The FT does solar

Pilita Clark, the FT's environment correspondent has written a bizarre analysis of the solar power sector. I can't make head or tail of it. Take this for example:

Prices vary widely depending on location but in Europe the average cost of power generated by residential solar PV systems ranges from 151 per megawatt hour to €275 MWh – more than double the cost of power from new nuclear, gas or onshore wind plants, according to IHS data.

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Hearing rules against UK renewables programme

Pat Swords writes:

You will find the attached [files 1, 2] to be of interest. In summary success has been achieved in obtaining a ruling at an international legal tribunal that the UK is in non-compliance with its legal framework and international treaty arrangements with regard to the implementation of its renewable programme (15% renewable energy target and National Renewable Energy Action Plan).

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Fracking concerns - Josh 233

Given the recent protests about Fracking, I thought some cartoons on the subject might be a good idea.

Suggestions for further Fract Sheets are very welcome!

Cartoons by Josh

Update: Andrew pointed out that the birds were missing in the Wind Turbine half of the cartoon. Now added.

Quote of the day

The populist notion that all climate sceptics are either in the pay of oil barons or are right-wing ideologues, as is suggested for example by studies such as Oreskes and Conway (2011), cannot be sustained.

Mike Hulme, in his new book. An extract of the chapter is at his website.

H/T Tallbloke.

No objection

In an interesting article in the Independent yesterday, it was revealed that Balcombe Parish Council didn't object to Cuadrilla's application for planning permission to drill for oil.

The two-week protest against potential fracking in Balcombe took a dramatic twist today as it emerged that the local parish council had lodged "no objection" to the planning application, without consulting the West Sussex village - a decision the council chair said she was now "gutted" about.

Alison Stevenson, a member of the parish council when the matter was dismissed without discussion in 2010 and now its chair, said no-one at the meeting had any reason to suspect an application by Cuadrilla, the fracking company chaired by former BP chief executive Lord Browne, would have any repercussions for the village.

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Polar bears

I was just on Radio 5 to talk about the Guardian's "polar bear dies of climate change" article. I was up against Greenpeace's John Sauven. I think I was better read on the subject than he was.

I liked this tweet from 4d2b

Easy victory for @aDissentient over Greenpeace spox re polar bears on @bbc5live just now.

and this one from Barry Woods:

AM: I read the report it says computer models. - greenpeace: andrew should read the report, AM: I said I read the report!!

There are a couple of points I should probably follow up on. The bear was found 150 miles from where they have seen it in previous years and the Guardian says this represents "an unusual movement away from its normal range". However, given that polar bears normally range over hundreds of miles, this doesn't quite seem to stack up.

I'll try to upload the audio when it's available.

Update on Aug 7, 2013 by Bishop Hill

The audio file is here.

Environmentalist journalist

Louise Gray has adopted the role of recruiting sergeant for the Balcombe protest camp, offering up helpful advice on what aspirant participants should bring along:

At the moment there are around 40 protesters on the site, but this is expected to swell as word spreads about the camp. Groups involved include Frack Off, backed by Lush, UKUncut and the Occupy movement.

The ‘climate camp’ or ‘peace camp’ will include compost lavatories, a ‘kid’s space, communal kitchen and possibly solar and wind power. Larger tents will host workshops on direct action.

It is expected the camp will ‘occupy’ a field by the site. Campers are advised to bring a tent, a sleeping bag, warm clothes, toothbrush/paste, loo roll, sunblock, waterproofs, a torch, and “a desire to change the world”.

I think this probably kills off any suggestion that Gray is a reputable truth-seeking journalist.

Update on Aug 7, 2013 by Bishop Hill

There are some more, rather intriguing details on Louise Gray and the demonstrators here.

Political science

On Radio 4 last night, Ehsan Masood, the editor of Research Fortnight, looked at the politicisation of science in a show entitled Science, Left or Right.

The first twenty minutes or so was fairly bog-standard BBC fare, with Chris Mooney telling us that Republicans are waging a war on science and various talking heads agreeing with him. After that it picked up somewhat, with Tamsin Edwards interviewed and sounding very polished and very reasonable, while neatly avoiding naming the scientists who are "doing a PR job" on science. There was also Peter Lilley pointing out the scientific establishment's cutting off of funding for those with dissenting views. This point was put to Paul Nurse, whose answer was, in essence, that "if their arguments are good, their views will prevail". This didn't seem to address the point in my view, and Lilley's case therefore stands unchallenged. It was a pity that Masood didn't press Nurse.

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The full horror of shale gas extraction

The Mail was briefly leading on shale again this morning although the story has been shunted down since. The only new development is that someone has taken a photo of the Balcombe site from the air. The Mail captions the photo "concrete carbuncle", but to me it's astonishing just how small the site is and how little concrete is involved.

Obviously, once the drilling is complete, the full horror of a shale gas well will be revealed...

From here.

Postscript: I wonder who wrote the Mail article?

Diary dates

In Unthreaded, Paul Matthews notes a couple of dates for your diaries:

Tamsin is on Radio 4 tonight at 8pm, along with Lawson and others, in a programme about science and politics.

There is a "Google Hangout" (whatever that means) tomorrow at 9 EDT which I think is 2pm our time, on the science/advocacy debate, with Judith C, Richard B and Gavin S.

A new look at the carbon dioxide budget - Part 3

In Part 1 of his paper, David Coe set out the failures of the IPCC model of carbon dioxide control to predict key observables in the ocean-atmosphere system. In Part 2 he outlined a new ocean control model that might better explain the observations. In Part 3 of his paper he looks at how this new model performs in practice.

The paper is attached below. Once again, the data for the figures is available too.

Coe Paper - Part 3

Akasofu's model

In recent months there has been a lot of attention devoted to the failure of the GCMs to predict the pause/standstill/hiatus in temperature rise seen for the last decade or more. Mike Kelly points me to this recent paper in the open access journal Climate. It's by the prominent sceptic Syun-Ichi Akasofu, whose naive model of global temperature change gets attention every few years.

The model essentially superimposes a multidecadal oscillation on an upward linear trend representing the recovery from the little ice age, and it gets attention because it performs so well. In the latest paper, the model is compared to observations for the period to 2012.

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Public opinion on shale and energy

Yougov has published a poll of UK public opinion for the Sunday Times, which this time round includes a number of questions about shale gas exploitation and energy policy in general. These are the questions and main responses. The segmented responses can be seen in the original document here.

I'm not sure that it tells us very much, except that the public are a bit mixed up on these questions.

Shale gas is natural gas trapped under sedimentary rock, which is extracted using a method known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking". There are large reserves of shale gas in parts of England. Some people think that using shale gas could be a solution to Britain's energy needs. Other people think that fracking is a dangerous technique that risks contaminating ground water and causing minor earthquakes. From what you have seen or heard about the issue, do you think Britain should or should not start extracting shale gas?

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Lewandowsky: Backdating

This is a guest post by Shub Niggurath.

Steve McIntyre has a post on the Lewandowsky affair. It is a key one, so a summary might be useful.

The notorious 'Fury' paper from the Lewandowsky group is, at time of writing, in chronic 'temporary withdrawal'. The 'Moon' paper has data issues that invalidate the paper. When questioned how he reported on skeptics in the Moon paper without surveying them, Lewandowsky said he had asked skeptics in 2010 to host the survey. He didn't say who they were. This came as a surprise. Searches showed no messages from Lewandowsky. Several skeptic bloggers reported no receipt. Subsequently, others fished out the survey emails. It was realized they were sent under assistant Charles Hanich's name. The bloggers contacted each other and dug up the emails rapidly. This was summarized on Jo Nova's blog and other venues on a running basis.

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Book review: The Age of Global Warming

This is a guest post by Messenger.

I take my hat off to Rupert Darwall for tackling this knotty and diverse subject, so full of devious twists and turns and sometimes almost unbelievable actions and decisions. It is a fascinating, if complicated story, creating an important record of the machinations producing the madness of crowds that has overtaken so many governments and people around the world.

Darwall pins down the seminal moments, the recurrent scares, and the prime movers, beginning with Malthus and Malthusians and identifying the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) as an important watershed. He notes the innate pessimism of the much of the environmental movement, typified by the Club of Rome in 1972 when it asked if the human species could survive without falling into a state of “worthless existence” and its development into the depressing topos that man must be at fault in one way or another for all environmental damage, and that therefore we must do- and apparently be persuaded or forced to do- without. It is this demand for self-sacrifice, originally aimed at Western nations, that has now become an attempt by our “global governors” to hold back development world-wide.

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