It could be worse …

The European Union is not renowned for the sanity of some of its regulations, straight bananas anyone?

With the willing collusion of the UK Parliament the British energy sector has become uninvestable. Npower is set to write off hundreds of millions of pounds on the value of its British power plants. Companies have stopped building new power stations amid a political and regulatory backlash, sparked last year by Ed Miliband’s pledge to freeze energy prices.But is there anything more insane than this?

The UK is committed by law to a radical shift to renewable energy. By 2020, the proportion of Britain’s electricity generated from ‘renewable’ sources is supposed to almost triple to 30 per cent, with more than a third of that from what is called ‘biomass’.

The only large-scale way to do this is by burning wood, man’s oldest fuel – because EU rules have determined it is ‘carbon-neutral’.

So our biggest power station, the leviathan Drax plant near Selby in North Yorkshire, is switching from dirty, non-renewable coal. Biomass is far more expensive, but the consumer helps the process by paying subsidies via levies on energy bills.

That’s where North Carolina’s forests come in. They are being reduced to pellets in a gargantuan pulping process at local factories, then shipped across the Atlantic from a purpose-built dock at Chesapeake Port, just across the state line in Virginia.

Carbon neutral because trees recently sequestered the carbon and will sequester it again as they grow again but …

Drax’s wood-fuelled furnaces actually produce three per cent more carbon dioxide (CO2) than coal – and well over twice as much as gas: 870g per megawatt hour (MW/hr) is belched out by wood, compared to just 400g for gas.

Then there’s the extra CO2 produced by manufacturing the pellets and transporting them 3,800 miles … when all that is taken into account, using biomass for generating power produces 20 per cent more greenhouse gas emissions than coal.

How will the environment tell the difference? Regrowth takes about 100 years.
Our whole business case is built on subsidy, like the rest of the renewable energy industry. We are simply responding to Government policy.
All this has required an investment of £700 million. Thanks to the green subsidies, this will soon be paid off. Even if all Britain’s forests were devoted to Drax, they could not keep its furnaces going. ‘We need areas with lots of wood, a reliable supply chain”.
Get that? Even if all Britain’s forests were devoted to Drax, they could not keep its furnaces going. Lunacy.
For the whole story read The Bonfire of Insanity.

Physics and the art of global warming …

In 2007 the American Physical Society leant its august weight to the consensus thus …

The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring.

If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.

Some of its members were less than impressed. 160 members of the APS protested. Some prominent scientists like Nobel Prize winning Ivar Gievar (“Incontrovertible is not a scientific word. Nothing is incontrovertible in science“) and long-standing Professor Hal Lewis (” … the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist“)  resigned.

Under the APS rules such policy statements must be reviewed each half-decade. The review is underway. Perhaps with one eye on its membership and the other on the lookout for more climategates or Himalayan glaciers melting at impossible rates, the committee that it has set up is remarkably balanced, three climate modellers and three skeptical scientists. The proceedings are fairly transparent for instance the Workshop Framing Document can be read <HERE>.

It raises some excellent questions. For a moderately lengthy discussion read Tony Thomas.

A sample …

While the Global Mean Surface Temperature (GMST) rose strongly from 1980-98, it has shown no significant rise for the past 15 years…[The APS notes that neither the 4th nor 5th IPCC report modeling suggested any stasis would occur, and then asks] …

To what would you attribute the stasis?

If non-anthropogenic influences are strong enough to counteract the expected effects of increased CO2, why wouldn’t they be strong enough to sometimes enhance warming trends, and in so doing lead to an over-estimate of CO2 influence?

What are the implications of this stasis for confidence in the models and their projections?

What do you see as the likelihood of solar influences beyond TSI (total solar irradiance)? Is it coincidence that the stasis has occurred during the weakest solar cycle (ie sunspot activity) in about a century?

Some have suggested that the ‘missing heat’ is going into the deep ocean…

Are deep ocean observations sufficient in coverage and precision to bear on this hypothesis quantitatively?

Why would the heat sequestration have ‘turned on’ at the turn of this century?

What could make it ‘turn off’ and when might that occur?

Is there any mechanism that would allow the added heat in the deep ocean to reappear in the atmosphere?

IPCC suggests that the stasis can be attributed in part to ‘internal variability’. Yet climate models imply that a 15-year stasis is very rare and models cannot reproduce the observed Global Mean Surface Temperature even with the observed radiative forcing.

What is the definition of ‘internal variability’? Is it poorly defined initial conditions in the models or an intrinsically chaotic nature of the climate system? If the latter, what features of the climate system ARE predictable?

How would the models underestimate of internal variability impact detection and attribution?

How long must the stasis persist before there would be a firm declaration of a problem with the models? If that occurs, would the fix entail: A retuning of model parameters? A modification of ocean conditions? A re-examination of fundamental assumptions?

Searching questions are also posed regarding climate sensitivity, climate modelling, the unexpected increase in Antarctic sea ice and the scale of anthropogenic forcing.

The questions are excellent but it’s how they are answered that matters. If the APS finds that the science is not settled, that observations do not match the model projections, that the evidence is not incontrovertible then their support for the AGW hypothesis must be withdrawn. In that case they will be the first significant scientific body to step back onto the path of science.

It will then be safe for the flat earthers, headless chickens and climate deniers to come out of hiding without fear of being tried for criminal negligence.

Electricity Bill …

Ms Gillard promised she would not introduce it.

She and Mr Swan heaped scorn on the then opposition for the suggestion that Labor would introduce it.

The nation saw Labor as liars when they did introduce it.

Energy prices and business costs have gone up because of it.

An optimistic forecast of its effect … restraining the increase in world temperature by 0.0034°C by 2100.

Prior to the last election Labor promised to abolish it.

The electorate certainly gave the Coalition Government the mandate to abolish it.

Today Labor joined with the Green to frustrate its removal.

It may be detrimental to the economy, useless for the environment but anything that hampers Australia’s recovery is good news for Labor because it reflects on Abbott.

 

Caution, offensive language …

RACIAL DISCRIMINATION ACT 1975 – SECT 18C

Offensive behaviour because of race, colour or national or ethnic origin

(1)  It is unlawful for a person to do an act, otherwise than in private, if:

(a)  the act is reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people; and

(b)  the act is done because of the race, colour or national or ethnic origin of the other person or of some or all of the people in the group.

Being offended is really a very easy thing to do. If, for instance, I was called a pom, which accurately describes my national or ethnic origin, I could take offense and give the lawyers a call. The assumption seems to be that we are all peculiarly sensitive about our race, colour or national or ethnic origin.

On the other hand we are expected to be extremely tolerant of offensive language and behaviour in every other aspect of our lives.

The former arbiter of good taste, our ABC, can see nothing wrong in designating one of its critics a dogfucker and photoshopping a picture of him thus engaged and offering it on national TV for the amusement of the masses. The same organisation showed considerably more sensitivity by not showing any of these pictures in its extensive coverage of March in March.

marchinmarch-protestors-600The Fuck Abbott t-shirts were originally designed and produced by Clementine Ford, an Age columnist (calumnist?) and promoted in the Age newspaper. You will be relieved to know that they are are ethically produced …

It seems that there are a lot of people out there who are keen to speak freely, expect me to be very tolerant of their free speaking but are not happy to extend that courtesy to others.

As a foot note I do like Tim Blair’s explanation of March in March … because there isn’t a month called Stupid Whiny Bitching.

 

The dope on climate change …

Screen Shot 2014-03-18 at 1.09.04 pm

  • 80 percent of all marijuana grown in the USA comes from California.
  • In 2013, California authorities seized 329 outdoor pot grow sites with: 1.2 million plants, 119,000lbs of trash, 17,000lbs of fertilizer, 40gal. of pesticides, 244 propane tanks, 61 car batteries, 89 illegal dams, and 81 miles of irrigation pipe.
  • During California’s growing season, outdoor grows consumed roughly 60 million gallons of water a day – 50% more than is used by all residents of San Francisco.
  • In California, indoor pot growing accounts for about 9% of household electricity use.
  • For every pound of pot grown indoors, 4600lbs of carbon dioxide goes into the atmosphere. California’s production equates to emissions of 3 million cars.
  • The energy needed to produce a single joint is enough to produce 18 pints of beer, and creates emissions comparable to burning a 100 watt light bulb for 25 hours.

Source – “Mother Jones” magazine.