Bishop Hill On advice to government
Oct 15, 2013 Bureaucrats Climate: IPCC Climate: Parliament ;)
In the email this morning I find a copy of the presentation Sir Mark Walport will give to the cabinet today, purportedly on the subject of the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report. It's a pretty interesting read (see bottom of post for link), although in fact when you get into it there is very little about what the IPCC had to say.
It starts unexceptionably enough, with a slide about surface temperature warming, including not only the IPCC's "Let's hide the pause behind decadal averages" graph, but also the annual averages.
Then there's a rather strange graph showing the emissions scenarios, which invites the reader to understand that temperature rises will be driven by carbon dioxide and carbon dioxide alone. Such confident statements are a bit surprising given the failures of the models.
After that it goes completely off the rails. Slide 3 is a major blooper, which discusses the UK Climate Change Risk Assessment. Unfortunately the UKCCRA is based on the UKCP09 climate predictions, which the Met Office has acknowledged contain a major flaw. Reasonable people might wonder why the Government Chief Scientific Adviser is basing his briefing of the Cabinet on data that is known to be erroneous.
The specific points Walport makes about weather extremes are fairly predictable:
- Peter Stott's claim that the risk of flooding has doubled due to climate change (despite there being no apparent trend in rainfall statistics)
- The "35,000 deaths from European heatwave" story (the Europe-wide mortality from cold far exceeds this figure every year)
If anything it then gets even worse, when Walport outlines possible scenarios for energy futures. We have a high nuclear scenario, with 75GW of atom-splitters, which is surely complete fantasy given the struggle to get even a single such plant built in the UK. Or we have the high renewables scenario, in which we get 82GW of wind, 13GW of CCS, 14GW of solar and 10GW of "marine". Given that CCS and marine power are still in the realms of fairytale this is bad enough, but consider this: David Mackay estimates that if we used the whole of the UK's offshore shelf for windfarms - some 40,000 square kilometers - we would get an average of 120GW. 82GW of wind would therefore require over 27,000 sqkm. (I think the figures Walport gives are average outputs rather than nameplate capacities, otherwise I can't see how he gets to his TWh figure. On the other hand I can't see how you can back up 82GW of wind with such small quantities of dispatchable energy. Can anyone throw any light on this?)
The briefing is, I'm sure readers will agree, woeful. It's a damning indictment of the advice that the government is getting from the scientific establishment. Nevertheless, we should be grateful that it has seen the light of day. People need to see the standards that pertain in Whitehall. Then at least they might understand how we have reached the point at which we wonder if the lights are going to stay on this winter.
Bishop Hill
Paul Homewood in the comments points out that this 82GW of wind is capacity, not output. This means we only need 7000 square kilometers of space for the turbines.
Bishop Hill
The Met Office have acknowledged Nic's points about the flaw in the UKCP09 predictions but ask me to make it clear that they deny that they have acknowledged a flaw. I don't know what they mean either.
Reader Comments (114)
JohnR says: "Oh well, I have purchased a 1Kw 12-230V inverter. At least it will power the lights, heating and computer/router"
John - unless it's a PURE SINE WAVE inverter (unlikely, as they are far more expensive) DO NOT try and run your central heating with it. I made that mistake and had to replace the Honeywell programmer which started emitting an unpleasant smell. Subsequent examination revealed a badly overheated circuit board. Most such devices have very crude power supplies, which don't take kindly to the "modified" sinewave (i.e. square wave with the corners chopped off) output from common or garden inverters.
If (like me) you are mainly concerned with keeping the heating going, buy a small (300 watt is fine, 150watt may be sufficient) pure sine wave unit just to power the programmer, boiler and circulating pump. Check your documentation to find the relevant ratings, but my old boiler is quoted at 50 watts (which I don't believe considering how simple it is), and from 35 to 70 watts for the pump, depending on the speed selected. The programmer draws virtually nothing. I installed a 2 position change-over switch before the CH supply, and only need to turn the inverter on and select "2" on this switch if the mains goes off. I have a pair of ex-equipment sealed 6 volt 100A/H batteries sitting in a cupboard with a 300 watt sine wave inverter connected to the switch. Even though some 15 years old they keep things running for most of the day.
Sealed "Gel" type batteries do require a proper smoothed and regulated charger, to avoid damage and premature failure. "Wet" car/leisure batteries are less fussy, but they must NOT be kept inside the house! If you intend using your car battery, make sure you have jump leads handy...
@dave
A few weeks ago there was a discussion thread: "Can Trenberth do sums?" IIRC. IMHO it will tell you all that you need to know about "Trenberth's fantasy universe".
An excellent post and comments at JoNova's regarding the utter folly of Carbon Capture & Storage:
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/10/22-billion-wasted-on-carbon-capture-which-increases-cost-of-electricity-by-70/#more-31241
Geoff Sherrington "We in the antipodes can relate to the pursuit of engineering excellence as shown for example by Rolls Royce engines over many decades."
Unfortunately we in the UK suffered from a series of problems that destroyed our industry:
1. Early success - which meant much was outdated after the war
2. The war - which left us without much money
3. The war - which caused a rethink of how we did science. It became more of a sausage machine - no thought about philosophy and by academia/science created "the way forward is science" culture which FALSELY portrayed industry as "the past".
4. The BBC - which favoured public service, was against commerce and particularly "dirty" commerce like industry which embraced "the way forward is science" and was therefore happy to portray industry as "the past" which as we know became "evil CO2 generators".
5. Post war socialism and the dominance of unions
6. Idiotic Thatcherism and a hatred of unions in Industry -> get rid of industry to get rid of Unions.
Michael Hart mentioned the "cover your ass mentality". it is worth repeating, that that could explain a lot of climate catastrophe hype
1. gives you a get out of jail free card : "predict something dire" and it When the badly maintained dyke breaks ..."it was climate change"
.. It doesn't break - "well we were lucky"
2. Gives you a bigger budget : well obviously to cope with climate change we'll need a bigger budget"
- Although of course there will be occasions when officials might have an interest in downplaying the"possibility of catastrophe CC", like say when they want to build in a floodplain , it seems that on many occasions the dynamic works in favour of hyping it.
Frank (4:01 AM): "If you look at the decadal average temperatures on page 2 (the first after the title page), you'll see roughly equal amount of warming between each decade. If you look at the graph on the following page, the amount of warming (vertical rise) between 2001-2010 is at least twice as big as between the other decadal data points. Something appears to be wrong with the data."
It certainly does seem off. My assumption was that the temperature in this chart is HadCRUT4, as the GISS and NCDC datasets do not include the reference period 1861-1880. I computed the anomaly relative to 1861-1880, and performed decadal averaging as indicated. Comparing to the values as read from the graph under magnification:
Decade...Anomaly(K)....plotted at(K)
1971-1980...0.22...........0.32
1981-1990...0.40...........0.47
1991-2000...0.56...........0.60
2001-2010...0.77...........0.93
This doesn't make a lot of sense, as HadCRUT4 has *never* reached 0.93 K anomaly relative to 1861-1880, even for a year, let alone a decade. HadCRUT3 doesn't match any better. So I wonder what dataset this came from, or if there was an error in constructing the graph.
[I don't recognize this chart as coming from AR5, although I haven't read that thoroughly so I may have missed it. So no clues there.]
Edit: Walport's chart bears an interesting difference to the last panel of figure 8 in Raupach, in which the lower-emission scenarios are higher on the T-vs-cumulative emissions plot.
He is 'live' now and... is lying. There is no other interpretation possible. He quotes chapter and verse from the latest IPCC report and then goes on to blame recent 'extreme' weather events on CO2.
The madness of crowds does not cover this guy's deviousness.
Bald-facedly. He was asked a single question (from several Twits) via Twitter regarding IPCC non-attribution of weather events to climate and he replied, along the lines of, 'we are seeing extreme events happening now'. The echo chamber remained silent. There were fawning 'questions' and zero dissent. The room appeared to be full of concerned policy wonks, activist reporters and the vested. A senior chemist claimed that Dupont saved the ozone hole by distributing a new chemical for refrigeration.
Couldn't up it make you.
I am fascinated by Walports's graph in slide # 3 which purports to show a more or less linear relationship between global average temperature and cumulative anthropogenic carbon(sic) emissions to the atmosphere. However nearly all of the graph is a projection which is made on the assumption that this relationship is in fact linear. The part where historical anthropogenic Carbon(sic) emissions are related to temperature is all crammed into a tiny corner in the bottom left hand part of the graph! The rest is merely speculation based on a particular assumption. I took the trouble to look up actual temperatures and actual ( estimated) cumulative anthropogenic CO2 emissions for the years 1997 through 2012 and the actual result is quite different. Starting on 1/1/1997 cumulative CO2 emissions have risen by a total of 514 Gt at an average annual increase of approximately 30 Gt /year. The temperature as fluctuated between a low of 14.27deg C in 2001 and a high of 14.48 deg C in 2005. The 1997 temperature in 1997 was 14.37 deg C and in 2012 it was 1435 deg C. The starting (1997 ) year average temperature was 14.37 deg and the closing ( 2012)tear average temperature was 14.35 deg C . Walport's presentation is not science - pure seculation.
The slide on graph #3 derives from TFE.8, Figure 1. The reason I couldn't match the temperature anomalies to HadCRUT4 or any other major index (cf. my post above at 3:15 PM) is evident from its caption: "The historical time period up to decade 2001–2010 is taken from the CMIP5 historical runs prolonged by RCP8.5 for 2005–2010 and is indicated with a black thick line and black symbols." So the "historical" points in black are not measured temperatures at all!
BTW, the graph is also presented as Figure SPM.10. Somewhat similar curves are in Figure 12.45.
Andrew, Does anyone know for sure that this was presented to cabinet? And does anyone know what year the projections are for? They don't match up with any of the 2050 pathways - look more like 2030-2035.
Euan
Energy Matters
@David Whitehead
"I am fascinated by Walports's graph in slide # 3 which purports to show a more or less linear relationship between global average temperature and cumulative anthropogenic carbon(sic) emissions to the atmosphere."
When I first saw this graph presented in London I thought there must be a mistake because it showed that all emission scenarios resulted in a simple linear dependence on anthropogenic CO2. The future climate just depended how far we move along that line. This cannot be correct because it is well known that CO2 radiative forcing increases logarithmically with concentration – not linearly. The novel feature of this presentation is that the x-axis is not time but instead cumulative anthropogenic carbon emissions. This shrinks all times before 1970 to insignificance while expanding the post 1970 warming period. Different emission scenarios result in different lengths along essentially the same linear trajectory. At the same time CMIP5 models seem to have shed all the uncertainties displayed in AR4 Figure 1.4 !
I have looked into this in more detail
So I did a fit to the Hadcrut4 temperature data using a logarithmic dependence on emissions. The fit is good and this is the result I get for an updated "slide3". click here for the new slide3
Paul Homewood wrote: "The interesting thing is that only 24GW of back up gas is assumed. To all intents and purposes, you need 1GW of back up for every 1GW of wind."
There are two kinds of back-up needed for wind. You need "reserve installed capacity" - in Great Britain or possibly elsewhere - that you can call upon when the wind is FORECAST to not be blowing in Great Britain. This is different from the "operating reserve" (or spinning reserve) needed for times when the wind blows LESS STRONGLY than forecast (or demand is higher than forecast or an operating power plant breaks down). Since wind power varies with the cube of wind speed, winds 20% below forecast result in wind power output 50% below forecast. The ability to reliably provide electricity from wind is critically dependent on the ability to forecast wind.
"Reserve installed capacity" does not emit CO2, but fossil fuel plants currently providing operating reserve do emit CO2. Right now, the additional operating reserve needed to back up wind isn't much bigger than the current reserve, but this won't be true in the future. Suppose GB has an installed wind capacity big enough the windiest 10% of the time wind couldl provide all power the nation's electricity without any CO2 emissions. By current law, the operating reserve is supposed to be big enough provide power with 99.7% reliability (one outage per year) and current forecasts are 99.7% reliable within +/-50% of expected wind output. To maintain reliability, you need an operating reserve capable of providing 50% of the nation's power in case the strong winds are a weaker than forecast!
Competence of senior civil servants is worse lower than that needed by a modern industrial nation.
Senior civil servants are recruited in the UK not by 'fair and open' competition but open only to 'existing' civil servants.
http://civilservicecommission.independent.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Recruitment-Principles.pdf describes how this should work.
This involves all posts on
Band 3 – £101,500 - maximum £208,100 and
Permanent Secretary range: £141,800 – £277,300
It is this bias for 'soft' graduates who have 'proven' themselves to 'fit in' that are allowed to rise to these senior positions.
Until the UK allows talented engineering professionals into top positions will will maintain our slide towards oblivion.