Obama and the climate change musical

Republicans in the US House of Representatives are currently trying to get a grip on one small part of the Washington bureaucracy by trying to get the National Science Foundation to concentrate on funding useful science. Lamar Smith, the Texas Congressman who is leading the charge, is firing off shots over NSF's funding for public necessities like a climate change themed musical, an effort that set the taxpayer back some $700,000. He wants standards set in place - things like "increasing the health and welfare of the public".

Reasonable enough? Apparently not. Entirely unembarrassed by their excesses, the bureaucrats and their chums are declaring their outrage. President Obama is even threatening a veto.

They work for you, I'm told.

Solving the Uruguay mystery

According to Wikipedia, in 2013, Uruguay had 10MW of wind power capacity out of a total electricity generating capacity of 2337MW. That's 0.4%. Fully 1538MW or 66% was hydro. It suggests wind as a percentage of generating capacity would hit 30% by 2016.

Six months ago, Bloomberg reported that wind capacity was due to hit 800MW this year.

But today, according Jonathan Watts in the Guardian, Uruguay has made a "dramatic shift to nearly 95% electricity from clean energy". The picture at the top of the article is, of course, of a wind turbine and we learn that:

Uruguay gets 94.5% of its electricity from renewables. In addition to old hydropower plants, a hefty investment in wind, biomass and solar in recent years has raised the share of these sources in the total energy mix to 55%, compared with a global average of 12%, and about 20% in Europe.

Click to read more ...

Oz Met Office hacked

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has apparently been hacked.

China blamed for 'massive' cyber attack on Bureau of Meteorology computer

China is being blamed for a major cyber attack on the computers at the Bureau of Meteorology, which has compromised sensitive systems across the Federal Government.

Key points:

• ABC told there is little doubt the "massive" breach came from China
• Motivation for attack could be commercial, strategic or both
• Bureau provides critical information to a host of agencies, including link to Defence Department
• Could "take years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars to fix"

This seems like a bit of an odd target, doesn't it?

Hugo's howler, Harrabin's howler

Updated on Nov 26, 2015 by Bishop Hill

The Spectator doesn't do a great deal on the climate front, but when it does, it does it very well. At the moment they have a long piece (£, but you may get a free look) by David Rose on Judy Curry, which although containing little that will be new to BH readers will be informative for many.

If it's pure entertainment you want, they also have a preview of Paris from Hugo Rifkind (£), a man with a wonderful facility for words, but also one who is just a moderately loud repeater of metroliberal certainties on the state of the climate. His effort this week is rather more thoughtful than usual, but he still retains some odd notions. Observing, quite correctly, that everyone in the UK is backing off green policy, he says that as a country we are starting to look a bit provincial:

Germany’s big push for renewables (which was admittedly predicated on an hysterical and frankly stupid post-Fukushima fear of nuclear) is surging ahead, in precisely the manner that Scotland’s could be if anybody still gave a damn.

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Greenpeace banned

The latest from the subcontinent is that Prime Minister Modi has finally decided that enough is enough and has banned Greenpeace for good:

Under the latest order issued by authorities in Tamil Nadu where Greenpeace is registered, the government said it had found that the organisation had violated the provisions of law by engaging in fraudulent dealings.

Greenpeace denied any wrongdoing and said the closure was a "clumsy tactic" to silence dissent.

It sounds a bit vague to me. I wonder what precisely these fraudulent dealings are? I'm also not really into banning things, although I think it's possible to make a good case where foreign agitators are involved.

South Australia today, UK tomorrow?

The authorities in South Australia have been pretty right on in terms of their devotion to the green cause, and the state has been in the forefront of efforts to increase renewables' share of electricity generation. That being the case, the state is something of a leading indicator for us here in the UK. Over the weekend there were strong hints that the chickens are coming home to roost.

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Turnbull's not for turning?

It's all go on the political front. While attention here has been focused on Jeremy Corbyn, in Australia, staunch sceptic Tony Abbott has been ousted by the considerably more eco-emollient Malcolm Turnbull, news that has been greeted with considerably satistifaction by our green friends.

Unfortunately, Turnbull has now gone and spoiled it all:

.@turnbullmalcolm says no intentions to change #climate policy. "It's very well designed".

— ABC Environment (@ABCenvironment) September 14, 2015

In Poland, workers and windfarms sit idle

It's hot in parts of Eastern Europe at the moment - this happens in summertime I believe - and so people are switching on the airconditioning in droves.

In Poland this has produced some pretty major problems because the electricity grid can't supply sufficient electricity to meet demand. It's a familiar story: Poland relies on coal for the bulk of its electricity, but nobody wants to invest in new coal-fired power plants because the market is being rigged in favour of renewables and the EU is going to shut them all down anyway. Meanwhile there is hardly a puff of wind to be found anywhere in Europe so Poland's wind fleet is not helping either.

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A dampish squib

So President Obama has a new climate plan out and his fans in the BBC are getting very excited about it. The main thing seems to be a requirement for states to formulate climate plans, but not for a while. There is an even longer delay before they have to implement them.

Here are my impressions:

• The main objective is to make climate change an wedge issue in the next round of elections.
• The delays will make them more acceptable to the states.
• The plan will make only a tiny fraction of a degree of a difference to global temperatures at the end of the century.
• The US is halfway to the new target already on the back of the shale gas revolution.
• The new rules are put in place by executive order and can therefore be removed just as easily.

I'm not sure this amounts to a particularly large hill of beans.

Spanish fail to fly

Interesting news from Spain, where it has been revealed that the country has failed to install a single megawatt of wind power capacity in the last six months. This comes after managing just 27 MW in 2014.

This makes the country's plans to put a further 5000 MW in place by 2020 look just a tad optimistic.

(Link to Spanish language article)

Silent economics

Updated on Mar 16, 2015 by Bishop Hill

Updated on Mar 16, 2015 by Bishop Hill

Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute, is up in arms today about an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by the Conservative peer Matt Ridley. Ridley's article, which extolled the virtues of fossil fuels, attracted Schmidt's ire because of one sentence in particular:

The next time that somebody at a rally against fossil fuels lectures you about her concern for the fate of her grandchildren, show her a picture of an African child dying today from inhaling the dense muck of a smoky fire.

Schmidt has variously described this statement as "totally abhorrent" and "asinine".

Conflating climate change concerns w/a disregard for African children dying from smoke inhalation by @mattwridley is totally abhorrent.

— Gavin Schmidt (@ClimateOfGavin) March 14, 2015

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The environment correspondent's standards

The FT reports that carbon dioxide emissions remained steady in 2014, despite the global economy having continued to expand.

One of the reasons is apparently China's energy mix:

China has cut its use of coal, one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions, and installed more hydroelectricity, wind and solar power.

Now the FT article is written by Environment Correspondent Pilita Clark, so claims about the involvement of wind and solar need careful examination. I think a little data is required, which, thanks to Reuters, I am able to bring you:

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French sceptics group launches

Not much to go on in the English language as yet, but I gather that a French sceptics group, l'Association Francophone des Climato-optimistes (AFCO) has been launched. Headed by Christian Gerondeau it aims to "struggle against the unjustified pessimism that reigns with regard to the planet's climate future".

Their website is here for the French speakers among you.

Ecoterrorism in Canada

Updated on Feb 18, 2015 by Bishop Hill

Via GWPF, we learn that Canadian police are worried about violent extremists in the environmental movement:

The RCMP has labelled the “anti-petroleum” movement as a growing and violent threat to Canada’s security, raising fears among environmentalists that they face increased surveillance, and possibly worse, under the Harper government’s new terrorism legislation.

In highly charged language that reflects the government’s hostility toward environmental activists, an RCMP intelligence assessment warns that foreign-funded groups are bent on blocking oil sands expansion and pipeline construction, and that the extremists in the movement are willing to resort to violence.

Click to read more ...

Antifracking: the Russian connection

Via Instapundit comes an article from the Washington Free Beacon which reports that money is being funnelled to anti-fracking activists by a mysterious company in Bermuda with links to the Russian oil business:

A shadowy Bermudan company that has funneled tens of millions of dollars to anti-fracking environmentalist groups in the United States is run by executives with deep ties to Russian oil interests and offshore money laundering schemes involving members of President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle.

One of those executives, Nicholas Hoskins, is a director at a hedge fund management firm that has invested heavily in Russian oil and gas. He is also senior counsel at the Bermudan law firm Wakefield Quin and the vice president of a London-based investment firm whose president until recently chaired the board of the state-owned Russian oil company Rosneft.

The findings are based on a report by the US Environmental Policy Alliance. I don't think a fire has been found yet, but the quantities of smoke are prodigious.

Update on Jan 28, 2015 by Bishop Hill

A little Googling shows that Hans-Joerg Rudloff, the chairman of Marcuard, a UK company named in the report, is a former director of Barclays Capital and a close associate of Suleiman Kerimov, who is a significant shareholder in Gazprom.