pdf Page 32
Hi Paul,
Andrew Simms and 100 months to save the world.
Andrew began this in The Guardian on the 1st of August 2008 so the time is up on the 1st of Dec 2016. It might be interesting to have a look at the actual changes that have taken place in this 8 years+?
Ed.
the link –
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/aug/01/climatechange.carbonemissions
Good idea!
Paul,
Have you seen this article and especially the comments. It seems interconnectors are not bees knees after all!
http://euanmearns.com/uk-electricity-interconnectors-a-double-edged-sword/
Paul,
You have a great site. I’ll do my part to get the Wadham Unit into popular circulation, although my site is not specifically Climate centric ..
https://notonmywatch.com/?p=807
-the old man
Great site old man, an amazing life story. No comments or follow option?
Steve – aka wolsten
naw… I just like to keep it low profile.. need a hobby, but not the angst. 🙂 take care.
Not a problem, I have book-marked and will try to revisit.
Hi Paul,
Have you seen this paper:
Click to access cutting_the_cost_of_keeping_warm.pdf
a fascinating insight into the thought processes of DECC at the time on Cutting the cost of keeping warm – a fuel poverty strategy for England. Includes the following howler from the Ed Davey”
” We need to get to grips with this problem once and for all, so people don’t have to pay such large electricity and gas bills, so people’s health doesn’t suffer from lack of warmth and so we aren’t making climate change worse as our fellow citizens shiver.”
Not quite sure how he could write this with a straight face.
More seriously, the paper describes many convoluted methods to achieve the goal, many requiring extensive research by DECC, but not one includes repealing the Climate Change Act or opening up a competitive open market in energy like what we had once.
Steve
Hi Paul, Paul Matthews on BH Unthreaded has mentioned a paper on ethics from Neil Lavery which is over at the Conversation
It’s just toto hilarious for words – considering it’s supposed to be a serious commentary. You’ll love the idea of how the consensus supposedly works, oh, and the fact that Lavery thinks climate scientists do not have to use common sense, just the assessment of experts. Priceless.
It is a bit hilarious Paul the (scientist writer) turns out to have been funded by one of the orgs listed on one of the pages he claims is a list of orgs who “fund deniers”
He’s just doubled down by saying “It’s a false flag operation”
So that’s a second unevidenced conspiracy theory from him
..Mail Paul and he’ll fill you in on the details
Hi Paul, are you or any of your readers aware of any onshore wind specific targets within the overall CO2 reduction targets for 2050 under the climate change act or other policy directives? Thanks, Steve
To the best of my knowledge, there are no technology specific targets, either UK or EU
Thanks Paul
Paul, have you seen today’s Matt cartoon in the Telegraph? Definitely a keeper.
Hi Paul et al, has anyone checked how many lead-acid batteries of the type in a car would be required to store a day’s worth of energy, say for a wind farm operating at an average power generation capacity of 11MW (i.e. not the name plate capacity but the actual average generated power)?
Piece on Weds Newsnight about the lack of evidence to support shaken baby syndrome. It seems the BBC is capable of arguing against the scientific consensus when they want to.
Good piece on subsidies at WUWT
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/10/12/the-truth-about-energy-subsidies-solar-gets-436-times-more-than-coal/
Does anyone know of a similar graphic for the UK subsidies ??
The Telegraph fails to realise that having lower power kettles does not reduce the amount of energy it takes to boil a quantity of water. Come to think of it, once you take into account heat loss, they probably use more. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/10/12/climate-advisers-pour-cold-water-on-idea-of-high-powered-kettles/ Our old friend, Lord Dreben of Police squad, gets a mention.
“National Grid will pay for 10 coal and gas-fired plants to keep spare capacity on standby, with further sums to be paid if they are called into action. These include coal plants at Eggborough in Yorkshire and Fiddlers Ferry in Cheshire that had previously been earmarked for closure.”
FT ..sign up for free account
“It shows how the segue from old, fossil fuel power stations to a system based on renewables and increased flexibility is taking place without the need for large capacity surpluses, which represent wasted investment,” said Jonathan Marshall, at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, a think-tank.
FOFL
Important story Paul “Big Green admitted Lying”
Oct 10 Page 3 of the Times …shows the Eden project is based on a LIE valued at £56m
The Dutch man who founded it Tim Smit found he wasn’t getting any money from the Millennium Commission
“faced with the “car crash” of being turned down for public funding, he decided that it “was surely the time to LIE”.(thats a quote)
so he set up a fake press conference in a tent saying that they actually had ..So the Times wrote a glowing leader saying the how insightful the Millennium Commission was ..and they came round over the next 6 weeks
\\He told the festival that fibbing was the “telling of future truths”//
Other stories say “ah but Eden has contributed £1bn to local economy” but that’s BS there’s no source and that works out at £50 for every man/woman/child
I’ve got a BBC page here that says “Eden received more than £132m from 2001-2009” well that works out at £14.7 to 16.5m/year ..which is about the same as the damn turnover. (avg about £16m)
What kind of business receives grants that are the same as its turnover ?
By the way the Alton Towers parent company has a £250m annual turnover from just a few themeparks
You see what is happening there ? you pay £60 to get a family in but another £60 comes from grants .
My free beer business could just take the £60 grant, give free beer to guests and argue it’s bringing cash to the local area, like Eden argue.
Peter Stanford in the Sunday Telegraph claims that Nicole was the biggest hurricane to hit Bermuda in thirty years. Really?
[Ed: HTF do I post this as a discussion topic?]
NANNY-STATISM & THE ENVIRONMENT:
Nanny-Statism is rampant in the modern world (Canada included). But the reality is that the primary beneficiaries are not the babies but the State, ever keen to superimpose its command and control instincts & methodology, and empower itself, its bureaucrats, and its influence-peddling, profit-seeking, grant-receiving sycophants who back-feed the Party by way of indirect funding & promotion. We proles are *nowhere* in this game of the rich & powerful.
Nanny-Statism reduces to the: “We’re in charge, don’t worry, be Happy!” To which I reply: “Don’t Happy, be very, very Worried lest the State takes over your life in-toto.” for which, read Totalinarianism.
So, in this perspective, the State is the Enemy of the People and their Individual Freedoms. Do we want to go the way of Communist China? Russia? Etc.? “Toe the Party-Line or else?!”
And driven by a cunning agenda of supposedly catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, albeit a fallacious & self-serving one at worst, and — objectively — very questionable at best, the U.N. is militating to ascend to a position of Global Power. Some would say, “High time”, but not on this tendentious, ‘gravy-train-riding’ agenda.
Our chums in the Insurance Industry are frantically virtue signalling again.
http://www.aviva.com/media/thought-leadership/climate-change-value-risk-investment-and-avivas-strategic-response/
Nice to see Amber Rudd gave the keynote speech.
Only real outcome I can see (apart from Aviva’s Mark Wilson’s warm feeling inside, presumably) is that it is now impossible to obtain even Public Liability insurance (let alone Professional Indemnity) for any inspections / reports / expert advice on anything to do with Coal Mining.
No doubt they will still happily accept insurance premiums from the largest consultancy practices (who, however, mostly lack any practical experience in this field.)
No doubt other fossil fuel companies / experts have similar problems.
I’m watching Sunday’s Horizon episode, ‘The wildest weather in the universe.’ Interesting that they say that Death Valley’s high temps (and by extension Venus’) are due to the high atmospheric pressure and not the composition.
BTW that BBC WWF species decline piece actually doubly debunks it’s own headline
“World wildlife ‘falls by 58% in 40 years'”
cos buried in the text is
“This analysis looked at 3,700 different species of birds, fish, mammals, amphibians and reptiles – about 6% of the total number of vertebrate species in the world.”
#1 It’s only vertebrates
#2 They didn’t include 94% of vertebrates species in the survey..just 6%
French Nuclear in a bit of a mess: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-27/french-shocked-power-prices-spike-8-year-highs-nuclear-reactor-probe-shutdown
So one may guess that the Inter-connector will be quiet this Winter, unless of course, they need our power,
RS
WE get 7% of our electricity via the inter-connectors
But no matter, Dick Ed Davey’s ‘renewables’ will save us…as long as we get the hottest, sunniest, windiest winter ever …start praying (if that’s your bag), but stock up.
Tabloid retelling:
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/nasa-scientists-suggest-weve-been-underestimating-sea-level-rise
Source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1002/2016GL070552/abstract
Title: Are long tide gauge records in the wrong place to measure global mean sea level rise?
Computer models suggest that there’s less than 1% likelihood that the tide gauges are sufficient to match computer models.
Paul
Have you seen the article in today’s FT http://on.ft.com/2fBweC9, by Martin Wolf. He is an economist, but has clearly been fed a story by the AGW camp and has not bothered to check his facts.
Kind regards
Cameron
It’s behind a paywall, Cameron
Is there any alternative source, or can you copy it?
I had a look it’s got 279 comments (now closed)
half from Green-loonies and half from anti-greens
Paul, the Telegraph is putting some content behind a Premium pay wall
I wonder if Booker can wangle some free accounts for us stringers ?
Introducing Telegraph Premium
Free 30-day trial then £2 per week billed as £8.67 per month or £90 for 12 Months
plus a free Amazon Echo Dot worth £49.99 (UK only)
The good news comments are being reintroduced (not just premium I think.)
“You need to register for a free account with the Telegraph in order to post comments.”
I wonder how much the BBC spends on Guardian subscriptions ? FOIA ?
I have been paying the online premium for a while. It started at £2 per month a couple of years ago!
I’ve not noticed anything extra in the new Premium Account!!
I don’t pay for my access, but it means I’m limited to a certain number of articles per week(ten I think). It just means I’m more choosy which links I click on.
To be clear this is the brand new Premium service which just launched.Guido just mentioned teething troubles
The main thing is you can comment on articles
A Free account gives : One Premium article per week, Comment on articles
It’s different from the old system cos now most items are free..but special commentators are in the Premium section
hmm signup doesn’t work right now. After input it just resets to start again.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-37846860
You’ve gottta laugh!
I was considering a response to the letter from Hugh McNeal. the chief executive of Renewables UK, in today’s Sunday Telegraph. His claim that they ‘are not asking for special treatment- just a chance to compete’ seems open to dispute. As your understanding of the system is no doubt more solid than mine, maybe you might be persuaded to give a refutation?
8:30pm R4 Future of the car
Evan Davis with the BBC giving a free plug for his Tesla mate
2 other guests
#1 Gett | NYC’s Black Car App
#2 Bloke from Driverless car software lab
Hi Stew, yes it was sickening, the radio was lucky not to go through the window!
So BBC admit making basic Climate Science error, in a news post which is intended to show that the BBC know more about Climate Science that Dumb Donald Trump
I say “admit”, cos they admitted it by making a stealth correction 7 hours after publication
Link to that modified BBC Denier Donald post #Donialists
(Donialism = denying Trump is pres elect)
I put screen shots etc in our BH discussion here
Southampton, Soton Cafe Scientifique event @the Pub Southwestern Arms, 36 Adelaide Road
November 14 Monday, 7 :00 PM mingle then 7:30pm-9pm Talk/break/Q&A
The use of satellites to monitor sea levels
Paul, do you have any explanation as to why the DMI’s Arctic temp plot is running so much warmer than usual? http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php Is it just weather, or could there be a technical reason? Even in recent low ice years the temp stayed closer to the mean.
PR not news ?
“More than half of electricity low carbon” in Yorkshire Post also here
Comes out of a Report from Imperial and Drax
“Between July and September 2016, the contribution of nuclear, biomass, hydro, wind, solar and low-carbon electricity imports from France peaked at 50.2%, up from just 20% in 2010 – demonstrating the scale and impact of Britain’s renewable energy revolution over the last six years, and the unprecedented changes taking place in the UK energy sector.”
“According to this quarter’s report, nuclear energy provided the largest share of low-carbon energy over the last three months, generating over a quarter of the UK’s electricity (26%), followed by on-shore and off-shore wind (10%), solar (5%), biomass (4%), low-carbon energy imports from France (4%) and hydro (1%).”
Hmm ..You can’t just assume all French imports are low-carbon, as it comes from a whole network , which is currently using a lot of coal cos of nuclear repairs
– hydro seems low
– Technically you can’t say “more than half” cos that 0.2% is probably within the margin of error.
– that a solar seems suspiciously high
– I wonder if the wind total has had the electricity USED by wind turbines deducted ?
– Biomass has basically been burning rubbish in the past and has been higher
Drax isn’t doing vwery welll if their bio is included within that 4%
– again has transport CO2 been deducted from biomass ?
So a network without all the big subsidies for solar/wind would have only 15% less electricity
I like the photo on the main BBC website accompanying the headline “2016 ‘very likely’ to be world’s warmest year”:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/
The implication is that a higher global temp. would mean hotter summers in UK, which isn’t necessarily the case.
I wonder why they didn’t use the same photo as on the actual article:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-37949877
Although, that one is probably no more relevant and is all part of the “Marrakech” propaganda campaign.
Paul Bill McKibben is tweeting a ridiculous ..world ice coverage graph
no one has debunked him yet ..I would guess instead of adding Antarctic and Antarctic together itr’s subtracting one from the other …or something
I found this:
http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/17/13667630/global-sea-ice-concentration-graph-science-twitter
May be something to do with the fact that the scale doen’t start at zero, which makes it look worse.
oh On B-BBC someone posted these 3 graphics against BBC anti-truth
The BBC reporting on Antarctic ice extent this morning but of course it’s all about the sea ice
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b084jqx6
News : I can tell European Environment Agency and Client Earth have put out a press release today about NO2
Each news org has put its spin on it …Here’s a Google news list
see more on BH unthreaded : Nov 24, 2016 at 11:30 AM stewgreen
note the slippage :NO2 certainly doesn’t 100% come from diesel cars, their is aircraft for a start.
Price pressure on OUR and French electricity due to French nuclear repairs/checks being given 1 more more month for 2 reactors
“The reactors had been due to restart on November 30, but further checks will be required to satisfy ASN, the French nuclear safety regulator, that they are safe.
Another EDF reactor, Saint-Laurent 2, has been given permission to restart three days earlier than expected, on November 24.” Times
How much would you pay for a Scottish Aluminium smelter including 2 hydroelectic dams ?
Lochaber 82MW and Kinlochleven 24MW
Liberty house just paid £330m
That seems reasonably cheap to me ..you could shut the smelter and still make a profit running the dams… depends the debts I guess
Light Relief from SNL video
After the US election a special real estate advert Bubbleworld a place for mad liberals to live “as if the election had never happened
Dear Paul, Thank you for the recent link to GWPF Lords select committee article. I listened with interest to the meeting. I have to say that I didn’t quite see Mr Nolan from Ofgem as a consumer’s champion, although he does appear to have a grasp of the renewables subsidy problem. I was more encouraged by the select committee’s general scepticism towards renewables. Hopefully, this might spread to the other chamber.
An interesting point that arose in the course of the interviews was the comparative size of the UK gas grid to the electricity grid. Mr Sheppard from Nation Grid mentioned that the gas grid carries 5 to 6 times more energy than the electricity grid. Later, Mr Nolan mentioned that the gas grid was 3 to 4 times larger than the electricity grid; I assumed he was referring to capacity. He also mentioned the planned switch from gas to electricity for heating (2030’s), which made me think: The infrastructure required to expand the electricity generation and supply over the next 10 to 15 years would seem to be a huge undertaking. I’m no expert, but I can’t imagine this is cheap? Especially when one adds in all those electric cars that will need charging. Any thoughts?
Paul, this article by David Whitehouse of GWPF http://www.thegwpf.com/satellite-data-reinstates-temperature-pause/ , has been getting quite a lot of attention recently. One query I have with it though is that it uses land only and highlights the big drop in temperature since the middle of the year. As most of the land is concentrated in the northern half of the globe, which has gone from summer in to winter,isn’t this only to be expected, or am I missing the point?
Don’t forget these are anomalies, so the winter/summer split should not affect matters
Should’ve put my glasses on.
Paul,
Here is a short article with links leading to documentation exposing an egregious wind farm scam/fraud in New Zealand. Worthy of a post.
http://www.wakeupkiwi.com/news-articles-42.shtml#Windfarm
I’ve just started an information only website
http://www.use-due-diligence-on-climate.org/
as an adjunct to sites like this.
Hope you find it useful in getting the message out.
Will add more as time goes on.
Happy to receive constructive criticism / more info,… when I get contact page connected.
For another very thorough treatment of interesting data and explanations go to:
https://friendsofscience.org / /click on CLIMATE SCIENCE on the left side of the page that comes up a virtual library on climate change / / which features a wealth of realistic climate history and information.
Peter Salonius
Paul 6pm news be prepared for BBC PR onslaught from Doctors Against Diesel
#1 Yesterday they did not exist
#2 Bottomline $$ spent on gas stoves for Indians save more LifeDays
than $$ spent on electricTaxi subsidies for Londoners
#VirtueSignalling + #EVsubsidyMafia
My notes
New type of gas turbine will find first application in CCGT. http://aviationweek.com/technology/aerojet-rocketdyne-explores-detonation-engine-options Potential of 15% improvement in fuel efficiency.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/mitsubishi/mitsubishi-outlander-phev-long-term-test/
Paul here is something not even the mighty minds that run our lives have pondered before.
Where do lekky and hybrid cars get heat to keep you toasty on a typical uk day, rather than a Californian one.
Latter have to run engine just to warm you. Former bye bye actually moving
Another point is look at the actual mpg in this case. Or should I say the total inadequacy of the ‘official’ testing.
Just a thought because it’s such a fundamental part of my driving experience. OK I live in the Highlands but I don’t recall it being a lot better down south.
I made the following complaint to BBC about this article on their website.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5qBNHFTFCNnsdzklrPQTK37/meetings-with-seven-remarkable-christmas-trees
‘Let It Snow, London, 2015’ ‘Sledging on London’s hills at Christmas hasn’t been possible for many years due to lack of snow. Once the tree was dismantled all the sledges were given away to local people, or sold to raise money for charity.’ Simply not true that there has been no sledging for ‘many years’ and why give away sledges to Londoners if there is no snow? It snowed at The Oval on 26 April 2016.
My impression is that there have been better than average sledging conditions in London in the last few years but I don’t live there now. Your research skills would probably back this up. The BBC text was taken more or less straight off the PR puff of course, typical BBC churnalism. They changed ‘recent years’ to ‘many years’ for added eschatological effect.
http://www.surelight.com/led_lighting_news/let_it_snow_christmas_tree.htm
Reply from BBC, note that ‘climate’ becomes ‘weather’ as the opening savo of the tissue of lies and evasions. All too depressingly familiar of course but a Happy New Year to all despite that!
Dear Mr S
Reference CAS-4150811-3C6H1Q
Thanks for getting in touch with us.
I understand that you feel the article contained an inaccuracy with regard to the weather.
The main focus of the article which asked “Do you wish your Christmas tree had just a little more artistic credibility?” was with regard to the artistic creativity involved in making the trees that were “a little different” and not climate change or the weather.
Nevertheless we acknowledge that you feel this was an inaccuracy and we appreciate that you have taken the time to bring this to our attention.
I have made sure to record your complaint on our daily Audience Feedback Report that is compiled and circulated right across the BBC.
These reports can be used to inform future broadcasting and policy decisions so please be assured that your complaint has been sent to the right people.
Thanks once again for taking the time to contact us.
Kind regards
Brian Morgan
BBC Complaints Team
http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints
NB This is sent from an outgoing account only which is not monitored. You cannot reply to this email address but if necessary please contact us via our webform quoting any case number we provided.
On BBC Radio 4 at 8pm tonight:
“Climate Change: the Trump Card”
A year on from the Paris climate change talks, Roger Harrabin asks if the world can limit the global temperature rise to under 2c.
(or as the Today programme put it, can we “save the planet” !)?
Nice story in today’s Daily Mail about the DeltaStream tidal turbine project that failed within weeks of being commissioned. The operator, Tidal Energy Ltd, has gone into Administration and the Welsh government is now searching for a buyer, claiming the project had achieved its objectives and ‘helped make Wales a key player in the industry’. A waste of £8.5M public funding.
A ‘key player’ in the Solyndra sense perhaps?
Times
Front page : Ski Holiday ruin : Alps drought zone
Article is speculative “if there is no snow by the weekend” : Twitter shows me it did snow around Annecy on Jan 4th
and Ski resort forecast is snow this week
https://www.j2ski.com/ski_resorts/Airports/Annecy_snow_reports.html
For the avid readers out there I’ve stumbled upon a strange site (and sight) with some really good links…
100 Legal Sites to Download FREE eBooks and Literature from
http://theglobalelite.org/100-legal-sites-download-free-ebooks-literature/
and for all you science and computer types there’s
http://techbooksforfree.com/science.shtml
The question of Climate Change came up on this week’s Any Questions on BBC R4.
Lucie Green, unfortunately, demonstrated closed mind (for a scientist) and couldn’t resist challenging Owen Paterson, putting forward the “scientific consensus” argument, when he expressed the point of view that a rise of 0.5 degrees in 50 years did not frighten him.
Incredibly, Margaret Beckett argued that the temperature had risen 2c since the last ice age.
It’s a pity that Paterson didn’t ask her if she would have preferred that hadn’t happened and we still under miles of ice in Britain.
Obviously some “global warming” is acceptable.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b087ts7p
About 29 minutes in.
hi Paul, you may be interested in this piece of mine today, re Earth Hour 2017
http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2017/01/earth-hour-3d-dim-dark-dopey/
Cheers and love your work, Tonyt
I assume this blog is manned. Comment for this would be helpful
https://www.engadget.com/2017/01/16/we-ve-never-seen-global-sea-ice-levels-this-low-before/
I did a couple of posts a month or two ago, Chris.
The Antarctic reduction has been caused purely by a change in wind direction, which has pushed the ice towards the shore.
With the Arctic, the main factor is an influx of warm Atlantic water around Spitzbergen, something very similar to what happened in the 1920s.
This is the post on the Arctic:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2016/12/06/nsidc-confirm-low-arctic-ice-due-to-influx-of-warm-atlantic-water/
I’ll dig the other one out later
Two more posts here Chris:
1) Arctic – https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2016/11/21/arctic-sea-ice-update/
2) Antarctic – https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2016/12/14/antarctic-sea-ice-retreats-due-to-wind-patterns/
Paul apparently Gatwick Airport will be Carbon Neutral by spring and is run entirely by renewables!
http://www.traveldailymedia.com/246124/gatwick-airport-to-be-carbon-neutral-by-spring/
Not sure if this means they stop flying on dull windless days or in fact how they fly anything at all on 100% renewables.
BBC had a Horizon programme Sun 22/01/17 addressing recent changes in global weather patterns. It was a very objective presentation, largely focussed on jet stream and supra tropospheric influences on weather patterns at terrestrial levels. At no point was there blame on mankind’s influences leading to ‘global warming’ and the accompanying link to carbon emissions that we normally see with BBC presentations.
Most of the statements were uncontroversial but a few slightly dubious ones crept in. However they did not take away the impact of a programme looking at factors that are only recently coming to light through proper scientific research. There was none of the wild speculation derived from suppositions made by pundits who project beyond the facts presented by a particular scientific study. Can it be that the BBC are learning to present science factually? If so let us have more programmes like this. Scientific debate is needed.
There is hope yet for the so called sceptic who says that while the world has been getting warmer over the past 10,000 years man’s influence by producing carbon dioxide as being the cause has not been proved.
That programme was a repeat, although I don’t remember when it was first broadcast.
It was probably discussed here at the time.
I don’t recall that the programme was particularly objective.
I doubt if the BBC is changing it’s attitude to “climate change”.
Can it be that the BBC are learning to present science factually?
Not while ‘Horrorbin’ is in charge
The programme was first broadcast in July 14, so a lot that was said about “our recent extreme weather”, is out of date.
Yorkshire Post Full page News-Vert from GreenBlob Corporation
Global climate warning as the world gets warmer
I left a longer comment https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/01/21/arctic-heatwave-it-was-warmer-in-1985/#comment-86258
Vaccinating against Climate Denial
Sander van der Linden , a Lew sidekick
my comments
http://biasedbbc.org/blog/2017/01/23/start-the-week-open-thread-110/comment-page-2/#comment-807834
Mail also has the story
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4145688/Britain-climate-change-sweet-spot.html
Not sure what the Telegraph are up to today. Reporting on Hurricane Gustav flooding Cuba and threatening to increase to Cat 5 before hitting Florida. Apart from fact that hurricane season ended in November, Hurricane Gustav was a 2008 hurricane. Gustav is not even a name to be allocated in the 2016-2020 name list. Maybe the NOAA is planting ‘false news’!
How do you know its a recent article?
The only Telegraph articles I found were dated 2008.
Paul, I would very much like to make contact with you directly in connection with your truly masterful review of Prince Charles’ recently published Lady-book on climate change. I have an idea which may be of interest to you. Best regards, David Cosserat, Oxfordshire, England. Email: cosserat@gmail.com
Paul
impartiality has for the first time been enshrined in the BBC’s mission
BBC impartial…that’ll be a novelty
The Charter has given the BBC a new public mission, which is
To act in the public interest, serving all audiences with impartial, high-quality and distinctive media content and services that inform, educate and entertain.
The BBC is required to deliver duly impartial news by the Royal Charter and Agreement, and impartiality has for the first time been enshrined in the BBC’s mission in the new Charter. The government agrees that it is vitally important that accurate and impartial news is at the centre of the BBC’s output.
see more
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/159140?reveal_response=yes
This from Andrew Ward at FT https://www.ft.com/content/fc9d036e-ea44-11e6-967b-c88452263daf
A new series of “Costing the Earth”, begins on Radio 4 on Tuesday (15.30) with a programme about wildfires, which it will no doubt blame on “climate change”.
Hi Paul
Good article in Mail on Sunday today (5 Feb) by David Rose about NOAA and their dodgy reports and impact on Paris Agreement.
More lunacy for us to pay for
http://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/POST-PN-0549
Typical BBC nonsense:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/38888624
German ship powered by LNG. http://www.4allports.com/first-bunkering-of-an-lng-fuelled-chemical-tanker-in-german-port-nid5280.html#sthash.IWWMLDUI.UyAJsRHy.dpbs
South Australia’s wind farms fail again, grinding out just 2 per cent power when the wind’s die in a heatwave.
Result: blackouts to 40,000 homes as the temperature soars above 40 degrees. And lives put in danger by this green madness.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/sa-loses-power-in-another-wind-farm-fail/news-story/8e5db34f658a3153f7f0a8d91a077b82
Interesting interview with Myron Ebell, Trump’s Director of Competitive Enterprise, available on BBC World Service – HARDtalk.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04sd21x
Paul last night Science In Action began with a report how GHG science isn’t working on Mars but there’s a lot of irony cos the previous Stephen Sackur prog had just spent half an hour telling Ebell the science is settled.
My notes are on BH unthreaded.
Feb 10, 2017 at 9:59 AM
Also here
http://biasedbbc.org/blog/2017/02/10/weekend-open-thread-135/#comment-813197
This is content on a Manchester University MSc course
The lecturer requires students to ‘comment’.
‘comment’
Cracking looking women,
I particularly like the one playing with her organ, lovely touch.
Alpine snow may shrink 70% by 2100 – Bloomberg
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-16/it-s-snow-go-for-skiers-by-2100-as-climate-change-hits-the-slope
I’ve been watching the NASA press conference about the exo planets around Trapiste 1.
They say that there are three Earth sized planets in the habitable zone where they receive about the same energy as we do. However because their sun is a red dwarf, most of that energy is at the infrared end of the spectrum, so the question is, would that energy penetrate the atmosphere enough to raise the temperature?
http://nativespress.com/2017/02/08/earth-has-shifted-inuit-elders-issue-warning-to-nasa-and-the-world-video/
If the Earth had experienced an uneventful developmental history — its geographic poles / axis would be vertical and the world would be without seasons.
There are suggestions in the literature that external forces such as those generated by a passing highly charged comet/ asteroid could easily interact with the Earth pulling the geographical axis away from its default vertical position and shift its rotation axis to a tilted position — and that over time with no interference the Earth’s axis of rotation will SLOWLY move toward its default vertical position (because of the inertia of the gyroscope that is the planet Earth).
A highly charged comet passing close is thought to be able to exert an even greater electro-gravitational force sufficient to tilt the Earth’s rotation axis than the mechanical consequences resulting from a direct impact.
The observations of Inuit elders deserve careful consideration.
http://nativespress.com/2017/02/08/earth-has-shifted-inuit-elders-issue-warning-to-nasa-and-the-world-video/
Peter Salonius
=================================================================================================
________________________________
Hi, Paul. I know you are interested in boondoggles of the climate-related variety so I thought you might be interested in this: http://www.breitbart.com/california/2017/01/23/solar-inconvenient-truth-ivanpah-plant-top-fossil-fuel-burner/
Paul – I stumbled across this 2011 paper today. I don’t have the ability to sense-check it – maybe others here do
Click to access the%20methane%20misconceptions%20published%20version.pdf
Hi paul – Just read this quote in Quillette online mag from a Professor Clay Routledge and thought it might interest you and your readers.
‘The important point is that people are biased and this influences scientific work. I and others have written about the problem of ideological bias in the empirical sciences. However, postmodernists horribly misdiagnose the problem. Science isn’t the problem. People are the problem. Scientists are people, so they can be biased. And this undercuts our ability to develop an objective understanding of the world. This means we need to increase our efforts to remove human bias. Postmodernists oddly go the opposite direction. They increase potential bias by rejecting the methods that help reduce bias. They put their faith, and I use the term faith purposely, in subjective human experiences instead of trying to remove subjectivity from research.’
Hello Paul
I am a techno peasant
I have in the past replied to various posts — but I have not been able to have you feature a New comment on NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT.
The New Comment I would like to share — but can not figure out how is as follows:
Do you mean a guest essay, Peter?
Hello again Paul
NOT A GUEST ESSAY — but the following observation by Inuit about the tilt of the Earth having shifted that I thought your readers may find interesting:
Earth axis shift influencing the climate(No subject)
PS peter salonius [https://boomerangoutlook.baydin.com/static/img/icons/ribbon/boomerang_64_blue.png]
[https://cdn1.evernote.com/outlook/v1.6.3/images/app-icon.png]
[https://www.wunderlist.com/office-add-ins/img/wl_icon_standalone.png]
Reply |
Wed 02-22, 3:19 PM NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT (comment+rg8fv2-6jqg1po9u5zcqty-7k06gcm3snds5xqlsp36_0abp@comment.wordpress.com) …
http://nativespress.com/2017/02/08/earth-has-shifted-inuit-elders-issue-warning-to-nasa-and-the-world-video/
If the Earth had experienced an uneventful developmental history — its geographic poles / axis would be vertical and the world would be without seasons.
There are suggestions in the literature that external forces such as those generated by a passing highly charged comet/ asteroid could easily interact with the Earth pulling the geographical axis away from its default vertical position and shift its rotation axis to a tilted position — and that over time with no interference the Earth’s axis of rotation will SLOWLY move toward its default vertical position (because of the inertia of the gyroscope that is the planet Earth).
A highly charged comet passing close is thought to be able to exert an even greater electro-gravitational force sufficient to tilt the Earth’s rotation axis than the mechanical consequences resulting from a direct impact.
The observations of Inuit elders deserve careful consideration.
http://nativespress.com/2017/02/08/earth-has-shifted-inuit-elders-issue-warning-to-nasa-and-the-world-video/
Peter Salonius
Interesting! Surely astronomers would have already spotted this though?
I think that if this had happened within living memory, we would have ALL noticed!
The motion of the stars relative to one another (proper motion) is known about but is very small.
It wouldn’t cause the sun to set in a different place or the other changes the inuit were talking about.
HI Paul, another quote from this article: http://quillette.com/2017/02/23/on-meaning-identity-politics-and-bias-in-the-academy-an-interview-with-clay-routledge/
He is talking about social sciences but I think this is the fundamental problem with Climate Change.
‘I have been at talks where people present very poorly conducted research related to ideas that failed to replicate or were never well-supported to begin with and watched as hardly anyone in the audience offered even the slightest challenge. It is very strange to see well-trained scientists so blatantly ignore fundamental research flaws because they find the conclusion ideologically affirming. This is precisely why we need to make our methods more rigorous, fight for an academic culture that challenges groupthink and prioritizes the pursuit of truth over tribal loyalty, and encourage diversity of thought.’
More boll-ox via the BBC…this time from Sheffield Uny – ‘bread causing climate change’
Sorry here’s the link –
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39106180
I don’t see any suggested solutions, i.e how do we increase yields without carbon emissions?
I wonder if they took into account the fact that c02 is plant food?
Simple solution, don’t let warmists eat bread…..or cake
Hi Paul,
I recently had an interesting experience discussing climate change with “young people” which I have blogged about here:
https://wolsten.wordpress.com/2017/03/01/climate-change-over-dinner/
I am waiting to see whether there is any reaction.
Best wishes
Young people will believe what they are told, particularly if passing exams depends on it.
True but it is much deeper. Essentially during all of their learning years they have been told the world is going to burn up (despite the rising seas!). We older ones are more amenable to changing our viewpoint given we had previously been subjected to the previous new ice age scare. I am guessing for them it would be akin to finding out they were adopted, their whole view view would be skewed.
Today’s PR in my face
Front page of Times
‘Diesel creates Superbugs’ paraphrase
Notes/caveats
http://www.bishop-hill.net/discussion/post/2648447?lastPage=true
Climate change makes volcanoes worse:
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170306-volcanoes-could-erupt-much-more-thanks-to-climate-change
Which has the most ridiculous opening sentence: “On the face of it, climate change and volcanic eruptions are completely unrelated.”
“The year without Summer” springs immediately to mind
If melting glaciers does cause an increase in volcanic activity, there may be a feedback mechanism in the eruptions which would have a long term negative effect on temperatures.
I also notice that according to the scientist in the video, Iceland was covered by glaciers 1-2 km thick 12000 years ago. If I am not mistaken that was during the glacial period, when the British Isles and most of Northern Europe was also covered by glaciers. The melting of the glaciers 12,000 years ago was not caused by CO2 emissions.
Love the “Climate Change is melting the earth”
Paul 3 Things
PR experts are clearly backing off the Global Warming narrative
And regrouping around air pollution narrative as a strategy.
Now I bet The BBC has been some secret #SoICanBreathe meeting with the NGO PR guys again like 28gate ?
Today the BBC started a campaign saying that the diesel cars is the new paedophile & directed the baying mob to them.
Every live program me throughout the day had PR tricks stirring up hate against them.
Stuff like getting children to stand in front of school with placards etc.
This is wrong !
I have no objection to the Green Party participating in political campaigns, but the BBC is unelected and undemocratic it should not be driving politics.
Here is a graph showing the official UK trend
This twitterfeed carries most alarmist PR
Stu,
Completely predictable there would need to be another scare to take its place. The fact that reacting to the previous scare was what to great extent caused this one is not lost on the shameless BBC.
One claim too far?
Musk Bets He Can Fix Aussie Power Woes in 100 Days or It’s Free
https://bloom.bg/2lK2g2b
He thinks 100MW of powerwall will be enough
..Is it ? ..seems quite small to me
and will have running costs
GREEN BANS “DEINDUSTRIALISING” AUSTRALIA
Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun March 8, 2017
low down on power cut costs
Paul,
Not sure how best to contact you, so posting a link here to an article by Richard Black (yes, ex BBC) titled, “We need electricity to be our flexible friend”.
https://capx.co/we-need-electricity-to-be-our-flexible-friend/?omhide=true
The intriguing thing is that he advocates markets to deliver best price, though he rather spoils that with this, ” If we want the overall amount of electricity to come from the cheapest form of generation, that would inevitably be onshore wind – but the Government has effectively decided to ban it.”
You and your more expert readers might well have something to say.
Regards
David Bishop
Paul,
Here is another example of “consensus” science at work –
35 yrs as a Pariah .
Prevailing archeological thought was that humans crossed from Siberia to Alaska and the Americas over a land bridge approximately 13,000 years ago ( they became known as the Clovis people).
In the 1970s a French-Canadian archeologist Jacques Cinq-Mars and his team found evidence of human activities much earlier & between 1979 and 2001, he published a number of papers arguing for his original theory, this went against the consensus so he was viewed as a pariah in the archaeological community for ~ 35yrs.
Another archaeological team in oxford confirmed in Jan 2017 that people were in the area ~24,000 yrs ago; now, the Clovis people theory has been set aside vindicating Cinq-Mars.
See:
https://www.hakaimagazine.com/article-short/archaeological-find-puts-humans-north-america-10000-years-earlier-thought
Full paper – http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0169486
Paul,
please contact me via my email ASAP
something I don’t want to post openly.
Ah : Adult tour of a proper Power Station Free
Fiddler’s Ferry Power Station, Warrington , Cheshire
Sat 18 March 09:30-13:30
More Climate Events this week from British Science Week, Cambridge Science Fest,Newcastle Free Thinking Fest
Here’s a Link to the Hydrological Summary for the UK http://nrfa.ceh.ac.uk/sites/default/files/HS_201702.pdf
Thanks to T2mike on xmetman.com
http://xmetman.com/wp/2017/03/18/is-the-uk-getting-wetter/#comment-478
So what do you have to say about this report in the Daily Telegraph then? Sounds pretty conclusive to me – human influenced climate change is real and should not be ignored..
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change-real-extreme-weather-wmo-world-meteorological-organization-global-warming-a7640376.html
They are confusing weather with climate. Of course we have never had bad weather in the past!
I thought I had already posted this once and so does “WordPress”, but I can’t see it.
I can’t tell from you post what your attitude is to the article but it is base on a biased source (WMO) which takes extreme examples of weather and calls them “climate change”.
For example the “wettest winter on record in Scotland”, is actually only the wettest since 1910 (because the records don’t go back any further) and winter 2017 rainfall has been below normal.
Each example used is probably an outlier and no mention is made of the “normal” weather experienced in most places, a sure sign of confirmaton bias.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
As for temperature, you have to trust the source of the data and as many of the figures are estimated and continually being upwardly adjusted retrospectively, I don’t.
In case their is any confusion, this post is in response to Dave Brittain’s.
Dave, this shows the catastrophic rapid change in temperature since 1880
from
https://suyts.wordpress.com/2017/03/20/back-by-popular-demand-new-and-improved-plus-bonus-graph-of-how-global-warming-looks-on-a-thermometer/
PR not news ..laying the PR tricks on thick.
There’ll be a debunk a long from WUWT or Tony Heller or Paul soon I suppose
I’m sure it sounds pretty conclusive to you…but that doesn’t make it fact.
Same as you convinced me to read something from the Daily Telegraph….then linked me to the Independent.
You may find this info site useful –
http://www.use-due-diligence-on-climate.org/
Laid out as simple bullet points, simple explanations, through to full scientific papers & stuff you’ve never heard of; plus loads of charts, links & refs. Work your way through; It’s well researched & is fairly easy to navigate.
I have just listened to an extremely alarmist report on sea level rise in Miami, on the BBC R4 World at One.
I expect it will turn up on TV news.
The programme on iPlayer with the report at about 25 minutes.
The report is by Nick Bryant, the BBC’s “New York” correspondent, so what is he doing reporting on Miami!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08k19mn
There’s more to Miami than vice & sea level rise…start with geology, years of water abstraction & geography.
They had the answer 2,000yrs ago –
Matthew 7:24-27.
And they shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:
And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.
According to this report, referring to Miami, “water levels here are rising at nearly 10 times the average world wide rate”.
Yet according to Wikipedia, global sea levels are rising at an average rate of 1.8mm p.a., and according to NOAA the rate at Miami Beach is 2.39mm +/- 0.43mm p.a.
So where does Bryant get his figure from?
I was trying to work out who actually claimed that. There were so many people talking, it was to keep track.
Who is Bryant?
According to this page, he is the BBC’s “New York correspondent”, although I must admit I don’t recall hearing much from him.
I am sure it was him who mentioned the “nearly 10 times” figure.
Maybe “climate change” isn’t his speciality and he was taken in by the propagandists.
It doesn’t seem to have made it on to the telly yet.
I missed off this link.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/correspondents/nickbryant
On “Outside Source” last night, Christiana Figures was making some claims in relation to President Trumps Executive Order and Climate Change.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08l5mkp/outside-source-28032017
They sounded pretty suspect to be but I haven’t had a change to check their veracity yet.
BbcOS on Twitter generated no comments
Just 6 people tweeted the Live Periscope feed
Now they’ve off air the Link’s dead
Theres this
“Mar 28 Alicia Trujillo @aliciatrujillo
@CFigueres hi I work for the BBC and we are interested in talking to you about the EPA. pls DM me your contact.”
Then this
A bit of a niche market but, some prospect of hydrogen cell development.
http://www.defensenews.com/articles/hydrogen-fuel-cell-technology-could-bring-stealth-to-army-vehicles
Hmmm. http://www.conservativehome.com/platform/2017/04/sam-hall-conservative-voters-are-more-green-than-stereotype-would-suggest.html
How about this for a weather record – 800ad to 2016. Japanese cherry blossom flowering dates . . .
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/04/elephant-bloom?cid1=cust/ddnew/n/n/n/2017046n/owned/n/n/nwl/n/n/uk/Daily_Dispatch/email&etear=dailydispatch
Hi Paul, I know you have done a lot of work on the CET and so would like to share this with you.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2951507
“Subsidise” renewables, by charging power stations more for water:
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170412-is-the-world-running-out-of-fresh-water
It is not hard to see here the formation of a plan; Charge power stations more for their water use (cooling etc) to make them less competitive.
It is also mind-boggling that a Manchester University (where it rains 12 days a month they tell us) has a rainwater harvesting/treatment system to reduce costs. It seems very unlikely that it is cheaper for the University to harvest rainwater and treat it for human use (showers and toilets; who showers in water not suitable to drink?) than it is to simply use the vast supplies of the Lake District.
the future does not seem bright,
RS
On a recent “Breakfast”. Samantha Franks, of the BTO, cited “climate change” along with habitat (loss of?) and predators, as a cause of some species being in decline, but offered no examples.
I have requested a single example, but have so far received no reply.
I have no doubt that weather is a factor, but climate change????
Just another example of where the obligatory cc has to be mentioned, with no evidence whatsoever.
Her Twitter timeline shows almost no mentions of topic
Except for one cherry picked species in Korea and that’s future modelling
Thanks,
“climate change doesn’t produce good picture for wind-supported migration of honey-buzzards”
What does that even mean?
What is she saying?
I’m afraid I am not into twitter!
Franks tweeted
If you search Twitter for BTO climate
You find some comfirmation bias type claims
Their latest blogpost is about migration getting delayed due to variation in cold weather.
http://btomigrationblog.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/still-waiting.html?m=1
Theyve had series of similar posts since March 20
After earlier March 3 excitement of early migration/spring
An item on “Breakfast” yesterday about native bluebells, similar to the one about birds the day before. This time apparently bluebells are flowering LATER than last year (when earlier flowering was of course due to climate change), and again the main threats were to “habitat loss, climate change and trampling”, with again no evidence for climate change.
Why do naturalists have to damage their case (IMHO), by mentioning climate change without any evidence, when the other threats are so much greater? Is it a standard script which they are obliged to use? I thought it was ironic that “trampling” was put forward as a threat, in an item which was encouraging people to go into the countryside and no doubt do a lot of trampling themselves.
I see that the person who gave the interview on Breakfast, Steve Marsh, is the woodlands trust PR manager. I suppose that explains a lot.
https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/authors/steve-marsh/
I requested evidence that climate change was affecting bluebells, and this is what he came up with:
http://metro.co.uk/2017/02/10/bluebell-woods-in-danger-of-being-wiped-out-by-climate-change-6439114/
Note the headline:
“Bluebell woods in danger of being wiped out by climate change”
Is not exactly borne out by the contents.
another article by the Times today trying to justify battery storage as being a feasible option to replace fossil fuels.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/power-shift-brings-energy-market-closer-to-holy-grail-2vr7q2cr7
How quaint.
Hi Paul,
Would it be ok by you if I collated your excellent rebuttal series of Nat Geos climate hyperbole into one post on my site https://climatism.wordpress.com ?
Cheers,
Jamie
Yes, that will be good
Post up. Cheers Paul.
https://climatism.wordpress.com/2017/04/19/7-reasons-why-activist-orgs-like-natgeo-sadly-cannot-be-trusted-on-anything-climate-change/
Cheers Paul.
Climate change causes river to change course!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-39634290
actually the headline on the bbc science page says it caused the river to vanish!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science_and_environment
“Their findings, published in Nature Geoscience, show how climate change can cause surprising geological events.”
No scientist should be surprised by this. the planet is constantly changing and always will.
Climate change yes, but man made climate change?
The link headline actually tells you it’s the mighty Yukon river that has vanished.
Screenshot
Strange, that’s not what I am seeing.
Mine says:
“Climate change makes Canada river vanish.
I suspect they mean “a river in the Yukon”, rather than the actual river Yukon.
Danish Wind Mafia demand subsidy money or else….
“When we see how few turbines it takes to replace the present ones, we really feel that it is a good way to preserve the Danish landscape”
“We face the huge challenge that support for onshore turbines expires on February 21 next year, and that means that onshore turbines won’t be erected after that date – at least, it certainly appears that way, given the amount you can earn under current market conditions,”
Because of this, electric companies are holding back from investing in new clean energy technology for as much as 5 billion kroner.
http://cphpost.dk/news/business/new-wind-turbines-for-old-theyll-be-larger-but-far-fewer-are-required.html
See, the wind industry really does care about preserving the landscape….of its bank balance.
&
‘Green Tomatoes’
http://www.energylivenews.com/2017/04/17/intergrow-greenhouses-the-us-greenhouse-which-has-chosen-island-mode-chp-to-make-growing-tomatoes-more-efficient/
In the Times20/4/17
“plugging in 6 electric cars may cause local power cuts”
Emily Gosden quotes ‘The green Alliance’ the government must mandate ‘smart meters’; Solar Panels threatening grid stability;…..
Latest from the independant “March breaks new global Warming record despite lack of El Nino” according to NOAA. I assume that they are using the “corrected” readings.
Paul, are you aware of this survey?
http://www.comresglobal.com/polls/energy-and-climate-intelligence-unit-climate-change-survey/
There is a link to the actual survey results (pdf) on that page.
The more I think about this survey, the more I feel it is a measure of the success of “climate cnange” propaganda than of the way people would actually think in the real world.
How many people would really be concerned about the forecasted effects of “climate change” on wildlife (or anything else for that matter), if they were not told to be concerned by organizations such as WWF in the first place?
just shows how ignorant people are
Went to a meeting of the local science café a few months ago & the conversation turned to photosynthesis, more than 50% of the university students wanted to have ALL CO2 removed from the atmosphere (because it was “the major pollutant” [yet most of them admitted to smoking] ) & didn’t know CO2 was a plant food.
A few thought CO2 was the main component of the atmosphere (up to 95%), & remember these are people at a science café….presumably with an interest in science.
Regarding Drax and biomass fuelled power generation, there is a complaint that was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last year. The complaint document is very interesting, detailed and illuminating as it exposes in some depth the misinformation and misdirected policy initiatives assiciated with this project. Although some of these points have been mentioned here before, it is worth highlighting a few of them:
1. Dorothy Thompson (CEO of Drax) also heads up the body appointed to monitor biomass power generation!
2. The USA (where the deforestation to produce pellets for Drax takes place) is not part of the deforestation control arrangements under the Kyoto protocol – which means deforestation in the USA is not counted as such!
3.The DECC itself produced a report dealing with the carbon cost of deforestation, which is to be found on p.23 of the complaint. Here is a paragraph: “A modeling study from the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is particularly significant to Enviva and its main customer, Drax. The model compared net emissions under scenarios where trees are cut for pellets that are burned in a power plant, versus scenarios where forests are left to grow or are harvested for other products, and fossil fuels are burned for energy. The model “cuts” and “grows” the forest under the different scenarios, treating losses in forest carbon as an emission of carbon to the atmosphere, and gains in forest carbon as a negative emission where carbon is taken out of the atmosphere. While data from Drax show the facility’s 2013 CO2 emission rate for biomass was 2,128 lb/MWh (Figure 1), this is just what is coming out the stack and does not reflect net emissions over time, which including the loss in forest carbon uptake following harvesting (since reducing a sink for carbon has the same effect on atmospheric CO2 concentration as increasing a source). The DECC report concluded that for pellets made largely from naturally-regenerated hardwood forests, the net emissions rate remains high for decades, at 2,800 to 8,792 lb CO2e/MWh52 when analyzed over a time horizon of 40 years, and 1,689 to 11,407 lb CO2e/MWh when analyzed over 100 years.53 As we show below, naturally regenerated hardwood forests are already a main source of Enviva’s pellet feedstock, thus the scenario is directly relevant to Enviva’s current harvesting practices.”
The full complaint can be found at http://www.documan.net/d/SEC-complaint-U-S-Securities-and-Exchange.pdf
Scroll down to “Carbon emissions and Climate Change disclosure….” ond download the pdf. A good read!
I wonder what the progress of the SEC investigation is?
The BBC are reporting a “study” by the RHS, which suggests that:
“Climate change could transform gardens”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39710313
Haven’t we heard all this before?
“The key thing is that the south of England is going to be hotter and drier throughout the year with some heavy rain showers and then the north of England is going to be certainly milder but it is also going to be wetter in the summer and in the winter.”
Not much sign of wetter weather last summer in the NE of England!
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/summaries/anomacts
Some slightly contradictory statements on BBC news reporting of this.
The husband in one couple said, “there’s less rain every year (really?), while the wife said they had to cut the grass more often. Surely with less rain the grass won’t grow as quickly?
Paul remember BBC Head of Editorial Partnerships and Special Projects ?
You might have got to her
She appeared on a 7 min bbcWS Radio segment
to recap the SoICabBreeathe season
And emphasised 2 things
– It wasn’t a campaign (well it looked like it)
– ‘It was about just offering solutions ..look one prog debunked the idea that trees help against pollution’ (..em I listened to that prog and the presenters still seemed to be true believers)
Despite tweeting this “Important to show up in rooms where people are sceptical. And listen”
She failed to respond to my 3rd request for info on what NGO’s she met for the project
I should FOIA the info I guess.
Recent tweets make her look like campaigner
Paul RT had news on the Nord Stream – Russia to Germany gas pipeline
why aren’t the anti-frackers protesting against it ?
Another Big Win for Russian Pipeline Politics in Europe?
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/04/26/another-big-win-for-russian-pipeline-politics-in-europe-gazprom-nord-stream-two-natural-gas-e-u-energy-market-geopolitics/
Apparently frosts in April have hit the wine industry in the UK and Europe:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/may/02/english-vineyards-frost-champagne-bordeaux-burgundy
It was the same last year:
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/667799/wine-shortage-price-hike-Burgundy-Champagne-frost
Frost in spring, who would have thunk it?
Maybe they shouldn’t have believed the warming predictions!
Interesting programme available from BBC World Service, “What’s Wrong with Science?”
Panel discussion by eminent scientists. “…some of science’s keenest advocates fear that there is a problem with science, that there is something wrong with the way it is currently practiced…”
Readers here will most likely recognise just about all problems discussed as being relevant to Climate Science.
Listen or download here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p051b9zg
Great stuff!
Paul,
Would love to interview you for my podcast The Malacast, available at http://www.themalacast.com
I’ve been doing a series on climate change alarmism and am sure you’d be great (if you do voice interviews). Please contact me at adammala@themalacast.com if you’re interested. Thanks for the blog.
Anyone in Southampton ? next week 15,16,17 Southampton Pint of Science
– 3 nights of 18 different talks in 6 pubs across the town
The blurb from a lecture on Monday says
“there has been a recent shift in the denialist community away from flat out denial to instead questioning the accuracy of predictions made by climate models. ”
and
“Coastal flooding is a growing threat due to sea-level rise and changes in weather patterns associated with climate change. “
Here’s a Southampton Uny climate muddler –
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/05/01/prof-tom-anderson-shows-his-ignorance/
no doubt they all sing from the same hymn sheet.
Pity its so far away (& my private jet needs a new elastic band).
on our topic is also
Climate Change: Cultural links and societal impact
17 MAY 19:00-21:30
Art and Science in the Arctic
Liveable Cities – Future UK Cities Patrick James
What will it be like to live in world of green energy and low carbon emissions?
16 MAY 19:00-21:30
How badly are we damaging our oceans?
Mark Hodgson has started a discussion about the new Matt McGrunt article
UN examines fossil fuel influence in climate talks process
(the BBC article is of course written by green NGOs)
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/discussion/post/2672102?lastPage=true
Latest thing on the Greenpeace* website
Arctic summit: Alaskan fears amid the vanishing ice
“”The winters are colder and a little bit shorter and spring is coming earlier and a lot warmer, which we love. Summers are longer instead of shorter,” says Ms Olanna.”
talk about laying on thick …*BBC I meant
Can someone explain when they put a map of Alaska the corner inset is a map of Europe ?
“Can someone explain when they put a map of Alaska the corner inset is a map of Europe ?”
CO2 driven tectonic plate movement (feel the earth move for you)
This mornings BBC ‘The Life Scientific’, plant biologist Ottoline Leyser actually said we should remove politics from science & scientists should be less aloof, no mention of climate change !!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08q5wxx
& at 11:00 we had ‘Carbon – the backbone of life’ only a small mention of (CO2 = climate change).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08q5wy3
Are the BBC getting cold feet about global warming ?
Both programs were quite good.
BBC4 Green Energy propaganda show ..next week or week after
“The Great Village Green War for BBC Four,
follows green energy enthusiast Robert Llewellyn’s year-long campaign to persuade the residents of a Cotswolds village to generate their own power”
.. It’s in Frome local newspaper
Rich Cotswold village gets green energy subsidised by unicorns and poor grannies in rest of county
\\.Frome’s ground-breaking plans are also supported by the former President Nasheed of the Maldives who visited the town recently. He said, “My country has no future if we continue to use energy the way we currently do. The whole island will become flooded by rising sea levels. Even in Frome increased flooding means that 720 homes are at risk. We need to work together to urgently tackle this crucial issue.”//
more https://biasedbbc.org/blog/2017/05/15/start-the-week-open-thread-125/comment-page-3/#comment-835920
One month ago why would Guardian claim Climate Change causes river to vanish rivers sometimes
Cos it’s better than saying that sometimes mountain rivers CHANGE DIRECTION. …due to land slips etc.
BEFORE August 3, 2015 ..river flows north
AFTER July 4, 2016 ..river flows east
…Guess which photo shows far more ice coverage ?… yep 2016
I take it you’ve seen this in wapo . https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-to-spot-a-misrepresentation-about-climate-change/2017/05/24/fee19c1e-0b0c-11e7-93dc-00f9bdd74ed1_story.html?utm_term=.b33f54a1388b
Great barrier reef is doomed piece in the independant today.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/great-barrier-reef-dying-coral-bleaching-global-warming-australia-climate-change-a7761351.html
I’ve got some info about last nights BBC4 show villageGreenCrusade
I’ll write a note here before lunch.
OK 3 Things about BBC luvvie Robert Llewellyn’s BBC4 Green Power show last night
I expected 90 mins of propaganda ending in a rigged but amazing success.
#1 As it was it ended on a squib. They’d hyped all the possible renewables up and all came to nought. They were too far up river for tidal flow etc. But the big deal came after 65 mins when they found their substation was not big enough for all the houses to start feeding into the grid.
So they end with just a 20KW community solar array on the barn of Cotswold Farm Park which will use the power and pay back the community “hundreds of pounds per year”
#2 Problem with the maths
– Show commences saying the village is “62 homes using 341MWh/yr”
I make that 5.5MWh each
– End of show they say “20KW barn solar offsets 5-6 homes”
Lets check that 365x24x20*0.097CapFactor =17MWh/yr
hangon thats Only 4 homes at UK av of 4.152MWh
but of this village @5.5 only 3 homes!
(And that assumes that CFP uses all the elec generated)
BTW turns out CFP have their own 50MWh array so even less likey to use all the power
#3 Interesting thing is when you look up Cotswold Farm Park.
guess who owns it …It’s actually titled Adam Henson’s
Cotswold Farm Park.
Yes the only reason they can do any green energy scheme at all is cos BBC luvvie is playing along.
OK 3 Things about BBC luvvie Robert Llewellyn’s BBC4 Green Power show last night
I expected 90 mins of propaganda ending a rigged but amazing success of powering his village greenly
#1 As it was it ended on a squib. They’d hyped all the possible renewables up and all came to nought. They were too far up river for tidal flow etc. But the big deal came after 65 mins when they found their substation was not big enough for all the houses to start feeding into the grid.
So they end with just a 20KW community solar array on the barn of Cotswold Farm Park which will use the power and pay back the community “hundreds of pounds per year”
#2 Problem with the maths
– Show commences saying the village is “62 homes using 341MWh/yr”
I make that 5.5MWh each
– End of show they say “20KW barn solar offsets 5-6 homes”
Lets check that 365x24x20*0.097CapFactor =17MWh/yr
hangon thats Only 4 homes at UK av of 4.152MWh
but of this village @5.5 only 3 homes!
(And that assumes that CFP uses all the elec generated)
BTW turns out CFP have their own 50MWh array so even less likey to use all the power
#3 Interesting thing is when you look up Cotswold Farm Park.
guess who owns it …It’s actually titled Adam Henson’s
Cotswold Farm Park.
Yes the only reason they can do any green energy scheme at all is cos BBC luvvie is playing along.
Alistair Buckoke says: comments about
batteries being pushed in the prog as a magic solution to balancing
http://euanmearns.com/the-lib-dem-party-energy-manifesto/#comment-29417
Yes, I suppose that having made the film, they couldn’t actually bring themselves to say they had failed, so achieving less than 10% of their objectives had to be called a success.
I also thought that the claim that Las Vegas powered 100% of its municipal buildings, fire stations, parks and street lights from “green” and renewable energy was misleading, implying that this represented all of the power consumed by the city.
INteresting post over on Stop These Things https://stopthesethings.com/2017/06/04/scotland-squanders-%E2%82%A4billions-on-subsidised-wind-gets-stone-age-power-in-return/
I’ve just finished watching BBC Horizon programme about the moving of the British Antarctic Survey Research station which was threatened by a crack in the ice shelf. During the whole programme there was not one mention of climate change despite there being several about the ozone hole. Are we seeing the beginning of something new?
Fascinating program –
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08tj2zr/horizon-2017-antarctica-ice-station-rescue
Hi Paul
Could you review the Finkel report into Australia’s energy market handed down today. My home electricity bill in Adelaide is about to rise 20% next month. SOuth Australia already has the highest prices in the country. Gas prices like fuel are linked to international index’s in this country. In a blackout approx 2 months ago in Adelaide, a gas turbine wasn’t started because the gas has been presold for export and it also gave AEMO volatility to drive up the spot price of electricity. Two coal fired power stations have just closed. One in both Sth Aust and Victoria. No new coal fired power stations slated. Green energy has been built on the back of coal. The green energy is only being propped up by governments. The Sth Aust gov’t has been micro sleeping on energy security. I think it has fallen asleep at the wheel now in relation to RET renewable energy target. The COAG meeting Finkel report session today sounded like a love-in to take more profit and coal is not getting a look in. Austalia has so much coal its ludicrous. It is if some lobby group is writing cheques to bouycot coal, to COAG
Hi Paul,
Sorry about previous! Love your site and thought you might get a smile out of this;
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/climate-change-study-1.4157216
Best regards, Geoff Moore, Ontario, Canada
Latest piece of non reporting in the westcountry 4.7 per cent of deaths due to air pollution, but no evidence to back up the claim.
http://www.devonlive.com/air-pollution-deaths-rates-revealed-for-devon/story-30391686-detail/story.html?dwrMeth=addComment&afterReg=Y
Hello Paul,
you probably will not have seen this as it is in our local press but the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England have commissioned a report which has concluded the renewable energy industry in the South West “has been entirely dependent on subsidies for its growth and its survival”
http://www.devonlive.com/is-renewable-energy-in-devon-an-unmitigated-disaster/story-30398142-detail/story.html
Regards
Mark
Did you see this? Any response?
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/06/the-great-myth-of-the-global-warming-pause/
Yep!!
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/06/17/what-phillip-williamson-forgot-to-tell-you/
Paul,
sorry, I should probably have directed my last post to you from here. http://www.climeworks.com/our-technology/
Paul – I don’t know if you pick up Matt Ridley’s blog, but his latest, comparing the Green Blob to “Baptists and Bootleggers” is worth a read. See http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/bootleggers-and-baptists-in-the-countryside/
Meanwhile, keep up the good work!
Paul, firstly thanks ‘carrying on’!
You may have already thought of this, if so then sorry I’m so slow. But, like you I get p.ssed off with met office picking whichever extreme temp to ‘prove’ their preconceptions etc, hottest March the 23rd in Weasleton for 56 yrs or whatever shite. However it is obvious for all hot extremes there are cold extremes on the same day, coldest 23rd june in inverarnie for 80 yrs or whatever, both equally important, or not, but it is a perfect counter to the ‘well what about the hottest day then’ umm ‘it was the coldest for.. yrs.
Don’t know but I look for things for you to do!
To recap some history, my original Communication against the EU led to a decision of non-compliance in International Law by the EU (Decision V/9g) adopted by the 2014 Meeting of the Parties:
Click to access Decision_V_9g_on_compliance_by_the_European_Union.pdf
There are 47 Parties (46 countries and the EU), which have ratified the UNECE Aarhus Convention and this Treaty Convention (Meeting of the Parties) is held on a three year cycle. While the Compliance Committee can adopt findings and recommendations, it is only following endorsement at the subsequent Meeting of the Parties that they become, as appropriate, decisions of non-compliance in International Law and part of the ‘case law’ of the interpretation of the Convention. This usually is a formality, with matters agreed behind the scenes in the run-up to the Meeting of the Parties, will practically no changes made to the Committee’s original findings and recommendations.
However, what has happened in the last two weeks shows that the EU and UNECE are on a major collision course with respect to the forthcoming Meeting of the Parties to be held in September in Montenegro. First of all the following is the draft decision of non-compliance against the EU to be agreed at that meeting:
Click to access ECE.MP.PP.2017.25__DD_EU__advance_copy.pdf
The first part of it reiterates Decision V/9g above in that the EU has not complied with those requirements over the last three years and clearly is intending not to comply with the Convention with respect to its post 2020 renewable programme. However, the real issue of contention is the recent findings on a long drawn out case on Communication C/32. EU citizens don’t have rights to challenge in the European Court of Justice in a manner, which is ‘fair, equitable, timely and not prohibitively expensive’ as the Convention requires Parties to ensure under its Articles 9(3) and 9(4). EU citizens can only challenge in their own National courts and hope that the judges might then refer the matter to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. As I know from my High Court case, this was a farce, which went on for three years and nine months, which finally ended up with an unprofessional and incompetent judge, who decided he didn’t have to decide. So the EU gets away with things, as it can’t be properly challenged, such as its gross non-compliance on the National Renewable Energy Action Plans (NREAPs), yet at the same time it is constantly dictating to us through a series of Directives, etc., the validity of which we as EU citizens cannot challenge in the European Court of Justice. In particular, as under the Treaty of Lisbon, environment is a joint responsibility between the EU and the Member States and in practice all the major environmental issues are emanations from EU legislation.
First of all it is important to realise that the EU is not a country in the normal sense, it is for the purpose of International Law, and the Aarhus Convention in particular, what is defined as a regional economic integration organisation (REIO). Therefore, competencies are shared between the REIO and its Member States and as the EU declared in its ratification of the Aarhus Convention and as has since been clarified by the Compliance Committee in Communication C-123:
“The European Community is responsible for the performance of those obligations resulting from the Convention which are covered by Community law in force.”
“89. In short, the effect of the Party concerned’s declaration is that it assumes obligations to the extent that it has EU law in force; member States remain responsible for the implementation of obligations that are not covered by EU law in force”
If the EU hasn’t brought out specific legislation in a certain area, then it has no international law obligations related to that area. However, as we know the EU has brought out a lot of environmental related legislation, so why can’t a citizen get standing in the European Court of Justice to challenge acts and omissions of this law on the environment, as the Aarhus Convention requires? One could also point out that such as the Decision V/9g of Non-Compliance by the EU on the NREAPs is automatically a breach of EU law, since the Convention is an integral part of EU law, but then we are back to the point that as an EU citizen, you and I have no means of effective access to justice to enforce it………….
Since the Compliance Committee published their findings in March 2017 on Communication C/32 on the EU’s lack of Access to Justice, what has happened since is unprecedented. Usually, all of these issues usually get resolved behind the scenes before the actual Meeting of the Parties. However, the EU is divided into several bodies and institutions and the Council is the big one in terms of political direction, etc., and was responsible back in 2005 for ratifying Aarhus, etc.
https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/institutions-bodies/european-council_en
The EU Commission being the independent executive arm:
https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/institutions-bodies/european-commission_en
Therefore, one can only be surprised with the aggressive tone being taken by the EU Commission in its recent Communication in relation to the above Aarhus findings and in that the EU Council should use its position to refuse to endorse these findings at the upcoming Meeting of the Parties:
Click to access COM-2017-366-F1-EN-MAIN-PART-1.PDF
The Compliance Committee has since responded following its meeting last week to the above, in a very fair and balanced manner, i.e. it is by no means going to be bullied and in particular the EU has obligations as a Party and it, UNECE, cannot be giving it preferential treatment:
Click to access ACCC_statement_on_Commission_proposal_on_C32_30.06.2017.pdf
The European Environmental Bureau, the main European NGO has clearly summarised its position about this completely unacceptable affront to democracy:
http://eeb.org/european-commission-seeks-to-block-access-to-justice-for-eu-citizens/
However, to date, the whole issue is only in the rarefied domain of environmental lawyers, although it deserves to get out to a much wider audience, as this goes to the fundamental principles of democracy and the rule of law. After all if you are being dictated to by an entity, which is pursuing an agenda which is detrimental to you outside of the rule of law and you have no means of effectively enforcing that rule of law………..
Finally, the report of the Compliance Committee on Decision V/9g from last week is now also published on the relevant UNECE webpage, as part of the background information to be adopted at this Meeting of the Parties:
Click to access ECE.MP.PP.2017.47_EU_advance_unedited.pdf
Regards
Pat
Critical information on S wansea tidal power! Buried reference in Roman concrete article is Prof. Jackson says it will take 120 years to amortize/pay out project!
I hope that is a typo!
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40494248
If you take account of ALL costs / intermittent benefits, 120 years to amortize/pay out sounds in the ballpark.
Is it just me, or does anyone else think that the Met. Office warning system is not fit for purpose?
There is currently a yellow warning for rain covering most of eastern England between 06:00 on June 6th to 06:00 on June 7th.
The area covers Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the north, but the only rain forecasted there is occasional light rain, with a maximum probability of precipitation of 40% for a short period.
On the other hand, yesterday there was blanket heavy rain over most of the north east with heavy rain recorded at Albemarle, but there was no warning in place.
I can’t make the Met. Office understand that such warnings (and lack of them), which bear no relationship to the weather forecast for a location are worse than useless. I get replies from them, explaining why the forecasts don’t match the warnings but with no indication that they are going to do anything about it.
It seems to me that with the resources at their disposal, they should be able to do something to correct this.
Bruce at exmetman also has problems with met office –
https://www.xmetman.com/wp/2017/06/05/problems-with-the-yellow-warning-in-more-way-than-one/
Thanks, I am not sure exactly what his attitude to the warning system but it seems similar to mine. I might log onto his site and post some comments there.
Have you ever logged into/posted anything on the xmetman site?
I am trying to log in using my WordPress details, but it doesn’t seem to work.
Also I can’t see any comments from anyone else.
“Have you ever logged into/posted anything on the xmetman site?”
Yes….often;
I think you may have to subscribe to xmetman (topish right) to log in & be able to comment ?
Nb: all posts are moderated so there is often a frustrating time delay.
Thanks,
Do you mean the “leave a comment” link?
I clicked on that and says I have to log in to comment.
When I click on that, I get the option to either log in with WordPress log, or Log in with user name and password.
When I try the former it says it can’t find my account and when I try logging in with either my email or user name, it either says they or my password are invalid even though they are the same as I use for this blog.
I am following xmetman on WordPress but for some reason I can’t post.
It may be because I haven’t registered separately with xmetman but I can’t see any option to do that. Is it different to the “leave a comment” link?
Oops, i have just spotted the “subscribe” option.
It was off the right side of the screen.
Why can’t people get everything on one screen without having to scroll????
That didn’t appear to help.
Still can’t post on xmetman.
Giving up!
quaesoveritas
When I just looked at the settings for my blog, it seems that the ‘Membership – anyone can register’ option had become unchecked!
My apologies, hopefully that should now fix it.
What a numpty!
xmetman
Thanks for fixing that.
I am glad that it wasn’t something I was doing wrong!
1saveenergy, thanks for your assistance.
Glad to be of service….Invoice in post (:-))
Well it looks like the forecast was correct and the warning was wrong for the North East.
A light shower at about 07:30 and none since. Certainly no heavy rain or thunderstorms.
You mean July (not June)
eg Mablethorpe ..for Thursday it says ” Increasing risk of thunderstorms arriving or developing, probably becoming locally severe with hail and large amounts of rainfall.”
Hence yellow warning
Go to NE whole region and then click Thursday tab and you’ll see explanation http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/mobile/warnings/NE
The sorms may stretech as far as Wales
Oops, I still haven’t caught up with the calendar!
The “explanation” still does’t explain why for some locations, the warnings and the forecast don’t match. At least there are thunderstorms forecast for Mablethorp, but not for Newcastle.
More BBC alarmism:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40099384
Apparently Sout African apple growers are going to have to shade the apples in future, because they get sunburnt.
Sigh
I recently unintentionally caught part of an interview with author Neel Mukhajee (not an author I have read or intend to waste time reading), on BBC’s “Meet the Author”.
During the interview, there is the following conversation:
Mukherjee: “At this moment in my life, I am not hopeful about our species.”
Naughtie: “You think we’re done for?”
Mukherjee: “I think we’re done for, yes.”
Naughtie: “Why?”
Mukherjee: “Well I mean, you know, climate change is one very obvious reason why I think we’re done for, I think we have run out of time.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08xk0lf/meet-the-author-neel-mukherjee
I find it incredible that someone so apparently well educated, can come to such a conclusion.
It is an indication of how pervasive the propaganda has become.
There may be many reasons why the human species is “done for” , but “climate change” is not one of them, although erroneous belief in “climate change” may be.
I wonder whether he even knows what he means when he uses that term.
Please reverse the order so newest is first. Or, make – say – 20 entries per page…
I’ll have a look
In wordpress “Simply go to Settings » Discussion. Under the Other comment settings, you will find the option, Comments should be displayed with the older comments at the top of each page. Click on the drop down menu and select Newer.”
Bu that’s a problem cos it changes the order on all pages
And on Paul’s site the best comments come in first.
Maybe the about page could be changed to New About page2.
I’ve discussed this with Paul before. The about page is hard to use with oldest first. Few brand new visitors will bother scrolling to the bottom, for example.
None of the other posts have anything like the same number of comments, so scrolling to the best ones shouldn’t be that much of a problem. Perhaps try it for a month and see what people think?
Yes if it’s possible to do that for this ONE page rather than for all pages, then that’s a good idea.
I don’t think it is Stu, at least not without a plugin. Case in point though, to respond to your reply in context of the thread to date means I have to scroll for a long time on my mobile.
I have a trick, cos I once checked the reply box bit that says
“Notify me of new posts via email”
thus your last comment entered my email box,
… and when I just click the reply link in the email.. it takes me direct to the BOTTOM of the page
Mmm. I am using the WordPress app and it takes me to the top:-(
I recommend using https://www.inoreader.com to monitor new posts in forum since you last looked.
Click “add new content”, post in this URL https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/about
and click subscribe, click on the new link on left of screen
You’ll see Inoreader then gives you comments with latest at the top.
Thanks Stu, I will take a look
Paul, a sign of things to come? http://www.bnn.ca/siemens-to-close-ontario-turbine-plant-cut-hundreds-of-jobs-1.807596
Tillsonburg is a small town in southwestern Ontario. Thus, these lost jobs will have significant impact on the community.
This appeared on my Facebook page today:
Paul,
another telling insight by Matt Ridley on his blog, this time on on ‘beloved’ EV’s, and the comparison with £3Bn wasted when the country was compelled by big government to abandon incandescent light bulbs.
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/electric-cars/
12:35pm R4 , a 10 min commercial for EVs
seemingly initiated by PR agency
https://biasedbbc.org/blog/2017/07/19/mid-week-open-thread-118/comment-page-4/#comment-853829
Claimed ‘This parliament has a 600m budget for spending for EV infrastructure/subsidies’
So much for BBC investigative journalism.
I mean Jeremy Vine only commands a salary of £700,000 for doing a 2 hour show, 5 days a week. Oh! I forgot, he does Egg Heads as well, trundled out to justify his eye watering salary.
And when challenged on his salary by a listener, he refused to engage in the discussion.
And Chris Evans, who is on £2M a year, justified it by telling everyone he spoke to his Mum on the subjects and she told him to say that he should earn as much as he could, when he could, for as long as he could.
She was, by his account, a nurse So that’s OK then. Oh! I also believe part of that salary is for Top Gear, which lasted for all of several months.
The recently posted UK sea level data again shows the awful mess that our government’s scientific advisers have got us in to. Good on Donald Trump for having the sense to walk away from the flawed Paris agreement. But how do we get the message over to our MP’s and ministers so they can make some sensible decisions?
#BiasedBBC’s enviro correspondent @BBCMarshall uncritically retweets GreenPeace propagandist Doug Parr on on Musk’s solar propaganda
Is that IMPARTIAL?
She also just said this on R4 FooC at 11:40am about Alaskan Inuit
“The Arctic is melting twice as fast as the rest of the planet”
‘Here we are in an Inuit cellar storage area and it’s melting, and it’s never done that before’
The old man says ‘all the old signs we used to read the ice can’t be trust any more’
CM ‘Down the road is a lab, the scientist likens climate change to a runaway car’
Direct link to segment
I guess this tweet is the guy she got her contacts from
Paul, I’ve got her banged to rights for #1 confirmation bias by cherrypicking and #2 Deception by omission.
#1 She’s lifted her main line straight from the opening line of his last blog
http://cooperisland.org/june-2017-the-arctic-continues-to-surprise/
“JULY 18, 2017 GEORGE DIVOKY
The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world.”
Yet you get a massive shock when you look at the photo cos snow is MUCH LATER this year
#2 So that’s her Deception by omission.as the blog post is titled “SURPRISE” cos he eventually says
“However, unlike the past two years, snowmelt in Barrow was not early —it was extremely late. ”
“Snow at the NOAA station just outside Barrow was the latest since 1988, with snow disappearing on June 18th – compared to 2016 when melt occurred on May 15th.”
(for more summary see BH Unthreaded Jul 22, 2017 at 7:55 PM)
Paul, interesting article on the history of environmentalism
http://www.spiked-online.com/spiked-review/article/americas-climate-of-crisis/20024
Paul I’ve had a surprising ‘tweet from the stars’ about your post.
Harra himself just tweeted me something , and since I had not addressed him, but merely explained the maths of the paradox that the £40bn saving is more that total annual household leccy bills , I’m guessing what has miffed him is that you sub headed it
“Another grossly one sided report from RH:”
hence his strange reply to me
“Calling yourself the open-minded questioner may be more persuasive”
I am not sure entirely what he means .
but what it does mean that he or one of his minions has read your post.
So it might knock some sense into them.
Hi Paul , I would be interested in an off line conversation about your dealings with Ecotricity planning. We are near Stroud want to destroy 100 acres of meadows to build a football stadium and business park that is not in the local plan and is not very green
I see @rich_yorks posted this
\\ Replying to @Eco_MarkJeff @ecotricity @Natures_Voice
Beautiful scene, much like meadows you plan to destroy for a biz park stadium complex creating 1 million car journeys #greenwash //
and then go blocked by the Ecotricity exec @Eco_MarkJeff
10 tips to save energy during the school holidays from British Gas:
https://www.britishgas.co.uk/the-source/our-world-of-energy/surprising-world-of-energy/summer-holiday-energy-saving/?cid=mem_MERCJul17_Fri_2017728_1289289&__ja=tsid:64897|cgn:MERCJul17|kw:1289289&dcs_em=a3a914bd779b748201d261fdf922508258c81ac0ef645ae6c4904362568be765
I suspect they were struggling to find nine, so they could make no 10:
10. Get smarter about saving energy with smart meters
Paul,
Interesting item by Dr. Roy Spencer on the hurricane “drought”.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2017/07/4300-days-since-last-u-s-major-hurricane-strike/
Climate Change now blamed for Scottish Canals being damaged by deluges!
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/scotland/deluges-damage-200-year-old-scots-canals-gzh32h7s6
British Gas prices going up discussed here:
http://www.hl.co.uk/news/2017/8/1/6m-households-braced-for-energy-price-hike-after-british-gas-website-blunder
with this gem:
“Ofgem said last week that it will relax licensing in order to let tech firms introduce the new gas and electric tariffs which will have more control over appliances in people’s homes than traditional arrangements.
The plans will reward households for turning lights off at night and heat off in the winter, letting technology firms like Google and Amazon provide energy to British Homes.”
Just what I have always wanted, being rewarded for freezing to death in the winter.
And WTF are Google and Amazon doing providing energy in the first place?
In case you haven’t seen it – Scientific American July 28, 2017
“Since the release of An Inconvenient Truth in 2006, more polar ice has disappeared, and global temperature and carbon dioxide levels have climbed even higher. Hurricanes are growing stronger, droughts more intense and flooding more extensive.”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/al-gore-returns-with-an-ever-more-inconvenient-truth/?WT.mc_id=SA_ENGYSUS_20170803
“Hurricanes are growing stronger, droughts more intense and flooding more extensive” !!!
Despite ALL scientific evidence to the contrary.
Pen Hadow sets sail for the North Pole:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-40935252/pen-hadow-sets-sail-for-north-pole-as-arctic-ice-melts
Paul
Nice article on Scottish energy ripping off the rest of the UK for NOT producing energy. “The Scottish wind-power racket”
By John Constable and Matt Ridley
Not sure if you have covered it.
https://capx.co/the-scottish-wind-power-racket/
Plenty of guff/nonsense to raise your hackles here.
https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/july-2017-earths-1st-or-2nd-warmest-july-record
In a review of “An Inconvenient Sequel”, on BBC’s “Film Review”, Jason Solomons, who obviously believes in “climate change”, never-the-less said he found the film “very boring” and a “cure for insomnia”, and that it “looked like propaganda for the people who believed in climate change”, while generally supporting the premise of the film. It’s difficult to understand what else he wanted from a documentary unless it was even more exaggeration and hyperbole.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0923gmp/the-film-review-final-portrait-an-inconvenient-sequel-the-hitmans-bodyguard
About 5 minutes in.
Sadly I am a follower rather than a leader. When I read the scholarly pronouncements here on your site I am embarrassed at the specious observations that I feel enjoined to make. In defence of my ignorance, I note that much of science is observation. Seeing something pernicious, such as the refusal in our society to embody all witness, enrages me to such a degree (a pertinent word) that I am more angered by the process than the fact.
This year has been a miserable one as far as weather is concerned (I live in the same latitude as you). Rain, low temperature and then more rain. I have had one evening when I have been able to sit in my lovely garden at twilight and enjoy the world. Recently, in the past few weeks, I have had to resort to central heating to make relaxation inside my home comfortable.
The weather pattern is one of a wintry aspect with the low pressures, that I was taught were centred over Iceland in our summer, a near permanent feature over our islands. If it is that this compression of the weather is taking place, the warmth ushered southwards away from us, then may it not be the fact that summer heat is being concentrated in a narrower band away from these dismal, and seemingly endless succession of lows? Could it be that temperature readings in areas away from these cold winds and rain are being boosted by the limitations that the weather systems we are experiencing impose?
As I say, I am a bear of little brain. I would hate to think that man’s purpose is to be handed over to the puritans or that scientific method, which up to this point has been scrupulous and reliable, given us a life of riches and hopefulness, should be subverted by people in bubbles who have only rhetoric as their understanding, a national broadcaster who is not beyond mocking reason and showing itself averse to that which is not fashion.
Paul,
I was just sent the following link to an article in which various executives in the automotive parts industry express their views on the future of EVs. Very interesting.
http://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/motoring/an-electric-car-boom-parts-makers-doubt-it
Paul,
Don’t know whether you aware of this ultra-alarmist and ultra-unscientific thing of Schroders. Free access through Citywire & no doubt other financial portals. Schroders are no doubt aware that there are megabucks beyond the dreams of avarice to be made. .schroders.com/en/insights/economics/climate-progress-dashboard-forecasts-global-warming-of-more-than-4c/?utm_source=Citywire_Money&utm_medium=Content&utm_campaign=UKInvInsights
That should have been http://www.schroders.com/en/insights/economics/climate-progress-dashboard-forecasts-global-warming-of-more-than-4c/
It’s been around a month
I’ve not seen a debunk
Seems the same idea a Grantham’s Green hedgefund
Like who is going to be against more green subsidies ?
…”think of the children” and other catchphrases.
Jonova 2013
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/10/nearly-1-billion-a-day-to-change-the-climate-the-invisible-vested-elephant-in-the-room/
Paul
Have you ever plotted US carbon emissions for the past century against solar eclipes in US. I think you’ll find it convincing.
BBC will run it especially if you montage solar eclipse behind the deadly black steam of a power station and a sad polar bear.
Paul, I found your recent article on wind power in Northern Ireland very interesting. Does anyone know where I could find financial figures of the subsidies, constraints payments etc that have been paid out.
This is good for starters:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/08/12/wind-power-some-basic-facts/
Most of the govt figures are on a UK basis, but you can get stats on wind power output here for NI (ET 6.1):
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/energy-trends-section-6-renewables
There’s something interesting NE electricity prices have just gone up by 6% after 4 year hiatus
The BBC NI podcast blamed the rise of FF
“There has been a 10% rise in gas prices and similar rise in the price of coal”
This raises the question over what period is this 10% gas price rise, where does NI power station coal come from etc.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05clffl
typo NI electricity prices = Northern Ireland prices
The BBC had a news item on the Today programme this morning about food production in Africa.
Of course they had to say claim that crop yields were being cut by “climate change”, by which they meant “drought”, without producing any evidence that this was not just caused be normal weather variation.
I suspect that the fact that the population in Africa is expected to double by 2050 in a part of the world which already has difficulty feeding itself may be the major problem.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b091s7zl
About 44 minutes into the programme.
Context is that we know Russia just had record grain yields
So their report seems like cherrypicking.
This just arrived in my inbox. People better equipped than me might want to rake it over
https://www.ceh.ac.uk/news-and-media/news/climate-link-european-floods
Makes big claim
“This is the first time a link with climate change has been shown at a large, continental scale using observations alone, as opposed to using computer simulation models.”
Yet almost no one bit
cos that URL was only tweeted twice
and no one replied to the tweets
6 tweets mention the title words “Climate link to European floods”
Yet again no replies or retweets
Some of those are tweeting a Liverpool Uni press release
https://news.liverpool.ac.uk/2017/08/10/climate-link-to-european-floods/
Just one thing URL back searches on Twitter are not comprehensive if people decide to use a short URL in their tweet
(short URL’s are not really necessary cos Twitter automatically shortens long URLS anyway now)
Hang on searching on “Climate link to European floods” yields about 30 tweets cos that was used in an IrishTimes article on Aug 10th the same day that Science Mag published the article
However little traction gained no retweets
Paul,
Off Topic slightly, but an article in the Guardian today by Jon Snow relative to Grenfell Tower.
Jon states that the MSM are part of the liberal elite and disconnected from the public (now there’s a surprise) and goes on to describe how they all missed the Grenfell tower residents blog which stated the building was a fire risk.
He says the MSM should be taking more notice of the voices of the small people and investigating their causes.
Perhaps there’s hope for us yet when he comes to the aid of climate sceptics, on his white charger, with their numerous blogs pointing out the self same issues, except of course, they claim the world isn’t going to burn.
But I guess that doesn’t make for good headlines.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/aug/23/jon-snow-grenfell-mactaggart-media-diversity?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+main+NEW+H+categories&utm_term=240736&subid=22625440&CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2
Paul,
and here as well.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/23/grenfell-british-media-divide
The latest edition of “Weather World”, on the BBC News Channel, discussed the Urban Heat Island effect, although not much detail on how much effect it had on temperatures either at a local or global level.
Lots of examples of “extreme weather” in the rest of the programme however.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b093twx4/weather-world-26082017
Paul,
I know this is old, but it seems to make sense. Any mileage in it?
And the paper: https://www.clim-past.net/9/447/2013/cp-9-447-2013.pdf
Paul, Keady power station is near you.
The just upped the planning permission on the new Keady 2 to 910MW last year they said 810.
It’s CCGT gas
Benny Peiser was on the BBC news channel this morning, discussing the EU legislation limiting the power of vacuum cleaners to reduce carbon emissions.
Unfortunately they didn’t get his name right, spelling it “Paiser”
Actually, while I welcome the appearance of the Director of the GWPF on the BBC, I didn’t think he got his point across very well, concentrating on the use of new technology, whereas a simple “if you make cleaners less powerful, people will probably have to use them more, negating any reduction in carbon emissions”, would have sufficed.
Excellent article about flooding in Westmorland and Cumberland…http://www.thiswascockermouth.uk/derwent_floods_history.html
Paul,
Rent seeking on another level.
I’m an ex pat sweaty sock (does living in Kent qualify me as an ex pat?) retiring back to Scotland (Dumfries and Galloway being my first choice) in 4 or 5 years.
This is what I’m looking forward to. Truly stunning countryside plagued by windfarms so the landowners can cash in on government subsidies.
The SNP have made some insane decisions in the past, but contaminating the country with these monstrosities has to be up there with Alex Salmond as first minister.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/03/britains-largest-landowner-warned-plan-build-huge-wind-farm/
In a new documentary, “The Search for a New Earth.” on BBC2 on Monday, Stephen Hawking puts forward the opinion that “I am convinced humans need to leave Earth and make a new home on another planet.”, citing “a new virus, nuclear war, artificial intelligence gone rogue”, and (you guessed it) “climate change”, as possible reasons.
The Radio Times says it is a two part documentary but my EPG only says it is a single part, albeit 90 minutes long.
I am convinced Stephen Hawking & all his “climate change”/CAGW mates, need to leave Earth and make a new home on another planet.
That would allow the rest of us to enjoy / endure whatever nature throws at us.
I have now seen the programme which was IMHO frankly ludicrous.
Apparently the problems of sending a viable population to another solar system are easier than solving the problems on earth.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0953y04/the-search-for-a-new-earth
Personally I think we will be lucky to reach Mars within 100 years, never mind Proxima Centauri b, which incidentally, is NOT a new earth!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri_b
Paul,
two things that caught my eye.
Building regulations…….what fun!
I’m looking at novel ways to build an extension to our listed cottage and am looking at ICF’s (Insulated Concrete Forms) and stumbled on this.
“The requirement to restrict solar gain limits the demands on energy for cooling the dwelling
or building. The UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP)3.28 has indicated that the UK
annual temperatures could increase by between 2°C to 3.5°C by the 2080s. The summer
increase will be roughly twice that seen in winter, giving an increase of approximately
6°C. Overheating is already an issue in many buildings and this will worsen and become
more widespread3.29, increasing the demand for air conditioning, and thus energy for
cooling. Designers will therefore be required in the future to pay much more attention to
heat gains through windows and the rest of the building fabric. In addition to design of
the fabric to limit heat fl ow into the building, the structure itself can be used to control
internal temperature rises by making use of fabric energy storage (FES). This can reduce
or even eliminate the need for air conditioning, and thus lower energy requirement and,
consequently, CO2 emissions3.30.”
The second, and possibly more important issue is raised in this article I found when I followed a link from here, to repealtheact.org.uk.
I’m too dense to read between the lines, but when it appears Judith Curry acknowledges this, it might be something to consider.
And the article itself: http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-nutrients-carbon-dioxide-000511?utm_content=bufferc40d9&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Perhaps you have some insight.
Interesting.
Maybe they have allowed for this, but I would have thought higher crop yields, for whatever reason, would tend to restrict uptake of minerals, as there is more crop per acre.
It may even be that soils are now being depleted of minerals as they over farmed more and more.
Paul,
that’s the first though that jumped into my head.
It would therefore seem logical to fertilise those crops more, which would take more energy, largely provided by fossil fuels.
See this article from Capx….
https://capx.co/innovation-not-subsidy-is-transforming-the-energy-market/?omhide=true&utm_source=CapX+briefing&utm_campaign=e275bcc4f7-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_07_17&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b5017135a0-e275bcc4f7-241779021
” Subsidies are no longer propping up the wind power industry”
Lies Richard Black!
What does he think the latest CfD round is? Scotch mist?
A couple of newspapers are reporting that “forecasters” are predicting a stormier that normal autumn, with 7 record storms before Christmas.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/britain-facing-stormy-autumn-with-11184485
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/uninvited-gusts-autumn-to-be-one-of-the-stormiest-warn-weather-forecasters-z3psdrrrd
These predictions seem to be coming from the usual dubious sources.
Parable of East vs West approach
West: Art project needs funding so they bang together buzzwords of Renewable Energy and Bitcoin.
They build a wind turbine that goes on the ground which is inefficient for generating energy and use software implementations of bitcoin mining protocol which is ineffiicent for mining bitcoin. They spend what remains of the grant money on publicising that any tiny amount of bitcoins mined will go towards green causes.
https://julianoliver.com/output/harvest – Wind energy used to mine cryptocurrency to fund climate research
East: Chinese Commercial Bitcoin miners build directly next to coal stations which are efficient for making energy ( and occassionaly a hydroelectic dam. )
They have custom built ASIC circuits to mine bitcoin, which is the most efficient mechanism.
https://qz.com/1055126/photos-china-has-one-of-worlds-largest-bitcoin-mines/
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/mail-on-sunday-censured-by-ipso-over-story-which-claimed-world-leaders-were-duped-over-global-warming/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2017-09-18&utm_source=Press+Gazette+Daily+new+layout
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/we-were-wrong-worst-effects-of-climate-change-can-be-avoided-say-scientists-k9p5hg5l0
This could be big news.
Behind a paywall.
See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/09/18/immediacy-threat-climate-change-exaggerated-faulty-models/
I also made a comment over in the CCC thread.
“The world has warmed more slowly than had been predicted by computer models, which were “on the hot side” and overstated the impact of emissions on average temperature, research has found.”
Some of us knew that, without being told!
I thought this was going to be discussed on the BBC News Channel in the “Papers” section, but although it was mentioned they skipped over it.
The opportunity arose to discuss this in the “papers” section of BBC Breakfast, but the airheads preferred other important topics such as Boris Johnson, Rio Ferdinand and London Fashion Week.