Diary dates, CCS edition

Sense About Science has an online Q&A on the subject of carbon capture and storage later this week.

The UK is committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80% by 2050. Achieving this target will undoubtedly require a decreased reliance on the burning of fossil fuels. However, another question has been garnering more and more interest: is it possible to make coal and gas cleaner?

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology extracts the waste carbon dioxide from power plants before storing it deep below the earth’s surface. Supporters claim that CCS can capture 90% of the CO₂ produced from burning coal and gas, while the IPCC has highlighted the considerable potential of CCS for mitigating greenhouse gas levels over the coming century.

But CCS certainly isn’t the finished article. Only a handful of CCS systems of commercial scale are currently in operation globally, and numerous projects have been scrapped in the last few years. Opponents argue that CCS is too costly, encourages fossil fuel burning, and diverts money away from other avenues of carbon mitigation. Some have also raised concerns over the reliability of the carbon stores: what happens if they leak?

To help make sense of carbon capture technologies we're hosting a live online Q&A on Thursday 22^nd October 2015 between midday and 1pm. Our expert panel (Dr Niall MacDowell, Dr Clair Gough and Professor Colin Snape) will answer questions. How does CCS actually work? Will it ever be affordable? Is it safe to keep the captured CO₂ underground?

If you want to ask a question then contact us via Twitter, @senseaboutsci using #energypanel, email us at energy@senseaboutscience.org or use our online form.

The man the Royal Society honoured not once but twice

There is a man that the Royal Society has chosen to honour not once but twice: first with a Wolfson Merit Award, and second with his own volume of their flagship journal. This post is about that man.

The man the Royal Society honoured not once but twice wrote a paper claiming that global warming sceptics believed that the moon landings were a hoax. This was despite the fact that his survey data had been collected at stridently anti-sceptic blogs. Worse,  his data showed precisely the opposite of what he claimed (and leaving aside that only ten of his 1145 respondents believed in the moon hoax anyway). Yes really - the man the Royal Society honoured not once but twice wrote a paper the title of which was completely, utterly and obviously refuted by his own data. This is a man who lied about the participants in his survey, the people who had given their time for scientific research.

Click to read more ...

Don't blame the sulphates

A new paper in Climate Dynamics examines the hypothesis that the indirect effects of aerosols (aka pollution) has been behind the hiatus/pause/thing-with-no-name/non-existent-thing that has, or has not, been affecting the global temperature average for the best part of two decades.

Andrew Gettelmann and colleagues focus on sulfate aerosols and plug revised forcing figures into climate models to see if this can bridge the gap to the temperature records. Unfortunately the answer seems to be a pretty firm "no".

Sulfate aerosol emissions increase globally from 2000 to 2005, and then decrease slightly to 2010. Thus the change in anthropogenic sulfate induced net global radiative forcing is small over the period. Sulfate ACI might be a contributor to the spatial patterns of recent temperature forcing, but not to the global mean ‘hiatus’ itself.

Of course there is always the possibility - or likelihood - that the models just can't simulate the cloud-aerosol interactions properly. Nevertheless, if they do then another explanation for the pause has been ticked off and the mystery deepens.

Remember when Nature was a science journal?

Climate change: Climate justice more vital than democracy

Title of new paper published in Nature

I can still remember the days when Nature magazine was about science.

Update on Oct 15, 2015 by Bishop Hill

Great minds...

Orac takes on @NatureNews for their propagation of quackery. Remeber when @Nature used to be a science magazine http://t.co/Vaq642LcCb

— David Colquhoun (@david_colquhoun) October 15, 2015

He gets all his best stuff from me. ;-)

Top French weatherman suspended for forbidden views

France's top weatherman, Philippe Verdier has been suspended from work for publishing a book about climate change which suggests that the IPCC might be just a tad unreliable and more than a little politicised.

In his book, the author, who rejects the term "climate sceptic", notes "the many happy and positive consequences of global warming." It also highlights scientific uncertainty... [he] speaks of "manipulated science", "blinded media", "mercantile NGOs" and "religions in search of new creeds."

It will be Île du Diable for him then.

Anti-everything Joss the boss

Utility week is reporting that Joss Garman is going to move from the woolly-left IPPR to become head of policy for Lisa Nandy, the shadow energy and climate minister. Garman has come a long way since he organised mass-trespass and criminal damage at airports.

His stance on energy should provide everyone with plenty of entertainment. He is anti-nuclear, anti-coal and anti-gas, for example, leading one to wonder if Labour's policy on energy security is going to involve a great deal of finger-crossing.

He also has an eyebrow raising attitude to factual accuracy. Take for example this piece, about alleged risks of "explosions" under houses located near unconventional gas wells:

Cuadrilla pursues its foe

Shale gas pioneers Cuadrilla have complained to the Charities Commission and the Advertising Standards Authority about the behaviour of Friends of the Earth, whose campaign of lies and disinformation about unconventional gas has been a favourite topic at BH.

The boss of fracking firm Cuadrilla is calling on the Charity Commission to put a stop to the “wilfully misleading” and “scaremongering” claims in fundraising material pumped out by FoE.

The Advertising Standards Authority is also being asked to block the claims.

My money would be on a wholesale rejection of the complaints, no matter how valid they might be. Blind adherence to the green faith is so ingrained in most of our institutions that I don't look to them for the truth or for justice.

Royal Society: "Please give it up for the rogues"

In a move no doubt timed to coincide with the Paris climate conference, the Royal Society's Phil Trans A has decided to hand over a full issue to that pillar of scientific integrity Stefan Lewandowsky.

You can imagine the calibre of author that Lew has chosen to enlighten us. There's Naomi Oreskes. There's James Risbey of "let's just's make stuff up about climate sensitivity" fame. There's a guy from the Environmental Defense Fund. Quite the collection of rogues and an astonishing step for an allegedly scientific journal to take.

The willingness of academic institutions to stand behind wrongdoers is always a wonder to behold. Why do they do it?

Yeo sueshi

The BBC is reporting that Tim Yeo is going to sue the Sunday Times over its 2013 allegation that he was influence peddling for green companies.

I can't see this ending well.

Diary dates, megadeath edition

The Edinburgh Geological Society has a lecture on 25 November about ocean acidification.

At the boundary of the Permian and Triassic, ~252 million years ago, is the greatest mass extinction documented, where we estimate that more than 90% of Earth’s species died. The “PT” or 'Great Dying' hit marine species the hardest - killing off, for instance, the once ubiquitous trilobites.

Recent work has shown that ocean acidification triggered by Siberian Trap volcanism was a possible kill mechanism for this mass extinction. We present a high-resolution seawater pH record across this interval, using boron isotope data from the UAE combined with a quantitative modelling approach. In the latest Permian, increased ocean alkalinity primed the Earth system with a low level of atmospheric CO2 and a high ocean buffering capacity. The first phase of extinction was coincident with a slow injection of carbon into the atmosphere, and ocean pH remained stable. During the second extinction pulse, however, a rapid and large injection of carbon caused an abrupt acidification event that drove the preferential loss of heavily calcified marine biota.

As such, the extinction holds a cautionary lesson for today: because of CO2 released by burning fossil fuels, oceans could now be acidifying even faster than they did 250 million years ago, although the process hasn’t yet persisted nearly as long.

Details here.

Has the BBC banned all non-alarmist views?

Peter Lilley has just issued the following press release.

BBC PUTS IMPARTIALITY AT RISK BY ATTEMPTS TO CENSOR AND DISCREDIT MPs

The BBC is undermining its reputation for impartiality by apologising for “giving a voice” to two MPs and by putting a ‘health warning’ on the BBC website casting doubt on their credibility – even though the accuracy of what they said is not disputed: says Peter Lilley MP in a letter to the Director General.  

He added: “It is particularly outrageous that the BBC should try to discredit the only two scientifically qualified MPs who served on the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee; absurd to suggest my views are “outside the scientific consensus” when I said on the programme that I accept the proven science of global warming though my views on the likely amount of warming are at the “lukewarm” end of the range given by the IPCC; thoroughly unscientific to claim the Met Office views are upheld by scientists when, on the matter under discussion, their predictions had been falsified; and discourteous to publish these insulting and untrue remarks without even informing me.”

The letter in full:

Click to read more ...

Justiciable climate?

Attempts by environmentalists to gain an advantage in the climate wars through the courts continue to attract the interest of commentators, particularly those on the sceptic side. Judith Curry has a review of some recent developments and Booker was discussing similar questions behind the Sunday Telegraph's paywall over the weekend.

I'm unsure about just how far the legal system is going to accept the kinds of cases that the greens are hoping for. It may well be that it depends on the particular jurisdiction. Philippe Sands reckons that because international courts involved themselves in the question of whether the Japanese whaling programme was scientific, they can (and should) involve themselves in questions of climate change. This seems an almost preposterously weak argument for a senior lawyer to make. Whether some activity is scientific or not is a question of categorisation - quite different to questions such as "What is the value of climate sensitivity?"

Click to read more ...

Is good news actually news at all?

Over the weekend there was a minor kerfuffle when the Sunday Times' Jonathan Leake breached the embargo on a press release about the latest GWPF report. Ho hum.

The report itself is by Indur Goklany and is about the benefits of higher carbon dioxide levels - increased crop yields and a general greening of the planet being the principal ones. Richard Betts has been taking a look and has come up with some interesting and some not so interesting points.

For example, he reckons that Goklany is inconsistent, accepting climate model predictions of a reduced threat from water shortages but pointing to the failures of climate models in general. This doesn't seem an unreasonable point to make, although neither do I think it unreasonable of Goklany to point out that even the models, flawed though they may be, are predicting benefits from global warming.

Richard also notes that the IPCC discusses carbon dioxide fertilisation in its reports and reckons Goklany's contribution is therefore not newsworthy.

CO2 fertilization is already considered in IPCC reports http://t.co/h9OXFLMmrm http://t.co/DkisNAsla6 #notnews https://t.co/xyzuHYg1Vp

— Richard Betts (@richardabetts) October 11, 2015

This is true, but I'm not sure that represents a criticism of Goklany's report. I'm struggling to recall an occasion on which the IPCC has proclaimed the benefits of higher carbon dioxide levels to the general public, so the new report represents a valuable contribution to the public debate, filling in the bits the IPCC didn't want to discuss in public.

I hope Richard welcomes the public gaining a deeper understanding of climate science, both the bad news and the good news.

Guenier on Sands

Those following the recent developments on the "law and climate" front will be interested in the article at Paul Matthews' site from Robin Guenier.

The perils of delegation

As a follow up to the last posting, consider this excerpt from the Guardian article by Client Earth director James Thornton (pictured above on a long-haul holiday):

The most obvious liabilities for companies and their directors relate to physical loss or damage. The residents of Tuvalu in the Pacific and Kivalina in Alaska, whose homes are disappearing beneath rising waters, have both threatened challenges against polluters.

Follow the Tuvalu link to its source and you find a national Geographic Article entitled:

Will Pacific Island Nations Disappear as Seas Rise? Maybe Not

and which contains this:

Some islands grew by as much as 14 acres (5.6 hectares) in a single decade, and Tuvalu's main atoll, Funafuti—33 islands distributed around the rim of a large lagoon—has gained 75 acres (32 hectares) of land during the past 115 years.

I wonder if Mr Thornton wrote the article himself?