Entries by Bishop Hill (6700)
Bishop Hill More heat than light
Oct 24, 2015 Energy: solar Does the sun shine all night in Australia? Are the new batteries a breakthrough? Over to you.
Bishop Hill Jennifer Marohasy tells it like it is
Oct 23, 2015 In an almost unprecedented meeting at the Australian Parliament on Monday, well-respected researcher and author Dr Jennifer Marohasy was invited, along with climate sceptic Bob Carter, to debate with three alarmist scientists. She was particularly emphasising the differences found between real world data and computer modelling and the need to disclose which was which.
Bishop Hill A load of gobbledegook?
Oct 23, 2015 IPCC Splendid little item on Inside Science last night on BBC Radio 4 9.21pm or so which made me laugh, in which Adam Rutherford interviewed Ralf Barkemeyer, Associate Professor of Corporate Social Responsibility at the Kedge Business School. Being interested in the interface between science and policy, he has made an analysis of the ”linguistic readability” of the IPPC summaries, which are, of course, intended for policy makers. He was looking at such things as the length of words and sentences used and the overall comprehensibility expressed as a percentage, for a non-specialist reader.
In comparison, the linguistic readability of a theoretical physics paper was 30-35% for a layman to read, while the IPPC summaries received the very low score of 20% comprehensibility.
Is anyone surprised, and is it deliberate obfuscation or just a badly thought out mess? TM
Bishop Hill Heaven and Hell
Oct 23, 2015 Climate: Sceptics A new book by Professor Ian Plimer is published today.
HEAVEN AND HELL: THE POPE CONDEMNS THE POOR TO ETERNAL POVERTY (Connor Court Publishing Pty Ltd)
Summary: The recent papal Encyclical was on climate and the environment. This book criticises the Encyclical and shows that we have never lived in better times, that cheap fossil fuel energy has and is continuing to bring hundreds of millions of people from peasant poverty to the middle class and that the alleged dangerous global warming is a myth.
Bishop Hill More hot water
Oct 22, 2015 https://mygardenpond.wordpress.com/2015/10/22/soviet-era-cartoon/
In case you missed it- posted as a comment by Ruth Dixon
Bishop Hill Non sequitur
Oct 22, 2015 Energy: wind A free map containing the most detailed publicly available information on global wind energy potential has been launched this week…
…Lars Christian Lilleholt, Danish minister for energy, utilities and climate, said the new tool will help the wind energy sector to expand by curbing risks and costs for developers around the world.
"The release of the Global Wind Atlas demonstrates the support of the international community to expand global renewable energy to address global climate change, increase electricity access and stimulate economic development," he said in a statement.
Spot the non sequitur.
Bishop Hill Climate Neutral
Oct 22, 2015 Climate: other UN The UN climate people have got their tentacles everywhere.
Bonn, 20 October 2015 - The Brazilian Embassy in London hosted a special event today to mark the launch of Climate Neutral Now, the UN-led initiative for increased voluntary climate action, which took place during New York Climate Week in September.
The London event discussed how individuals, companies and governments can contribute to a climate-neutral future by measuring their carbon footprints, reducing emissions where possible, and offsetting the rest with UN-certified emission reductions (CERs), while at the same time investing in sustainable development projects in developing countries. Keynote speakers included representatives from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Brazilian government and the private sector.
Participants at the event heard inspiring examples, such as the successful experiences of the Brazilian government in using CERs to offset carbon emissions from major events. A short film commissioned by the UN climate change secretariat on offsetting the 2014 World Cup’s carbon footprint was also screened. See below.
Bishop Hill Getting into hot water
Oct 21, 2015 Energy: biomass As part of their aim to become “carbon neutral” or something equally daft, the University of St Andrews is planning to close the road to Dundee and to the station at Leuchars for several months in the New Year, requiring diversions of at least three extra miles, while they run a water pipe under the road from their new biomass plant four miles away from St Andrews. They intend to generate hot water which will be piped the four miles to heat university buildings and residences in town. The whole "green energy plant" is projected to cost £25 million pounds, £10 million from taxpayer via the Scottish government.
Can anyone give some informed opinion on whether this is possible while retaining enough of the heat to make it worthwhile? Presumably Icelandic district heating systems do something like this but what are the insulating materials used? Geothermal heat will make the whole process cheaper in Iceland than biomass (“fuel sourced from a radius of 50 miles” -until the trees run out) to be used here, as the Icelanders won't have to generate the heat in the first place. My initial thoughts were that the whole University idea is crackpot, but maybe I am wrong? TM
Bishop Hill
A shorter closure but further to drive than I had thought.
Residents and workers in North East Fife are being advised to expect travel disruption during early Spring 2016, when major pipe-laying works get underway on the main A919 Guardbridge to St Andrews road.
Fife Council will close the road, from 15 February 2016 to 8 April 2016, to allow 4 miles of water-pipe to be laid, connecting Guardbridge’s new £25 million Green Energy Centre with St Andrews, and providing the essential infrastructure for ongoing inward investment into Fife, job creation, and renewable energy production.
...diversions will be in place through Balmullo, adding an extra 7.5 miles to journeys north of St Andrews and south of St Michaels.
Bishop Hill
I am sure that there was talk of importing fuel from North America for the Glenrothes plant- it may be the 10% virgin wood they are talking about here.
The [Glenrothes} project was financed, in part, with an £8.1m Regional Selective Assistance grant from the Scottish Government and Forestry Commission Scotland has also helped underpin the investment with a long term contract for timber supply to the plant, providing 750,000 tonnes of timber over the next ten years.
The plant is fuelled by a mixture of 90 per cent recovered wood waste – primarily from the construction industry – which otherwise would end up in landfill sites, and ten per cent virgin wood sourced from a variety of sites across the UK.
When fully operational, the CHP will burn 400,000 tonnes of wood of both types in a fluidized bed boiler and flue gas system – that’s an estimated 67 wagon loads, (1500 tonnes per day) of waste wood supplied from storage plants, the nearest being Cardenden
RWE [npower] said the new contract would see Malcolm Logistics transport around a third of the overall fuel needed for the site by road from two local ports and RWE’s recently opened off-site processing facility at Cardenden..
Bishop Hill "Peak heat", peak nonsense
Oct 20, 2015 Deben Belatedly, a link from 6 October to John Gummer haranguing the Australians on their global warming policies, if you can bring yourself to watch and listen to it. Too many clichés to mention, from human caused floods in South Carolina to Australians having to think of their children and grandchildren....... Very feeble interviewer, no challenges and no attribution of the backgrounds of the people asking questions. TM
[Typos corrected. TM]
Bishop Hill Literary bits and pieces
Oct 20, 2015 Climate: HSI 
A couple of snippets on the subject of The Hockey Stick Illusion.
Firstly I am told by my publisher that they have sold the Japanese rights to the book. This is the first foreign language edition and it's surprising to see it coming after such a long time.
Meanwhile the book got a mention in the New York Times last week.
Bishop Hill O tempora, O mores, O M&S
Oct 19, 2015 Climate: solar Energy An announcement in Business Green
M and S, why do you do it? Are you believing that you are saving the planet, or merely encouraging your green customers to think how wonderful you are? Why are you involving children? (Don't answer that, I already know the answer).
Bishop Hill Green transformation?
Oct 19, 2015 See Mikky 9.39am and TinyCO2 at 10. 18 am on Off
I heard McGlade (Chief Scientist to the United Nations Environment Programme) as well, and was duly appalled, especially when she said that people don't just go for solar or wind subsidies because of the money, but because there is a "sense of pride" that Britain could be at the forefront of renewable energy. What alarmed me was the (?inadvertent ) slip that the intention of the programme was " to transform the whole of society".
Whatever next- taking people to court because they don't agree with the "consensus"- and then re-educating them until they do?
The only bright spot, during the hour before and no doubt with a much smaller audience, but surprising neverthless, was the report of comments by Dominic Lawson, which said that most of the reports on the collapse of the steel industry had omitted to point out part played by increased government green policies leading to distortion of industrial energy prices.
TM
Bishop Hill Bishop Hill Express on Lilley's letter
Oct 18, 2015 BBC Climate: Sceptics 
The Express has a report on Peter Lilley's letter to Lord Hall, which will no doubt be of interest to readers.
Peter Lilley, a long standing member of the energy and climate select committee, has made a formal complaint to director general Lord Hall after discovering that mandarins had issued an apology following claims he made that the effects of climate change were being exaggerated.
Appearing on BBC Radio 4’s ‘What’s the Point of The Met Office’, Mr Lilley stated that, while he “accepted the thesis that more CO2 in the atmosphere will marginally warm up the earth”, he questioned the assertion that global warming would be as dramatic as is being portrayed in some scientific circles.
You read it here first.