The captive state

A few of days ago I mentioned the extraordinary decision of the Scottish Government to proceed with windfarm developments by unlicensed operators, something Lady Clark in the Court of Session has ruled is illegal. I also mentioned that an amendment to the Energy Bill had been tabled with a view to waiving the licensing requirement.

The amendment by Lord Teverson (who is, incidentally a trustee of RegenSW, "a leading centre of sustainable energy expertise and pioneering project delivery") was discussed in the Lords a couple of days ago and there were some powerful interventions from former Secretary of State for Scotland Michael Forsyth and another from the legal giant Lord MacKay of Clashfern (Hansard link here). Forsyth was keen to draw attention to the implications for the rule of law, noting that Salmond et al seemed to think 'their renewable energy ambitions trounce the law of the land'. MacKay meanwhile seemed to offer unqualified support to the decision of the Court of Session:

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Time Out can't find the place

This is a guest post by Katabasis.

Time Out published an online article yesterday entitled 'Err, Thames Barrier not really working as barrier'.

Some mild flooding took place at various places along the Thames on Monday, as it so often does. The article depicts numerous  pictures from somewhere on the Thames that it describes as looking "pretty scary". A picture of rising water 'at the gates' is sure to have a psychological impact on many of us, myself included:

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GWPF Annual Lecture: 'One religion is enough' - Cartoon notes by Josh

On Guy Fawkes night this week we were treated to a brilliant Annual GWPF Lecture given by John Howard, former Prime Minister of Australia.

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Ague peak

Ross McKitrick has a new paper in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society A, examining reasons for the eradication of malaria in some countries but not in others. You'll never guess what isn't a factor.

Malaria has disappeared in some countries but not others, and an explanation for the eradication pattern has been elusive. We show that the probability of malaria eradication jumps sharply when average household size in a country drops below four persons. Part of the effect commonly attributed to income growth is likely due to declining household size. The effect of DDT usage is difficult to isolate but we only identify a weak role for it. Warmer temperatures are not associated with increased malaria prevalence. We propose that household size matters because malaria is transmitted indoors at night, so the fewer people are sleeping in the same room, the lower the probability of transmission of the parasite to a new victim. We test this hypothesis by contrasting malaria incidence with dengue fever, another mosquito-borne illness spread mainly by daytime outdoor contact.

There's a discussion of the new paper here and the full paper can be seen here.

Deben has explaining to do

Lord Deben was on the Toady programme this morning discussing whether other countries were doing as much as us on the renewables front (audio below). This statement grabbed my attention.

If you look at what China's doing...China's actually moving a lot faster than we are now, and it's actually moving towards a peak in its emission in the mid, maybe even in the early, 2020s...

This is pretty bizarre when you think about it. Per capita emissions have been falling in the UK for decades, as has the carbon intensity of the economy. How has China been doing? Not so well actually, as this graph of per capita carbon dioxide emissions shows (source).

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Speaking volumes

Mike Kelly has a letter in the Times today calling for an independent panel of statisticians and engineers to assess what the climatologists are telling us.

Sir, When I hear the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser one week, and the Secretary of State for Business Innovation and Skills ten days later, with several members of the House of Lords in the interim, all referring to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as being more certain than ever of mankind’s role in changing the climate, but none of them qualifying the statement by admitting that man is still a bit player compared with the Sun and with nature over the past 150 years, then there is need for a really independent assessment of the interface between science and policy in this most important and contentious subject (Global warming battle “has become a religion” Nov 6).

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Our Friends dyspeptic

There has been another minboggling intervention in the battle to prevent Dart Energy's attempts to bring some much-needed economic good cheer to central Scotland. This time, Friends of the Earth seem to have been able to place an article in the local paper, the Stirling Observer, and it bears all the hallmarks of their usual standards of 'accuracy' and 'integrity'.

An energy company with controversial plans to extract gas from deep underground has a licence to drill under Wallace Monument.

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Tip drive November 2013

It's been a few months since I did a tip drive, so if you'd like to help keep the BH show on the road the links are over there on the right. As always it's good to get people subscribing to the site, so (and I mean you at the back there) if you haven't helped out before, now could be your moment.

A Walport in a storm

Updated on Nov 6, 2013 by Bishop Hill

Mark Walport's appearance before the Science and Technology Committee this morning - part of the 'public understanding of climate science' inquiry I took part in a month or so ago - alternated between breathtaking platitudes and moments of real interest.

Walport gives the impression of being someone who is highly skilled at sounding plausible on subjects about which he knows little and the MPs seemed impressed on the whole. The impact on me was less favourable.

I've jotted down a few of Walport's more extraordinary statements:

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Consistency

Image from www.despair.com (click to buy)The failure of the GCMs to reproduce real world temperature trends is becoming quite awe inspiring. In a post at WUWT, Michaels and Knappenburger have compared actual temperature trends over periods of different lengths (but all ending in the present - either 2012 or 2013) with the output of the IPCC corpus of climate models. They find that trends as long as 27 years are inconsistent for 2012 period ends. If you bring the data bang up to date it's even worse

For data ending in the year 2013, the category of marginal inconsistency extends out to 37 years and is now flirting with lengths exceeding 50 years, and trends of lengths 11-28, 31, 33, and 34 (!) are clearly inconsistent with the climate model simulations.

Some people say you need a fifteen year trend to falsify the models, some say seventeen, others say you need thirty. It's beginning to look as if the day when all excuses fall by the wayside is fast approaching.

Quote of the day, heavy industry wipeout edition

I don't yet believe there is any understanding in this country of the crisis we are facing in terms of the energy supply...we will not have energy intensive sectors in this country twenty years from now unless we do something about it.

Tom Crotty, director of INEOS UK, in evidence to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee.

Stern and his gang

Lord Stern appeared before the House of Commons Energy and CLimate Change Committee this morning. It was amusing to see him arriving with his posse of assistants, Bob Ward among them. Why on earth does he need a PR man to go to the House of Commons with him? [Update - just seen one of his minions passing him the answer to a question]

Lilley from 10 mins with a few fireworks, Stern accusing him of being misleading, Lilley referring to Stern's "attack dog". Smashing stuff. The bit about discount rates is fun too, with Stern denying using different rates for costs and benefits and then flannelling furiously. I can't wait to see the transcript.

Graham Stringer was there, alongside Peter Lilley; questions from 10:43.

What's all this then?

Posted under "Debates" on the TheyWorkForYou website comes this notice about the Energy and Climate Change Committee:

That Barry Gardiner be discharged from the Energy and Climate Change Committee and Graham Stringer be added.

The motion seems to have been discussed last night.

Frack fluid on the rocks

In a nice bit of public relations work, Halliburton executives took it upon themselves to drink some of their latest fracking fluid to show just how harmless it is.

“It was absolutely the first time I drank fracking fluid — you can be sure of that,” said Michael Binnion, President of QOGA and CEO of Questerre Energy Corp. a couple of days after Monday’s event, noting that 20 to 25 executives drank the brew. “I feel fine. There was quite a build-up, but it was a bit of a let-down as it was less viscous than I thought it would be, but more viscous than water. And very stale-tasting.”

Presumably they left the sand out.

Enemies of the people

A couple of weeks back I took a trip over the Forth to Stirlingshire and the coalbed methane company Dart Energy. I was shown around by general manager Douglas Bain and he has some pretty interesting stories to tell.

The process of developing coalbed methane in the area has been ongoing for many years now. In 2004 a local entrepreneur with a background in coal started drilling for gas, and latterly another company had taken on the task. Neither could make the process economic. In 2011, however, the licence passed into the hands of Dart Energy, a coalbed methane specialist, who have found a way to extract the gas profitably. CBM involves drilling along a coal seam and then pumping water out to reduce the pressure to the point at which the gas flows. Dart's breakthrough was simply to pump the water out through a second, vertical well, which intersects with the horizontal one. No fracking is currently involved and, according to Bain, nor is it likely to be in the future, because the narrowness of the coal seams involved mean that fracking is unlikely to be economic.

With gas flow rates now favourable, a pilot production facility has been set up, with the gas sent to an on-site generator, from where it supplies direct to the grid electricity sufficient for several hundred homes.

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