JoNova
A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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Statistics
I have posted up a few hours ago about Defining “Temperature Homogenisation”
The standard definition of temperature homogenisation is of a process that cleanses the temperature data of measurement biases to only leave only variations caused by real climatic or weather variations. This is at odds with GHCN & GISS adjustments which delete some data and add in other data as part of the homogenisation process. A more general definition is to make the data more homogeneous, for the purposes of creating regional and global average temperatures. This is only compatible with the standard definition if assume that there are no real data trends existing within the homogenisation area. From various studies it is clear that there are cases where this assumption does not hold good. The likely impacts include:-
– Homogenised data for a particular temperature station will not be the cleansed data for that location. Instead it becomes a grid reference point, encompassing data from the surrounding area.
– Different densities of temperature data may lead to different degrees to which homogenisation results in the smoothing of real climatic fluctuations.
I will post later on how this assumption may affect the global land surface temperature warming trends.
132
Kevin,
you show a fine analysis but I always wonder what is the aim of all this homogenization. If it is to reconcile the local problems with siting, instrument change, and obvious unforeseen and inexplicable temperature changes all well and good — note the changes and amend.
If it is to manufacture data to cover shortcomings in records, or to generate data for unknown localities then no it is wrong.
Basically if homogenization must be done it should be only for the site location, never should homogenization carry over from one location to another as temperature data is site specific. If you have no data, improve the instrumentation, the communications, or what ever is required. Homogenization over vast areas, as done currently is worthless exercise designed to hide both the lack of reliable data, and the lack of investment in the proper equipment. It also leaves the gate wide open for those less unscrupulous to manipulate the data to their preferred agenda requirements.
162
Tom,
It is assumed – without checking – that there are little or no natural local variations in temperature trends. So any variations between adjacent temperature stations are due to measurement biases. Homogenization becomes a method of data cleansing. However, this assumption does not hold, and the climate community does not check its results. If this is the case homogenization becomes more necessary, not less. Homogenizated data ceases to provide an estimate of what the thermometers would have read if they were free of biases. Instead the location becomes a grid reference point as part of building up regional and global average anomalies.
80
Precisely Kevin “It is assumed – without checking – that there are little or no natural local variations in temperature trends.”
And that would not be a difficult thing to check. Without proof that the method is valid at each site it is applied to, the resulting homogenized data is scientifically invalid.
Real science requires valid and verifiable data.
40
I’m not sure I agree, weather patterns are established by the terrain, and the constantly circulating fronts rotating around the poles from west to east. Clearly orbital mechanics establishes these patterns, so given a 43 degree day in Esperence I can pretty reliably establish what temp Ceduna will have the day later.
To the degree to which Esperence and Ceduna correlate, taking account of the lag, I could use the historical data of Esperence to predict Ceduna. I won’t be 100% right though, but maybe good enough to infill. I wouldn’t do it though, without a substantial correlation between the sites
The problem of course is really that we aren’t told how this is done or how good the correlation between the sites is. Nor do we know whether the correct lags are applied or indeed whether lags are used at all!
Clearly though Eucla, is not done very well since the probability of Eucla getting through December without a day over 30 is pretty close to 0.00.
31
bobl, I agree up to a point. Often we can predict temps tomorrow here in Melb. from what Adelaide had today for most practical purposes when a degree or three either way doesn’t matter. But we have BOM types and other would-bes pretending they can measure global temps to within tenths or hundreths of degrees by fudging local data that was never measured that precisely in the first place.
30
bobl,
Interesting point but also interesting was how the weather was observed to change over parts of the USA after the New York 9/11 tragedy, when most aircraft in America were grounded for a protracted period.
Just a weather effect or do aircraft have more profound effects on regional (macro)climate?
40
Kevin and Tomo, Anyone with eyes knows that there are significant differences in micro climates over a km or two. There is NO justification for homogenising temps from non-adjacent sites.
151
me@home,
Exactly.
Also changes over time affecting micro and macro climates happen. Changes such as the effects after a large forest fire can affect a fairly wide area, as will changes in urbanization, or farmers changing irrigation methods due to crop changes, etc., etc., all affect micro climates.
90
Interesting point!
I had assumed that microclimates would over time show temperature trends in line with other sites. I was thinking that heat must spread around over time and tend toward an equilibrium.
However some local changes in land use or topography could cause long term variations.
What is the impact of the Ord river irrigation scheme on the long term temperatures at Kununurra? It might be interesting to look at the records.
60
It’s interesting that a Dutch court has decided that global warming is real and the Dutch government do more to restrict their “greenhouse” gas emissions, and yet a British court decided that most of Al Gore’s assertions about global warming were not factual and his book should not be used in the UK schools. What is still lacking is a mathematically valid correlation between global temperature, which have been static for the past 18 years and still less than one degree C since the Mini Ice age, and levels of carbon dioxide have been rising in a linear sequence to now 0.04% of the atmosphere.
Things such as solar activity and the Ei nino/ La nina phenomenon don’t seem to count for much in Dutch legal circles, but what happens if temperatures stay the same and carbon dioxide still rises, do we the folk get a refund for the wasted expenditure from the “warmistas”?
141
The Dutch, in my experience, are probably the most literal nation on Earth, in relation to their legal system, and the way in which judges interpret the law.
If the scientists, appointed by the Government to advise on Climate Change, say that it is real, and corroborate each other, then as far as the Government is concerned, it is real, without any room for doubt.
This then gets enshrined in law, complete with mitigation actions, and the expected results, and is given to the courts to administer.
If, in the court’s view, the expected results have not been achieved from the mitigation actions, then they can require the Government to put more resources into doing, whatever it is that they are currently doing, that is demonstrably not working.
In the heyday of NATO, some of the more “liberal” military commanders used this knowledge to great effect.
100
RobertO, the absorption spectrum for CO2 has its primary maximum at about 4.3 microns, within the spectral range of our incoming Sunshine. The secondary maximum is at about 15 microns, within the spectral range of the average Earth’s surface emission. All of the other spectral lines are at shorter wavelengths, that is, not within the range of the Earth’s emissions.
The primary absorption peak for CO2 absorbs about three times the energy from the incoming Sunshine as does the secondary peak in absorbing energy out-going from the Earth’ surface. Hence any increase in CO2 atmospheric concentration will cause cooling of the Earth as less energy reaches its surface. Note that this is before any surface emission that might be “trapped” by the atmosphere.
The Dutch may have a strict legal system but appear to lack information about CO2 being limited, like the deceitful IPCC, to its effect on emissions from the Earth’s surface only.
As the Earth’s temperature has been stable throughout this century, with neither warming nor cooling, it is apparent that the one molecule of CO2 to the 2500 molecules of other atmospheric gases is insufficient to cause any measurable effect on the Earth’ temperature.
61
I had a look at Roy Spencer’s website a couple of days ago, and happened to read something from a certain Connor Gibson from Greenpeace.
Here’s what his organisation says about him:
“He specializes in tracking those who professionally deny climate change science and obstruct policy solutions to global warming.His research frequently focuses on money funneled from the billionaire Koch brothers to federal politicians and front groups running anti-environmental campaigns, like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Heartland Institute, and other influence peddlers in the State Policy Network.”
Also:
“Connor’s accountability research has appeared in the New York Times, LA Times, The Guardian, CNBC, Financial Times, Toronto Star, Forbes, CNN Money, Yahoo! News, Huffington Post, Politico, The Hill, National Journal, and Mother Jones.
Gibson joined Greenpeace Investigations in 2010 after completing an environmental studies degree at the University of Vermont. He is based in Washington, DC.”
That sums up why Greenpeace won’t be getting any money from me.
“He specializes in tracking those who professionally deny climate change science and obstruct policy solutions to global warming.”
The sheer ****** arrogance of it.
290
Greenpeace sexual harassment in limelight again after tell-all article
60
Dear Conner,
Please track me down and pay a visit to discuss your concerns of people who ‘deny climate science’, I may have some information that will be very enlightening for yourself and Greenpeace mostly concerning facts and reality.
I shouldn’t be hard to find due to my large carbon footprint and obvious mental impairment, looking forward to engaging with a true intellectual such as yourself and finally having an excuse to get out the good Tupperware.
Yours sincerely, Y Stone.
110
and
I am curious to know, how the second statement equips somebody (or anybody for that matter) with the necessary investigatory, economic, financial, legal, and interpretive intelligence analytical skills, to undertake the first statement.
Perhaps he just heads-up a team? Or perhaps he just makes stuff up, and uses his bio-line to put lipstick on the pig.
220
My comment at, #4 should have been appended to Carbon500’s comment at #3 … I need more coffee …
70
Joined Greenpeace after getting his environmental studies degree because there was no where to go for a job.
60
He should have aimed higher, with such an education you can at least become a logistical manager of supermarket trolleys.
70
My exact reaction too RW.
10
An odd thing happened on the way to the Last Glacial Maximum.
• Obliquity Control On Southern Hemisphere Climate During The Last Glacial
Apparently the peak extent of the Patagonian Ice Sheet was 5000 years before the currently accepted date of the worldwide Last Glacial Maximum dictated by earth axis precession. This lot ran some climate models in the hope they could explain why ice in South America was leading ahead of the insolation trough instead of lagging.
The Antarctic sea ice extent has been expanding in recent years. Is that potentially a warning that if it continues expanding it can (again) lead to significant cooling in South America… and maybe southern Australia if the whole zonal winds are affected?
Did a double-take at the list of authors: our old friends Chris (Ship of Fools) Turney and Matthew (Lynchin’ Minchin) England. Tales of global cooling are very thin on the ground from that lot. Possible signs of escape hatches being prepared???
112
Andrew McRae
Strange how local climate changes in some areas better signal probable trends than homogenized data of global temperature ever can. Maybe more research is required to look at localities where climate variation happens faster than average to see if there is a real trend appearing.
93
Please send more money in plain brown envelop with details of what you want to prove.
81
GrameNo.3,
Sorry. The amounts that you’ve requested will not fit in a plain brown envelope. Please choose one of the following alternate forms of
graftpayment:1. Large wooden crate.
2. Money Order funnelled through the NGO of your choice.
3. Direct deposit into your Swiss bank account. (we have the acct. no. on file)
Abe
41
‘…Patagonian Ice Sheet was 5000 years before the currently accepted date of the worldwide Last Glacial Maximum…’
And before the Younger Dryas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huelmo%E2%80%93Mascardi_Cold_Reversal
The bipolar see-saw in operation.
40
Can someone please enlighten me?
I read that anything above a 2 degree C rise in earth’s average temperature would be catastrophic, therefore justifying massive new regulations at a global level to “decarbonize” the world.
If the earth’s average temperature today is about 15 degrees C, and that’s about 1 degree above what it was in the early 2oth century, what is the catastrophic temerature? Is it 16 degrees, or 17 degrees? And exactly why will that be catastrophic compared to the current temperatures?
If I take Melbourne as an example, the average min/max temperatures in July are 6/14 while in January they are 14/26 degrees C, with considerable variations around those numbers from minus 2 to 46 degrees. But more than 2 degrees above some “norm” will be catastrophic? Please explain.
142
Catastrophic because humanity may not be able to cope with changes in the weather over a longer time span.
Speaking on behalf of the coolists, the Maunder Minimum saw temperatures drop by 1.2 and the Dalton Minimum by 0.7 and we survived, but I acknowledge a drop of more than 2.0 C might create a few problems and opportunities.
21
A rise of +2C is nothing! We experience a rise of +40C every year in a temperate zone at the bottom of of the Australian continent where it never snows at sea level. Compare Colorado where the change from mid winter to mid summer is +80C. Note also this is only a predicted change in an average. It says nothing about the peaks. Water is the element which can change those peaks, most evident in a desert.
Anyway in the tropics where 40% of humans live a +2C would not happen as the temperatures are already limited by so much warm water and ice doesn’t happen. Singapore and Darwin are always 32, winter to summer. Those in the sub tropical and temperate zones are also immune where they rarely see ice. It is the phase change of water from liquid to solid which is scary and nothing else.
However a fall of 2C would be disastrous for those climates above latitude 40 where the glaciers roamed as you could get a steady yearly accumulation of ice and the glaciers could advance again. Australia didn’t have glaciers and there is almost no land in the South except for huge Antarctica which is already covered by km of ice.
It was the melting of the Northern glaciers a mere 10,000 years ago which made the land liveable where 60% of humans now live. So for cities like St. Petersburg, Helsinki, Stockholm, Vladivostok, Glasgow, New York, Chicago, Moscow, Berlin and even Beijing, cooling even 2C would produce an incredible human disaster.
So keep those coal fires burning, except no one actually believes CO2 causes enough warming to be any use. 97% of scientists believe without an imaginary and disproven assist from extra water vapour, any noticeable warming at all. The other 3% ticked the wrong box.
51
I wanted to express my puzzlement at the idea that extra water vapour caused by CO2 produced warming amplifies the warming. How does this work exactly? Don’t you need the extra warming in the first place to get the extra evaporation? Or is this a new physical chemistry principle, anticipatory evaporation?
42
TdeF, since this is an unthreaded post I will risk pointing out a distinctly North American phenomenon.
I refer to the CHINOOK which occurs on the East side of the Rockies.
The first indication is the formation of a “chinook arch” above the horizon on a cloudy day. It appears as a huge hole in the cloud exposing blue sky.
It is the visual representation of a massive temperature inversion.
With cold air at the surface, and warm air above it, the warm air spills over the mountains flows under the cold air.
I have personally witnessed a change from minus 35 F to plus 75 F in a few hours.
During that period winds gust to over 100 MPH.
In the event that sticks clearly in my mind, there was a meter of snow on the ground at midnight with a temperature of minus 35, in Taylor, British Columbia.
The next morning there was no snow left. Not even puddles. It was a balmy plus 75 F. The snow had sublimed.
Weather in the mountains sometimes has to be seen to be believed.
30
Rod Stuart @ # 6.1.1.2
The Canadian Chinook winds and it’s Cloud Arch are typical and the hall mark of Mountain Lee Waves found in almost every spot where a mountain range even of only a few of hundred metres high lays across the prevailing ground level and higher altitude winds.
The very fast changes in temperature occur as the downdraught of the lee wave, after it has been forced to rise by the mountain topography, descends back to the lower ground down wind and down range and at ground level and compression heats during it’s descent into the higher atmospheric pressures at ground level.
The trough of the now very warm descending air mass often oscillates back and forth over a few kilometres at ground level.
And for a bit of sometimes useful information; Air at the International Standard Atmosphere temperatures [ +15 C ] and pressures [ 1013.25 hPa / one Bar ] weighs 1.1 kilograms per cubic metre
Compression of the descending air due to the increasing atmospheric pressures at ground level lead to a rapid warming of the descending mountain lee air mass.
The highest mountain lee wave altitudes are to be found in the Owens Valley off the western American Sierras where record world glider altitude of 51,000 feet was reached a couple of years ago.
The New Zealand Alps where altitudes of 35,000 feet are regularly reached by glider pilots flying the alps Mountain Lee Waves.
And the grandaddy of them all, western South America’s Ande’s mountain waves where heights exceeding 40,000 feet are regularly achieved by gliders and the world record distance by a glider of some 3000 kilometres over 13 plus hours all at between 30,000 and 40,000 feet along the Argentinian Andes was achieved a few years ago.
Even here in western Victoria in Australia’s SE, flights by local glider pilots in mountain Lee Wave off the Grampians Mountains [ max altitude 1167 metres ] regularly top 20,000 feet and a few flights have occurred to the 28 to 30,000 foot level .
Airbus Industries of Europe is backing the Perlan Project which is currently building a highly specialized, two seat, fully research instrumented, pressurised cockpit glider that will, it is believed, be able to reach 90,000 feet altitude in the well over 100,000 foot southern South American Patagonian Andes triggered lee waves in the Antarctic’s stratospheric circumpolar wind systems which reach speeds of some hundreds of kilometres per hour .
The Perlan Project backers and principals, one of whom flies at our local Horsham annual gliding competition, believe they will be able to sustain level flight at the aimed for 90,000 feet which would give them a world record for the highest sustained flight, higher in fact than that achieved by the famous American Blackbird aircraft , the SR71.
There is a great amount of interest in this project amongst the world’s meteorological and high altitude meteorology researchers as data from this region of the stratosphere is very limited.
10
ROM, (and everyone else too) I hope this gets taken with the levity I have intended.
So, umm, hot air rises.
Methinks that perhaps they need glider pilots to tell them just where that missing, er, hot spot really is hiding!!!
Tony.
20
🙂
When in a few gliding Comps I entered I rarely got the rates of climb in those hot air thermals that many others claimed they got but I often seemed to get home a bit faster than a lot of them.
So my rising hot air, aka thermal strengths wasn’t rising as fast as their hot air even in the same thermal at times.???
Glider pilot’s claimed thermal strength is a bit like a fishermen’s catch sizes.
Weekends spent flying distances was my main interest but when you are 200 kms from home and in a rough bloody teeth jarring [ literally ] thermal at 500 feet on a 35 C day somewhere out near Mangatang over those 1000 acre Mallee sand paddocks and an imminent landing is on the cards if you can’t center that bloody thermal and climb out, you do seriously question your own sanity.
Thats when the “hot spot”; mentally, physically and verbally can readily found inside of that cockpit!
Three minutes later you on the ground and cursing or ten minutes later you are lovely and cool and relaxed at 9,000 feet and the world is definitely looking real good again.
10
Robber:
The concern is for themselves ( the global warming theorists ) who largely live in the USA or northern Europe ( for convenience I include the UK in the latter ).
The theory is that extra heat in the equatorial zone causes the Hadley cells to expand, and forces more heat towards the North Pole (also the South Pole but the IPCC doesn’t care about us). The effect is more rapid temperature rises the further from the Equator you go.
Thus the following things should occur:
A ‘hot spot’ in the Troposphere
Rising temperatures in the ‘temperate zone’ (roughly 40-55 degrees N or S) e.g. “BBQ summers in the UK” or “children won’t see snow by 2010” etc.
Melting of sea ice in the polar regions,
Melting of ice shelves near the Poles. ( Greenland, Antarctic).
That none of these has actually happened is frantically ‘covered up’ by scary predictions on what might happen. ( I note that the Cretaceous period was warmer than present, anywhere between 4 & 11℃ – depending on the level of hysteria about the higher CO2 level – but was filled with lush abundance of life. Unless they believe that dinosaurs will reappear, what is the problem? )
30
Mysterious Weather-Changing Machine Used For Secret Solstice
. . .
Sure beats a carbon(sic) tax or direct action:
Protest against power cut during bitter cold
30
There have been protests in Pakistan because of power outages during hot weather.
10
‘Mysterious Weather-changing Machine’…..
Could that account for Glastonbury mud?
20
***a point to remember re the Dutch court decision. more symbolism:
24 June: National Post: AP: Mike Corder: Dutch court orders government to cut country’s greenhouse gas emissions 25% in the next five years
The Dutch government can appeal the ruling to a higher court.
It remains unclear exactly how the court can enforce its ruling.
It has the
power to impose fines for failure to carry out its orders, but ***never uses such powers against the government and Urgenda did not request such a move, said judge Peter Blok.
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/dutch-court-orders-government-to-cut-countrys-greenhouse-gas-emissions-25-by-2020
31
btw while the Dutch court decision was picked up by MSM worldwide, this wasn’t:
22 June: Hydrocarbons-technology: Gazprom forms alliance with Shell, E.ON and OMV for transmission of gas from Russia to Europe
Russian-based Gazprom has signed memorandums of intent with Germany-based E.ON, Dutch oil company Shell and Austrian OMV for co-operating on projects related to gas transmission infrastructure connecting Russia with its European customers.
The alliance indicates the parties’ intention to implement a project, which will involve construction of two gas pipeline strings connecting the Russian coast with the German coast via the Baltic Sea.
Gazprom, E.ON, Shell and OMV also intend to integrate their capabilities and form a joint project company for the Nord Stream gas pipeline construction.
The proposed pipeline is expected to enable transmission of 55 billion m³ of gas every year…
http://www.hydrocarbons-technology.com/news/newsgazprom-shell-eon-omv-transmission-gas-russia-europe-4606237
more symbolism below:
25 June: EnergyDeskGreenpeace: Energy Files: When is a promise to cut coal use not a promise to cut coal use?
by Joe Sandler Clarke
The government’s promise to dramatically to reduce the use of coal in the next few years isn’t actually a promise but a projection based on policies even senior civil servants don’t believe will happen — according to FOI’s seen by Energydesk.
Energy Secretary Amber Rudd has appeared to commit the government to reducing the amount of power the UK gets from coal from 25% today to just 1% by 2025, with the gap largely filled by renewables and nuclear.
The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) later clarified that the plan to reduce coal consumption was actually a “projection,” not an “aim” of government policy…
That prediction, however is based on overly-optimistic forecasts that rely on the carbon price floor (a 2011 tax placed on industries using fossil fuels for electricity generation) rising to £78 by 2030 — and making coal production uneconomical.
But back in 2014 the government froze the tax at £14 following pressure from the coal industry…
A spokesperson from DECC insisted the model on which the projections were based was sound.
“The source of the estimated 1% coal’s share in the generation mix in 2025 is the reference scenario of DECC’s energy and emissions projections published in October 2014 (Annex J – available here).”…
DECC’s coal projection also counts on a significant expansion in the nuclear sector. With the Hinkley Point project held up by international squabbling and legal challenges, that foundation of the projection also looks problematic…
IPPR’s claims are backed up by research by Imperial College, which found that even under the most optimistic modelling, coal generation would continue beyond 2030.
Despite cross-party agreement on the need to phase out coal, the industry has been boosted by a number of government policy initiatives in recent years…
***With 16 coal fired plants, the UK was second largest emitter of carbon dioxide from coal power stations in 2013, behind only fossil fuel rich Germany and just ahead of Poland, which has some the dirtiest power stations in the EU.
http://energydesk.greenpeace.org/2015/06/25/energy-files-amber-rudds-coal-calculations-dont-add-up/
following is below the above story:
25 June: Poland: Europe’s most polluted country in trouble with the EU but still won’t clean up coal
After ten years of extreme pollution that shows no sign of abating, the European Commission has told Poland to clean up its air or else it’ll be taken to the EU Court of Justice…
LOL.
72
another story of no interest to abc or fairfax:
25 June: UK Independent: Hazel Sheffield: The Green Investment Bank, the first ever bank for environmentally sustainable projects, is being sold off by the Tories
The UK government has said it plans to sell off part of the first bank in the world established to make money out of environmentally sustainable projects.
The Green Investment Bank was launched by the Government late in 2012 with a mission to make money out of the growing green economy in the UK. Now Sajid Javid, the business secretary, has said the government will sell off its stake, effectively privatising the bank.
The Government could reportedly make £1 billion by selling 70 per cent of its shares, which Chancellor George Osborne said would go to ***paying down the deficit…
(Caroline Lucas, former leader of the Green Party) called for the government to keep its majority stake in the bank. “The Government’s rash and irresponsible plan to sell off a large chunk of the Green Investment Bank calls into question their commitment to investing in a low carbon economy,” Lucas said.
“At precisely the time when we should be leading the world in the fight against climate change our Government appears to be in retreat.”…
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/the-green-investment-bank-the-first-ever-bank-for-environmentally-sustainable-projects-is-being-sold-off-by-the-tories-10344574.html
41
pat:
As I understand it, the Green Bank’s major investments are 7 – 9 year old wind farms, i.e. purchased as the original financiers got their money back but realised there were big maintenance bills coming real soon.
Under those conditions it is hard to think of anyone who would be silly enough to want to buy the trouble. Greenpeace? The BBC Staff Superannuation fund?
Forget most banks. The amount invested in new ‘renewable’ projects in Europe in 2014 was less than half what it was in 2012, despite evermore hysterically squeals from the gullible.
20
27 June: UK Telegraph: Christopher Booker: The BBC is in a fog of groupthink and can’t see how biased it is
Here are recent examples of how mindlessly the BBC falls into its party line, on three familiar topics
When in 2013 a chap called Roger Mosey retired from the top of the BBC, where he had been editor of the Today programme and Head of News, he caused a stir by lashing out at the BBC’s biased “uniformity of view” on subjects ranging from the EU and immigration to climate change. The BBC’s “party line” on so many topics has for so long been a theme of this column that – when it was reported recently that Mr Mosey had written a book allegedly giving “chapter and verse” on how often its coverage “topples over into propaganda” – I was naturally eager to read it.
Having now done so, I find that his account of his life at the BBC actually says much less on “bias” than he did in 2013. We learn that his favourite politician was that inveterate old Europhile Kenneth Clarke and that he was converted to the importance of “the environment” by that cheerleader for global warming Roger Harrabin.
But what really comes across is that the BBC’s senior executives are so lost in their corporate groupthink that they have no real idea just how biased it is…
1. Those ‘850 New York lawmakers’
On no issue has the BBC’s coverage been more absurdly one-sided and unprofessional than energy and climate change: not least since that famous “secret seminar” set up by Harrabin in 2006, when the BBC’s top brass met with a roomful of climate activists to agree that the BBC must follow a propaganda line inseparable from that of Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth…READ ON
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11703758/The-BBC-is-in-a-fog-of-groupthink-and-cant-see-how-biased-it-is.html
51
pity this debate doesn’t include criticism of the abc’s juvenile, sensationalised coverage of CAGW:
28 June: SMH: Lisa Cox: ‘You’ve lost the plot, Barrie’: Malcolm Turnbull defends government attack on ABC
Malcolm Turnbull has compared the ABC to an “undergraduate playing at tabloid journalism” after a former terror suspect was allowed into the Q&A audience…
Meanwhile Steven Ciobo, the Coalition frontbencher involved in the original Q&A confrontation with the former terrorism suspect, has called for “structural change” to the ABC and suggested its budget could be cut…
In a fiery interview on the ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday morning, Mr Turnbull told host Barrie Cassidy he had “lost the plot” after a series of questions about the government’s attack on the national broadcaster…
Also on Sunday morning, Mr Ciobo, appearing on Network Ten’s The Bolt Report, said there was “a lot of anger” within the Coalition party room about the ABC and indicated there was a determination to correct its perceived political bias.
“What’s going on within the Coalition is the view that the ABC has effectively become an island,” Mr Ciobo said.
While acknowledging the government appointed the ABC’s board members, Mr Ciobo said the broadcaster was not sufficiently accountable.
“There is no pressure from sponsors, there is no pressure from ratings, there is no external pressure in terms of the government being able to say we’ve got a problem with management and that person needs to go, so really as an organisation funded from more than a billion a year, the ABC sits as an island unaccountable.
“No one’s after it being a state broadcaster, but people are after balance.”
Pressed repeatedly by host Andrew Bolt on whether the ABC was too big for a “healthy democracy” and should be cut on that basis, Mr Ciobo said there was “scope to find savings”…
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/youve-lost-the-plot-barrie-malcolm-turnbull-defends-government-attack-on-abc-20150628-ghzn8k.html
42
should have said “abc’s juvenile, sensationalised PROMOTION of CAGW”, as there is no CAGW to cover.
62
There has been a lot in the MSM recently of thousands of old people passing away in India, because of the excessive heat, power failure and compliance with religious fervor.
The reality is that cold kills far more.
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/EXCESS_WINTER_MORTALITY_II.pdf
60
It’s very hot in India, but the modern record was set in 1956 — 90 ppm CO2 ago. (stevemilloy via twitter)
The record India is thought to be 50.6C (123F), recorded in 1956 in the northern town of Alwar (pdf).(guardian)
20
el gordo
Note the reference to drinking water in the Pakistan part here
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2015/06/25/unstable-electricity-and-higher-costs-causes/
20
An ever so slight population reduction, plus an excuse to use these deaths as an example of climate change. A ‘Green’ wet dream, really.
It’s win-win, unless you happen to live in such a country, and are unable to access cheap electricity, clean water, or health care.
Now all you need to do is get some propaganda into the worst affected areas, explaining how terrible global warming (and ‘the West’) is, and how evil cheap electricity is – oh, and then try to sell overpriced inefficient solar systems.
too cynical…?
21
Jo, the old global warming evidence thread is locked, so I can’t post this there.
http://gfdl.noaa.gov/bibliography/related_files/soden0201.pdf
I think the GCM output is relevant as the condition of constant relative humidity is not assumed by climate models but their output is almost the same if that condition is enforced, indicating this is probably just how the world works. From other graphs I’ve seen the RH has stayed about the same since the 1960s.
What is empirical in that paper is the decrease of 0.5 degree in world temperature after Pinatubo and the synchronous drop in total column water vapour by 0.5mm. Looks fairly linear-ish in the graph too.
The relevance is that a drop in temperature from any initial cause has then caused a drop in water vapour, so the reverse is also true for warming and the magnitude of the effect should be the same. It doesn’t say how much warming CO2 causes, but it does indicate how much water vapour feedback should occur from any surface temperature rise.
As the GCM output matches the measurements, they use a GCM analysis to conclude the total cooling was increased by 60% due to the water vapour feedback, so one would think any initial warming would also be magnified by 1.6 due to water vapour feedback. This would imply any temperature rise is 37% due to positive feedback, 63% initial cause.
That implies in 0.6 degree of 20th century rise in temperature, about 0.22 was positive feedback and just like Pinatubo it should have aded ~ 0.55mm to total column water vapour, but that is untestable as we don’t know TCWV for 1901.
On the other hand, I’m under the impression the GCMs in 2001 didn’t simulate everything about clouds, so the water vapour effect might be stronger than what was simulated here so that the negative cloud feedback reduces the total feedback to the amount that was observed. There is also the question of increased SW not having the same effect on the ocean as increased LW (due to penetration depth), so backradiation from CO2 need not have the same effect as volcanic aerosol screening. They admit that caveat right at the end of the paper instead of straight up declaring that the two radiation bands will have the same effect, which is intriguing.
Also interesting that paper has been around since 2002 but I’ve never seen it mentioned on your blog.
00
Watermelon policies in action in Tasmania?: “keep ’em poor, and keep ’em stupid”.
How long before we are back to the day when children had to abandon school to get a job in order to support their family? I don’t know where the jobs will come from though – unless these tens of thousands of ‘green jobs’ in ‘green industries’ ever come to pass, and that the positions are able to be filled by people who have suffered through an incomplete Australian school education.
21
TTIP Update:
Tags: Global Warming, Hydro Power, Trade, US, EU
‘Nein Danke’ – smaller German firms see U.S. trade deal as threat
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/28/us-eu-usa-trade-germany-idUSKBN0P805D20150628?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_source=twitter
Martina Roemmelt-Fella, who owns a small, family-run turbine manufacturer in Bavaria, should be a cheerleader for a trade deal between Europe and the United States that promises to ease the flow of goods and services across the Atlantic.
But instead she fears the Trans Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) being hammered out between Brussels and Washington will give too much power to big multinationals at the expense of small companies like hers.
“The proposals are being negotiated behind closed doors with the help of 50 or 60 big corporates,” said Roemmelt-Fella, whose firm is one of the thousands of small and medium-sized companies known as the ‘Mittelstand’ that account for 89 percent of Germany’s exporters and form the backbone of the economy…
…”TTIP may bring significant benefits for big multinationals, but I don’t think there are big advantages for the Mittelstand,” she added.
Her opposition underscores the depth of scepticism towards TTIP in Germany, Europe’s largest economy, where media coverage has focused largely on protests from anti-globalisation groups and labour unions. It also highlights the challenge facing German Chancellor Angela Merkel as she tries to overturn entrenched suspicion of the pact.
While Merkel and big businesses, such as industrial group Siemens and car parts supplier Robert Bosch [ROBG.UL], remain strongly in favour of a deal, public support has fallen sharply over the past year, according to a recent opinion poll. Such widespread German mistrust could mean a deal has to be diluted or is even blocked.
Hurdles are also growing in Brussels, where as negotiators prepare for their 10th meeting next month, the European Parliament is so split on the subject that it cannot even agree to debate it.
Earlier this month, Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel declared that the talks might fail…
…Roemmelt-Fella, whose company specializes in making turbines for hydropower plants, is not the only exporter with misgivings.
A Commerzbank study last year found only 15 percent of Mittlestand companies believe TTIP would be a good thing for their business.
A separate survey by the BVMW Mittelstand association, showed more than 80 percent of its members believe the government is not doing enough to represent their interests in the negotiations.
Much of their concern focuses on how companies settle disputes under the pact. They worry U.S. multinationals will use an Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) clause to bypass national courts and bully governments into doing their bidding.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimates the average legal and arbitration costs of ISDS cases to be around $8 million (7.1 million euros), an amount that is far beyond the means of the average Mittelstand firm.
A further gripe is the proposed creation of a regulation council, designed to smooth the consultation process on new laws, but which opponents say will make the legislative process more susceptible to manipulation.
20
I can’t imagine why the Mittelstand should be so unwelcoming. I mean, apart from electricity bills 3 times that of USA competitors, labour costs twice that of USA competitors, and a savagely reduced home market, all 3 handicaps because of EU policies, what could happen, apart from bankruptcy?
I note in passing that Siemens no longer tries to sell it very efficient CCGT plants in Germany, indeed is dismantling 2 and trying to relocate them to Turkey where they want cheap power. Also that Roemmelt-Fella specialises in making turbines for hydropower plants, which are being shut down in Germany because they can’t make money with those wind farms flooding the market with low prices (because they get separate subsidies). Also that BASF’s last 4 new plants have been in Poland, the USA, Malaysia and Kenya. I wonder what country is missing from the list?
10
A new plant slated for Texas and this agreement:
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-1000089252
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RIOT POLICE DEPLOYED IN ARMENIA AS PROTESTS OVER ELECTRICITY HIKE RAGE ON
http://www.blacklistednews.com/Riot_Police_Deployed_in_Armenia_as_Protes…
Riot police have been deployed to the site of demonstrations in Armenia’s capital city Yerevan, as protests continued on Friday in the country following the government’s refusal to back down plans to hike electricity prices.
As night fell on Friday, reports emerged that buses with riot police had arrived at a major street in Yerevan where nearly 20,000 protesters had gathered to demand a reversal of a 17 percent price hike that is set to kick in on August 1. The protests are being referred to on social media as the Electric Yerevan demonstrations.
==========
A little background: (look at the electric grid map and who borders the country).
An Energy Overview of the Republic of Armenia
http://www.geni.org/globalenergy/library/national_energy_grid/armenia/En…
EUROPE COULD DRAW GAS THROUGH IRAN-ARMENIA PIPELINE http://eurodialogue.eu/676
Gas Operator To Buy Iran-Armenia Pipeline (Gazprom)
http://www.azatutyun.am/content/article/27052147.html
00
Armenian protesters reject presidents offer to stop rate hike.
http://news.am/eng/news/274192.html
Note: Armenia has one old wind farm built by AES and is unwilling to develop more wind farms due to excessive cost. The current protest appears to be be another color type revolution for geo-political and other purposes.
30
While my previous lukewarmer comment is stuck in auto-moderation, here is another which is perhaps more troubling.
tip’o’t’hat to Catallaxy Files
10
Sorry, have just noticed this is what Robert O was talking about up at #2, forgot to check first. Should have known this sort of news travels fast.
10
hope TonyfromOz will critique the following, which is one of four ABC Science Show “Energy Futures” programs, which have been showing since 13 June.
this one was repeated at 4am today, even tho it has two broadcast dates already, so it seems ABC is pushing this stuff relentlessly:
Sat 27 June: ABC Science Show: Episode 3: Bioenergy, trigeneration and network efficiency
Saturday 12 noon Repeated: Thursday 9pm
Transcript
Carl Smith: Glenn Platt is the Research Director for CSIRO’s Grids and Energy Efficiency program…
Glenn Platt: So in most situations we could easily reduce energy consumption by 30% and enjoy exactly the same sorts of things we were beforehand…
Glenn Platt: The electricity in Australia is typically made in a coal-fired power station. So we burn coal to make heat and then we convert that heat into electricity. The way that coal-fired power stations work, the very best ones are around 30% efficient. And so we lose about 70% of the energy in that coal as heat, which goes to heating up cooling towers or the air around the power station or a lake if there is a lake nearby. That electricity then goes into the transmission and distribution system, the poles and wires. So they might lose around 10% of the electricity that goes in at the power station by the time it gets to your house. The input energy, in Australia’s case coal and gas mostly, we can lose close to 70% or 80% of that before it gets to your house or office building and does something useful…
I live in the Hunter Valley and we transmit electricity hundreds of kilometres from Sydney and Newcastle…instead of doing that, where we lose power over those long distances, generate electricity much more locally. And examples that we see of that could be everything from solar panels on the roof of people’s buildings through to more conventional generators that might even use coal but generate electricity in the basement of the local supermarket, for example.
So as well as generating locally, another way of improving the efficiency of the grid is to try to spread out when people consume so that we don’t all use electricity all at the same time, and that touches a little bit on those automation schemes I mentioned where computers can manage when people’s air-conditioners turn on or off. You are just as comfortable inside, but instead of everyone’s air-conditioner turning on at the same time, we try to spread that out throughout the day…
Carl Smith: Next week we look to the Sun, the source of many of the energy alternatives we’ve explored so far.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/energy-futures—part-3-of-4/6542116#transcript
the other episodes, with transcripts:
ABC The Science Show: Energy Futures
13 June: Episode 1: Geothermal and nuclear energy
Ahead of the Paris summit this year, the G7 leaders say it’s time to plan a phase-out of fossil fuels…
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/features/energy-futures/
10
Tony seems to be otherwise occupied this weekend. Maybe I can shed some light on this.
The barrow this Platt appears to be pushing is a concept called “Distributed Generation“.
The concept has been around for a long time, but has had difficulty gaining any traction because of the complexity of small generation in residential and commercial application. There are situations in which it makes sense. These are usually situations in which natural gas can be used to produce electricity, heating and/or cooling simultaneously. The benefits derive from the fact that the energy available to the consumer in natural gas is generally much less expensive than electrical energy. The costs are generally related to the capital cost of the generation equipment and the cost of maintaining it. Additionally, reliability tends to suffer with small generating plant as compared to typical power stations. In discussing distributed generation one aspect is often overlooked; the presence of the grid is essential to its operation, and someone must pay for the cost of the grid. The concept is successfully employed where most of the waste heat can be recovered where there the balance of electricity and heating is appropriate. Using adsorption refrigeration units, DG can be quite successful where the balance of electricity and cooling needs are appropriate. An example of the former is the hospitals in Victoria, and of the latter in cool store applications in New Zealand.
A couple of decades ago it appeared that PEM fuel cells might make distributed generation attractive where gas is abundant, electricity is expensive, and in applicaitons where the balance of electricity and heat is appropriate. For this purpose General Electric developed an apparatus called the Homegen 7000. It could have been a real winner had fuel cells worked out as well as expected.
In typical ABC fashion, Mr. Platt obfuscates and exaggerates. While many of Australia’s older power stations, of which Hazelwood is an example, the thermal efficiency might well be only 30%. But then, when the facility sits on a mountain of coal does that really matter? Actually, the new Ultra Super Critical plants Tony often references being built in China and Germany can deliver nearly 50%. Gas fuelled combined cycle power stations, like Swanbank E at Ipswich, deliver over 60%.
Platt really loses the plot when he suggests “So they might lose around 10% of the electricity that goes in at the power station by the time it gets to your house.” where MIGHT is the operative word. Losses in high voltage transmission is typically more in the order of 1%, depending on the distance. In Australia 220kV is employed. When longer distances warrant higher capital cost higher voltages are used. Long distance electrical transmission in Canada sometimes employs 900 kV to limit transmission loss. Of course such high voltages require a substation nearer the consumer, and a local transformer, but transformer efficiencies are typically in the order of 98%. For long marine transmission such as the Bass Link, power companies employ high voltage DC which eliminates the reactive losses. HVDC is also employed to connect Vic with SA. These systems also deliver transmission efficiencies near 99%.
In typical ABC newspeak then, the use of the word MIGHT is used to completely abuse the Truth, without actually being a bold faced lie. For an even better example of how the T R U T H can be stretched is in this video.
31
Er, no.
The thermal efficiency of a good coal generator is well over 40% heading to 50%. With closed cycle waste heat recovery. In ultrasupercritical coal plants there is enough heat to actually gasify the water into oxygen and hydrogen, generating hydrogen fuel as an ouput from the generation. Plants of this nature, along with heat recovery, storage or reuse (such as in community heating) 60% total thermal efficiency is not unapproachable.
So while yes, 30% might be all Oz lignite plants get today, that is not by any means representative of advanced coal combustion and coal technology that will become available in the near future.
For example, I don’t think any of the plants can extract energy from low grade waste heat, yet that is certainly possible with a heat difference engine. If I recall it’s not done because it results in only a small benefit (about 20% efficient so only add 10% of the electricity which isn’t cost effective), but hey, you know what solar panels are less efficient that that. If the coal industry got the same subsidies for rankine or stirling heat recovery engines as solar outfits do then we’d probably be at 60% now!
21
Thanks pat.
This is wrong on so many levels, it’s difficult to know where to really start.
Yeah! Good luck with that. 30%. What the!
Pants on fire! Nearly all the large scale coal fired plants in Australia are Subcritical and supercritical, and their efficiency rate is between 35 and 38%. Very few really ancient tiny plants have an efficiency rate that low, and there would now be virtually none here in Australia, as these plants are those from 60 to 70 years ago.
UltraSuperCritical (USC) plants have an efficiency of 42%+ and Advanced USC greater than 45%, and these are what is now state of the art.
That is the singly most artful interpretation I have ever heard.
Hmm! Combined Heat and Power, (CHP) something I mentioned way back in 2008, a process in use since the 1880’s, now refined to cogneration and trigeneration. And hey, not only is he advocating coal fired power, but decentralised plants all over the place, and not just one large scale plant, so now he wants them everywhere.
Seriously, has any thought at all gone into the making of this statement?
Look at any Load Curve, not only here in Australia, but anywhere on the Planet. Not only in States, large cities, small cities, urban areas, regional areas, rural areas, small towns everywhere. They are the same.
The first peak of the day starts at around 5 to 6 AM and power consumption rises considerably.
Say, Isn’t that when everyone gets out of bed and readies for, and then goes to, both school and work.
Then consumption rises throughout the day. Say, isn’t that when everyone is at school or work.
Then the second peak kicks in between 4 and 6PM. Say, isn’t that when everyone gets home from school and work, and turns on their home, does their chores, and cooks their dinners, etcetera.
Hmm, spread out the consumption, eh!
Just how does he propose to do that?
Change the hours we sleep. Yeah! Right!
Change the hours of work and school. Good luck with the Unions on that front.
Change when we eat breakfast and our evening meals. Yeah! Tell your kids that eh!
There was just so much thought put into his bland statement. I suppose he suggests that Government regulate these things eh!
Again, how much research did he do to blandly put this out there.
Around 90% of air conditioning in Australia, in fact, anywhere at all, is in the Commerce and Industry. Look at any city small, large, or huge, and every structure taller than 2/3 levels, Each has units on the roof, and while classified as air conditioning, their PRIME purpose is to ENSURE a constant recirculated supply of breathing air into that structure, The units are set at around 22C all year round, so it feels warm in the cooler Months and cool in the warmer Months.
Why is there this concentration on Residential air conditioners. The Residential Sector consumes around 30% of all power consumption. (38% in the US) Air conditioning consumes around 5 to 8% of residential consumption in the homes that have it, so around 2% across all the residential sector, So that’s 2% of 30%, or a little more than half of one percent of all power consumption.
Yeah! Let’s regulate that, and watch those coal fired plants close in their droves. Right!!
When people like this person realise that the bulk of power consumption is where we work, where we do our business and shopping, where we school our children, in Commerce and Industry, and cease their constant calls to vastly regulate what we use in our homes, a small percentage of the overall, then perhaps they will gain an inkling about how silly they really sound when they say things like this.
When they realise that (here in Australia) there is a constant ABSOLUTE demand for 24 hours of every day of every year, and that Consumption is for 22,000MW, then these people might gain an inkling into where all that power goes to, and what might be needed to keep that constant supply, actually constant. And hey, they need look no further than Pakistan where the grid is crashing regularly now.
Green dreamers can hope that the fairies deliver, but reality dictates that nothing will change the way people consume power, at least not on the level these people waft on about.
Tony.
Post Script – Say, does anyone know what happened to the wind farm performance site here in Oz. It, umm, mysteriously went down some time during the Senate Wind Inquiry, and has not been up since.
10
Rod Stuart & bobl –
many thanks for your comments. of course, ABC is pumping this misinfo out repeatedly without having to justify anything that is said.
more MSM deception. anyone who knows about the crowds who congregate in St. Peter’s Square on a Sunday would be wary of the 5,000 figure for this activist “rally”:
29 June: Guardian: Pope Francis’s environmental message brings thousands on to streets in Rome
Vatican officials to discuss climate change and environment with scientists and activists including Naomi Klein
by Rosie Scammell in Rome
Holy See officials will this week discuss the environment with activists and scientists at a meeting at which Naomi Klein, a prominent social activist, will take centre stage alongside Cardinal Peter Turkson, one of the pontiff’s most senior aides…
Alongside Klein and Turkson, the conservation group WWF has been invited to this week’s Vatican conference and had a strong presence at the rally on Sunday, described as a “historic event” by Samantha Smith, leader of the organisation’s global climate and energy initiative…
Activists at the One Earth, One Family event broke through the silence enveloping early-morning Rome with singing and chanting, waving paper birds high over the central Piazza Farnese before marching to the Vatican…
While a few hundred people began the multifaith march, holding banners and sheltering from the sun under giant paper leaves, organisers said about 5,000 were present at the end of the march in St Peter’s Square…
Among them was Yeb Sano, the Philippines’ former chief climate change negotiator at the UN, who is now a spiritual ambassador for the march co-organisers, OurVoices, a multifaith environmental group…
Kiran Bali, who travelled from Yorkshire in the UK on behalf of the Hindu community, said it was imperative that religious leaders such as herself get involved…
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/28/pope-francis-environment-rome-naomi-klein-climate-change
nowhere in google images of the rally have i seen any sizeable crowd whatsoever. greenpeace also involved, it seems, & elsewhere i read that 350.org sent a couple of islander “climate warriors”.
in the first photo gallery, there are no crowds whatsoever, just some WWF banners, Solar banners, Migrant Lives Matter banners & the like.
in the second photo gallery, there is one photo of a crowd, with a caption “I finally saw the Pope” but it is evident that is the regular Sunday crowd & nothing to do with the rally.
OneEarthOneFamily.org – Photo Galleries
http://oneearthonefamily.org/
10
Rosie’s announcement of the “rally” – what a laugh:
28 June: Guardian: Rosie Scammell: Pope Francis recruits Naomi Klein in climate change battle
Social activist ‘surprised but delighted’ to join top cardinal in high-level environment conference at the Vatican
She is one of the world’s most high-profile social activists and a ferocious critic of 21st-century capitalism. He is one of the pope’s most senior aides and a professor of climate change economics. But this week the secular radical will join forces with the Catholic cardinal in the latest move by Pope Francis to shift the debate on global warming.
Naomi Klein and Cardinal Peter Turkson are to lead a high-level conference on the environment, bringing together churchmen, scientists and activists to debate climate change action…
Activists and religious leaders will gather in Rome on Sunday, marching through the Eternal City before the Vatican welcomes campaigners to the conference, which will focus on the UN’s impending climate change summit.
Protesters have chosen the French embassy as their starting point – a Renaissance palace famed for its beautiful frescoes, but more significantly a symbol of the United Nations climate change conference, which will be hosted by Paris this December…
The ***imminent arrival of Klein within the Vatican walls has raised some eyebrows…
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/28/pope-climate-change-naomi-klein
***”imminent arrival” – you would think Klein was the Pope or something!
20
28 June: Toledo Blade: AP: Home-efficiency upgrades fall short in savings
Study suggests weatherization costs outweigh benefits on low-income homes
Home-efficiency measures such as installing new windows or replacing insulation deliver such a small fraction of their promised energy savings that they may not save any money in the long run, according to the conclusion of a University of Chicago study…
“The problem is that the real world is screwy,” said Michael Greenstone, an energy economist and head of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. “The models project much larger savings than are realized by homeowners.”
The study, conducted by Mr. Greenstone and University of California at Berkeley economists Meredith Fowlie and Catherine Wolfram, ***has not yet been reviewed by a panel of peers. And energy-efficiency experts who were shown the study say the authors’ broad conclusions about energy efficiency in general aren’t justified after studying a single program in a single state focused only on low-income households.
But Mr. Greenstone said he is finding similar results in a second study of middle-income homes in Wisconsin. If correct, the findings could undermine the rationale for billion-dollar federal and state efficiency programs and call into question the understanding that making homes and businesses more energy-efficient are among the cheapest ways to cut carbon dioxide emissions…
https://www.toledoblade.com/Energy/2015/06/28/Home-efficiency-upgrades-fall-short-in-savings.html
LINK TO STUDY: Becker Friedman Institute Research Repository, University of Chicago: Do Energy Efficiency Investments Deliver? Evidence from the Weatherization Assistance Program
Conventional wisdom suggests that energy efficiency (EE) policies are beneficial because they induce investments that pay for themselves and lead to emissions reductions. However, this belief is primarily based on projections from engineering models. This paper reports on the results of an experimental evaluation of the nation’s largest residential EE program conducted on a sample of more than 30,000 households. The findings suggest that the upfront investment costs are about twice the actual energy savings. Further, the model-projected savings are roughly 2.5 times the actual savings. While this might be attributed to the “rebound” effect – when demand for energy end uses increases as a result of greater efficiency – the paper fails to find evidence of significantly higher indoor temperatures at weatherized homes. Even when accounting for the broader societal benefits of energy efficiency investments, the costs still substantially outweigh the benefits; the average rate of return is approximately -9.5% annually…
Authors:
Meredith Fowlie, University of California, Berkeley
Michael Greenstone, University of Chicago
Catherine Wolfram, University of California, Berkeley
Publication Date:
June, 2015
Publication Status:
Internal Working Paper
LINK TO PDF
http://econresearch.uchicago.edu/content/do-energy-efficiency-investments-deliver-evidence-weatherization-assistance-program
20
TonyfromOz – many thanx.
from the same abc science show transcript:
Carl Smith: According to Russell Marsh, the Clean Energy Council’s Policy Director, the combination of ***improved storage and more localised power production is upending traditional economic models for power companies.
Russell Marsh: …And with people now in their houses being able to install effectively a set of batteries that in conjunction with a solar system they themselves can generate electricity that can be exported to the grid, you’ve now got this two-way flow of electricity that the system originally wasn’t designed to do that, so you’ve actually now got householders not just being a source of electricity demand but also a source of electricity generation. That means you don’t need as many large-scale power stations located around Australia, but you need a very different mix of technology…
Bill Gates doesn’t agree! (Gates, of course, has his own agenda, but worth reading all):
26 June: UK Register: Lewis Page: Gates: Renewable energy can’t do the job. Gov should switch green subsidies into R&D
‘Only way to a positive scenario is innovation’
Gates expressed his views in an interview given to the Financial Times yesterday, saying that the cost of using current renewables such as solar panels and windfarms to produce all or most power would be “beyond astronomical”. At present very little power comes from renewables: in the UK just 5.2 per cent, the majority of which is dubiously-green biofuel burning rather than renewable ‘leccy – and even so, energy bills have surged and will surge further as a result.
In Bill Gates’ view, the answer is for governments to divert the massive sums of money which are currently funnelled to renewables owners to R&D instead. This would offer a chance of developing low-carbon technologies which actually can keep the lights on in the real world…
Gates says he’ll personally put his money where his mouth is. He’s apparently invested $1bn of his own cash in low-carbon energy R&D already, and “over the next five years, there’s a good chance that will double,” he said.
The ex-software overlord stated that the Guardian’s scheme of everyone refusing to invest in oil and gas companies would have “little impact”. He also poured scorn on another notion oft-touted as a way of making renewable energy more feasible, that of using batteries to store intermittent supplies from solar or wind.
“There’s no battery technology that’s even close to allowing us to take all of our energy from renewables,” he said, pointing out – as we’ve noted on these pages before – that it’s necessary “to deal not only with the 24-hour cycle but also with long periods of time where it’s cloudy and you don’t have sun or you don’t have wind.”…
Gates has said a lot of this before. The main new thing is the firm assertion that renewable energy technology as it now is has no chance of powering a reasonably numerous and well-off human race. This is actually a very simple thing to work out, and just about anybody numerate who thinks about the subject honestly comes to the same conclusion – examples include your correspondent, Google renewables experts, global-warming daddy James Hansen, even your more honest hardline greens (they typically think that the answer is for the human race to become a lot less numerous and well-off).
Unfortunately a lot of people aren’t numerate and/or aren’t honest, so it’s far from sure that the colossal subsidies pumped into today’s useless renewables will get diverted into R&D which could produce something worthwhile…
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/26/gates_renewable_energy_cant_do_the_job_gov_should_switch_green_subsidies_into_rd/
10
Thanks again pat for this. Oh dear, fancy saying this: (my bolding)
Let’s look at that shall we.
We now have 1,500,000 (yes, 1.5 MILLION) of these powerful generators installed atop Australian roofs.
Man, that’s huge. Power plants all across the Country are just shutting up shop left right and centre. (tut tut Tony, insert /sarc here)
The average sized rooftop installation is now 2.2KW.
So, 1.5 Million X 2.2KW equals 3.3MW.
At 12.5% Capacity Factor, that brings it down to 412.5MW.
66% of the power is actually consumed by the Residence with the panels installed, so that means that 33% is fed back to the grid.
That brings it down to 136MW.
Say, no wonder they’re all shutting down.
Umm, just ONE unit at Bayswater is 660MW.
Under normal operation, that Bayswater plant supplies the equivalent power generated in ONE YEAR by all those 1.5 million rooftop systems, delivering it to the grid in, umm, 75 days, and the amount fed back to the grids, well, Bayswater supplies that in 25 days.
Closing down soon. Umm, I somehow doubt it.
And, if they have the batteries, then they are not sending anything back to the grid. You either have grid connected solar, or stand alone solar, which is with the batteries.
Tony.
20
Heatwave to strike Europe.
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2015/06/27/this-will-cause-squealing-30c/
10
BoM still predicting warmer and drier going forward.
http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2015/s4263144.htm
They got off to a bad start with June, south-east Oz felt cooler and wetter, its what my neighbors call a ‘good season’ on the land.
10
TonyfromOz –
surely the Minerals Council or Coal interests should be demanding from abc the right to reply on “The Science Show”.
can’t imagine Media Watch or the abc’s fact-check lot would ever concern themselves in such matters! lol.
20
pat,
what you need to realise here is that these commentators, and announcers, both on radio and on TV and in the print or online media, and here I’m talking those journalists and ‘talking heads’, well, they do not want to do anything which would make them look in even the slightest manner silly, or red faced, or to back down, or to admit any error, (willingly and of their own free will, without being forced into it) hence, even if it is pointed out to them, they will NEVER make it public in any way.
That’s how they get away with it.
They never actually do any research themselves, because nearly all of this is so far over their heads that they don’t even bother to even try and understand it. All they understand is journalism.
On top of that, their preferred people that they go to for (so called) informed comment, well they believe every word they say, no matter how outrageous or false, and if anything ever does get pointed out to them, then THAT person is an outrageous liar.
I’ve been there and I’ve done that. There’s no point my going to their sites and commenting any more. There’s just not enough hours in the day to take all that.
I’ve seen comments here about the same old people saying the same old things at this site of Joanne’s time and again, and yes, I am one of those.
However, here at Joanne’s site, I get people who actually do want to understand all this, and give me a free hearing, and on top of that, they actually come back and ask further questions. They want information, and they want it to be correct, and explained in a manner that they can understand.
I fully understand what I do here. It’s not at all ‘preaching to the converted’ in any way. There are new people coming here all the time, and each little snippet from me adds to their knowledge, and their ability to see through the lies, and even if they are not confident enough to explain the technicalities, they at least can call it out for themselves as Bovine Waste Product.
I’ll keep doing it.
You’ll occasionally see some of my comments getting red thumbs. I love them. Those people are so uninformed that they believe implicitly what they do, but have no comeback to me, because they have no actual understanding, so their ONLY comeback is the red thumb. I love those red thumbs, because it tells me that there’s another person I have sowed seeds of doubt in.
I used to go to other sites and call them out. The invective I got as responses told me one thing, not to argue with fools.
I’m confident in what I do. I have the Maths and the technical understanding to shame them with the facts.
Anyway, those sites have the biggest comeback of all. Moderation. If they don’t like my Comment, it never gets seen. For every one comment I have got up at sites like theirs, there are ten which never see the light of day at all.
Tony.
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TonyfromOz –
i hear what you say.
however, in this particular instance, i would like to see the Minerals Council plus other interested parties, come together and write to Mark Scott and the abc board, requesting equal time on The Science Show in a program called, e.g. The Case for Coal (subtitled why solar and wind cannot do the job or something like that). they would request an entire program, without opposing voices, just as the show i’ve linked to has no opposing voices.
if they are turned down, then they could go public in the press, if any journalist allowed them, or in the form of an Open Letter.
these abc shows are played over and over, with the old propaganda effect of repetition playing its part in brainwashing their audience. it’s time people stood up to them.
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Solar activity has a profound influence on climate, the 200 year cycle is caught in sharp relief.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com.au/2015/06/paper-finds-pronounced-influence-of.html
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Large high-pressure systems have sat over Victoria for much of June, pushing cold fronts – and their moisture – further south, Ms Westcott said, adding that Melbourne had its driest June since 2009.
‘Sydney’s rainfall of 110.6mm has been about 20 per cent below average for the month – with more than half the rain falling on one day, Friday, June 19.
‘For the first half of 2015, Sydney’s rainfall totals about 877mm, or about 20 per cent above the long-run average for the period of almost 729mm.
‘Temperatures in the city have extended their above-average run, with maximums in June about 1.6 degrees above the norm.
‘Overnight temperatures in June were about 0.7 degrees above normal, Ms Westcott said.’
SMH / Hannam
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Sydney and Melbourne are not the whole world, I want a second opinion.
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‘The month of June provided some unusual weather events for the Northern Territory. There was, some record rain in parts of the Top End, and across the NT it was warmer than average.’
Weatherzone
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Also, Hannam (SMH) is calling this cyclone ‘early’ and not ‘late’. Don’t know why he bothers, either way its clearly a global warming signal. (sarc/off)
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We are on a space journey.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jHsq36_NTU&list=PLrhU-AowtrRhfdIo8k1Nw86cJyDUFPWV2
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Rising CO2 but no positive feedback, humidity falls, massive fail.
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c01bb084ab2fa970d-pi
The Atlantic is cooling and conditions are becoming drier?
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