A mysterious change of tune

Over at Climate Audit, Nic Lewis examines the strange divergence between observational and climate-model-based estimates of transient climate response. There's lots to enjoy, particularly for the more technically minded among us. But there's also something of a mystery:

So, in their capacity as authors of Otto et al. (2013), we have fourteen lead or coordinating lead authors of the WG1 chapters relevant to climate sensitivity stating that the most reliable data and methodology give ‘likely’ and 5–95% ranges for TCR of 1.1–1.7°C and 0.9–2.0°C, respectively. They go on to suggest that some CMIP5 models have TCRs that are too high to be consistent with recent observations. On the other hand, we have Chapter 12, Box 12.2, stating that the ranges of TCR estimated from the observed warming and from AOGCMs agree well. Were the Chapter 10 and 12 authors misled by the flawed TCR estimates included in Figure 10.20a? Or, given the key role of the CMIP5 models in AR5, did the IPCC process offer the authors little choice but to endorse the CMIP5 models’ range of TCR values?

Why would all these IPCC bigwigs say one thing in the primary literature and something completely different in the IPCC report?

I just can't imagine.

No hope, no change

The foolhardiness of the current government's energy policy need hardly be reiterated, but word is getting round the political and economic mainstream that Labour is potentially just as bad. Last week Liberum Capital put out a briefing note estimating the damage done to the UK economy by the party's proposed price freeze:

The heightened political risk faced by the UK utility sector following the announcement of the Labour Party’s price freeze has materially impacted on the valuation of the sector and reversed the five year utility sector trade of Long UK / Short Europe. Total shareholder value lost so far amounts to between £7bn to £11bn. In our view, if the UK government is successful in politically neutralising Labour’s price freeze policy then some of this loss, but probably not all, could be regained. Some of the loss is likely to be permanent in our view because it is now apparent that UK politicians (like those in Europe) are unwilling to stand by the logic of their own energy policy and enforce the higher costs onto consumers that naturally follow from their de-carbonisation strategy.

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AR5 - the Synthesis Report

Tallbloke has got hold of the pre-first order draft of the AR5 WGI Synthesis Report.

Read it here.

Axe the tax

The head of Scottish Power has called for the Climate Change Act to be axed. The alternatives are terrifying:

Britain's unilateral carbon tax should be scrapped before it causes blackouts, pushes up household bills and makes the UK uncompetitive, ScottishPower argues.

Keith Anderson, chief corporate officer, warns that the “carbon price floor” (CPF), which taxes companies for burning fossil fuels, will make Britain’s remaining coal plants “largely uneconomic by around the middle of the decade”.

I don't suppose this will have any impact on Ed Davey or David Cameron, so I think we should probably assume the worst (although I reiterate my view that spiralling prices and industry shutdowns are more likely than consumer blackouts). What seems increasingly clear is that the crisis will be upon us soon. It is therefore not only the younger culprits - the noble and learned Baroness Worthington for example - who will live to see the results of their ideology, but the older ones like Lord Deben too.

MacKay's dilemma

Christopher Booker's piece on windfarm policy this morning visits old ground for BH readers, namely Gordon Hughes' report on the deterioration of wind turbine performance over time. There is, however, an important bit of information towards the end of the article:

I gather that Prof Hughes showed his research to David MacKay, the chief scientific adviser to the Department of Energy and Climate Change, who could not dispute his findings. So DECC is fully aware of this devastating flaw in its projections, but presses on with its insane policy regardless.

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Let them eat equality

The Oxford Martin School has appointed a "commission" of environmentalists to gaze at the future and come up with all sorts of plans to deal with it.

Deja vu.

The results were presented in a joint lecture by Martin Rees and Sir John Beddington last week and a video of the event is now available here. In it, we learn that the commissioners are proposing a cornucopia of new international bureaucracies, that some of them have a bit of a soft spot for totalitarian regimes (no short-termism, you see) and that they have decided that Lord Stern was right about low discount rates. This last one is not a surprise given that Lord Stern was in fact one of the commissioners.

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The Frackers

Gregory Zuckerman, a business journalist at the Wall Street Journal has told the story of the shale gas revolution in his new book The Frackers. It's an easy read, with a light, journalistic style similar to books like Robert X Cringely's Accidental Empires or Stephen Levy's Hackers. You get a series of pen portraits of the motley selection of men who battled against adversity and ridicule and made the shale gas revolution a reality. We hear about their lives and loves and the fortunes they made, or in some cases, they didn't make.

The book cleverly shows how the different ingredients needed in order to make shale gas flow in economic quantities were gradually brought together. So we start by learning that hydraulic fracturing was tried as an alternative to gel-based fracking (not as a brave new commercial venture but in a desperate attempt to save money) and was found to be much more effective. Others were trying horizontal drilling on shale and exploiting the new-found ability to precisely steer the drill bit. Other factors needed to be added before the recipe was just right.

In the end though it's a bit too light for me. As a business journalist with a mission to entertain the lay reader, Zuckerman seems to shy away from the technical details. I wanted more science, more technical details, something more to get my teeth into. But if you are not technically inclined, or you just want something to read by the pool, you will enjoy it.

Buy here.

Ecocide echo - Josh 251

On the noisiness of wind turbines...

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Men of no meaning

James Delingpole is on vigorous form, in a groove that this blog also treads from time to time, namely the misuse of the English language to score political points. His particular complaint is the "let's all pretend that fossil fuels are subsidised" meme that many of the more ludicrous members of the green fraternity find so attractive at the moment:

This fossil-fuels-more-subsidised-than-renewables meme has been spread, inter alia, by the Guardian's ludicrous Damian Carrington; by Labour MP Barry "Dork Brain" Gardiner (Vice President of the sinister GLOBE international); by green pressure groups; by the Overseas Development Institute; and by the IMF which, impressively, has put global energy subsidies at $1.9 trillion – the majority of these, apparently, for fossil fuels…

This is undoubtedly an abuse of the English language and one so egregrious that even the noble and learned Baroness Worthington has found herself unable to support it.

As I've said before, if you don't use words with their common meaning then nobody can trust a word you say. So when peers and MPs who make these claims about fossil fuel 'subsidies' tell you they have 'no conflicts of interest', that they only make 'honest expense claims' or that they 'didn't have sex with that woman', you should probably assume the worst.

Windfarm noise: state of play

Via Angela Kelly comes this message from acoustician Mike Stigwood, who sets out the state of play on excess AM noise from windfarms. It looks like surrender from the developers.

Recent research presented at three planning inquiries that were conducted in September, October and November (Starbold, Bryn Lleweln and Shipdham - decisions awaited)  have hopefully exposed the misconceived arguments made by the industry's acousticians, which have successfully avoided controls over wind farm noise impact for many years.

After more than 4 years of smoke screens, obfuscation and erroneous objections raising unrealistic concerns and placing barriers in the way of necessary controls over the wind farm noise called "Excess Amplitude Modulation", industry acousticians have finally admitted a planning condition is "necessary" and "reasonable".  Excess AM is now shown to be neither rare nor only causing minor effects as claimed over the last few years, arguments that have successfully blocked planning controls leaving many communities exposed to serious noise impact.  Research by ourselves and the Japanese have exposed this as a common and serious problem.

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Skary kidz extreme weather - Josh 250

You can read about Dana's latest Twitterings on Twitter here, and here at WUWT and also at Keith Kloor's here. Quite a fun and, as Roger Pielke Jr says, educational read.

Cartoons by Josh

The unfeeling in pursuit of the unthinking

Simon Jenkins has written an admirable blast at windfarms in the pages - believe it or not - of the Guardian.

I have spent two years traipsing Britain in search of the finest views. It is hard to convey the devastating impact of the turbines to those who have not seen them, especially a political elite that never leaves the south-east except for abroad. Fields of these structures are now rising almost everywhere. They are sited irrespective of the wind, since subsidy is paid irrespective of supply, even if there is none. It makes EU agricultural policy a paragon of sanity.

I don't think Jenkins is right when he says that politicians have been driven mad by the myth of free wind power. That's lazy thinking. Politicians are making logical decisions to get themselves reelected. It was the rational pursuit of the green vote that was behind the appearance of sanity. We have to ask ourselves why so many people were persuaded that wind power was a sensible way to go.

More on the secret dissertation

Readers may remember the strange case of the LSE research project that had apparently investigated global warming sceptics in ethically questionable circumstances. Back in July I reported that in response to a request for the related MSc dissertation under the Data Protection Act LSE had contradicted my original source, and said that I was not in fact one of the subjects of the research. They subsequently refused to release details of the project under FOI either.

My appeal to the Information Commissioner has now been concluded, with the ICO upholding the LSE's decision.

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Same old New Scientist

Same old New Scientist. Their editorial today is desperately poor stuff, at best demonstrating a comical lack of understanding of the lukewarmer case and at worst deliberately mispresenting it.

[Sceptics] have been emboldened by scientists' acknowledgment that temperatures on the planet's surface have risen less sharply than expected in recent years. The scientists say that's down to natural variability; the doubters say it is a sign that climate change amounts to little more than ignorable, or even beneficial, "lukewarming".

...

But it is misguided to focus only on the temperature of the thin layer of air that we live in. That is just one of many important indicators. In particular, the oceans are warming too: recent research suggests that in the last 60 years the Pacific's depths have warmed 15 times as fast as at any time in the previous 10,000 years.

Leave aside the fact that for years, upholders of the global warming consensus and their supporters in New Scientist focused relentlessly on surface temperatures. Leave aside the fact that people like Pielke Sr who called for a focus on ocean heat content were damned as heretics or the paid mouthpieces of oil companies. Consider instead the fact that the basis of the lukewarmer case is not based on the hiatus in surface temperature rises, it is that climate sensitivity is low. And climate sensitivity calculations take ocean heat content changes into account.

One wonders if the author took the trouble to actually find out what the lukewarmer argument is before criticising it.

Green jobs: £1 million each

Stephen Lovegrove is the permanent secretary at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, although when hearing him speak about his work one could sometimes be forgiven for mistaking him for, say, someone from Greenpeace. Take his speech to the Concito conference in Denmark a few weeks ago for example.

For a start, Concito describes itself as a green think tank. One therefore wonders why a politically neutral civil servant is lending his support to environmentalists - who are nothing if not a political movement - in this way. And then read the text of the speech and try to work out whether this is a politically neutral civil servant putting government policy into action or a fully paid up member of the green movement:

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