Renewables wreck the environment

So says Jesse Ausubel of Rockefeller University in New York, writing in the International Journal of Nuclear Governance, Economy and Ecology. The paper appears to be an analysis of the amount of land required per Watt of energy produced.

Biomass energy is also horribly inefficient and destructive of nature. To power a large proportion of the USA, vast areas would need to be shaved or harvested annually. To obtain the same electricity from biomass as from a single nuclear power plant would require 2500 square kilometers of prime Iowa land. "Increased use of biomass fuel in any form is criminal," remarks Ausubel. "Humans must spare land for nature. Every automobile would require a pasture of 1-2 hectares."

Obvious to everyone except greens. 

The good old days

Via The Volokh Conspiracy, this is a database of the records of the Old Bailey from 1674 to 1834. It's extremely nifty in that it has a graphing tool so you can easily analyse crimes, verdicts and punishments. I used it to generate a graph of crimes involving killing by decade (all verdicts).

Click for full size image The results are quite interesting. Apparently the Old Bailey saw between 10 and 15 cases involving killing each year during this period. Call it one per month. I wonder how many it is now?

To get a handle on the answer to this question, I've searched the Google News archive for pleas to charges of murder in 2006 and come up with 27 stories. Some, however, are duplicates and others are not actually Old Bailey cases at all. The edited list looks like this:

1. the Monkton murder
2. Mohammed Ali & his brother
3. Tom ap Rhys Price
4. Damilola Taylor
5. Billie Jo Jenkins
6. Trial of Daniel Gonzalez who killed four
7. Samantha Renfrew
8. Anne Mendel
9. John Curran (reduced to manslaughter)
10. Samaira Nazir
11. Rochelle Holness
12. Peter Woodhams
13. Sally Anne Bowman

I think it's fair to say that by the time you've added in the manslaughter charges (and possibly the attempted murder charges too - the definition used is not clear) the current figure will be well in excess of what we saw in previous centuries.

This all deeply unscientific of course, but interesting nevertheless. 

Keifer Sutherland

Via A Blogassault of Global Warming we learn that...

Keifer Sutherland, a.k.a Jack Bauer, blames all of us for global warming.

Star Kiefer Sutherland has already filmed a public service annoucement which begins: "Global warming is a crime for which we are all guilty!"  While on the set of "24" they plan on being carbon neutral by the end of the season.

Rumours that Sutherland is also going to offset rising sea levels by drinking every bar in Los Angeles dry are apparently without foundation.

It's all in the adjustments

This is odd. Or do I mean appalling?

When you measure the surface temperature, the data that comes out of the station network is poor, and has to be "fixed". This is done by means of a series of adjustments which are added stepwise to the raw data to give the final answer. 

I've show below a graph of the difference between the raw temperatures measured in the USHCN surface station network, and the final temperature delivered as an output.
 

What this appears to show is that most of the observed warming is coming from the adjustments, not the weather stations. (I'm assuming here that the trend in the final temperature is not more than 0.6^oC)

The page from which the graph is ripped explains what the adjustments are:

• Time of observation. Different stations measure temperature at different times of day, but you want every station's midnight temperature. You therefore adjust anyone who is not reading at midnight, creating an estimate of what temperature it would have been if they had have done it at the correct time.
• Station moves
• Changes in equipment
• Missing data
• Urban heat island - as urbanisation takes place, an man-made warming trend is introduced, which needs to be eliminated to give the true temperature.

It also gives the impact of each. In the graph below, each line represents one of the adjustments.

 

From this, we can see that the warming trend is being produced by the time of observation adjustment (black) and  by the station move adjustment (yellow). 

I can think of no earthly reason why time of observation adjustments would produce this shape. The upward slope of the adjustment implies that there are many stations recording temperature at a time when it's colder than midnight. This means the wee small hours I guess. Why would this be? And why would the effect be increasing? I mean, over the last century more and more stations will be automatic, which presumably means that you could get temperature exactly when you want. Why then, does the raw data appear to be getting worse - ie the adjustment required to correct it is getting larger?

It all looks a bit fishy if you ask me.

Private prosecutions

Now that the CPS have decided that there is insufficient evidence to proceed with any prosecutions in the cash for honours affair, Guido is rounding up volunteers to back a private prosecution. While this is a great idea, there is a risk that the CPS  take over the prosecution and then promptly drop it. The details of their powers in this respect are here; essentially they can drop the case if:

• There is so little evidence that there is no case to answer; or
• The prosecution falls far below the public interest test in the Code for Crown Prosecutors; or
• The prosecution is likely to damage the interests of justice.

It looks to my untrained eye as if the CPS would struggle to make a decent case for dropping it. They have refused to prosecute themselves because they don't think they can get a guilty verdict (let's leave aside the absurdly high standard they have set themselves). This is not the same as having so little evidence that there is no case to answer.

I can't conceive of any argument they could make that the prosecution was against the interests of the public or of justice, so there doesn't appear to be an "out" for the crooks here either.

The other thing to think about is the political fallout of the CPS taking over and then dropping a case against close confidants of the prime minister. It would look nothing if not very, very corrupt. Would Brown really risk it rebounding on him now that Blair is long gone?

So all in all, it looks like it's worth a punt.  We live in hope.

Where's the food going to come from?

Further to my recent post on Scottish Power's plan to use 12% of agricultural land to grow biomass sufficient to power a couple houses in Linlithgow, the Englishman reports that Friends of the Earth are resisting the idea of using genetic modification to reduce food price inflation. They, of course, are in favour of organic farming (or "faeces farming" as I prefer to call it), which requires four times as much land as conventionial crops.

So if they get their way, there won't be any land left to grow the trees to make power for Linlithgow, or anywhere else for that matter.

Whoops. 

Climate cuttings 6

Welcome to the sixth edition of climate cuttings, in which I round up interesting postings in the world of global warming.

Reaction to the Lockwood paper, which claims that the sun can't be causing recent warming, rumbles on.

Climate scientist Eduardo Zorita describes a Nature post lauding the results as "an example of what science journalism should not be". He goes on to explain why the Lockwood paper might be considered superficial.

Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist and co-author of a book on the solar theory of climate change with Henrik Svensmark, is interviewed in the London Book Review. He points out that the earth has stopped warming despite continued rises in CO₂, a fact that supports the solar theory better than the CO₂ one.

John Brignell of Numberwatch, in common with other commentators, takes issue with the odd smoothing algorithm used by Lockwood.

Astronomer David Whitehouse weighs in too. 

Anthony Watts of surfacestations.org (15% of the network now surveyed!) has been investigating the impact of the paint used on climate stations. This was originally specified as whitewash, but because this is no longer available, latex paint is now used instead. He thinks that this may have introduced a warming bias into the data and has designed an experiment to find out if he's right. Why has nobody done this before? 

Glacier melt has been something of a theme for the week. Roger Pielke notes a paper describing the advance of the Siachen glacier in the Himalayas, and points out that this evidence needs to be taken into account when considering the oft-repeated claims that glaciers are retreating everywhere. William Connelly says that nobody is saying this. Lonnie Thompson (a man who is perhaps best known for not archiving his data) then somewhat takes the ground from under Connelly's feet when he is quoted in the New York Times as saying that glacial ice loss is “a repeating theme whether you are in tropical Andes, the Himalayas or Kilimanjaro in Africa.”

Roger Pielke has also been highlighting the issue of land use and its effect on climate. This is an area which is not well captured by climate models.

Not climate, but weather - a distinction lost on most of the MSM - but it's been remarkably cold in many parts of the world, particularly in the southern hemisphere.

First snow in Buenos Aires for nearly a century
Cold snap in Peru prompts emergency
Savage cold snap has brought record low temperatures to Australia

It's also been wet and not very warm in the UK. The Met Office had predicted a hot dry summer, so they've now decided to hedge their bets about the outlook for the winter. It will be wetter, but dryer. Perhaps. This is the Gypsy Rose Lee school of weather forecasting, I guess.

An environmentalist went for a swim near the north pole, claiming that this was only possible because of recent climate change. It was widely pointed out that this wasn't true.  

Harsh liberalism

Jock Coats has a very good article up on what he calls the "neo-puritans" - those who would roll back relaxation of the cannabis laws, twenty-four hour drinking and so on.

On drugs, Ming and Clegg should speak out right now, while the issue is to the fore, about our own party policy for decriminalization and social supply of cannabis and a full commission on the best way to handle all drugs in future.

We know that up to 80% of property crime at least in some places is related to the illegal drugs industry. We can wipe that out almost entirely almost instantly, and save billions - perhaps the equivalent of a fifth of the public sector budget.

With the savings we can be harsher on people who use their new freedoms to harm others.

Which is the crux of the matter of course. When Joe Public sees people fighting and puking in the streets at two in the morning, or selling drugs of streetcorners, his natural reaction is that twenty-four hour drinking is a nonsense. He wants to see the status quo ante restored and views any argument to the contrary as, well, liberalism gone mad. So when Jock says that we can be "harsher" on people who abuse their new freedoms, he's right, but this point needs to be expanded. The whole argument will be shot down in flames unless it is explained to people why it will be safe to go out on the streets at night after the repeal of the drugs laws. What exactly is the proposal for dealing with drunken yobs? Why will drugs not be sold at my childrens' school gates?

Personally, I would be in favour of corporal punishment, something that Chris Dillow argued for recently. I would have thought the reintroduction of the birch or the stocks would concentrate even the dullest minds among drunks and drug peddlers, and it would certainly reassure people that a liberal approach was not the same as anarchy.

Harsh punishment for people who abuse their freedoms is probably a necessary condition for a free society. We can have puritanism and soft punishments, or freedom and harsh ones. Proper liberals need to demonstrate that they understand this. Until they do they will be written off as "woolly liberals" by society at large. 

Meaningless gestures

Scottish Power has announced that it is going to convert two of its coal-fired power stations to burn wood - coppiced trees in other words. They aim to replace fully 5% of their coal requirement (that's their coal requirement, not the country's coal requirement, mind) with this "carbon neutral fuel".

In order to do this, they need to use 12% of the agricultural land in Scotland.

So it's an expensive, but meaningless gesture.

Update:

It's a very expensive meaningless gesture. According to this, biomass fuel is more expensive than oil or coal, even if set-aside subsidies are still paid!! It's daylight robbery!

Bird scaring

The BBC's daily climate change scare for today is this:

Disastrous season for seabirds
Scotland's seabirds are having a "disastrous" breeding season, according to RSPB Scotland. It said mid-season reports had found cliffs, where there should be thousands of birds, almost empty.

You don't need to read the report to know that it's climate change to blame.

However, if you look carefully at the related stories bit in the margin you will also see the following:

From 18 September 2006

Seabirds found starving to death
...Over-fishing and global warming are thought to have been affecting the birds' normal food supply.

From 31 August 2005 

Worst seabird season on record
Seabird colonies in Scotland have suffered one of the worst breeding seasons on record, experts have warned. Breeding has been poor in guillemot, puffin, kittiwake and razorbill colonies, particularly in the west coast reserves.

This is the first time the west has been affected and we can only speculate as to why but climate change must be considered as a factor.

 A little further digging reveals this from 28 July 2004

Experts warn over seabird numbers
Some of the most important seabird colonies in Western Europe are under threat because their main source of food seems to be disappearing.

Shetland fishermen have stopped catching [sandeels], but scientists believe climate change could be to blame for their continued decline, which is causing the birds to starve. 

Frankly it's amazing that there are any seabirds left at all, what with all the disasters befalling them in recent years. You have to wonder whether the PR department at the RSPB has a diary entry for every summer entitled "Seabird disaster (probably climate change) story".

Now of course we can't discount the possibility that there is a genuine problem with seabird numbers. With this in mind, I've taken a look at the official government numbers (yes, we have a government body responsible for counting birds) for one species which seems to have been particularly affected - the common guillemot.

The recent poor breeding success shows up clearly in their figures, but there's a bit of a mystery here. Breeding numbers are pretty stable

 

The graph starts at 1986. And here's another surprising thing - according to the same report in 2002, the 1987 population figure was itself up 118% on 1969.

So as far as I can tell, breeding numbers are stable, total population is way up on what it was in the past, but there's a bit of mystery about where all these birds are coming from. (Perhaps they're just hiding their eggs from all the bird counters?). And this is apparently a disaster which is yet more evidence of global warming.

Colour me unconvinced.  

Laying in wait

The Graun carries a short report about a survey of householders which shows that one in three people keeps a makeshift weapon beside their bed as protection against burglars. It was also covered on 5Live this morning.

Householders confessed to putting items such as golf clubs, cricket bats and heavy torches within reach for self-defence from burglars, researchers found, and more than half said they were prepared to use them.

While this is a pretty damning indictment of where our society has got itself to, I was surprised that neither the Graun or the Beeb mentioned that keepting a weapon beside your bed is actually (IIRC) illegal. You are only allowed to use something to hand. Now obviously you can concoct an argument that the cricket bat/torch/steel bar that you used to brain the intruder was by your bed for completely innocent purposes, but itsn't it rather horrific that the state would rather turn a third of the population into liars rather than let them plan for their own self-defence?

An Indian Muslim writes

A posting I chanced across the other day, from Lalbadshah, an Indian Muslim. It takes the form of an open letter to the failed Glasgow terrorists:

Dumb fuckers!! WTF were you thinking? Sardar shabashi dega?? That you'll go straight to heaven?? Man! Not only did you fuck yourselves, you've got the eternal curse from every foreign visa aspiring Muslim who actually wants to do well in life. And just when I was beginning to realise that as Indian Muslims, we are doing pretty well upholding our credentials as peaceful folk, you had to go and fuck it all up!!

 Read the whole thing.

2000 jobs lost, lefties celebrate

There's a column about the closure of a supermarket supplier called Bomfords over at Comment is free today. Tim W has lots of fun laughing at the knots the liberal elite are getting themselves tied in - well worth a read.

One comment in particular struck me - someone calling themselves marydole wrote:

"Still, one lot of rapacious exploiters gone bust? Fantastic!"

It's an indictment of the left that when a company goes bust, they see the loss of a "rapacious exploiter" rather than the loss of two thousand livelihoods. And then they have the nerve to call the Conservatives "the nasty party".

Socialists are indeed evil. 

Clutter is dangerous

I picked up a glossy leaflet in the local sports centre the other day.

Clutter is dangerous - Tidy up! was the title, and it was brought to us by the combined eminences of Perth & Kinross council and NHS Tayside working under the umbrella of the Tayside Healthy Communities Project. The cover had a nice cartoon of somebody tripping over a book, watched by his muliticultural family.

This looked like pretty important stuff, so I read on:

Five Tips to Help Reduce the Risk of Falls

There's a lot to cover then. I had no idea standing up was so complex.

Take regular exercise

Huh? I would have thought that remaining safely ensconced in bed would be more effective.

Look after your feet and wear sensible shoes.

No more dressing up in ladies stillettos for me then.

Get your eyes tested regularly

So you can see the floor before it hits you, no doubt. 

Avoid rugs, loose carpet, and trailing flexes

Break dancing might be inadvisable too. 

Have plenty of light, put light on if up to loo at night

Doesn't everyone pee in the dark now? There's a planet to save after all.

Signing off, the authors (either the Falls Service Manager or the Falls Project Manager by the look of it) give us this final gem of advice.

"It's better to be safe than sorry" and "Pride comes before a fall". 

I'm speechless.

(Political note: Perth & Kinross council is run by a LibDem/SNP coalition - just so you know who to blame). 

Conservative cretins

I just made the huge mistake of taking a look at the Conservatives' new Stand Up Speak Up website. Never in all my years have I seen such a collection of cretinous half-arsed half-witted half-formed twaddle. The schools system is completely mindbogglingly disfunctional and numpty Cameron's thinks we might like to consider better links with the community! Or perhaps a little training for head-teachers of schools in deprived areas! What a pillock!

God this slimy man and his party of slack-jawed inbred goons make me want to puke.

The Conservatives - they're like your local council but not as bright and not as nice.

/rage.