Tuesday
Jan032012
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Windy
Jan 3, 2012 Climate: Sceptics It has been very windy here this morning. My parents just telephoned to say they have just had next door's solar panels through their conservatory roof.
So end all who question the AGW consensus...
Reader Comments (181)
Have the neighbours been round to ask for them back yet?
I expect the wind turbines will have stopped working, too...
A photo would be good, please!
This might be an appropriate time to discuss "The broken window theory"
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2005/06/the-broken-window-theory.html
Then again, perhaps not.
Guess whose Dad just had 18 solar panels installed... :( go on :(
@ Barry Woods (1:37 PM):
Why - have they all winged it as well?
no still there..... just I don't approve.
It's a New Year of catastrophes -- with 4.5 billion people predicted dead from climate change by Jan 1 , I am trying to check whether my village has done better than the average.
So far, I have located all members of the family, who were widely dispersed to lessen the impact of the Apocalypse -- in the morning, they were discovered in bedrooms, the kitchen, and the bathroom, all apparently healthy, although some appeared to have lost their clothes. I was also informed that we couldn't find the cat, further evidence that we need to be broad in our definition of 'climate justice'.
Skeleton crews must be working at the power company and telephone monopoly, as services are normal, even as they struggle to bury their fallen comrades (about 3 dead for each survivor), and, miracles, a truck has just pulled up from the bakery with fresh bread! How do they do it, in the midst of such devastation and sorrow. My hat goes off to them.
A government employee turned up at 10am to survey the catastrophe, though to avoid causing unnecessary panic amongst the survivors, he was disguised as a postman, and even delivered some letters as part of his cover. Couple of bills in there I'll never have to pay now that society has been decimated.
Decided to carry on as normal as possible and made some toast ah! and there's the cat -- must have smelt the food.
Not good, I do trust that nobody got hurt.
The insurance claim should be interesting!
Will the neighbours be able to claim for loss of earnings whilst the units are out of action? :-)
I trust the neighbours had informed their insurers re the installation?
My neighbour's telephone wire is now holding up a tree. But the good news is that our river overflowed its banks into our garden and the field on the other side and Mrs B saw three displaced otters trying to make sense of what was going on - a very rare sight. I haven't been out yet to see if the local bird masher is still standing. I'll wait for the water level to go down and see if the bridge is still usable first.
Thanks Rick - brightened my morning ;-)
I know, Rick - having myself read that article in 'The Canadian' from 2007, I was astonished on going into town to discover people going about their business as though nothing had happened...
It was almost like the First of January 2000 - against all the odds, computers were still working; planes not falling out of the sky; again everything astonishingly normal..!
I dunno - what with all the awarding each other Fellowships and deleting of e-mails, you would have thought these guys in the University of East Anglia would have SOMETHING to show for all their efforts, wouldn't you..?
@David. Be fair. The unsung and as yet undiscovered leaker has done a fantastic job. The Nobel Peace Prize surely beckons our shy and reclusive hero or heroine?
"Thanks Rick - brightened my morning ;-)"
I second that.
Green Sand's observation re. insurance would be worth following up. I foresee plenty of buck-passing between the panel installers, their financiers and the household insurers. The Bishop's folk should get their claim in pronto, IMHO.
PLEASE someone send us pictures of some de-bladed wind turbines - or better still, on fire...
Saturday, passed (as I do regularly on the X5 from Cambridge) a business premises near Milton Keynes proudly announcing: 'Solar Panels Here.... Free Quotations... Etc, etc..'
Only when I retuned on the bus could I see that the whole enterprise was boarded up....
Shame...
Are solar panels a bit like those new-fangled light bulbs: you mustn't go near them when they break due to all the nasties needed to make them?
And a smashed up conservatory must be a bit of a pane....
Unfortunate that the conservatory housed a 60" plasma TV. Hard to know which bit's which now, I imagine.. :-)
Previously, the worst thing that could blow off a roof and land on your head was a tile - a few hundred lbs of aluminium plus jaggedy glass & silicon is a bit more scary.
I foresee litigation.
you would have thought these guys in the University of East Anglia would have SOMETHING to show for all their efforts, wouldn't you..? David asks
That is a very good question.
What have they got to show?
What have they achieved?
Apart from notoriety, that is.
List of achievements on a post card please.
peasdia
Or just a stamp.
Errr....................
Passing acquaintanceship with many of the world's exotic beach locations?
Improved skiing techniques?
Much more disciplined approach to email security?
Personal enrichment by transcontinental "male bonding"?
Encylopaedic knowledge of the laws relating to copyright and information dissemination?
The list is endless.
Rick Bradford (1:48 PM)
typical denialister taking the worst possible slant on a news report.
The article said :
It didn't says will or even would, just could.
So all it said was that the actual number that will die is between 0 and 7 billion (i.e. everyone). And as it turns out with hindsight we now know that the actual number was sufficiently close to zero to be statistically indistinguishable from zero.
Isn't hindsight wonderful?
</sarc>
I'm amazed that wind is still contributing to the power mix...here in Herts it is blowing a full gale
http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp_home.htm
O/T but I just came across this 2002 Grudaina article bigging up some long-forgotten green sociopath.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2002/nov/02/weekend7.weekend2
I laughed out loud at the claptrap, especially the confident stupid predictions of stuff that was sure to happen within 10 years that of course hasn't happened. This fool is up there with David "Children won't know what snow is" Viner.
Except it's really not funny because stupid windbags like this do appear to have some influence.
The universal get-out for CAGW "projections" that do not materialise.
BH
Yikes. Did your parents' neighbours get their solar panels installed in a hurry before the FiT was cut...? I hope the insurance situation gets sorted - I can imagine it getting quite complex. And I can imagine my colleagues being called in to confirm how windy it was - the Met Office does quite a lot of that kind of thing these days, to help avoid fraudulent insurance claims. Not that I think there's much doubt that it was very windy of course, but losing solar panels is the kind of thing where they'll want to know the circumstances in some detail.
Just out of interest, if you are willing to share this info, what part of the country do they live in? (I'm just personally interested in seeing where different incidences of damage occurred - down here in Devon it was very windy but I've not seen any damage in the immediate vicinity).
Rick Bradford: that story from the Canadian is exactly the kind of thing that makes me despair. There is absolutely no need to make up such drivel, it just distracts from the real issues.
Indeed Martin. In just the same way, Chris Huhne could, for example, pour treacle over his head, stick a cricket stump up his bottom and claim to be a toffee apple.
>The universal get-out for CAGW "projections"
And for newspapers, of course. Most would have been sued out of existence years ago without the aid of the subjunctive!
J4R
Stop it! My mind's eye is hurting...
Come on now, you lot, stop making a spectacre of yerselves and move along. Drunk on the internet, this time o' the day... That's it, boys, be sensible now; go home to yer wives and little children, bless 'em. And leave them solar panels right where they are (no taking souvenirs now), let the authorities handle all that.
I wonder if Chris Huhne's exploits could be reported in the media? Anyway, returning the original subject...
The solution is solar panels mounted on windmill blades. (Looks a little like the Tardis too). With this green technology everything can be blown away at once by a 'once in a century gale' (tm The Met Office) - these typically occur once a year.
J4R, thanks, I only got as far as this in that 2002 article:
One is reminded of the Spartans reply. If.
The H&S boys should be interested in the regulations with regard to fitting lethal weapons (or WMDs) on roof tops - particularly when many cowboys are in on the act. The insurers will no doubt be taking a great deal of interst and will no doubt be putting up the premiums for anyone with solar panels on their roof.
When I jokingly asked a friend (who fitted a bank of solar panels on his roof against my advice) how much his insurance premium had gone up because of the increased fire risk, he looked a bit non-plussed. More-so when another friend caught on and said he had heard that premiums went up by 30%. Perhaps he was right.
Clearly the 4bn deaths by 2012 was...err.....a bit strong Richard.
How do you feel about Katherine Hayhoe, who is an IPCC "expert reviewer" from Texas Tech, and regularly shows a lecture slide stating categorically that 300,000 people died from climate change in 2009?
http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2012/01/wow-check-out-climate-hoax-promoter.html
Just for the record, does the Met Office think people have died from climate change?
If so - how many?
J4R
Let me adjust that slightly for you:
“In just the same way, Chris Huhne could, for example, pour treacle over his head, stick a cricket stump up his bottom and claim his ex-wife to be a toffee apple.”
Designing roofs to cope with exceptional winds is quite tricky.
Although traditional slate and tiles, with hundreds of years experience behind them, survive quite well - it's common to see relatively modern industrial roofs fail spectacularly and blow away - often due to poor design or fastener corrosion.
I wonder how much design work has been done by the small firms that stick these large and quite flimsy solar arrays up on existing roofs.
I'd bet their contract conditions exclude all liability for consequential damage.
Aren't windmills wonderful?
Just seen that during the really windy bit....about 9 am for Scotland where there are lost of the frigging things, the total wind output dropped to about 1 GW from its more normal 2.5GW.
So at the height of availability of wind, all the 'investment' in these useless monstrosities produced about 2% of the country's electricity needs.
Yippee! I am so glad to see that our energy policy is so well thought out that we actually bought more nuclear generated lekkie from France at that time than we generated from wind ourselves. (1750 vs 1084 MW)
What a f....g shambles!
http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp_home.htm
So now we have empirical proof of the dangers of global warming: crappy renewable technology that drops on your head.
Rick Bradford: that story from the Canadian is exactly the kind of thing that makes me despair. There is absolutely no need to make up such drivel, it just distracts from the real issues.
Jan 3, 2012 at 4:07 PM | Richard Betts
Richard
A lot of that "drivel" comes from your colleagues and their PR people, don't you know.
Slightly OT, but the Government's Carbon Plan has just been published.
I have to say that when Nigel Lawson described the Euro as "the most irresponsible political experiment since WWII", I thought he had hit the nail on the head. However the Euro now takes 2nd place.
The Carbon Plan depends on highly speculative and unproven technology. At a first read it appears to be completely devoid of any engineering reality but is a list of political fantasies. It is notceable that no carbon fuels can be used without CCS. Does CCS actually work? There is one reference to shale gas in 220 pages. Renewables will take up the slack in any energy deficit that there might be in the plan. Erecting 2 W/T per day for the next 30 years might bring us on target.
Carbon emissions from transport will be practically zero by 2040. Powered by renewables through lots of charging points. Clearly any travel will become a luxury.
Is the rest of world going to follow in the footsteps of the UK? Of course, the rest of the World will follow the lead shown by the UK and deliver a low carbon future.
Given that the computer models of global warming do not seem to be following reality, might not there be a case to pause for thought? If there are no increases in global temperature apart from the long term trend, could the Carbon Plan be slightly ambitious?
As has frequently been observed. If it is NOT all right to shout "fire" in a cinema as a joke, it is not all right to shout "you're all gonner die" in a newspaper or green rag.
Yippee! I am so glad to see that our energy policy is so well thought out that we actually bought more nuclear generated lekkie from France at that time than we generated from wind ourselves. (1750 vs 1084 MW)
What a f....g shambles!
Latimer
Will be even funnier if the socialist is elected president here in France. The Partie Socialiste has teamed up with the greens in order to win but sold their souls for the closure of half of our nuclear power stations. With Germany closing all theirs and Britain shutting all their coal stations at the same time and next winter likely to be the coldest since '83 boy is the pile of $h!t going to be enormous.
Bon nouvel an
RCS:
The Carbon Plan is nicely eviscerated at the EU Referendum:
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2012/01/carbon-democracy.html
Jan 3, 2012 at 2:14 PM | James P
"Green Sand's observation re. insurance would be worth following up. I foresee plenty of buck-passing between the panel installers, their financiers and the household insurers. The Bishop's folk should get their claim in pronto, IMHO."
As I understand it, in these things you are threatening to sue for damages. Usually, it doesn't end in court because the defendant has an insurance policy which indemnifies him and at least makes a reasonable offer.
If the house insurance doesn't cover this then presumably the person with the solar panels has to threaten (at least make an implied threat) to sue the installer in turn.
Possibly the Bish's folks could make a claim on their house insurance, and it certainly might be worth informing their insurers anyway, but it seems wrong that they should make such a claim and presumably face higher premiums when it's down to someone else's negligence.
Just been thinking about this solar panel crap. If you've got them installed on your roof, how the heck do you keep them clean? Don't tell, me that they don't get dirty and this does not affect their efficiency, because I know how dirty my windows and car get. Are there any data on the number of people who have been killed/injured cleaning their solar panels?
"...it just distracts from the real issues." What are the real issues to you Richard? To me I'm watching our government spending billions of £s tackling a problem I don't believe exists, and if it did exist the solutions won't solve the problem. We're planning to spend £20bn a year in an attempt to get our fossil fuel emissions down from 4 weeks of China's output to 2 weeks of China's output, which by the time we get to it will be about 2 hours of China's output. This madcap policy is a result of the advice given by your colleagues in the Met Office and others in climatology. Actually, it's not just advice, it's also advocacy. When this all comes crashing down, and it will, there may well be a massive public backlash, in fact I'd be surprised if there wasn't, and the many thousands of scientists who go about their work without advocacy will be lumped in with the activists that have infested our scientific institutions.
So what are the real issues for you Richard?
Richard Betts
"There is absolutely no need to make up such drivel, it just distracts from the real issues."
Firstly, what are the real issues, because if they are those as espoused on your website then they are real witch and the wardrobe stuff. Secondly, for medal winning drivel and sheer cheek there is very little to touch the Met Off and it's partners at the CRU uni of EA. Eh?
That clown of yours that tried to jet off to Cancun only to be snowed in at London airport? Didn't see it coming the day before I guess !!
Sorry, but until you guys stand up and tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth I suggest you keep quiet.
Yours sincerely
Stephen Richards BSc MSc Physics
Or as we say here in polite societé.
Je vous remerci de la confiance que vous me accordez et vous prie d'agréer, Cher amis l'expression de mes salutations distiguées. Voilà
geronimo
Last time I looked, the Met Office employed about 400 research scientists, all well rewarded by the tax-payer. http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/our-scientists
The benefits for working for the Met Office are nicely spelled out at http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/recruitment/benefits
You wouldn't want to work at the Met Office and rock the Met Office boat by revealing that their "climate science" was a load of crock.
"Just been thinking about this solar panel crap." Me too, it's an absolute disgrace. Rich people, and all my friends are among them, have the werewithal to spend £15000 or so on solar panels and then be paid 43p a kWh through FIT. While poor people can't afford to buy them.
The other side of the coin is that it saves you approximately 10% per annum on your electicity bills which means your're basically paying your electricity bills 10 years in advance to get free electricity in your eleventh year. If solar is going anywhere then we can expect the prices amd quality to have dropped dramatically in the next ten years, so I decided to hang on and buy them at £1500/ installation, with a saving of 50%/annum when they've refined the technology.
My cats are working their whiskers off toward the goal of 4.5 billion, but they've surveyed the bins out behind the Inn at the End of the Universe, and they know the goal is for mice, not people.
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