Saturday
Dec052009
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Unthreaded
Dec 5, 2009 Climate Some of the comments threads are going way off topic, so I'm setting up an unthreaded post for people who want to point to interesting stories or put forward their own theories.
Reader Comments (472)
Andrew Neil hosts Monbiot and Delingpole on the Daily Politics. Clips here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/the_daily_politics/default.stm
The Monbiot and Delingpole clash was another example of “time over” before it properly got going. Come on give it some air........
Yes disappointing. I've only just had the time to view it, and it never got going at all.
I had been looking forward all week to Andrew Neil getting his teeth into Monbiot, as he has done previously with Bob Watson and others. But the opportunity was missed. Maybe it was never meant to be, and hence explains the appearance of Delingpole.
Yet again the debate was climategate as be all and end all. The usual apologist argument that it doesn't discredit the "large body of consensus peer review yada yada..." was trotted out for the nth time.
Unfortunately, although Delingpole made reasonable and valid points, particularly about post-non science, I think the danger is that this goes over most non-scientists' heads. And it doesn't really drive home the nails in the AGW coffin.
I'm waiting on the day that the realist in one of these TV debates actually advances the argument forcefully by saying something like "hold on George, forget about climategate. It's revealing, but it's actually irrelevant.
"Just answer this: the ever increasing body of historic, empirical and theoretical evidence at complete odds with the entire hypothesis of ACO2GW, and every one of its multi million $ computer models."
The Gruniad has more on the story about the IoP's submission: it's still holding to the line about the IoP being "forced" to clarify its submission, but with no indication of who or what is doing the forcing.
Random thought for the day:
Our favourite Penn State Professor should be referred to as Michael LegerdeMann as regularly as possible.
Monbiot seems to have finally woken up to the fact that <href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/mar/05/solar-feed-in-tariff">green is the new gold for the various scammers who are milking environmentalism for all it's worth.
"We do not have a moral obligation to blindly support inefficient, expensive renewable technologies," he opines. Well, no shit, Sherlock!
The glacier-based temperature reconstruction of Oerlemans (2005) might be as good as the hockey stick.
http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/the-warm-glacier-temperature-reconstruction-of-oerlemans-2005-160.php
The much hyped "new" research by Peter Stott of the Met Office which finds human fingerprints all over the warming globe is not yet published (despite being all over the newspapers today).
However, the current issue of the journal where it is to appear (apparently), Wiley's WIRE: Climate Change, carries an interesting paper entitled "Cycles and trends in solar irradiance and climate" by Judith Lean. She concludes:
"Dismissal of Sun-climate associations was, until recently, de rigueur because climate models were not been able to replicate them. But the increasingly extensive, broadly self-consistent empirical evidence accruing in multiple high-fidelity datasets of present and past climate, combined with new appreciation of the complex mechanisms, now precludes this. Climate models are instead challenged to reproduce this comprehensive empirical evidence.
Solar-related fluctuations are apparent at the Earth's surface (including the ocean) and atmosphere. Although solar irradiance cycles impart only modest global mean surface temperature changes (of 0.1°C), they are nevertheless sufficient to alter climate trends on decadal time scales and must therefore be understood and quantified for more reliable near-term climate forecasts and rapid detection of the anthropogenic component to aid global change policy making. Evidence from empirical Sun-climate linkages and recent model simulations suggest that climate responses to radiative forcings are complex and holistic, engaging the troposphere, stratosphere, surface, and ocean in multiple dynamical and radiative adjustments that alter existing circulation patterns, in ways as yet only poorly parameterized numerically.
Understanding of how, when, where, and why climate responds to solar variability is incomplete. Among the many remaining questions are what is the long-term amplitude of irradiance changes, how does the spectrum change in concert with the total, how can we better quantify the relative roles of direct and indirect processes, the mechanisms of stratosphere and troposphere coupling, and the amplitude and profile of ozone changes, are responses to solar radiative forcing altered by the presence of other forcings, such as by elevated volcanic aerosols or concentrations of greenhouse gases, what are the relative strengths, timings and spatial distributions of dynamical and radiative responses, how much larger are (equilibrium) climate response than shorter-term (more transient) responses?
As the only external climate forcing directly specified independently of climate models, solar irradiance variations promise a touchstone for advancing understanding of climate change. When climate models can reproduce the multiple, complex responses embodied in the empirical evidence, confidence will increase in their ability to simulate climate changes in response to other radiative forcings, including by greenhouse gases."
Funny how this one isn't being reported in the Guardian, eh?
Interesting post over at WUWT regarding the Swedish Met office reaction to the Select Committee being told that they wouldn't release data.
The Royal Statistical Society issued a statement for the Parliamentary select committee that was fairly critical of UEA and climate science methodology.
However the latest issue of the Society's magazine called Significance has an editorial by Julian Champkin where he says:
"Scientists and statisticians rightly condemn those politicians who seem able to deny facts and reasoning. They tend also to ascribe scientific ignorance to the great public in general. This last may be a mistake. Certainly there are glaring gaps in public understanding of science, and especially of statistics; but most people are, generally speaking, on the side of science. On the great issues the public is with us. Climate change denial, like creationism, is a minority interest, not shared by the great majority. Most people (even, it seems, in America) understand and accept evolution; most people, in Europe at least, accept that man-made climate change is real; most people with half a brain can put two and two together – which is basically all that the scientific method entails."
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/123300804/PDFSTART
The issue has 3 prominent articles on the theme: After Copenhagen - what can be done?
One of the articles:
The perfect storm : food security and nutrition under climate change (p 13-16)
Gerald C. Nelson
"When politicians fail to agree, very often it is the poorest who suffer
most. More than 25 million additional children could go hungry
through the failure of Copenhagen, says Gerald C. Nelson of the
International Food Policy Research Institute. As crop yields decline,
the calories available per person in sub-Saharan Africa will decline
by 21%."
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/123300799/PDFSTART
Has no refereed bibliography, and article has precious little to do with statistics. I expect it will appear in the next IPCC report as a "refereed" paper.
Full issue of Significance available here:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118500352/home
Q quoting Significance Mag:
"Scientists and statisticians rightly condemn those politicians who seem able to deny facts and reasoning. They tend also to ascribe scientific ignorance to the great public in general..."
Personally I think the problem is more the woeful lack of scientific and mathematical education found amongst career politicians, bureaucrats and journalists.
The Met Office is at it again. They just never learn:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8550090.stm
Here's a piece from good old Grumpy old twat blog.
http://grumpyoldtwat.blogspot.com/2010/03/earthquakes-blamed-on-global-warming.html
Short but worth a read.
This little snippet from the local paper may be of interest:
"People have the chance to become carbon change champions with the help of climate change experts. Specialist staff from the University of East Anglia's Low Carbon Innovation Centre (LCIC) will be delivering a training programme to develop Carbon Change Agents in organisations across Norfolk. The Carbon Change Agent Programme will train individuals to work with a local organisation to become carbon champions. This will involve a combination of teaching and hands-on tasks, with feedback and support as delegates build up their skills. An introductory session will run on Tuesday, March 23rd from 9.30am to 4.30pm at the the UEA Norwich. Follow up sessions have then been timetabled for April 22 and May 24."
I'm adding my voice to the cause. Hoping my modest contribution puts another nail in the coffing of the agw alarmist movement.
http://casualdoubter.blogspot.com/
Cheers.
This is rather fascinating:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/
The small number of stations listed as operating through to 2010 is interesting, but click on some of those and they don't actually have data through to 2010, e.g. Kitale and Yalinga here:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/findstation.py?datatype=gistemp&data_set=1&name=&world_map.x=428&world_map.y=222
Also Wau which supposedly goes to 2009.
There is no station on Madagascar. Also Sri Lanka.
One would have thought that, with all the interest in global temperatures, some of the vast amounts of money available for climate change research could have been spent on expanding the network not overseeing a massive decline in station numbers.
Donna Laframboise at nofrakkingconsensus.blogspot.com is looking for citizen auditors to divide up the chapters of WR4 to count the peer-reviewed journal cites vs the grey literature. See the post on her blog for details. Please post this where it will be widely seen. Already sent to WUWT.
Thanks,
There goes another one.
One of the main AGW alarmist-sponsored positive feedback systems is the prospective outgassing of carbon from the simply enormous stocks in the world's soils as the world warms. Nature (not them AGAIN?), published a paper by Bellamy et al. in 2005 Carbon losses from all soils across England and Wales 1978-2003 which reported that soils in England and Wales were losing carbon at a truly alarming 0.6% per annum, therereby dwarfing any gains through sequestration.
A new report from the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology covering a longer period in substantially more detail has refuted these findings entirely, and has shown that over this time soil carbon stocks have not decreased at all, and have actually shown a statistically insignificant increase. Find it here: http://www.countrysidesurvey.org.uk/news.html
Naturally there's a kerfuffle about who got it right. I can only wonder how rigorous Nature's peer review was here, given the form they so richly display. The Guardian covered the story here - but it hasn't had much exposure as far as I'm aware.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/07/carbon-dioxide-global-warming-soil
Lord Reese on the Today program this morning likening the press coverage of climate change to the MMR debacle. Suggesting that after all the scepticism has died down that the underlying science is correct.
Refused to comment on what will happen with the IPCC today and whether there will be another leader by tomorrow.
Just heard Martin Rees on the R4 Today program carefully skirt around the issue in two ways;
1. The 'evidence' that CO2 was increasing at an unprecedented rate was undeniable
2. That simple physical laws were also undeniable.
Of course both of which are actually undeniable.
Also would not condemn the media coverage on the issue as being irresponsible
So the science is 'settled' argument is no longer in evidence, at least not from the RoySoc.
SDCS
Rees interview now available.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8559000/8559204.stm
Video of smoke rings colliding. very interesting:
http://elmtreeforge.blogspot.com/2010/03/this-is-just-so-damn-cool-to-watch.html
Following on from LordB
(Rees interview now available.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8559000/8559204.stm
Only the back half of the interview seems to have been uploaded, the front half with all the very carefully nuanced statements about the science has been left off. Martin Rees is a clever bloke and its no surprise that he would stay at least a couple of AU from the CRU/Penn state version of science.
Its a pity, people could judge for themselves how the tone is subtly changing.
SDCS
One more thought on Rees's 'laws of physics' comment.
It turns out he's been saying this line for a few weeks now;
http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/?p=3215
But using the precision of a lawyer, today he did not categorically state that the laws implied AGW. I would imagine he's beginning to scooch over to talking about climate change, which may in fact mean AGC.
I'll keep an eye on the RoySoc over the coming weeks.
SDCS
Dear Bish,
Friends who live near large water supply reservoirs in Northern England note that they have been spilling water down their overflow spillways for most of the past year.
As this water is going to waste already, why not put it, and their normal daily discharge through a turbine, or even better, release a surge at peak times to sell power at peak rate?
There is the former "largest man made lake in Europe" sitting on the North Tyne. A quick look at my old copy of OS "Outdoor Leisure 42" failed to show any big power lines near the thing
There is a pumping station on the River Tyne which can pump water from near sea level, to a header dam at around 220m above sea level, as another part of the white elephant Tyne to Tees water transfer scheme. There is also a shaft near a reservoir at Waskerly, capable of modification to do the same thing into the River Wear. Why aren't these modified to work as pumped storage?
All would be capable of supplying power on demand at peak time.
The utilities companies employ some pretty bright people.
Are they missing a trick here? or, have they already run simple feasibility studies and found the NPVs for the modifications necessary to be negative?
In which case, extra lunacy marks for the micro solar and wind subsidies.
Credit where credit is due: Thanks to Frank O'D, whoever or whatever he is, for baiting the trap of questioning these things.
Climate science is a textbook example of the cargo-cult science that Richard Feynman warned us about in 1974.
They had seen scientists on TV and they genuinely thought that by wearing white coats and sitting in labs drawing graphs they would develop an understanding of the world's climate.
They hoped to uncover and name some new laws - like Hooke's Law, Boyle's Law, Ohm's Law. Maybe it was going to be Jones' Law or Keith's Coefficient.
This explains why their record-keeping was so awful. They hoped that the laws would stand on their own and someone else would do the hard work of calculating the exact value of Keith's Coefficient.
Detail and diligence was for someone else.
They went to conferences, wrote papers, held seminars. But the cargo didn't arrive. The planes didn't land.
It must have been a terrible moment of self-awareness, of insight. Psychological vertigo - by now they had senior positions and highly-regarded departments.
In public they had to bluster and bluff their way forwards. Unprecedented levels of cognitive dissonance.
In private, their real views are shown by the Climategate emails. They knew that the game was up.
Ernest Rutherford explained the two types of science: physics with its numbers and its correct predictions, and stamp collecting.
The climate scientists had hoped to be at the hard end - the physics end. They now realise that they are only ever going to be stamp collectors - describing and recording the world's weather. Except that other people are already doing a better job of this.
They are stamp collectors without any stamps.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/03/11/usa-today-defends-mann-front-page-misrepresents-climategate
A Maunder minimum would hardly affect global warming from the Potsdam Institute reported through Reuters.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE62939O20100310
Keith in Ireland
There is indeed a Hydro generating plant at Kielder (largest man made lake in Europe), see
http://www.rwe.com/web/cms/en/312572/rwe-npower-renewables/sites/projects-in-operation/hydro/kielder/
and studies of what else can be harnessed:
http://www.hexhamcourant.co.uk/news/news-at-a-glance/tyne-turbine-plan-unveiled-1.680003?referrerPath=news
Sir David King give a 3-page interview in the latest issue of Oxford Today (Volume 22, number 2, Hilary 2010). He is sticking to his standard line. Unfortunately the interview does not yet appear to be available on the Oxford Today website. http://www.oxfordtoday.ox.ac.uk/#
Thanks, I'd missed the micro hydro on the Tyne (I don't bother with the "Currant" here, Carlow Nationalist and Kilkenny people are the local rags to find out who's shat twice in one day 'round here).
I gather that the Derwent reservoir (Northumberland -Durham border) has been spilling from the overflow for most of the year. Some hand-outs that I got years ago when I was swatting up on dam design say that there was a small turbine fitted when it was built, but there doesn't seem to be much sign of it operating, or of a bigger one being fitted for peak time operation.
The Airyholme header reservoir on the Tyne to Tees tunnels was frozen over last time I was past, so, little evidence of use as a pumped storage at that time, despite what looks like good potential for that use. The pumping station for it is at Styford, beside where the A68 crosses the Tyne.
On the same aqueduct system, there is a shaft within a couple of hundred metres of a Reservoir at Waskerley. I suspect that some strengthening would be needed for a victorian dam to safely withstand repeated rapid drawdown, and for the tunnel portal to resist a couple hundred metres head, allong with some tunneling needed to connect the shaft with the dam sluice level, but the essentials of dam and many km of tunnels are in place.
I'm less familliar with the location of the shaft between the Wear and the Tees catchments.
I was having a look at the network of small dams around Nenthead, on Google Earth. If the Water authorities aren't going to bill for the water going through any more, I'll put the word around the guys I know in that area, and start swatting up on re-wiring centrifugal pumps as turbines and generators.
I have slides I took about 10 years ago of the pelton wheels, still in place down the Brewery Shaft on Rampgill mine at Nenthead, must get them scanned some time. Have you heard whether the heritage centre has made them accessible yet? I got a right mouthful about "safety" from one of their crowd last time I came out of the horse level. we had two mine managers, a mine surveyor a rock mechanics engineer and the leader of a cave rescue team in the party... we just smiled.
I must take a look in to see if the old turbine at Ballyellin Quarry at Goresbridge (here in Ireland) is still in one piece, now that the quarry has closed. The River Barrow has 2.5m high weirs for canal locks every km or so, so ideal for micro hydro, but i only know of two turbines, Ballyellin and Milford, just south of Carlow.
Excellent discussion between Richard Lindzen and Hadi Dowlatadabi on the Agenda (via SPPI)
Guardian have a "leaked" ASA adjudication clearing the Bedtime CO2 ads and a link to a printable copy.
The ASA basically saythat 2 print ads should be withdrawn because they were a bit too specfic about UK weather events, but everything else was OK.
My 2 cents after reading it, is that the ASA are basically saying that since every organiastion that makes an alarmist projection about future climate just can't be wrong, they have to say the ads are totally fine :)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/mar/13/government-cleared-climate-change-adverts
I was right about the IoP tanks then
http://bradstaggs.blogspot.com/2008/06/dr-bruce-west-talks-about-global.html
The Army on climate change...
Encouraging news from Canada: http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20100314/climate_research_100314/20100314?hub=.
We need more governments with the courage to stop bankrolling this pseudo-science.
Rats - I mucked up the html. But you get the gist ...
Andrew Revkin on Point of Inquiry. Chris Mooney is really going for broke here. I'm guessing POI's hits have gone up with his Michael Mann interview...need to keep the momentum going.
The excellent No Frakking Consensus blog is asking for volunteers to help in a project to determine just how many of the IPCC's sources are actually peer-reviewed.
Volunteers are being asked to contribute 3-10 hours of their time to check through a list of references: http://nofrakkingconsensus.blogspot.com/2010/03/help-audit-un-climate-report.html.
Dr Roy again
"This is a very significant result. It suggests the possibility that there has been essentially no warming in the U.S. since the 1970s."
He says.
Inspirational
Inhofe: Al 'First Potential Climate Billionaire' Gore 'Running for Cover'
Here in France AGW controversy stays within Academia and, apart from an occaisional piece in Le Monde, does not get reported in the MSM, eg
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2008/12/inside-help-for.html
However, last week, after 40 cm of snow on the early strawberry crop in Languedoc-Rousillon, Vincent Courtillot (a prominent sceptic) got an outing on C'est dans l'Air, a prime time chat show. Best bit was an SMS from a viewer saying 'All this snow is Nature's way of telling us we don't need the taxe carbone .'
Claude Allegre (the most eminent sceptic) has a new book out.
http://www.amazon.fr/Limposture-climatique-Ou-fausse-%C3%A9cologie/dp/2259209858
If anyone wants to check out their academic credentials, I suggest the French language Wikipedia. I suspect Connolly may have got at the English language version.
Climate change "as an ethical issue"
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bigideas/stories/2010/2837901.htm
Really says it all. Either you believe it all or you are - that most evil of beasts - unethical.
Jeremy Vine on Radio 2 today (Wednesday) is going to be discussing the govt's climate change adverts.
R4's Material World is about to do a show on uncertainty in climate science. Starts at 1630, link here-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qyyb
More carbon trading fraud
also reported by Jo Nova
Your Lordships new Tome is hopping off the shelves - I see Amazon UK is out of stock. Best increase the rations for the copy-scribes and buy some more parchment and quills.
Climate change as a religion:
http://www.revbilly.com/
I thought this was a spoof. Apparently not
The "climate change song" is positively cringe-worthy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAWHUiGQepI
The Sunday Times has an article on the current inefficiencies of Britains wind farms. Basically we have no chance of depending on wind to sustain supplies.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7069938.ece
Also editorial comments, non too favourable!
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article7069806.ece
Bonus, quite a reasonable comment by Hannah Devlin on the current state of climate science.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/earth-environment/article7039324.ece
Couple of posts at Jo Nova's (and already elsewhere)
Where did the decline go?
We'll all be praising Raobcores soon...
and some nice maps of australia
Leaving out data
BBC - sceptical bits program
Did a physicist just sneak a whole TV series, with very, very subtle AGW scepticism, past the BBC's man made CO2 is the driving force to the climate, not the suns radar..
---------
I just watched the first episode of Wonders of the Solar System on iplayer: The Sun
The bit when Professor Brian Cox, describes the wonderfully simple scientific experiment, to calculate the suns energy realeased per second, is fantastic
All with a tin of water, a thermometer, and an umbrella (shade until water is brought up to ambient temperature...
Later, he is talking about how suns energy is essential to all life on earth, and how plants capture the sun's energy, using the red, blue part of the spectrum, and reflecting the green...
All the while very, very, very, VERY carefully, NOT mentioning carbon dioxide, which is the other component of photosynthesis essential to all life on this planet...
Plus the bit, where he is talking about how the sun effects the earths climate, and describes shear amount of energy required from the sun, that drags the water into the atmosphere over the andes to create the vast rivers of the Amazon.
Then talks about how these Rivers have cycles of flow, one particular river with flows measured since 1904, then looking at them with a bit of physics, showing graphs with peaks of flow three times, in that period...
How can that be?
Then he lays a graph of the sun's energy intensity, over the river flow graph, and they match precisely...
He knows, I know, the Institute of Physics know, that AGW theory is a delusion, of man's insignificance....
A fantastic program, which the programs makers and physicists slipped passed, the BBC's Man made co2 is the dominant force in acceerated global warming radar, and the sun has only a minor role!!!
Hope they bring the whole series out on DVD
Explaining the Institutes of Physics, submission to the climategate enquiry...
Fantastic program, all 'climate scientists' should watch that episode..
Brian Cox, Professor of Physics, works at Cern.
Probably could tell a few climate scientists about the SKY and CLOUD experiments.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Cox_(physicist)