Windfall

The Press and Journal has details of some truly phenomenal payments to wind farms in order to get them to switch off.

An energy giant was paid nearly £600,000 in less than a month – to turn off its windfarm and not produce any electricity.

Some or all of SSE’s 33 turbines at Strathy North were shut down almost daily between November 12 and December 10.

Last night, campaigners branded the situation “scandalous”, but the power company said it had to play its part in balancing the needs of the National Grid.

Westminster politicians: enabling graft and corruption since 1265AD.

The extraordinary climate effect of land-use change

The latest attempt to conjure up a hypothesis as to why things are going to get much worse on the climate front has appeared in Nature Climate Change, with an author team including Gavin Schmidt and Kate Marvel.

The paper delves deeper into the idea of forcing efficacy, a concept that is explained as follows:

The concept of radiative forcing is used to compare the effects of different physical drivers on the Earth's energy budget. Two forcing agents that produce a similar radiative imbalance might be expected to initiate similar feedbacks and have the same global mean temperature response. However, there can be variations in the size and type of feedbacks engendered by a specific forcing, mainly due to geographical variations in the forcing magnitude. These variations can be characterized by an efficacy that scales for the differences in temperature response. Forcings that project more strongly on the Northern Hemisphere, land or polar regions are systematically more effective at changing temperatures than an equivalent amount of CO2, whose forcing is more uniformly distributed throughout the globe. The converse is true for forcings localized in the Southern Hemisphere or ocean regions.

Click to read more ...

Library manoeuvres

Updated on Dec 14, 2015 by Bishop Hill

The opposition have called a debate on the Cumbria floods tomorrow, and so the House of Commons Library has issued a briefing paper to MPs. There's lot to amuse. For example, I read with interest that:

...there is a general understanding that climate change is likely to be linked to increased winter rain in the UK.

I think it's fair to say that this is complete drivel. As Richard Betts has quite rightly noted, predictions of UK climate are incredibly difficult because of our geographical position. Most commentators also agree that GCMs are useless when it comes to rainfall. So predictions about UK rainfall are almost impossible to take seriously. The "increased winter rain" story is of course derived from the UKCP09 climate projections, which are so wrong they put even Lord Deben in the shade. The idea that there is a "general understanding" of anything based on this farce of a computer simulation is preposterous.

Click to read more ...

Superforecasting

I'm sure for many readers here, Philip Tetlock's famous studies of the predictions of experts need little introduction. His most famous finding - that specialists are considerably worse at making predictions than generalists - is now quite well known, although less so among the general public and media than it should be.

His more recent work has been a project looking at forecasts in the realm of geopolitics and the results are summarised in his latest book, Superforecasting. The project asked panels of volunteers to make forecasts and then tested how accurate they turned out to be in reality. Much of the book focuses on "superforecasters" - those people who turned out to be noticeably better at it.

Suffice it to say that there was little by way of expertise that made these people stand out from the crowd. They were bright people, but not off-the scale geniuses; numerate but not those inclined to conjure with arcane mathematics. It was more about independence of mind, the ability to constantly recalibrate and to question assumptions, the ability to think in terms of probabilities rather than in black and white terms.

And although the book barely mentions climate, and indeed the focus of the project was on short-term predictions not long-term ones, it was hard while reading it not to keep wondering "do climatologists think like this?"

Co-authored by pop-sci writer Dan Gardner, the text is as light as a feather, making it readily accessible to nearly everyone. A good Christmas pressie for the geek in your life. Buy it here.

Kaye sera sera

I was on the Kaye Adams show this morning, talking about Paris and what one can do about one's personal carbon footprint. Also featured was BH favourite Louise Gray, although we didn't get a chance to interact.

We touched on energy, recycling, the global warming movement and green gestures although I'm not sure Ms Adams realised I was a "bad person" until rather late in the day. It was great fun.

Audio should be available here this afternoon (climate segment was from the top of the show, with me on after about half an hour).

Saudi snow

A reader in Saudi Arabia send this picture which was taken recently in the north of that country.

The naughty thing doesn't seem to be conforming to the local sumptuary laws.

Cold light of day is earlier than usual

As predicted in our lighthearted look at the COPs, the breakthrough moment at COP21 was reached yesterday. The cold light of day appears to have been reached almost immediately afterwards.

Grand promises of Paris climate deal undermined by squalid retrenchments

Greens lining the pockets of farmers

This excerpt is from Farmer's Weekly, (paywalled here).

I’ve been spotted rummaging through the hedges and tracks than border my farm, searching high and low for, would you believe, an electricity substation. It turns out that if you are lucky enough to find one on or near your farm, and it’s over 33kV, you’re blessed: you can now go ‘generator farming’.

On a concrete pad (hmm, carbon footprint?), surrounded by a massive earth bund, an array of diesel-powered (yes, diesel) generators are installed and linked to the grid. Their sole purpose is to switch on and provide back-up power when the national grid is found wanting. They are known as ‘short term operating reserves’, or Stors.

The figures (as supplied by Strutt and Parker) are astonishing. The average Stor will supply 20MW, and so will need 50 400kW generators. The rents are even more mind blowing. The rule of thumb is £1,000-£2,500/MW capacity, so for a 20MW Stor – well, do the sums yourself. The other good news (assuming you yourself don’t live in earshot) is they tend to only work at night – probably something to do with the inherent night-time uselessness of solar farms. And if you do live nearby, fifty grand a year will pay for some serious double-glazing, or even a new house at the far end of the farm.

The Lewandowsky concoction

The Social Psychology of Morality, a forthcoming book from the Psychology Press, has a chapter on the interaction between "high moral purpose" and scientific integrity, and takes a brief look at the work of Stephan Lewandowsky, including this summary of the great man's work:

Understanding when people are and are not persuaded by science is an interesting and important area of research. But this curious case highlights the threat to scientific integrity that can stem from high moral missions. The notion that skeptics believed something so silly as the faking of the moon landing is yet another myth essentially concocted by the researchers.

The world the greens created

While the energy and climate punters are concentrating on Paris, the results of the government's latest capacity auction are out. The market cleared at £18/kW which means that no new CCGT power stations will be built. Instead, the gap is going to be filled with diesel generators and OCGT.

A little gem

The BBC's Inside Science strand had a brief section on the floods in Cumbria, with Nick Reynard of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology interviewed on the subject.

During the interview he mentioned the startling fact that the average record length for river flow in the UK is 36 years.

Remember that next time you hear about the 100-year flood.

More problems for the climate models

As I noted in my Spectator piece yesterday, the Met Office is really, really desperate to attribute floods and rainfall to global warming, particularly at this time of year when they can usually rely on taking advantage of a bit of human misery.

Unfortunately, some toad at the Lawrence Livermore laboratories in the US has rather gone and pooped the party by publishing a paper that shows that climate models are overestimating growth in rainfall (report here).

Lawrence Livermore researchers and collaborators have found that most climate models overestimate the increase in global precipitation due to climate change.

Specifically, the team looked at 25 models and found they underestimate the increase in absorption of sunlight by water vapor as the atmosphere becomes moister, and therefore overestimate increases in global precipitation.

The team found global precipitation increase per degree of global warming at the end of the 21st century may be about 40 percent smaller than what the models, on average, currently predict.

They are not the first to notice how bad climate models are, but it's good to be reminded of these things, particularly when there's rain - and the odd chief scientist - in the air.

Thoughts on Naomi Klein

It's fair to say that people on the sceptic side of the climate debate think that Naomi Klein is a weapons grade noodle. But it's not just us. Plenty of serious commentators on the other side of the debate feel the same way. Take these examples.

Ms Klein's harshest critics must allow that, for an angry adolescent, she writes rather well. It takes journalistic skill of a high order to write page after page of engaging blather, so totally devoid of substance. What a pity she has turned her talents as a writer to a cause that can only harm the people she claims to care most about. But perhaps it is just a phase.

The Economist

I was similarly disappointed. I see big flaws in modern capitalism but found Klein's book incoherent & shallow. @andyskuce @SuzanneWaldman

— mtobis (@mtobis) October 25, 2015

 Or what about this?

The most fascinating thing about This Changes Everything is how much factual refutation of Klein’s thesis is contained within the book itself.

Jonathan Chait

And this is how John Humphrys introduced Ms Klein this morning on the Today programme:

One of the most respected voices in [the climate] debate.

Me on the floods

I have a post up at the Spectator blog about the Cumbria floods.

Read it here.

The amazing Sarah Montague

Quite astonishingly bad journalism from Sarah Montague on the Today programme this morning, inviting the president of Kiribati to hold forth about how his country was about to disappear beneath the waves. Not even a hint of a challenge to anything he said, and certainly not a mention of the fact that Kiribati is growing.

The BBC's tsunami of disinformation shows no signs of abating.

Audio below.

Kiribas

Update on Dec 10, 2015 by Bishop Hill

We should not forget Montague's earlier triumphs on the journalistic integrity front.