Google: renewables "simply won't work"

Via The Register we learn that some of Google's top engineers have been tasked with making renewable energy cheaper than fossil fuels. We also learn that they have given up.

At the start...we had shared the attitude of many stalwart environmentalists: We felt that with steady improvements to today’s renewable energy technologies, our society could stave off catastrophic climate change. We now know that to be a false hope ...

Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.

There's lots of kowtowing to Gaia in the article ("scientists have definitively shown that the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere poses a looming danger"), but on renewables they seem to have done their homework.

(H/T El Reg)

Quote of the day, precaution edition

[There has been] a drift of interpretation of the precautionary principle from what was, in effect, a holding position pending further evidence, to what is now effectively a stop sign.

Mark Walport comes over all real worldly

RP Jr on disasters

Readers at BH probably don't need to be reminded that the official science on extreme weather and climate change is not nearly as scary as the popular perception of it is. In some ways then, Roger Pielke Jr's slim tome about disasters and climate change might be seen as entirely superfluous to requirements, but in fact it would be a mistake to overlook a book that goes well beyond a simple expounding of the science, but looks also at the political and social background to it. 

Click to read more ...

UKIP's second MP

So UKIP, the only political party in Britain that seems willing to question the sanity of energy or climate change policy, has got itself a second MP. How much has their stance on these issues played a part in their recent success?

Roger throws down the gauntlet

This morning Roger Harrabin has written something about the Green Climate Fund, the latest wheeze for moving money from the pockets of poor people in rich countries to those of rich people in poor countries, while allowing environmentalists to take their cut. No surprise there.

What was interesting was the way he describes the GWPF:

Benny Peiser from the fossil fuel lobby group GWPF said international climate finance for low carbon development was "a detrimental use of aid money".

A couple of days ago I wrote to Roger about his coverage of the ODI report into fossil fuel subsidies, pointing out that it was essentially a work of fiction. He was apparently too busy to look into the problems with it.

Go figure.

Update on Nov 20, 2014 by Bishop Hill

GWPF are being fairly blunt

@RHarrabin 'Char comm ruled it wasn't a think tank' - yet another Harrabin lie.

As is Ben Pile:

@RHarrabin Withdraw the lie, and give a fair, truthful description of the GWPF. IT is not an insult to point out that you have lied.

Update on Nov 21, 2014 by Bishop Hill

The article has now been stealth edited:

Benny Peiser from GWPF said international climate finance for low carbon development was "a detrimental use of aid money".

Movie Mann

Updated on Nov 20, 2014 by Bishop Hill

The new film Interstellar has been generating quite a lot of column inches in recent weeks, with many people noting that it features a data-falsifying scientist named Dr Mann. I was intrigued to note that the film's scientist adviser was Kip Thorne, a physicist from Caltech, and wondered what he and Richard Muller discussed at the coffee machine of a morning.

Anyway, while some people have pooh-poohed the idea that there is any connection between the fictional Dr Mann and the real one, it seems that the film's director Christopher Nolan is quite clear that there is:

Click to read more ...

Diary dates, short commons edition

It's very late notice, but Sir John Beddington is speaking in Edinburgh tonight.

Legacies of the 20th century and challenges for the 21st: our changing world enlightenment lecture.

Professor Sir John Beddington will discuss Climate Change and Food Security.  6.30 (doors open 6.15) – 8pm, McEwan Hall, Teviot Place, University of Edinburgh. Free tickets can be booked via eventbrite.

Schwartz on climate sensitivity

Stephen Schwartz et al have published a paper in a journal called Earth's Future that reviews and considers the recent low estimates of climate sensitivity, wondering what the divergence of the different estimates might mean:

Earth's equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) and forcing of Earth's climate system over the industrial era have been re-examined in two new assessments: the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and a study by A. Otto and others (Nature Geosci., 2013). The ranges of these quantities given in these assessments and also in the Fourth (2007) IPCC Assessment are analyzed here within the framework of a planetary energy balance model, taking into account the observed increase in global mean surface temperature over the instrumental record together with best estimates of the rate of increase of planetary heat content. This analysis shows systematic differences among the several assessments and apparent inconsistencies within individual assessments. Importantly, the likely range of ECS to doubled CO₂ given in AR5, 1.5 to 4.5 K/(3.7 W m^-2) exceeds the range inferred from the assessed likely range of forcing, 1.2 to 2.9 K/(3.7 W m⁻²), where 3.7 W m⁻² denotes the forcing for doubled CO₂. Such differences underscore the need to identify their causes and reduce the underlying uncertainties. Explanations might involve underestimated negative aerosol forcing, overestimated total forcing, overestimated climate sensitivity, poorly constrained ocean heating, limitations of the energy balance model, or a combination of effects.

Summary: Recent assessments of Earth's climate sensitivity and forcings over the industrial period, taking into account the observed increase in global mean surface temperature and rate of increase of planetary heat content, exhibit differences and apparent inconsistencies.

A panel debate

I was in St Andrews yesterday, appearing at a discussion/debate for third year students in the Earth Sciences department. We were discussing the usefulness of climate models as policy tools (a subject I had suggested, as it involved the least work for me!) The event was hosted by Dr Tim Hill and putting a more mainstream view was Rob Wilson, although I think our views were probably too close to really create any fireworks. Rob's nuanced views on the climate debate also seemed to have rubbed off on his students, as although there was some close questioning at the end there was none of the outright hostility that one sometimes gets on these occasions.

Thanks to Rob and Tim for lunch and an interesting afternoon.

Tip drive November 2014

It's a long time since I've done a tip drive, so I think it's time to dust off the tip box again. It's over there in the right-hand column.

Help keep the BH show on the road!

Overoptimistic

Here's an interesting little detail from the National Grid report on capacity margins that I wrote about a few weeks back.

It seems we have windfarms with a nameplate capacity of 7.6GW. National Grid obviously then have to derate this capacity for planning purposes. As we all know, it's perfectly normal for the whole of the UK to simultaneously experience very low windspeeds (or no wind at all), and this has been known to happen even in the depths of winter, for example the very cold winters of 2009/10 and 2010/11. I had therefore assumed that the Grid would have to plan on the basis that they might get nothing from windfarms at all, but in fact they do nothing of the sort. According to Table 16, the grid assumes that they will get 23% of nameplate capacity, or some 1.7GW.

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They all lived together in a little crooked house

Brandon Shollenberger's latest piece about the Skeptical Science crew is simply astonishing. If true, he has uncovered dishonesty on an industrial scale.

John Cook’s tendency to use made up quotes seems to have been a constant problem for Skeptical Science. At one point, people in their forum had to go through over a hundred web pages to check quotes he posted because so many of his “quotes” weren’t real.

Green disinformation: worse than we thought

The other day, I mentioned a report by a pair of NGOs on the subject of fossil fuel subsidies, noting that the usual suspects in the mainstream media had failed to mention that in the UK oil companies are subject to a supertax on top of the Corporation Tax to which all companies in the country are subject.

It now seems that the report was even more misleading than we thought.

The report by Oil Change International is a complete distortion of facts. The authors have described as “subsidies” normal deductions of expenses and capital costs from revenues for calculation of taxable income. These are procedures which are followed in all fiscal systems in all countries for all forms of business and investment endeavors. Under normal definitions of “subsidy” the United States has no subsidies for the oil and gas industry which is why Obama has taken no steps to reduce them.

I wonder if Roger Harrabin is going to investigate?

Why does Lord Deben misreport the science of extreme weather?

Updated on Nov 17, 2014 by Bishop Hill

The appointment of Lord Deben as the government's chief adviser on climate change matters was always something of a nonsense. As somebody who knows little or nothing of science, let alone climatology, his appointment was always more about sending out messages to target voters than the provision of meaningful or useful information. As if to underline the point, the noble lord has sent out a tweet today on the subject of extreme weather:

Pity it takes American to tell #Abbott truth about Australia. Climate change makes extreme weather worse & #coal is a cause.

Click to read more ...

Energiesuspende

GWPF have some pretty amazing news from Germany. It seems that the powers that be in Berlin have finally recognised that their energy policies are a busted flush. If the story in Der Spiegel is correct then the country is going to cancel its decarbonisation targets forthwith.