Sunday
Jul062014
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Bishop Hill
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Jul 6, 2014 Climate: Surface Energy: other There are a great collection of stories in the Mail on Sunday this morning, with a story and leader on the idiocy of smart meters and a story on Antarctic Sea ice from David Rose. The latter is accompanied by a comment piece by someone called "Andrew Mountford". I think they got it right in the print edition.
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Margaret Hodge, chairman of the powerful Commons Public Accounts Committee, said: ‘This is a typical Government project – they set up a big scheme but don’t think about the costs to the consumer because it’s being driven by the energy companies. This expensive equipment is already out-of-date, because we could get the information on our smartphones.
‘The Government should really think about the technology they are using and make sure that the consumer benefits.’
It comes to something when a Labour MP expresses far more sensible thoughts on wasteful public expenditure than a Conservative dominated coalition government does. Although the economy is improving our national debt is still huge. Why spend large sums on smart meters when there are all sorts of other things that public money could more usefully be spent on?
Conservatives claim to believe in choice. Why not let members of the public decide whether or not they want smart meters and let those who want them pay for them?
The idiocy of smart meters
Another green TAX (Danegeld)
or should that be
'Green-geld-of'
So the smart meters will deliver 17bil in cost benefits....which will no doubt show up on my power bill as reduced costs for electricity and gas?
Bwaaahahahahahahahaaha...who am I kidding? The ONLY way these things can produce savings is through artificially increasing the cost of energy to your home!
Mailman
Although I don't think that political parties should design their policies primarily with a view to winning votes there is an open goal waiting for anyone wanting to try and score. Nigel Farage should announce that UKIP would save householders £200 by immediately abolishing the smart meter scheme. If he doesn't take the opportunity then perhaps Margaret Hodge will persuade Ed Miliband to adopt that policy.
Labour would NEVER offer such a policy simply because it is their policy that got us in this mess to start with.
Mailman
So, "Margaret Hodge, chairman of the powerful Commons Public Accounts Committee, said: ‘This is a typical Government project"
Yes it is typical of the crazy Climate Change projects under this inept government. IT WAS STARTED BY THE LAST GOVERNMENT!!!
From the Daily Mail article:
"Smart meters are being introduced under a 2009 EU proposal. The UK scheme was the brainchild of Labour leader Ed Miliband when he was Energy Secretary in the last government."
Roy on Jul 6, 2014 at 9:39 AM
"... a Conservative dominated coalition government ..."
With a Lib Dem leading the British, or even English, Tories, where is this "Conservative dominated coalition government" ?
The policy was initiated by the last Labour government and this Government, unlike Keynes, has policy of "when the facts change, we stick to the Labour agenda". Do not forget who's the heir to Blair.
We have the LibLabConGreen Party in power, but people are waking up to the consequences.
What is of more concern is how a foreign pop singer, who cannot sing, who exhorted us to throw money at Africa, much of which was wasted and some went to 'undesirable destinations', and yet who has been, and still may be, a non-dom, who is from a family that has given us enough heart breaking headlines, yet is promoting divisive, undeveloped technology that is contrary to British sensibilities!
"Despite living in England since the Seventies, his [Bob Geldorf] non-dom status enables him legitimately to avoid paying large sums of tax on overseas earnings although he still has to pay tax in the usual way on his UK earnings.
Meanwhile, in March it was revealed that he has exploited off-shore companies based in the British Virgin Islands to ensure his two homes here — the mansion flat in Battersea, South London, which he shares with his French partner Jeanne Marine, and his rambling country home in Faversham, Kent — are both exempt from stamp duty and inheritance tax."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2150195/How-Saint-Bob-words-private-equity-whore-launching-125m-investment-fund.html
I wonder how much of the supposed energy-'savings' attributed to 'Smart' meters are actually a result of the meters being unlawfully by-passed, and so the consumption goes unrecorded?
This remains undetected because human readers no longer visually inspect them, and, the rest of us honest consumers have to pay the cost.
As an aside, please snip if you think it's going too far OT, I had one of these here smart metres fitted. Comes with a screen (Optional) that lets you check what tarrif you're on and various stuff like hourly consumption history. That bit maybe useful if you've got kids, who when they berate you about being "Green", take them by their little donnies and show them how much electricity they use, when they come home from school, switch every light on in the house as they moved from room to room, not switching anything off afterwards.
adam - I have an Owl energy monitor, and it does pretty much all of that. - cost ~£30
Adam Gallon: Re the 'smart meter' you have. I have one of these (actually two. because they cocked up the delivery!) and you should understand that these are not truly the Smart Meters that the gov wants us to use. But the idea is to get the term fixed in people's mind of a benign piece of kit sitting in their houses helping them see how much energy they use.
Then the time comes for the upgrade. You will be offered (forced to take) new, super improved, wonder smart meters. And it is these that the gov hopes will get them out of the cack when the brown-outs come. With these little gizmos and their so-called secure (obscure) network, they can switch you off. The epitome of state control.
Hi Andrew,
Well done, that's the first mention of the new adjustments kerfuffle in the mainstream that I've seen. Your article is very moderate, much more gentle than I'd have been able to manage, but in the matter of persuasion of 'the other side' far more effective probably than the ranting mode we tend to fall into.
Regards,
Stephen
mountford has been made discredited
Yes, well done Bish. As you are unlikely to be invited on to Newsnight or any other BBC programme again, you may as well get as much coverage as you can in the Daily Mail.
Barry - I have an Owl meter too, as you say £30 and does the job. I don't use for energy monitoring much though, mainly as an alarm for when the household demand gets too close to the 100 Amp fuse in the meter. (If that blows then the supplier will probably insist on 3 phase and that will mean re-wiring the house).
It is clear that the politicians who make these decisions have absolutely no basic understanding of the fundamentals.
Sometime ago, a liberal MP expressed the view that they should make low energy kettles, a 1 kwh version rather than the usual 3 kwh version so as to save energy! It is clear that he did not know that the amount of energy required depends upon the volume of water that you wish to heat and by how much you wish to heat it. Having a 1 kwh kettle would merely mean that it would take 3 times as long to boil when compared to the standard 3 kwh version. The lower powered version may in practice use slightly more energy due to heat loss.
The main stumbling point is human nature and the complete lack of understanding of human nature.
The fact is that without radically changing one's life style, one cannot save a significant amount of energy. In fact, human nature is to demand more and more. Most people now have several TVs, much larger fridges (compared to their parents), some have wine fridges, many computers and laptiops, mobile phones and charging devices, gaming equipment, double ovens, dishwashers, power showers and the like. As more technology comes onto the market and as we all wish to better our standard of living the amount of household energy (especially electricity) will increase, not decrease. Just look at the way we live compared to our parents. My parents had a dishwasher and a washing machine washer/drier, but that was almost unheard of. I do not recall anyone else in the road, or any of my friends having both such appliances. Most had washing machine but with no internal drier. Now all of that is the norm.
If the climate does warm, many in the south will fit swimming pools (8 hours of a 1.5 hp pump consumes a lot of energy), they will fit heat pumps so as to enjoy swimming not restricted to the 2 or 3 summer months, and hotrtubs etc. One can already see the disconnect of the housing market between the south and the rest of the country and one expect that gap to grow and with it a more indulgent life style.
It is not the consumer that can make savings, only product manufacturers. If a washing machine or dishwasher can wash efficiently using less water and/or lower temperatures then a saving in energy can be achieved. But these products are far and few betweenand you reach a stone wall. If you better insulate a fridge, energy is loss when you open the door and you have to open the door to use the fridge. Low temperature washing may clean, but bacteria survives such that some items will always need a very hot wash.
Sometimes better insulation causes other problems. My home has old loose fitting crittal windows. Most of the other houses in the road have double glazing, and many have asked why I do not fit double glazing. I have been in many houses in the road and they all smell musty and damp. This is because they are a mixture of 1880s, 1910s and 1930s housing stock and people have covered in the fireplaces and fitted double glazing and there is no air circulation in the house. My house on the other hand is dry and does not smell musty. If I were to fit double glazing I would always have a window open during the day, and close a bedroom window only in extreme winter nights so there would not be any worthwhile energy saving.
Cavity wall insulation also often brings damp problems. This may be because of cowboy fitters, but whatever the reason, you read many horror stories. Much of London housing is solid single brick construction such that cavity wall insulation is not an option and if terraced as much is, there is little external cladding that can be done.
Most of the assumed for energy saving will not arise because it is over assessed and no account has been taken of human nature. It is human nature to strive for more, not less and that is the killer point. One will never significantly wean 21st century humans off from the teet of energy productiona nd consumption.
Smart meters will be a complete waste of time and there will be no significant savings. Everyone should make it clear, before they have a smart meter fitted, to their energy supplier that they will hold the energy supplier accountable in circumstances where the claimed for energy reductions (and hence lower bills) do not materialise.
PS Good articles in the Daily Mail. Good to see this issues get some airing.
FWIW, there's a chap called Richard Mountford who regularly writes to the Sunday papers whenever the consensus is challenged. Perhaps that's what unconsciously misled the MOS.
richard verney
As you say as long as people want energy-intensive products there can be no significant savings in energy consumption. Indeed, I would go one step further and say that any savings due to improved efficiency, insulation, etc. can only be as against the increased consumption that follows from the growth in use of these products.
There are certainly a sizeable number of them that we could all comfortably do without should we ever reach the stage where that becomes essential. (I'm thinking of things like powers showers and hot tubs and the other "lifestyle" luxuries and we could probably all cut down a bit on electricity consumption without any real inconvenience if we set our minds to it). But why should we given that in practical terms we still have an almost infinite supply of the various raw materials needed to produce the cheap and reliable energy that we need?
As for your physics-challenged MP, he provides a classic example of why I called my blog "Stands to Reason". I mean, it stands to reason, dunnit, that a 1kW kettle will use one-third of the energy of a 3kW kettle! Full marks for simple artihmetic, Mr MP; zero for understanding the equally simple laws of physics! And if you don't understand something then stop passing laws that rely on the very thing you don't understand.
Simples.
Yet again government proves the public's cynicism is well-placed. Give them a 'problem' to 'solve' by either a simple and cheap method or a fiendishly complex and horrendously expensive method, and they almost always choose the latter.
Has disaster writ large from the start.
《I》Jul 6, 2014 at 10:35 AM | Unregistered CommenterHarry Passfield《/I》
You have it in one. These devices are intended to get DECC out of the lack of base load hole they have created. They will be used to surreptitiously switch off various appliances remotely to avoid brown outs and power cuts. There is no benefit for the consumer whatsoever. In future winters there will be insufficient power and DECC knows this, yet they will not admit that their subsidy farms are a failure of mammoth proportions.
Cheshirered
But you need to remember what Harry Passfield wrote up-thread. This is just the start — trial run, you might call it.
Yes, there are bugs but as soon as the bugs are ironed out we move onto stage two which goes something like this.
"We're sorry about the problems everyone has had with this system but we've learnt a lot from it and we are now undertaking a two-pronged programme which will upgrade the reporting system while at the same time improvements to the hardware will bring greater reliability. And this will be done at no cost to the consumer."
Then they roll out the meters they really want you to have — the 'two-way' ones that can be used to cut off your power when they feel like it. And if you want to be really paranoid, just think what else they might be able to get those meters to do as well!
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/environment/article4139121.ece
The Times tried to report it yesterday but didn't understand the difference between total sea ice coverage and anomoly. According to the Times there is only 2.07 sq KM of Antarctic sea ice. I couldn't be bothered to correct them.
<Geldof Voice> Give the Government/Utilities your f******g money </Geldof Voice>
"Andrew Mountford"
Personally, I like it :-)
Watching the cycling.
Aerial view of wind turbines not turning! Commentator made some acidic comment and questioned their worth.
How much power do these meters consume and who pays for it?
The typical annual household electricity consumption in 2011 was 3,300kWh and they want to reduce this by 92.4 kWh (2.8%). If the smart gas meter (which is currently mechanical) consumes just 11W then it will use more electricity (96.36 kWh) than the savings they are aiming for.
You might end up with the ridiculous situation whereby the government claims success for household consumption dropping by 2.8% yet the power company has had to provide the household with more than the savings to power the meters.
Oh hold on .. it's government, ridiculous situations are their stock in trade.
Following the Bish's post recently about David Evans' unfolding new theories, has anyone been following the bullfights at Jo Nova's and Anthony Watts'? First, we had the Steve Goddard thing, where some prominent sceptics ate crow because they were wrong. Now, we have Dr David Evans unfolding a new theory and model at Jo Nova's, and being savaged by Willis Eschenbach (who accused Evans of being inthe same class as Michael Mann) and Dr Sven (who claimed that using any data but his was verging on fraudulent). Then Chris Monckton threw in his usual threats of lawsuits.
It's been a three-ring circus, to reclaim the term after Mark Steyn so cruelly, and accurately, described it as a "tree-ring circus."
But as the protagonists (mostly over 50) limped back to their caravans, with makeup dripping down their faces, what have we learned, apart from that some "sceptics" are about as discriminating as sharks if they sense blood in the water, or tabloid journalists if they sense a cheap headline?
We learned that Dr Leif was prepared to repeat more than 50 times that anyone who did not use his data exclusively was wrong, verging on fraudulent, and their results would therefore be nonsense. In the end, he sounded like a cross between that embarrassing uncle at a wedding and Father Jack.
We also learned, in case anyone hadn't noticed it before, that Willis behaves like a toddler if he can't get what he wants, when he wants it, RIGHT NOW! Or else, you are just like Michael Mann. 'cause he's a passionate kind of guy, which is such a hackneyed excuse for bad behaviour that only someone with the self-awareness of one of Gussie's newts would still use it.
We learned that Monckton's fixation on legal remedies in unhelpful, to say the least.
But more importantly, we learned that the sceptics' universe is now big enough for splits to come out into the open.The "false consensus" is over. That said, I trust the bloviating of people like Willis and Sven are not given undue attention.
Purveyors of waffle and piffle like "I first became interested in XXX because" and "I'm the kind of guy who ..." (spits over saddle) culminanting is a more recent "the reason that people believe in me is because I admit when I am wrong" really need to jump back on the back of their covered wagon with snake oil bottles and ego intact. And the same goes for Dr Sven's repetitive snarks.
One of the signs of how degraded WUWT now is, that a troll (who has appeared before) named "Margaret Hardman" appeared, and professed never to have heard of any problems with Mann's Hockey Stick. Typical Concern Troll, she promised that if anyone gave her some references, she would study them and report back.
Nobody called her out, nobody cited The Hockey Stick Illusion, nobody suggested that chiming in after more than 400 comments on a specialised thread suggests that you are at best being disingenuous. By the time I read it, it was two days later, and besides, the wench was dead.
As a personal observation, I don't go to WUWT as often these days, although Jim Steele's posts are gold.
Mike Jackson, you cynic. How very dare you impugn our loyal government....
Re: Mike Jackson
I can't find the link at the moment but a group of researchers were able to determine what people were watching from reading the data from a smart meter. Apparently "white" parts of an image consume more power than "black" parts and they used the slight power fluctuations to work out which channel they were watching.
The Mail headline online:
The first sentences of the article:
I think you can call that puffing the story.
At a wholesale power price of 5p/kWh, the saving is just £4.62 per year. If the meter costs £200, it will take over 40 years to save its cost - by which time you can be sure it will have been replaced.
It is actually recognised that smart meters will increase costs for consumers - but the idea is that by making energy expensive we'll consume less of it. Of course, it helps to be able to enforce that by remotely cutting off the supply.
Sorry if the above comment is O/T, but the B/H software which tells you that you are logged in when you are not, has struck again. I can't comment on Unthreaded, short of wiping all my history and cookies. So, to get it back, I have to re-enter every username, personal address and password on every site I ever visit. All because once you arelogged in here, it is like the Hotel California in reverse.
You can leave, but you can never check out.
johanna,
With most browsers it is possible to delete all cookies from a single site, which I guess would fix this problem?
JJ: That's right, it's possible to delete cookies for one site - or, more strictly, for one domain. The domain for this site is bishop-hill.net. If you say which browser you're using, johanna, I could talk you through it. I think your earlier comment is interesting, controversial - I'd want to question some of it - and off-topic. The most dangerous kind for thread diversion! I think it would great if you started a BH Discussion on it. The Decline of Climate Blogs? Or something more positive and narrower.
Meanwhile, Stephen Fox:
Well done to you in turn. You captured something of importance which I doubt enough of us heard.
All good stuff in the Mail. Inch by inch and all that. I think it will help a great many with, or interested in developing, a sensible view of climate alarmism, and of smart meters. I always thought, by the way. that the big appeal of these meters for energy suppliers and the grid was that they gave them added versatility when shutdowns were required to cope with the vagaries of wind and sun driven inputs. And that the great appeal of them for eco-zealots is the ability they provide to impose energy consumption limits on households by the simple device of disconnecting those who go above their daily allowance.
The Itron smart meters now installed by British Columbia Hydro use the Zigbee network for short range remote information display and for communication and control of appliances (for which the EU has a forthcoming mandate) in order to facilitate remote "load control".
That meter with this enhanced ability to deal with variable intermittency of "sustainable sources" are opposed by the Green Party (on grounds that they cause cancer, etc. etc.) is a source of great amusement.
Dr. Magda Havas of Trent University, a Green scientific advisor, goes even further and labels WiFi a government plot to lower fertility.
I would have thought they would applaud this desirable side effect.
Jul 6, 2014 at 2:07 PM | Registered Commenterjohanna
/////////
It was an unedifying spectre. The only plus was that Anthony had the courage to admit that he was wrong, and that he had been biased.
Willis brings much to the table, but (IMHO) at times he has a tendancy to over react to people joining issue with what he states, can sometimes throw the toys out of the pram, and at times is needlessly discourteous. Heck, we are all human, and it is the discourteous style of all 3 that you mentioned that bothers me most.
I am not surprised to see 'Dr Sven' sticking to his guns and fighting his corner, since he, perhaps, has the most to lose should we see a cooling in temperatures, whilst the sun goes through a quiet spell. Whilst in these circumstances correlation will not establish causation, it will make it harder for people to dismiss this as coincidence, or incorrect data abuse etc.
Why is Andrew Montford in the Daily Mail quoting Tony Heller's bullshit from the Steve Goddard website about US te!mperature records?
It had nothing to do with David Rose and the Antarctic sea ice.
Jul 6, 2014 at 7:40 PM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic man
Why do you come to these blogs spouting bullshit ? That doesn't seem to bother you.
Stephen Richards
I've given up trying to change your beliefs, but I still find some of your bullshit entertaining. Occasionally there's even some sensible discussion of the science.
Bullshit begats bullshit?
They're proposing to use the ZigBee communication system, which is founded on the 868 MHz channel hopping spectrum. I'm a little familiar with this system since my Davis weather station uses it.
Power is limited, and so are distances. The claim is usually 'to 300 m', but more like 100 m if you're lucky. And the system really doesn't like trying to get through any thickness of a stone wall - a pity then that over half of Britain's houses are stone built.
And this channel hopping system is now right in the middle of the 3G spectrum. It was never intended to be, it used to have a little chunk all to itself in what was until recently the DTTV spectrum. Ofcom 'believe' that the channel hopping spectrum can co-exist with 3G but that may well prove to be more hope than actuality. My Davis weather station is certainly reporting periods when communication error rates rise, something which never used to happen before.
This has all the makings of being another, Milliband initiated, disaster.
David Rose's article on increasing Antarctic ice tells part of the story, focusing only on sea ice area. When this is put into the larger context it can be seen as a red herring.
Overall the amount of ice on Earth is decreasing by a thousand gigatons , ~1000 cubic kilometres, each year.
Poor EM, a committed and enthusiastic consumer of used cow food whose intelligence has been clearly damaged by poor diet choices. But whose enthusiasm for consuming yet more climate obsessed used cow food and regurgitating it here undiminished is almost inspirational in his/her relentless dedication to being a dim as possible without becoming a miniature black hole of mindless reaction.
johanna,
I do agree that Willis can be predictably childish but as Judith Curry pointed out in her take down of the attacks on Goddard, skeptics tend to jump on everyone. Dr. Sven is defending his work product and work, which is typical of scientists. He is a million miles away from acting like the team has, so while he is misbehaving, it is the difference between someone who manages their checking account poorly and someone who robs a bank. For Monckton, I read him seldom and then only selectively he has some good things to say which he typically buries in over the top prose or posturing that I think most people simply ignore. My take on why no one bothered to respond to the concern troll is that it is a waste of time to try and correct a troll. They are not worth it. They are occasionally worth mocking or flaming. But treating a troll as if they are amenable to reason is a pearls before swine choice.
Good to see the Mail having a good go at the smartmeters, and well done Bish too.
The point on smart meters that never seems to be made strongly enough, is that their reason for existing is nothing to do with providing 'information' for the customer. The less-than-3% saving that is demonstrably achieved through customers reacting to the information will, as mentioned above, be transitory, and will in any case be exceeded by the cost of the meters themselves.
The real saving that is being banked on here is the peak shifting and load levelling which is intended to save on building more plant. This will be achieved by the mechanism that everybody is avoiding telling the public about. RATIONING. Rationing both by price and by provision. The smartmeters will be used to switch off load in non-essential circuits, but also they will provide a means of rationing by price - the Time of Use tariffs (ToU). That's why they need monitoring to the half-hour. The 'information' is not provided so that customers can decide how to save power - it's so that they can be charged extortionate rates if they want to use power at times when there's likely not enough to go around.
David Rose and others need to get the word RATIONING out there, because that's the word that the PTB are avoiding, and that's the one that will get the people's attention.
EM Jul 6, 2014 at 8:43 PM
"Overall the amount of ice on Earth is decreasing by a thousand gigatons , ~1000 cubic kilometres, each year."
Care to tell us how much ice there is on Earth?
John M,
Actually that assertion by the troll is not well established at all. And as you point out, is deceptive since the troll offers no context for the history of ice dynamics nor the significance of the alleged tonnage of the loss.
In reality, even if 1000 gts is accurate, it is insignificant. A graph of fixed ice done honestly shows that 1000 gts is trivial.
And since we do not have good historic measurements with anything close to the resolution of our current sensing technology, it is also meaningless.
But blathering out numbers with the mindfulness of a parrot is about all the climate obsessed trolls have to offer.
The protestations of the AGW faithful sound ever more desperate as Mother Nature continues to refuse to answer their prayers. I have also noted that their hearts don't seem to be in it and most now just come across as simply pathetic. Luckily, the anonymity of the internet will spare the blushes of many of them so that they can move on to the next great scare.
The costs of supposedly dealing with the AGW issue is starting to hit people in the pocket, smart-meters are just another example, and they are taking notice.
John M, hunter
The total ice is not relevant. What interests me is David Rose's attempt to imply that an ongoing decrease in ice quantity is not happening. Why would he have an interest in misleading Daily Mail readers?
Hunter, are you so afraid of global warming that you condemn any science sight unseen? If I gave you the references, would you read them?
Green Energy Efficiency.........
The label on my new freezer tells me it is 15% more efficient than my old one,however, due to the increased thickness of the insulation it has 25% less volume......
EM,
I can see why you thing the total ice is irrelevant, since I suspect you know what it is.
Sea ice is decreasing and the sea level is rising because the planet is still recovering not only from the little ice age but the last big ice age. The challenge for warmists is to show that this ice loss or sea level rise is somehow out of the ordinary but they can't do that because it isn't true.
In fact, if global ice was doing anything other than decreasing then that would be something to really worry about because it would signal the start of the long overdue next ice age. Most realists should hope that man indeed has actually warmed the planet enough to stave it off. It is merely a poor philosophy that warmists expect the planet not to warm all by itself: A philosophy contradicted by absolutely everything we know about planet Earth.
By contrast the fact that Antarctic ice is increasing is an important refutation of the CO2-is-the-climate-driver hypothesis. And for those who say an increasing Antarctic sea ice is not a refutation well we absolutely know that if it had been increasing it would have been touted by those very same people as thermageddon. Maybe there will come a time when these pause-deniers realise while they are putting lipstick on this pig that it isn't just ugly, it is stone dead.