GWPF
"The owners of most of Shetland’s wind turbines are facing uncertainty after the leading installer Shetland Wind Power went into administration on Friday. A dozen or more employees at the company’s bases at the Greenhead in Lerwick and in Glasgow have been made redundant by administrators KPMG."
Monday, 14 November 2011
Leaked Text of IPCC Extremes Report
Roger Pielke, Jr.
"After working for more than a decade on this issue with many colleagues around the world, it is indeed satisfying to see the climate science community on the brink of finally get this topic right, after botching it at almost every previous opportunity. But before declaring victory, it is worth noting Black's expectation that governments will be pressing for different conclusions because money is at stake: ....."
"After working for more than a decade on this issue with many colleagues around the world, it is indeed satisfying to see the climate science community on the brink of finally get this topic right, after botching it at almost every previous opportunity. But before declaring victory, it is worth noting Black's expectation that governments will be pressing for different conclusions because money is at stake: ....."
Sunday, 13 November 2011
German Professor Slams Global Warming Science – Calls Mann’s Hockey Stick “A Very Very Nasty Fabrication”
NoTricksZone
"Michael Krüger at our friends Science Skeptical brings us this jewel of German dissent. Professor Dr. rer. nat. Richard Dronskowski at Aachen Unisversity brings loud applause from what appears to be a lecture hall full of his students as he slams the AGW science and the hucksters behind it." (video)
"Michael Krüger at our friends Science Skeptical brings us this jewel of German dissent. Professor Dr. rer. nat. Richard Dronskowski at Aachen Unisversity brings loud applause from what appears to be a lecture hall full of his students as he slams the AGW science and the hucksters behind it." (video)
Saturday, 12 November 2011
The BBC reveals how Blair’s 'multi-billion-pound gaffe’ may triple our electricity bills
Christopher Booker,Telegraph
"I would not have wished it on anyone to sit through last Monday’s laborious Panorama, entitled “Who’s Fuelling the Rise in Your Fuel Bills?”, but two things about it were remarkable. One was that it was the first BBC programme, as far as I know, to admit that electricity from wind turbines is “eye-wateringly more expensive” than that from conventional power stations. According to one estimate cited by Panorama, Chris Huhne’s wish for us to spend £200 billion on renewable energy in the next nine years could triple our electricity bills, pushing millions more households into “fuel poverty”.
The programme’s other startling feature was an interview with Sir David King, formerly Tony Blair’s chief scientific adviser. This confirmed that in March 2007, the prime minister had made “a multi-billion-pound gaffe” when he signed us up to the European Council’s historic commitment that, by 2020, the EU would derive 20 per cent of its energy from renewable sources. What Blair did not realise, as he and the EU’s political leaders argued “until two or three in the morning” without their technical advisers, was that “energy” includes many things, such as gas for heating, which cannot be derived from renewables.
A Treasury official explained to Panorama that they had worked out that Britain could not hope to generate more than 15 per cent of its electricity from renewables. But Blair recklessly signed up to a target which meant that 32 per cent of our electricity would have to come from renewables, which would be fantastically expensive were it even feasible. By the time King and Blair’s other advisers learnt what he had let us in for, it was too late.
The programme ended with the ineffable Mr Huhne assuring us that “the overall effect of government policy will be to lower bills”. Even the BBC was clearly not convinced."
"I would not have wished it on anyone to sit through last Monday’s laborious Panorama, entitled “Who’s Fuelling the Rise in Your Fuel Bills?”, but two things about it were remarkable. One was that it was the first BBC programme, as far as I know, to admit that electricity from wind turbines is “eye-wateringly more expensive” than that from conventional power stations. According to one estimate cited by Panorama, Chris Huhne’s wish for us to spend £200 billion on renewable energy in the next nine years could triple our electricity bills, pushing millions more households into “fuel poverty”.
The programme’s other startling feature was an interview with Sir David King, formerly Tony Blair’s chief scientific adviser. This confirmed that in March 2007, the prime minister had made “a multi-billion-pound gaffe” when he signed us up to the European Council’s historic commitment that, by 2020, the EU would derive 20 per cent of its energy from renewable sources. What Blair did not realise, as he and the EU’s political leaders argued “until two or three in the morning” without their technical advisers, was that “energy” includes many things, such as gas for heating, which cannot be derived from renewables.
A Treasury official explained to Panorama that they had worked out that Britain could not hope to generate more than 15 per cent of its electricity from renewables. But Blair recklessly signed up to a target which meant that 32 per cent of our electricity would have to come from renewables, which would be fantastically expensive were it even feasible. By the time King and Blair’s other advisers learnt what he had let us in for, it was too late.
The programme ended with the ineffable Mr Huhne assuring us that “the overall effect of government policy will be to lower bills”. Even the BBC was clearly not convinced."
Heresy
Matt Ridley /WSJ
"My latest Wall Street Journal Mind and Matter column:
The list of scientific heretics who were persecuted for their radical ideas but eventually proved right keeps getting longer. Last month, Daniel Shechtman won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of quasicrystals, having spent much of his career being told he was wrong.
"I was thrown out of my research group. They said I brought shame on them with what I was saying," he recalled, adding that the doyen of chemistry, the late Linus Pauling, had denounced the theory with the words: "There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists."
The Australian medical scientist Barry Marshall, who hypothesized that a bacterial infection causes stomach ulcers, received similar treatment and was taken seriously only when he deliberately infected himself, then cured himself with antibiotics in 1984. Eventually, he too won the Nobel Prize.
Drs. Shechtman and Marshall are on a distinguished list. Galileo, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein all had to run the gauntlet of conventional wisdom in the scientific establishment. For a profession whose very product is new knowledge, science seems strangely resistant to novelty.
In the 1840s, Ignaz Semmelweiss's lonely battle to get the medical establishment to accept that doctors were spreading childbed fever from mother to mother cost him his job and his sanity (though his prickly personality didn't help). Alec Gordon, a doctor in Aberdeen, Scotland, had failed in the same quest five decades before."
"My latest Wall Street Journal Mind and Matter column:
The list of scientific heretics who were persecuted for their radical ideas but eventually proved right keeps getting longer. Last month, Daniel Shechtman won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of quasicrystals, having spent much of his career being told he was wrong.
"I was thrown out of my research group. They said I brought shame on them with what I was saying," he recalled, adding that the doyen of chemistry, the late Linus Pauling, had denounced the theory with the words: "There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists."
The Australian medical scientist Barry Marshall, who hypothesized that a bacterial infection causes stomach ulcers, received similar treatment and was taken seriously only when he deliberately infected himself, then cured himself with antibiotics in 1984. Eventually, he too won the Nobel Prize.
Drs. Shechtman and Marshall are on a distinguished list. Galileo, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein all had to run the gauntlet of conventional wisdom in the scientific establishment. For a profession whose very product is new knowledge, science seems strangely resistant to novelty.
In the 1840s, Ignaz Semmelweiss's lonely battle to get the medical establishment to accept that doctors were spreading childbed fever from mother to mother cost him his job and his sanity (though his prickly personality didn't help). Alec Gordon, a doctor in Aberdeen, Scotland, had failed in the same quest five decades before."
Renewable Energy: Bubble, Scam or Both?
GWPF
"Crony Capitalism, Green Energy Division: The lead story in today’s New York Times is a devastating look at solar and wind power subsidies. Too bad it appears on a Saturday when fewer people will read it (which may not be a coincidence). The print hed and sub-hed tell it better than the online version: “Rich Subsidies Powering Solar and Wind Projects: Big Rise in Government Aid—Companies Are Virtually Assured of Profits.” It’s worth reading the whole thing to soak in the outrageousness of the whole scene, but this graph gives a worthy summary:
The government support — which includes loan guarantees, cash grants and contracts that require electric customers to pay higher rates — largely eliminated the risk to the private investors and almost guaranteed them large profits for years to come. The beneficiaries include financial firms like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, conglomerates like General Electric, utilities like Exelon and NRG — even Google. "
"Crony Capitalism, Green Energy Division: The lead story in today’s New York Times is a devastating look at solar and wind power subsidies. Too bad it appears on a Saturday when fewer people will read it (which may not be a coincidence). The print hed and sub-hed tell it better than the online version: “Rich Subsidies Powering Solar and Wind Projects: Big Rise in Government Aid—Companies Are Virtually Assured of Profits.” It’s worth reading the whole thing to soak in the outrageousness of the whole scene, but this graph gives a worthy summary:
The government support — which includes loan guarantees, cash grants and contracts that require electric customers to pay higher rates — largely eliminated the risk to the private investors and almost guaranteed them large profits for years to come. The beneficiaries include financial firms like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, conglomerates like General Electric, utilities like Exelon and NRG — even Google. "
Friday, 11 November 2011
Shock news: trees grow better in a warmer climate with more carbon dioxide
WUWT
"The geniuses at Columbia University’s Lamont -Doherty Earth Observatory have discovered Liebigs Law of the Minimum. The tree researcher exclaims: “I was expecting to see trees stressed from the warmer temperatures,”…“What we found was a surprise.”
"The geniuses at Columbia University’s Lamont -Doherty Earth Observatory have discovered Liebigs Law of the Minimum. The tree researcher exclaims: “I was expecting to see trees stressed from the warmer temperatures,”…“What we found was a surprise.”
Thursday, 10 November 2011
Water from thin air: Aussie Ed's Airdrop an international hit
SMH
"An Australian designer has beaten 500 inventors to win a £10,000 international prize for his beetle-inspired device that is capable of extracting water from even the driest desert air. With global temperatures continuing to rise and droughts set to become more severe, a device capable of literally pulling water out of thin air is likely to have significant global applications."
ED: Useful when it stops raining....More than 500 homes in South Australia's Riverland will be without power for another night after severe storms downed powerlines on Wednesday afternoon. ....ETSA spokesman Paul Roberts says crews are working to remove power poles and wires from beneath large trees."There will be possibly between 500 and 1000 customers who we won't be able to restore power to tonight. We're continuing to work very hard to try and restore that power but the sheer weight of numbers of the jobs and tasks means it's just going to be impossible," he said."
"An Australian designer has beaten 500 inventors to win a £10,000 international prize for his beetle-inspired device that is capable of extracting water from even the driest desert air. With global temperatures continuing to rise and droughts set to become more severe, a device capable of literally pulling water out of thin air is likely to have significant global applications."
ED: Useful when it stops raining....More than 500 homes in South Australia's Riverland will be without power for another night after severe storms downed powerlines on Wednesday afternoon. ....ETSA spokesman Paul Roberts says crews are working to remove power poles and wires from beneath large trees."There will be possibly between 500 and 1000 customers who we won't be able to restore power to tonight. We're continuing to work very hard to try and restore that power but the sheer weight of numbers of the jobs and tasks means it's just going to be impossible," he said."
The great offsets scam begins
Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun (Australia)
"Most of the Gillard Government’s planned cuts to our emissions actually involves paying foreigners to cut their own. From 2020, we’ll be spending more than $3 billion a year on foreign carbon credits, rising to an astonishing $57 billion a year by 2050, according to Treasury modelling.
If you think this is an invitation to be ripped off, then you won’t be surprised by this:
An environmental group has accused China of climate blackmail after threats to vent powerful greenhouse gases if Europe cuts off carbon credits next year. The row over hydrofluorocarbon-23 offsets – which have a much greater warming effect than carbon dioxide and linger in the atmosphere for 200 years – has intensified before international climate negotiations in Durban this month.
Since 2005, Chinese firms have received the bulk of the $6bn in carbon credits for the reduction of these gases, which are produced in the manufacturing of refrigerant chemicals. The money has mostly come from European firms that have bought the offsets under the clean development mechanism, but this source of funding will come to an end next year. The EU has banned HFC-23 offsets because they are inefficient: the value of credits is 70 times the cost of destroying HFC-23 gases.
There are also widespread suspicions that Chinese and Korean firms have cynically created hydrofluorocarbon facilities in order to qualify for credits, which can generate twice as much income as selling the refrigerant. But Europe’s decision has angered Chinese officials responsible for administering the system, which has generated $1.3bn in tax revenues for the state.
The China Clean Development Mechanism Fund warned last week that the loss of income would force HFC producers to cut costs. “If there’s no trading of [HFC-23] credits, they’ll stop incinerating the gases” said Xie Fei, the fund’s revenue management director. "
"Most of the Gillard Government’s planned cuts to our emissions actually involves paying foreigners to cut their own. From 2020, we’ll be spending more than $3 billion a year on foreign carbon credits, rising to an astonishing $57 billion a year by 2050, according to Treasury modelling.
If you think this is an invitation to be ripped off, then you won’t be surprised by this:
An environmental group has accused China of climate blackmail after threats to vent powerful greenhouse gases if Europe cuts off carbon credits next year. The row over hydrofluorocarbon-23 offsets – which have a much greater warming effect than carbon dioxide and linger in the atmosphere for 200 years – has intensified before international climate negotiations in Durban this month.
Since 2005, Chinese firms have received the bulk of the $6bn in carbon credits for the reduction of these gases, which are produced in the manufacturing of refrigerant chemicals. The money has mostly come from European firms that have bought the offsets under the clean development mechanism, but this source of funding will come to an end next year. The EU has banned HFC-23 offsets because they are inefficient: the value of credits is 70 times the cost of destroying HFC-23 gases.
There are also widespread suspicions that Chinese and Korean firms have cynically created hydrofluorocarbon facilities in order to qualify for credits, which can generate twice as much income as selling the refrigerant. But Europe’s decision has angered Chinese officials responsible for administering the system, which has generated $1.3bn in tax revenues for the state.
The China Clean Development Mechanism Fund warned last week that the loss of income would force HFC producers to cut costs. “If there’s no trading of [HFC-23] credits, they’ll stop incinerating the gases” said Xie Fei, the fund’s revenue management director. "
What Hath Kyoto Wrought?
WUWT
"It is obvious from this data that economic depression causes a reduction in CO2 emissions. What has not been so obvious to the Kyoto folks is that the converse is true—forcibly reducing CO2 emissions comes at a cost to the economy."
---------------------
Hellfire destroy the unbeliever (Video)
"It is obvious from this data that economic depression causes a reduction in CO2 emissions. What has not been so obvious to the Kyoto folks is that the converse is true—forcibly reducing CO2 emissions comes at a cost to the economy."
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Hellfire destroy the unbeliever (Video)
Wednesday, 9 November 2011
The IPCC’s Fake Review Editor
Donna Laframboise (Canada)
"But it turns out there’s a far more serious problem with Chapter 3. It lists includes a fake review editor – the people who are supposed to ensure that feedback solicited from external experts receives proper attention at the IPCC.
Over at his ClimateAudit blog, Steve McIntyre wrote about this more than a year ago but I missed it. A Freedom of Information request filed by retired UK engineer David Holland turned up an October 2006 e-mail from Kevin Trenberth, who was one of the coordinating lead authors of Chapter 3 (aka one of the two people in charge). It says, in part:
I am writing to protest the inclusion of Bubu Pateh Jallow as Review Editor…He played no role whatsoever in our chapter. He did not attend any meetings, he did not answer email and he should NOT be listed in my view."
"But it turns out there’s a far more serious problem with Chapter 3. It lists includes a fake review editor – the people who are supposed to ensure that feedback solicited from external experts receives proper attention at the IPCC.
Over at his ClimateAudit blog, Steve McIntyre wrote about this more than a year ago but I missed it. A Freedom of Information request filed by retired UK engineer David Holland turned up an October 2006 e-mail from Kevin Trenberth, who was one of the coordinating lead authors of Chapter 3 (aka one of the two people in charge). It says, in part:
I am writing to protest the inclusion of Bubu Pateh Jallow as Review Editor…He played no role whatsoever in our chapter. He did not attend any meetings, he did not answer email and he should NOT be listed in my view."
Tuesday, 8 November 2011
The Durban Game
WUWT
"So when the developed world asks India and China and Brazil and Indonesia to cut back on carbon emissions, we’re asking them to cut back on developing their country’s health and well-being and infrastructure and manufacturing … ...What will happen in Durban is that the developing countries will pull out all of the stops to convince the developed world to give them money. We’ll hear endless heart-wrenching stories of climate refugees and dying reefs and ecological zones being uprooted and moved polewards without so much as a by-your-leave. And not forgetting, people in polar bear suits. Can’t have a UN Climate Change Carnival without polar bears."
"So when the developed world asks India and China and Brazil and Indonesia to cut back on carbon emissions, we’re asking them to cut back on developing their country’s health and well-being and infrastructure and manufacturing … ...What will happen in Durban is that the developing countries will pull out all of the stops to convince the developed world to give them money. We’ll hear endless heart-wrenching stories of climate refugees and dying reefs and ecological zones being uprooted and moved polewards without so much as a by-your-leave. And not forgetting, people in polar bear suits. Can’t have a UN Climate Change Carnival without polar bears."
Monday, 7 November 2011
Credibility Of EU Energy Modelling In Doubt
GWPF
"The credibility of a European energy review has been cast into doubt by experts who point out that long-term plans to cut carbon emissions are based on an economic model owned by a single Greek university that cannot be independently scrutinised."
"The credibility of a European energy review has been cast into doubt by experts who point out that long-term plans to cut carbon emissions are based on an economic model owned by a single Greek university that cannot be independently scrutinised."
Scrapping wind farms in favour of nuclear and gas will save each of us £550
Daily Mail
"Shelving expensive wind farms in favour of cheaper nuclear and gas-fired power stations would save every Briton almost £550, it is claimed. Government plans to cut pollution by a third by 2020 rely heavily on wind power and will cost £108billion to implement, an accountancy firm has calculated. But shifting the emphasis away from turbines and towards nuclear and gas-fired power stations would slash the bill by £34billion, according to KPMG. This equates to around £550 for every person in the country."
"Shelving expensive wind farms in favour of cheaper nuclear and gas-fired power stations would save every Briton almost £550, it is claimed. Government plans to cut pollution by a third by 2020 rely heavily on wind power and will cost £108billion to implement, an accountancy firm has calculated. But shifting the emphasis away from turbines and towards nuclear and gas-fired power stations would slash the bill by £34billion, according to KPMG. This equates to around £550 for every person in the country."
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