UK
This thread is for discussion of British aspects of global warming.
Climate Conversation Group
Taking the heat out of global warming
For the first time in history, people shouting “the end is nigh” are somehow
For the first time in history, people shouting “the end is nigh” are somehow
the sane ones, while those of us who say it is not are now the lunatics.
Latest climate models v. reality
As the models continue to leave actual temperature readings in their dust, sizeable warming halted about 1995 — although it might resume at any time. It must hasten to have any hope of catching up with the predictions.
If you claim warming continues, we want evidence of continued warming — eminently reasonable. Making us wait for 17 years for that evidence invites us to doubt you.
Claiming that warming hasn't stopped is the same as claiming it has — and both are ridiculous, for nobody knows the future. The best you can do is describe the past.
Click graph for larger version.
Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past
Snow falls in Yorkshire – In October!
Snow fell as far south as Yorkshire as drivers were stranded in cars following blizzards in Scotland as winter came early to Britain.
Published: 7:26PM BST 20 Oct 2010
Andy says:
October 27, 2010 at 10:19 am
Frozen Britain braves coldest October night for 17 years
Parts of Britain have suffered their coldest October night for 17 years, with temperatures plummeting to -6.6C, reports the Daily Telegraph
The central England Temperature (CET) from the 1st-7th of December is -1.9, making this the coldest opening week of December since 1772
Joe Bastardi European Blog
POSTED: 3:29 p.m. December 9, 2010
Snow Might Cover 90% of U.K. by End of November With Six Inches in London
Nov 24, 2010
Snow is forecast to cover as much as 90 percent of the U.K. by Nov. 29 with six inches in London as cold weather approaches, according to weather forecasts.
There may be as much as six inches (15 centimeters) of snow in southeast England, northeast England and much of Scotland, British Weather Services, which sells forecasts to businesses including energy companies, said in an e-mail.
“We expect the country to be whitened out,” Jim Dale, a senior meteorologist at British Weather Services in High Wycombe, England, said by telephone. “There’s a good chance we could be waking up to large volumes of snow.” Snowfall is also forecast across the rest of Europe, particularly across the Alps and Scandinavia, he said.
Weather forecasters use models which can predict trends in weather. The models can change. The U.K.’s Met Office issued a heavy snow warning on its website at 11:30 a.m local time. Cold weather can spur demand for natural gas, used to heat more than half of the country’s homes and businesses.
Snow is going to come “progressively as we get to the end of this week and into next,” Dale said. “On current trends, we can’t see an end to this until mid-December.”
Heavy snow to blanket Britain as bitter cold weather heralds arrival of winter
24 Nov 2010
More than eight inches of snow are set to blanket parts of Britain as the bitter cold snap triggered the first Cold Weather Payments of the winter.
Temperatures were due to plummet well below zero as freezing winds swept the country amid warnings “treacherous” roads remain not gritted after salt supplies failed to be delivered.
Forecasters, who said it was the earliest significant snowfall since 1993, warned no part of Britain was “going to be immune” from snow over the coming days.
[Snip]
The Mercury was set to plummet to -9C (18.8F) in northern Scotland while temperatures will fall to about -4C (24.8F) in many other parts as easterly winds hit the country from Scandinavia and Russia.
The country will be as cold as Iceland for the rest of the week as day temperatures struggle to reach 2C or 3C, which is about eight degrees lower average.
The freezing temperatures triggered the first Cold Weather Payments of the winter with almost 80,000 households set to receive £25 each over the coming days to help cover the cost of heating their homes.
Cold Weather Payments are made when average temperatures are recorded or forecast to be 32F (0C) or lower for seven consecutive days. Around 11.9 million such payments worth £297 million were made to households last winter
Councils warned that some local authorities remained unprepared for the blast of cold weather because they were still waiting on delivery of thousands of tonnes of salt.
Continues…….
UK record low temperatures – Google Search
Biased BBC (B-BBC)
Richard North Blog
Hottest Year Ever : UK’s Barbecue Summer
Wind power? Saving the earth or just costing it?
Climate sceptics launch campaign to overturn green targets
Climate sceptics, including a number of high profileTory backbenchers, are launching a campaign to overturn the Coalition’s green targets.
By Louise Gray, 27 Oct 2010, Telegraph UK
The ten challenges sceptics have asked ‘supporters of the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused climate change’ to prove:
1. Variations in global climate in the last hundred years are significantly outside the natural range experienced in previous centuries.
2. Humanity’s emissions of carbon dioxide and other ‘greenhouse gases’ (GHG) are having a dangerous impact on global climate.
3. Computer-based models can meaningfully replicate the impact of all of the natural factors that may significantly influence climate.
4. Sea levels are rising dangerously at a rate that has accelerated with increasing human GHG emissions, thereby threatening small islands and coastal communities.
5. The incidences of malaria and other infectious diseases are now increasing due to recent climate changes;
6. Human society and natural ecosystems cannot adapt to foreseeable climate change as they have done in the past.
7. Worldwide glacier retreat, and sea ice melting in polar regions, is unusual and related to increases in human GHG emissions.
8. Polar bears and other Arctic and Antarctic wildlife are unable to adapt to anticipated local climate change effects, independent of the causes of those changes.
9. Hurricanes, other tropical cyclones and associated extreme weather events are increasing in severity and frequency.
10. Data recorded by ground-based stations are a reliable indicator of global surface temperature trends.
Climate Fools Day in the UK Parliament a Success
October 28, 2010 The Hockey Schtick
email received from analytical chemist Hans Schreuder reporting the Climate Fools Day meeting in the UK Parliament was a great success. Perhaps a US version will occur in the US House of Representatives following the Nov. 2nd midterm elections.
The Climate Fools Day in London meeting was superb.
Will write a proper report on the event yet, when various video clips have been posted.
Attached two pics from the event. The room was nearly fully booked.
Lots of good contacts and a call for a monthly meeting at Parliament and for MPs to attend.
Wind energy in particular was demolished as the greatest waste of time and money. The momentum is building now.
Kind regards,
Hans Schreuder
http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/
Andy says:
October 30, 2010 at 9:09 pm
Without the Hot Air
Sustainable Energy – without the hot air
Prof David J.C. MacKay
http://www.withouthotair.com
“The Freakonomics of conservation, climate and energy.”
Insurance that kills
10:10 threatened to kill people, but Piers points out that their incompetence already does.
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/11/insurance-that-kills/#more-11085
ACTUALLY THE CO2-CLIMATE CHANGE LOBBY DOES KILL PEOPLE
From Piers Corbyn
Met Office says 2010 ‘among hottest on record’
26 November 2010, Roger Harrabin, BBC
[Snip]
Climate sceptics say that until now, warming has plateaued over the last decade. The Met Office agrees that the rate of warming has slowed – but it maintains that is due to natural variability, not because man-made warming has stopped.
[Snip]
“The long-term warming trend is 0.16C,” she says. “In the last 10 years the rate decreased to between 0.05 and 0.13.
“There are a number of things that are affecting short-term temperatures. A lot of the heat could be distributed to the deep oceans and we don’t know what’s going on there.”
‘No proof’
There is a question over how many times the Met Office has forecast a record previously. Dr Pope said they had not done so from her recollection.
But a Met Office press release shows a forecast that 2007 would probably beat 1998. And a BBC report implies that they made the same prediction for the other El Nino year of 2003.
Sceptics say this could prove the third time they have been wrong.
But it is impossible to be wrong with a probabilistic forecast unless the forecast is 100%. It would certainly have eased pressure on the Met Office, though, if their 2010 forecast had been seen to be spectacularly accurate.
Professor John Christy, a climate sceptic from the University of Alabama in Hunstville, said global temperature had plunged in the past two weeks, so 2010 was likely to remain in second place.
He challenged the Met Office conviction that greenhouse gases were to blame for the warmth.
“The cause of the warmth is speculation. There are numerous feedbacks at work (many of which are poorly modelled if at all), and it seems to me unimaginative to conclude that greenhouse gases are the dominant cause,” he said.
“There is no proof of such a cause in classical scientific sense – so we end up with a lot of opinions on the matter. Evidence is strong that centuries in the past 10,000 years were warmer than today without influences from human-related greenhouse gases.”
World May Record Warmest Year as U.K. Meteorological Office Adjusts Data
Nov 27, 2010 Bloomberg
The decadal rate for the 2000s may be 0.03 degrees higher once adjustments have been made to compensate for an increase in the use of buoys to take sea temperature measurements, Pope said. The buoys measure sea temperatures as being slightly lower than ships, which were used more in the past, according to Matthew Palmer, an ocean scientist at the Met Office.
[So, adjust and splice - Et Voila! - global warming]
What happened to the ‘warmest year on record’: The truth is global warming has halted
MailOnline
Last updated at 4:17 PM on 5th December 2010
A year ago tomorrow, just before the opening of the UN Copenhagen world climate summit, the British Meteorological Office issued a confident prediction. The mean world temperature for 2010, it announced, ‘is expected to be 14.58C, the warmest on record’ – a deeply worrying 0.58C above the 19611990 average.
World temperatures, it went on, were locked inexorably into an everrising trend: ‘Our experimental decadal forecast confirms previous indications that about half the years 2010-2019 will be warmer than the warmest year observed so far – 1998.’
Met Office officials openly boasted that they hoped by their statements to persuade the Copenhagen gathering to impose new and stringent carbon emission limits – an ambition that was not to be met.
Last week, halfway through yet another giant, 15,000delegate UN climate jamboree, being held this time in the tropical splendour of Cancun in Mexico, the Met Office was at it again.
Never mind that Britain, just as it was last winter and the winter before, was deep in the grip of a cold snap, which has seen some temperatures plummet to minus 20C, and that here 2010 has been the coolest year since 1996.
Globally, it insisted, 2010 was still on course to be the warmest or second warmest year since current records began.
But buried amid the details of those two Met Office statements 12 months apart lies a remarkable climbdown that has huge implications – not just for the Met Office, but for debate over climate change as a whole.
Read carefully with other official data, they conceal a truth that for some, to paraphrase former US VicePresident Al Gore, is really inconvenient: for the past 15 years, global warming has stopped.
Continues…………
I wonder if the Met works with raw or adjusted data; oh silly me!
…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-26/world-may-record-warmest-year-as-u-k-meteorological-office-adjusts-data.html
Cooking The Books At The Met Office
World temperatures in 2010 may be the warmest on record, the U.K. Met Office said, as it plans to calibrate a decade of data to account for newer sensors.
The average temperature for the year through October shows 2010 will be one of the two warmest years in a series that goes back to 1850, said Vicky Pope, head of climate science at the Met Office. Scientists at the agency are preparing to revise data since 2000 to adjust for a new method that masked some of the rising temperature trend, she said.
“I wonder if the Met works with raw or adjusted data”
They “calibrate” and “revise” data – apparently. This seems to be a process of adjustment and splicing of disparate datasets.
It’s getting ridiculous:-
Micheal Mann’s hockey stick adjust and splice,
UK Met, ship – ARGO adjust and splice
Land record adjust and splice
Law Dome – Mauna Loa GCM spin-up splice
Adjust, splice, revise, calibrate………… and so it goes on
“Scientists at the agency are preparing to revise data since 2000 to adjust for a new method that masked some of the rising temperature trend”
They are running out of ways to extract warming from the records.
All of these trends in the metrics depend entirely on the initial pivot point selected so what is really masked is warm/cool phase change – they just have not got a clue.
If they would just place intermediate trends on the data the picture emerges but that’s not the warmist way of course.
Cancun climate change summit: scientists call for rationing in developed world
By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent 7:30AM GMT 29 Nov 2010 Telegraph UK
In a series of papers published by the Royal Society, physicists and chemists from some of worlds most respected scientific institutions, including Oxford University and the Met Office, agreed that current plans to tackle global warming are not enough.
[Snip]
In one paper Professor Kevin Anderson, Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, said the only way to reduce global emissions enough, while allowing the poor nations to continue to grow, is to halt economic growth in the rich world over the next twenty years.
[Snip]
But Dr Myles Allen, of Oxford Universitys Department of Physics, said this might not be enough. He said that if emissions do not come down quick enough even a slight change in temperature will be too rapid for ecosystems to keep up. Also by measuring emissions relative to a particular baseline, rather than putting a limit on the total amount that can ever be pumped into the atmosphere, there is a danger that the limit is exceeded.
[Snip]
Other papers published on 4C and beyond in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A warned of rising sea levels, droughts in river basins and mass migrations.
In response to the observations about Kevin Anderson above, there is quite an interesting thread at Bishop Hill where Prof Anderson pops up in the comments and answers questions.
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/12/1/competing-interest.html
It’s well worth reading all the comments. Well mannered and reasonable, mostly.
BRITAIN IS FREEZING TO DEATH
Sunday December 5,2010 – Express UK
MIDDLE class families are among millions of Britons who cannot afford to heat their homes this winter, as elderly ride on buses all day to stay in the warm.
After a week of snow and freezing temperatures a shocking picture has emerged of the bleak months ahead for 5.5 million households.
Pensioners, who are among those most vulnerable to the cold, are resorting to extraordinary measures to keep warm.
Many have been using their free travel passes to spend the day riding on buses while others are seeking refuge from the cold in libraries and shopping centres.
Dot Gibson, spokeswoman for pressure group the National Pensioners’ Convention, said: “Now that we have one of the coldest winters, older people are going to have to make the unenviable decision whether or not to put the heating on. The Government should guarantee that they won’t cut the winter fuel allowance.”
The death toll from the big freeze rose to seven yesterday. They included two men who were killed in a crash on the M62 in Humberside and two teenage girls who died when their car collided with a Royal Mail van in Cumbria.
The winter death toll is set to rise steeply as official figures show that nine elderly people died every hour because of cold-related illnesses last year. The number of deaths linked to cold over the four months of last winter reached nearly 28,000.
Charities claim this country has the highest winter death rate in northern Europe, worse than colder nations such as Finland and Sweden.
About half of the people forced to spend over 10 per cent of their income on energy bills – the official definition of fuel poverty – are aged over 60.
But working families also face a tough time meeting the cost of keeping the central heating turned on as fuel prices continue to rise.
Ann Robinson, director of consumer policy at price comparison service uswitch.com, said: “Middle-class households are now in fuel poverty.”
National Energy Action estimates that 5.5 million households will have plunged into fuel poverty by early next year due to price rises.
This is up 400,000 on the group’s last estimate and represents 21 per cent of the UK’s 26 million households.
The last official figures, for 2008, showed there were 4.5 million fuel-poor households in the UK. On Friday, British Gas will raise prices for eight million customers. Millions more customers of Scottish & Southern Energy and ScottishPower have already been hit by price rises.
Last winter 70 per cent of household were forced to cut down or ration their energy use because of cost.
Uswitch’s Ms Robinson, who advised Tony Blair’s government on energy policy, warned: “Winter price hikes will simply force even more people down this route.”
Energy minister Greg Barker admitted last week that the system to deal with fuel poverty was “completely broken” and said he was “very worried” by the NEA figures.
Charity Age UK estimates that nearly a third of pensioners have resorted to extreme measures to keep warm. The National Pensioners’ Convention has described the situation as “Dickensian”.
Widow Rita Young, from Thorny, near Peterborough was struggling to stay warm last week. Mrs Young, 75, said: “I’ve worked all my life. It doesn’t feel fair.
“People my age don’t want to put hats and scarves on in their homes, but there’s nothing we can do about it. I sit in a blanket put on a hat and sometimes go to bed at 7.30 in the evening.”
Last week Lillian Jenkinson, 80, and William Wilson, 84, were found dead in the gardens of their homes 70 miles apart in Cumbria. Both are thought to have lain undetected in sub-zero temperatures for hours.
On Thursday a driver who stopped to help a stranded motorist in the Yorkshire Dales was killed when he was struck by another vehicle.
Britain’s big freeze death toll hits 300 every day
Dec 25 2010 – METRO UK
Nearly 300 more people a day died when freezing temperatures hit at the start of this month, new figures show.
A total of 11,193 deaths were registered in England and Wales between December 3 and 10, the Office for National Statistics has revealed.
This is a 21 per cent rise on the previous week, which works out at 282 extra deaths every day.
It has also emerged flu rates have more than doubled in the past week with children the worst-hit.
Continues…….
Carbon capture coal firm Powerfuel calls in administrators
Powerfuel £635m short of money required for CCS scheme
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/dec/09/powerfuel-clean-coal-ccs-firm-administrators
Yet another “green” initiative bites the dust.
But the madness continues
“The government in October finally committed £1bn for the UK’s first CCS demonstration plant, likely to be developed by ScottishPower. It says it remains committed to putting levies on consumer bills to fund up to three more projects but it is not clear when the funds will be made available.”
All the plants need is scrubbers – the carbon’s no problem.
Even The Guardian is reporting that the UK may suffer its coldest winter since 1963.
The weather maps look horrendous, cold air coming straight off the North Pole.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/dec/15/uk-fears-worst-winter-weather-1963
An interesting development – from the Guardian no less. There is still objectivity there from time to time,
The photo of cycling/walking on the frozen river wont go down well in some quarters and I see the Met Office is still holding out for warmth in January, ‘too early to warn of another 1963″ apparently.
But a “national summit of government leaders’?
Maybe some realisation setting in.
On top of this in today’s Mail
Energy bills could double to pay for green power as ministers plan minimum carbon price
Proponents of the scheme insist the carbon ‘floor price’ is meant to reflect pollution caused by fossil fuels, and will encourage investors to pour their money into ‘green’ energy instead.
But experts warned it could lead to a doubling of energy bills, hitting the poor and elderly the hardest.
There was a separate warning yesterday that winter energy bills are already at a record high of £630 for the average family after most suppliers hiked prices.
Website Energyhelpline.com said families have been hit by a combination of higher tariffs and plunging temperatures
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1339040/Energy-bills-double-pay-green-power-ministers-plan-minimum-carbon-price.html
£500 on electricity bills to pay for green energy
Electricity bills will have to rise by up to £500 a year to pay for a new generation of environmentally friendly power stations, it emerged.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/8205123/500-on-electricity-bills-to-pay-for-green-energy.html
Scroll down to the comments. How long can this madness last?
Christopher Booker: Chris Huhne has a blueprint for a green, cold, dark Britain
Saturday, December 18th 2010, 2:31 PM EST - Climate Realists
The government’s new energy policy will lead to widespread power cuts and economic disaster,
As much of the northern hemisphere last week froze under the snows of the fourth unusually cold winter in a row, our ministers, led by David Cameron and Chris Huhne, the Climate Change Secretary, laid out a blueprint that promises to inflict on Britain a social and economic catastrophe unique in the world. They chose this moment to announce what Mr Huhne called “a seismic shift” in Britain’s energy policy, the purpose of which, according to Mr Cameron, is to replace our “clapped-out” electricity supplies by making Britain “the greenest economy in the world”.
The chief driving force of the policy is the EU’s requirement that, within 10 years, 30 per cent of our electricity must come from renewables, mainly through thousands more wind turbines. This would be so expensive that the Government accepts it could only be made economical by massively rigging the market against any form of electricity derived from fossil fuels, such as the coal and gas which were last week supplying more than 80 per cent of our electricity. By a complex new system of regulations, including what in effect will be a tax of £27 a ton on CO2 emissions, the Government thus hopes to make renewables “competitive” with conventional power.
In addition, it will in effect make it impossible to replace the coal-fired power stations that will be forced to close in the next few years under an EU directive, while proposing a hidden subsidy to any new nuclear power stations. (Although, since the EU does not count carbon-free nuclear power as “renewable”, this may well fall foul of its ban on state aid.) All this, Mr Huhne assures us, might lead to a modest rise of £160 a year in the average household energy bill, but in the long run it will make electricity cheaper than if he had not intervened.
So riddled with wishful thinking and contradictions are these proposals that one scarcely knows where to begin. For a start, even if we could hope to build enough windmills to provide, say, 25 per cent of our electricity (10 times the current proportion), this would require not the 10,000 turbines the Government talks of, but more like 25,000, costing well over £200 billion, plus another £100 billion to connect them up to the grid.
At least the Government admits for the first time that the wind doesn’t always blow; so it proposes a Capacity Mechanism to subsidise the building of dozens of gas-fired power stations, to be kept running all the time, emitting CO2, just to provide instant back-up for when the wind drops. More than once on these recent cold, windless days, the contribution of wind to our electricity needs has been as low as 0.1 per cent – so the back-up to all those turbines will cost billions more, doing much to negate any CO2 savings from the turbines when they work. It does not take long to estimate that the capital cost of Mr Huhne’s new energy policy could well be more than £300 billion over 10 years, or £30 billion a year. Since the total wholesale cost of the electricity we used last year was only around £19 billion, this alone would be well on the way to tripling our bills by 2020.
When Mr Cameron talks of wanting to replace our “clapped-out” power supplies, what he should have had in mind was the need to meet the terrifying shortfall due in a few years’ time when we lose those older nuclear and coal-fired power stations which currently suppply 40 per cent of our needs. In a sane world, the Government would be planning to get that infrastructure replaced as a matter of the highest national priority, at a cost of around £100 billion. Instead, it puts forward an incoherent farrago of uncosted policies which, even if they could be put into practice, would cost three times as much, paid for by all of us through our already soaring energy bills. They include no practical proposals to meet that fast-looming energy gap, without which, within five years, we face the prospect of wholesale power cuts, bringing much of Britain’s economy to a halt.
No other country in the world has an energy policy so utterly mad and unworkable. Yet all our major political parties are equally locked into the same self-deceiving bubble of unreality. Any final hope that we might be saved from this absurdly unnecessary disaster seemed last week to vanish, even as the ice and the snow closed in.
Source Link: telegraph.co.uk
Arctic freeze to last another month as AA warns of ‘worst driving conditions imaginable’ for Christmas getaways
The Big Freeze will hold us in its grip for at least another month, forecasters warn.
Arctic conditions are expected to last through the Christmas and New Year bank holidays and beyond.
With temperatures expected to fall to -15c (5f), the Met Office said this is ‘almost certain’ to become the coldest December since records began in 1910.
Yesterday’s snowfall was largely in the South and West, and in Wales while the South was braced last night for another 10in of snow accompanied by treacherous ice.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1339632/Big-freeze-Arctic-conditions-month-AA-warns-dangerous-driving-conditions.html
Heathrow management under fire after week of chaos
8:00 AM Thursday Dec 23, 2010 – NZH
[Snip]
Airports on Europe’s northern fringe are models of cold-weather resilience. Scandinavian airports stay open in bitter cold and waist-deep snow. Authorities in Sweden say they can clear a runway in 6 to 10 minutes, compared to 25 at Heathrow.
Reijo Tasanen of Finavia, which runs Finland’s 25 airports, said preparedness is the key.
“We are ready. We brief the staff on weather conditions, we work overtime if necessary and simply put, we have enough equipment – we have to,” Tasanen said.
That doesn’t come cheap. Canada’s biggest airport, in Toronto, spends almost $15 million a year dealing with winter. Heathrow won’t give a comparable figure but said it has 6 million pounds ($9 million) worth of snow-clearing equipment and is spending 500,000 pounds ($770,000) this year upgrading and maintaining it.
Heathrow faces a choice: invest tens of millions in snow-clearing equipment, or gamble that this year’s wintry weather was a one-off event.
“BAA has to make a decision for the future: do we throw more equipment at it?” said David Learmount of Flight Global magazine. “Then what happens if they never get any snow for the next 10 years? What will their shareholders say when they put the prices up to airlines and the airlines pass that on to passengers? It’s a difficult decision.”
——————————————————————————————————————–
One-off event?
If they take the advise of the UK Met Office, they will be certain to make the wrong decision – better not to in that case.
In private, the best-informed analysts now agree that Britain’s environmental policies have put the country on track to have the world’s most expensive electricity. This is mainly because our competitors are almost certain to choose cheaper routes to emissions reductions, such as natural gas, or to shun emissions reductions altogether. The Coalition’s own Annual Energy Statement for 2010 concedes that by the year 2020, nearly one third of the average domestic electricity bill will consist of green energy charges imposed by law (£160 out of £512, or 31 per cent). Business will be hit even harder, with environmental charges for the average medium-sized non-domestic user accounting for £404,000 out of £1.224 million, or 33 per cent.
http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/3639/full
Where do all the UK subsidies come from?
I have to highlight this stuff – it defies belief.
We know Spain’s stuffed – why’s Britain following? Crazy.
Mind you, I’ve been looking at NZ ETS market distortions – also crazy.
The Hijack of the Met
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/12/hijack-of-met.html
North and Booker on the Green Hijack of the UK Met Office
Andy, i can’t link to the Booker article “The green hijack of the Met office is crippling Britain”. Is it not in print yet or something? Not in Google or Bing or UK Telegraph.
The EU Referendum article is definitely bookmarked though.
Works for me, Richard.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/12/hijack-of-met.html
The heading is just: “The hijack of the Met.”
No that’s North writing on Booker’s article. If you click on the image of the article you can see it but not read it and I don’t know where to access it.
It might be only in newspaper form at this stage and will go online later – no point giving it away before it goes on the stands.
Ah yes. I beg your pardon.
Worthy of note is the data on wind output during the cold snap. sometimes reaching zero percent for the entire country.
The wind maps showed the wind bringing the cold down from the Arctic, but once the cold system is in place there’s no wind and they have to stoke coal.
My (limited) understanding is that wind occurs at the interface between high and low pressure systems but at the centre of either there’s no wind.
Not much of an alternative when it’s not there are the time it’s needed most.
UK Generation by Fuel Type last 24 hours (when I looked)
COAL 39.1%
CCGT 34.2%
NUCLEAR 21.5%
WIND 1.9%
PS 0.9%
NPSHYD 0.3%
http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp_home.htm
The green hijack of the Met Office is crippling Britain
By Christopher Booker 8:00AM GMT 26 Dec 2010 – The Telegraph
The Met Office’s commitment to warmist orthodoxy means it drastically underestimates the chances of a big freeze, says Christopher Booker
By far the biggest story of recent days, of course, has been the astonishing chaos inflicted, to a greater or lesser extent, on all of our lives by the fact that we are not only enjoying what is predicted to be the coldest December since records began in 1659, but also the harshest of three freezing winters in a row. We all know the disaster stories – thousands of motorists trapped for hours on paralysed motorways, days of misery at Heathrow, rail passengers marooned in unheated carriages for up to 17 hours. But central to all this – as the cry goes up: “Why wasn’t Britain better prepared?” – has been the bizarre role of the Met Office.
Continues…………
A potentially big story is brewing that the UK Met Office knew about the cold winter in October, but withheld the information from the public
http://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2011/01/04/bbc-spins-that-met-office-got-winter-right-just-kept-it-secret-from-public/
Climate change means we will be skiing in Yorkshire rather than sunbathing under palm trees, experts warn
We are more likely to be skiing in Yorkshire than basking under palm trees, a leading climate change expert has warned as global warming will actually lead to Britain getting colder.
Dr Simon Boxall, of the National Oceanography Survey, said that while the planet as a whole will get much warmer, this country will see temperatures plunge as the ocean currents and weather patterns around the world change.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/8281655/Climate-change-means-we-will-be-skiing-in-Yorkshire-rather-than-sunbathing-under-palm-trees-experts-warn.html
Yet, 10 years ago, we were told that snow “would be a rare and exciting event” in Britain.
“Kids just won’t know what snow is”
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2011/01/experts-warn.html
I notice that GR has taken Don Easterbrook to task over grape vineyards in Britain at present (and rightly so, DE was incorrect, Britain is producing wine at present)
They have also planted kiwifruit vines but I wonder whether it is a long-term proposition now that the climate in Britain seems to have taken a dive. I know kiwifruit require a certain amount of cold but not extreme cold or frost. The NZ South Island grape vineyards seem to cope OK but I don’t think they have anywhere near the cold as in Britain now.
I’ve just crunched three articles at Climate Realists, the first is the Met Office data manipulation for the “2010 – a near record year” press release, the second is blatant BBC misrepresentation of AGW sceptics in the Horizon “Science Under Attack” programme and the third is the Met Office/Roger Harrabin (BBC) untruth stemming from the Met Office Oct 2010 winter weather forecast to the British government.
Manipulation, misrepresentation and untruth, what an indictment on these institutions and personnel.
See:-
Christopher Booker: Is Met Office again playing games with its weather data?
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=7123
Christopher Booker: How BBC warmists abuse the science
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=7122
BREAKING: The Met Office Winter Forecast Lie Is Finally Nailed: Updated
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=7114
All on one weekend !
Lobbyists who cleared ‘Climategate’ academics funded by taxpayers and the BBC
A shadowy lobby group which pushes the case that global warming is a real threat is being funded by the taxpayer and assisted by the BBC
h/t Bishop Hill
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2011/4/23/digging-into-the-globe.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8469883/Lobbyists-who-cleared-Climategate-academics-funded-by-taxpayers-and-the-BBC.html
Climate change ‘could disrupt wi-fi and hit power supply’
Climate change will disrupt wi-fi connections, cause regular power failures and lead railway lines to buckle unless Britain spends billions of pounds, Caroline Spelman, the Environment Secretary has warned.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transport/8502620/Climate-change-could-disrupt-wi-fi-and-hit-power-supply.html
That’s brilliant!
Richard North has a good summary of this story
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2011/05/if-heineken-made-stupid-people.html
It was Caroline Spelperson that suggested that hospitals would have to be built on hills because of rising sea levels.
Tata cuts 1500 UK jobs over ‘double whammy’ of carbon targets
* From: The Times
* May 21, 2011 11:14AM
TATA, the Indian steel giant, has blamed the UK government’s environmental policies as it cut 1500 jobs in one of Britain’s poorest regions.
The company, which took much of the former British Steel business five years ago, will axe 8 per cent of its British workforce. Its Scunthorpe plant is to close with the loss of 1200 jobs. A further 300 jobs will go in Teesside.
Unions described the cuts as a “devastating blow” to the region, which is already home to some of Britain’s worst unemployment blackspots.
Karl-Ulrich Kohler, Tata Steel’s head of Europe, blamed the cuts on the decline of the construction industry, but added that new EU environmental laws and planned British legislation had compounded the company’s problems.
“Europe’s steel industry is in danger of being made uncompetitive in the world market because of European taxes on UK emissions,” said Dr Kohler.
“But here in Britain we are facing a double whammy of carbon targets.”
Under the coalition deal, the government plans to bring in the toughest carbon emissions targets in the world by 2027. The EU has already said that member states must slash emissions, but Britain will go farther and cut them by 80 per cent by 2050.
Continues…….
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/news/tata-cuts-1500-uk-jobs-over-double-whammy-of-carbon-targets/story-e6frg90o-1226060096233
—————————————————————————————————————————-
Note that this is in the Business section of the Australian. OZ steel (and the unions) will be taking notes.
This story was also covered by Richard North at EURef
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2011/05/unfinished-business.html
Note that there will be no net CO2 emissions as a result of these closures, as the jobs will be “offshored” to India
Note also that Pachauri has links with Tata
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2009/12/pachauri-another-tata-link.html
I think these allegations might have ended up with Booker and North in court against Pachauri
Lessons in climate change ‘should go’ says schools adviser who tells them to remove pseudo-science
14th June 2011 – MailOnline
Climate change propaganda could be cut from the classroom, as a government adviser demands pseudo-science is removed from the national curriculum.
Tim Oates, who is leading an overhaul of school syllabuses for five- to 16-year-olds, has signalled the end of ‘climate wash’ in schools.
He is calling for a return of ‘science in science’ and for children to be taught facts, not fads.
And he accused Labour of replacing traditional physics, chemistry and biology with ‘topical issues’ such as global warming.
At present, seven-year-olds are taught that the world is overheating, and told this will cause floods and kill polar bears.
[Snip]
However, climate scientists have accused the anti-green lobby of influencing education.
Bob Ward, of the Grantham research institute for climate change and the environment, said the removal of climate change from the curriculum may not be in pupils’ best interests.
He added: ‘Certain politicians feel that they don’t like the concept of climate change. I hope this isn’t a sign of a political agenda being exercised.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2002890/Pseudo-science-climate-change-lessons-says-schools-adviser.html#ixzz1PEpEPlEI
BBC, Prof Steve Jones and the push for censorship
The BBC have made a decision to push the sceptics further out into the fringe
Autonomous Mind sums it up
http://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/bbc-prof-steve-jones-and-the-push-for-censorship/
Guardian article here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/jul/20/bbc-climate-change-science-coverage
Booker on the BBC decision to be even more biased:
“Steve Jones tells the BBC: don’t give ‘denialists’ so much air-time
In his report for the BBC Trust, Steve Jones actually attacks the BBC for having too little global-warming bias.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/8656765/Steve-Jones-tells-the-BBC-dont-give-denialists-so-much-air-time.html
UK House of Commons: Science and Technology Committee – Eighth Report
Peer review in scientific publications
Paragraph 10:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmsctech/856/85602.htm
http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=479
Conclusion:
heh. Another barbecue summer in Blighty
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/8730125/Parts-of-Britain-suffer-coldest-summer-for-nearly-two-decades.html
Flagship UK carbon capture project ‘close to collapse’
Scottish Power expected to pull out of government-promoted scheme to build a £1bn prototype CCS plant at Longannet
A £1bn flagship government project for fighting climate change – the construction of a prototype carbon capture and storage (CCS) project at Longannet in Scotland – is on the verge of collapse, it emerged on Thursday.
Talks between the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) and Scottish Power have run into deep trouble and the electricity supplier is expected to pull the plug on the government-promoted scheme, which hoped to bury carbon emissions from the coal power station in the North Sea.
The potential demise of the scheme comes amid growing fears among renewable power enthusiasts that David Cameron and George Osborne want to scale back the “green” agenda on the grounds that low-carbon energy schemes such as CCS and offshore wind cost too much at a time of austerity. Osborne told the Conservative party conference in Manchester that if he had his way the UK would cut “carbon emissions no slower but also no faster than our fellow countries in Europe”.
Scottish Power, and its partners Shell and the National Grid, have just completed a detailed study of the CCS scheme and have deep concerns about its commercial viability without heavier public backing.
Decc had promised £1bn of public money but the developers are understood to be arguing that they cannot proceed without more money to trial the scheme, close to the Firth of Forth.
Both sides insist “talks are ongoing” but well-placed industry and political sources say the process is “pretty much over” and a statement to that effect could be expected shortly.
Jeff Chapman, the chief executive of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, said the collapse of the Longannet scheme would be a “severe disappointment” for the wider hopes of the sector.
“Everybody knows the negotiations have been very difficult, so to that extent it’s quite possible [the talks] don’t come to a conclusion – although there are other projects coming through the system hopefully.”
A senior Conservative backbencher with deep knowledge of the energy sector told the Guardian he expected the CCS deal to collapse within weeks. He said the underlying blame lay with the Labour government, which had dithered for so long in awarding the CCS demo contract that bidders dropped out until only one was left, leaving the government in an impossible negotiating position.
A Decc spokesman said Longannet was only one CCS project and the government still planned to choose by the end of the year another three that could be eligible for European Union funding.
In May, the department submitted seven UK CCS projects for European funding – including Longannet – but the Fife scheme was by far the most advanced and spearheaded the drive to develop this new technology in Britain.
Ministers have repeatedly stressed the importance of CCS as a way of keeping coal and potentially other fossil-fuel burning power stations in operation without undermining moves to cut CO2.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/06/carbon-capture-project-longannet-collapse
Austerity has its benefits – the largesse gets trimmed.
I see the BBC is to cut 20% of its £3.5 bn budget. Still leaves £2.8 bn from which to allocate to climate change propaganda.
I wonder though, that the inability to facilitate CCS poses an even greater threat to coal power and UK energy security?
I don’t think CCS was ever a viable proposition. It was just designed to make coal ridiculously expensive.
I think NZ is still putting money into CCS research but nothing like the scale of the UK project.
Rural idyll threatened by ‘monstrous’ plan for wind farms
From his farmhouse in mid Wales Jonathan Wilkinson looks out across a glorious stretch of the Vyrnwy valley, rolling hills and acres of woodland rich in wildlife.
But it is a view that could soon be lost forever
The valley and the hills are under threat from huge wind turbines and electricity pylons that will stretch for miles in both directions in the biggest concentration of onshore wind farms in England and Wales.
The proposed scheme will extend across up to 42 miles of unspoilt Welsh and English countryside. It will include 800 turbines up to 600ft tall – some visible from the Snowdonia national park – a network of electricity pylons, and a substation spread over 28 acres.
Areas under threat include the Severne valley in Powys, the Vyrnwy valley in Montgomeryshire and parts of Shropshire.
Mid-Wales will be the worst-hit but many other areas to the north and south face a rash of wind farm development under the Government’s plans to encourage an expansion of renewable energy.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/greenpolitics/planning/8815567/Rural-idyll-threatened-by-monstrous-plan-for-wind-farms.html
BRITAIN FACES A MINI ‘ICE AGE’
BRITAIN is set to suffer a mini ice age that could last for decades and bring with it a series of bitterly cold winters.
And it could all begin within weeks as experts said last night that the mercury may soon plunge below the record -20C endured last year.
Scientists say the anticipated cold blast will be due to the return of a disruptive weather pattern called La Nina. Latest evidence shows La Nina, linked to extreme winter weather in America and with a knock-on effect on Britain, is in force and will gradually strengthen as the year ends.
The climate phenomenon, characterised by unusually cold ocean temperatures in the Pacific, was linked to our icy winter last year – one of the coldest on record.
And it coincides with research from the Met Office indicating the nation could be facing a repeat of the “little ice age” that gripped the country 300 years ago, causing decades of harsh winters.
The prediction, to be published in Nature magazine, is based on observations of a slight fall in the sun’s emissions of ultraviolet radiation, which may, over a long period, trigger Arctic conditions for many years.
>>>>>>>>
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/276516/Britain-faces-a-mini-ice-age-
Interesting development and a change of tune from the UK Met Office.
******************************************************************************************************
Cold U.K. winters from low solar activity
Various media such as BBC, Reuters, Australia’s ABC, The Daily Mail, The Independent, and others admit that the solar activity has an impact on the weather. [See links]
In particular, cold British winters in recent years mostly boil down to the lower solar activity we have experienced. More precisely, the fluctuations of the ultraviolet radiation are stronger than people used to think and a lower amount of the UV radiation influences the weather.
Those layperson’s articles boil down to the following paper in Nature Geoscience:
Solar forcing of winter climate variability in the Northern Hemisphere (abstract linked)
written by Sarah Ineson and six co-authors. The paper admits that weaker westerly winds occurred on years with a weaker solar activity, something that can’t be reproduced by the carbon-dioxide-led climate models. When the influence of the ultraviolet rays on the stratosphere is taken into account and the impact on the winds in the troposphere is calculated from it, we learn that the reduced solar activity does lead to this chilly result.
Richard Black of BBC writes that the authors “emphasize” that this finding can have no consequences for “global warming”, something that appears at the end of the Nature abstract as well. Wow. It’s pretty impressive what preposterous propositions zealous and biased people are ready to write down in their effort to defend the indefensible (including their indefensible grants).
There exists absolutely no reason why such effects – which can lead to freezing winters at various places including the U.K. – would exactly average out once we calculate their impact on the global mean temperature and its changes within decades etc. One may hypothetically see a cancellation at one time scale but it won’t extend to other timescales.
[Snip the rest but well worth reading, see teasers]
“Even if the heat is “just” being redistributed from one place to another, it’s extremely important where the heat actually is if you want to know something about the Earth’s future ability to accumulate heat”
“….the actual weather in Great Britain is more important than some abstract and partly ill-defined global mean temperature”
>>>>>>>>.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/10/cold-uk-winters-from-low-solar-activity.html
The Sun And The Winter Of 2011
10 October 2011 Dr. David Whitehouse
I’ve said it before. If you are not confused about the Sun’s role in global and regional climate variations, you haven’t been paying attention.
The latest manifestation of the Sun-climate debate takes place in the pages of Nature Geoscience (paywall), here and here. The UK Met Office also issued a press release on the subject a few days ago.
The conclusion is that the Sun’s low activity, in particular its low ultraviolet (UV) output, is influencing the stratosphere in such a way as to produce unusually cold winters in parts of Europe, including the UK.
[...]
The problem with this “confirmation” was demonstrated rather dramatically the very next year.
In October 2009 the Met Office predicted a mild winter because of El Nino. Temperatures in December would be above average, they said. In reality December temperatures were a whopping 1.1 degrees below the recent average.
The Sun’s Influence This Coming Winter
There are other problems with the Met Office’s latest research.
Firstly, it refers to 2008-2010 when the Sun’s activity was low, and the UK experienced three severe winters in succession. The problem is that the activity of the Sun as we enter the UK 2011 winter is not the same as it was in the past few years.
Solar activity is back to what it was in 2004-5, and we didn’t experience severe winters in those years, see here, and here, and here.
So, if anything, the logic behind this particular piece of research points towards the Winter of 2011 being a mild one!
I don’t believe that this latest research increases the probability of a severe UK winter this year. It will be interesting to see what happens.
UV Or Not UV
The other problem concerns recent, highly publicised, research by Joanna Haigh of Imperial College London, a co-author on the current Nature Geoscience paper.
Her work rests on the fairly recent observations that show that solar UV and optical radiation vary in anti-phase – although the figures are not totally rock solid, it seems that when solar optical radiation is low the UV is high and that UV varies to a greater degree than previously suspected. This led to headlines all over the world that when the sun goes through a decrease of activity, such as the slide towards solar minimum, it might actually be warming the earth.
So, on the one hand we have research that suggests that during the last solar minimum, 2008 – 10, low solar UV resulted in cold European winters. On the other hand we have research that suggests that during the same solar minimum enhanced UV may have actually provided a warming effect!
But what does this tell us about the forthcoming winter? Will it be mild or severe?
Place You Bets
We in the UK have had three very severe winters, 2008, 2009 and 2010. The big question is, is it a coincidence?
The Met Office is in a quandary. It has to advise the UK government on winter preparations. Politically it can’t afford to get it wrong again this year. Despite what it said in retrospect last year’s predictions were a disaster.
[...]
>>>>>>>>>>
http://www.thegwpf.org/the-observatory/4063-the-sun-and-the-winter-of-2011.html
A quarter of all UK families could be in fuel poverty by 2015
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2048122/Green-taxes-force-fuel-poverty.html
UK Fuel Poverty Solved!
by Roger Pielke, Jr
Last week I noted the projected increase in “fuel poverty” in the United Kingdom and speculated that such a trend might have political consequences. The UK coalition government and their creative policy analysts have come up with a solution for this difficult situation — they are proposing to redefine “fuel poverty” in a manner that shows it to be decreasing, not increasing (see figure above from the FT).
Voila, problem solved!
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2011/10/uk-fuel-poverty-solved.html
Britain scrambles to avoid future blackouts
If the promise of wind was real, the UK wouldn’t need to spend £5 billion on new undersea cables linking it to more reliable power from European nations like nuclear-powered France:
http://climatechangedispatch.com/home/9496-britain-scrambles-to-avoid-future-blackouts
With Germany already importing from France (and others) and Britain planning to, France sure seems to be on to something (that’s if they have a surplus to supply what’s needed if it really gets cold).
Britain’s solar energy boom is built on unsustainable foundations
By Greg Barker, UK minister for energy and climate change
The government is proposing measures to reform the feed-in tariff scheme and ensure the industry has a long-term future
[...]
It’s easy to see why solar is so attractive: it’s simple, accessible, reliable and fits discreetly into homes and communities. It’s a vital component of our decentralised local energy revolution. But however convinced we may be of the long-term potential of solar, we have to face up to the economic reality that every other sector of the economy is challenged by. The green economy does not exist in a bubble.
The huge subsidised returns for people investing in solar photovoltaic panels – funded from everybody’s energy bills – have now broken double figures and cannot continue. The good news is that the costs of the technology have plunged – by at least 30% – since the scheme started in April 2010. A home installation can now cost around £9,000 or less. A similar installation would have set you back an extra £4,000 less than two years ago.
With installed capacity nearly three times that projected by the last government when it launched the scheme 18 months ago, it all means that solar is burning through its budget at an unsustainable rate. The generous pot of £867m secured for the feed-in tariff scheme by the coalition last year will be completely devoured if we don’t act now.
>>>>>>>>>>
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/31/britain-solar-energy-unsustainable-foundations
Solar subsidies to be cut by more than half
Government documents prematurely published online reveal feed-in tariff cut will double the payback period for householders
Solar subsidies will be dramatically cut by more than half, according to government documents that were prematurely published online and quickly taken down.
The cut will almost double the payback period for householders, the document revealed, meaning someone installing £10-12,000 solar panels will only be in credit after 18 years rather than the current 10. The rate will be reduced from 43.3p per kilowatt hour of solar electricity to just 21p, the document revealed, cutting returns from around 7% to 4%.
>>>>>>>>>
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/28/solar-subsidies-cut-half
Here are two video’s from a meeting headed by Prof. Em. Philip Stott which totally tears down the IPCC, the UK policies on CO2 Emissions and the renewable energy policies and totally ridicules the fiction of peak oil (great job performed by Matt Ridley)
Each speaker covers a specialized subject and has 15 minutes to make his or hers case and what a splendid job each of them performed.
THE CLIMATE CHANGE ACT RECONSIDERED
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6c5LUq5jLQ
Part 2: http://youtu.be/vswg5wnVVr4
great stuff, a must see. thanks for the tip Andy.
Seen at WUWT:-
Spen commented on Kyoto – in the past for Canada.
It has just been announced that the last UK aluminium smelter is to close because of unstainable energy cost increases. These include costs arising from the UK Climate Change Act (the most expensive piece of UK legislation ever passed), subsidies to renewable energy producers and EU and UK carbon taxes.
Net results – loss of jobs, increase in trade imbalance as all aluminium will now be imported, loss of tax receipts. Although the UK carbon footprint will be reduced, the carbon dioxide will simply be produced elsewhere..
Well done Canada for avoiding this economic madness.
PS Can you give the UK a special deal on aluminium.
One person dying every five minutes in Britain due to cold weather
Britain reels from a winter death rate twice as high as some of the world’s coldest countries, according to the Department of Health’s Chief Medical Officer.
Professor Dame Sally Davies said the average increase in winter deaths in England and Wales is 1,560 per week compared to non-winter months, with a “substantial” increase on top of that total expected due to extreme cold this week.
http://tomnelson.blogspot.co.nz/2012/02/in-davos-climate-change-is-dead-and.html
“Nearly £1.5 billion has been spent tackling man-made climate change by Government department responsible for fighting poverty abroad”
“… funding available for projects now 45 times higher than four years ago. The department now also employs 66 specialist climate and environmental advisers. ”
“… encouraging Indian farmers to use manual foot pumps to draw water from underground for their fields rather than using diesel powered pumps … ”
etc etc
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/9090830/Foreign-aid-cash-spent-tackling-climate-change.html
Some more utter BS from Tim Yeo MP about Uk emissions.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/nov/06/transport-emissions-carbon-budgets?fb=native
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/11/12/bbc-climate-28-revealed.html
All this on the back of the latest BBC scandals.
Huge
Now coined “28-Gate”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/12/breaking-the-secret-list-of-the-bbc-28-is-now-public/
28-Gate
Now in The Spectator
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/sebastian-payne/2012/11/revealed-who-decides-the-bbcs-climate-change-policy/
and The Register:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/13/climate28_named_wtf/
And now Dellers
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100189491/28-gates-later-the-bbcs-nightmare-gets-worse-and-worse/
Any comment will be an understatement but here goes – now we see why the BBC sent six lawyers to keep this list from public view (Ha!). The “best scientific experts” is “2500 scientists” stuff. From JN (lots of links):-
When read in conjunction with Climategate 2.0, this list removes even the pretense of the impartiality (there’s that word again) required by their Charter – huge as you say Andy.
Full “best scientific experts” quote for the record (H/t The Register):-
“The BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus [on anthropogenic climate change]”
- Filmmaker John Bridcut
More on 28 gate:
Melanie Phillips
http://melaniephillips.com/the-real-bbc-scandal#.UKLOEkRVolQ.facebook
And Richard North has more to add. This kind of stuff is right up his alley as he unearthed the Amazongate scandal
http://eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=83332
Bloody good links Andy, thanks. The update at the bottom of Melanie’s excellent piece is a response from the BBC. It is the only one I have seen so far. Typical corporatees proclaiming the virtuous impartiality of the Beeb and a “Nothing to see here folks…. move along” approach.
more from Dellers
http://www.spectator.co.uk/columnists/james-delingpole/8758121/heres-a-bbc-scandal-that-should-really-make-you-disgusted/
UK Climate Madness: Two billion pounds just pissed up the wall:
Britain yesterday pledged almost £2 billion in “climate aid” to help finance foreign projects including wind turbines in Africa and greener cattle farming in Colombia.
Each household will contribute £70 to schemes to tackle climate change in developing countries before March 2015, under plans championed by Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat Energy Secretary.
Conservative MPs were furious last night at the scale of the bill, which was unveiled as George Osborne prepares to announce a series of tax rises and spending cuts in today’s Autumn Statement.
Lord Lawson of Blaby, a former Chancellor, also criticised the “appalling waste of money” at a time when household budgets are already squeezed.
Senior Conservatives were also dismayed at the timing of the announcement, but Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, hailed the cash as “fantastic news”.
http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/2012/12/uk-climate-madness-two-billion-pounds-just-pissed-up-the-wall/
The question, is, of course, who are they going to have to borrow this 2 billion from?
another excellent article by Christopher Booker. Let’s hope there is a swift return to sanity.
“[...] 2012 has been the year when long-dominant belief systems and fondly held illusions have been conspicuously falling apart, portending a time of agonising reappraisal when familiar certainties give way to greater realism and painful rethinking. [...]”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/9770705/Europe-wind-warming…-were-slowly-waking-up-to-reality.html
Now Britain is bracing itself for more cold weather with temps of -15 forecast
http://www.politicshome.com/uk/article/69399/daily_express_wednesday_9th_january_2013.html
Boris Johnson:-
“When the solar acne diminishes, it seems that the Earth gets colder. No one contests that when the planet palpably cooled from 1645 to 1715 — the Maunder minimum, which saw the freezing of the Thames — there was a diminution of solar activity. The same point is made about the so-called Dalton minimum, from 1790 to 1830. And it is the view of Piers Corbyn that we are now seeing exactly the same phenomenon today.
Lower solar activity means – broadly speaking – that there is less agitation of the warm currents of air from the tropical to the temperate zones, so that a place like Britain can expect to be colder and damper in summer, and colder and snowier in winter. “There is every indication that we are at the beginning of a mini ice age,” he says. “The general decline in solar activity is lower than Nasa’s lowest prediction of five years ago. That could be very bad news for our climate. We are in for a prolonged cold period. Indeed, we could have 30 years of general cooling.”
Now I am not for a second saying that I am convinced Piers is right; and to all those scientists and environmentalists who will go wild with indignation on the publication of this article, I say, relax.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/borisjohnson/9814618/Its-snowing-and-it-really-feels-like-the-start-of-a-mini-ice-age.html
The expected “indignation on the publication of this article” here:-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2013/jan/21/boris-johnson-snow-climate-change
For the record, the SkS response including the continued (and highly uncertain) use of PMOD, complete ignorance of accumulation theory (think Rawls, Stockwell), and solar-ocean-atmosphere thermal lag:-
http://www.skepticalscience.com/open-letter-mayor-boris-johnson.html
Note the opposing posited reasons for NH (and UK in Particular) winter cold:-
Corbyn (via Boris),
“Lower solar activity means – broadly speaking – that there is less agitation of the warm currents of air from the tropical to the temperate zones, so that a place like Britain can expect to be colder and damper in summer, and colder and snowier in winter”
NOAA/Francis and Vavrus (2012) (via SkS),
“…some research has suggested that changing atmospheric patterns due to the human-caused decline in Arctic sea ice could be responsible”
Take your pick.
“…some research has suggested that changing atmospheric patterns due to the human-caused decline in Arctic sea ice could be responsible”
is the same statement as
“…some research has suggested that changing atmospheric patterns due to the decline in Arctic sea ice could be responsible”
The attribution in the Arctic sea ice loss is irrelevant to the scientific discussion. Unless, of course, you are an activist.
Climate Change Plan For Yorkshire & Humber
By Paul Homewood
In 2008, the UK government asked every region to set up their own Climate Change Plans. The one for Yorkshire was funded by a series of quangos, themselves publically funded such as Yorkshire Forward, and the Regional Assembly. It seems that Friends of The Earth also got themselves involved.
The purpose of the plan was to “set a strategic direction for managing and combating climate change in the Yorkshire and Humber region”.
[...]
But let’s take a look at what climate changes they were predicting for the region, and compare that with what has actually happened since.
Annual Temperatures
CLAIM – Increase of 1.8C – 1.9C
FACT – Annual average between 2008-2012 was 0.58C lower than 2003-2007, and only 0.11C higher than the 1981-2010 baseline.
Summer Temperatures
CLAIM – Increase of 2.1C – 2.5C
FACT – Summer temperatures between 2008-2012 averaged 0.67C lower than 2003-2007, and 0.02C lower than 1981-2010.
Extreme Hot Temperatures
CLAIM – Extreme hot temperatures up 2.8C to 3.2C
FACT – Absolutely no upward trend in either the number of hot days, or their severity. There have been no days at all over 30.0C in Sheffield since 2006.
Annual Rainfall
CLAIM – Annual rainfall down by 6%.
FACT – Up by 10% on 1981-2010.
Winter Rainfall
CLAIM – Winter rainfall up 12 to 17%
FACT – Effectively no trend since 1981. Three of the last four years are below the mean.
Summer Rainfall
CLAIM – Summer rainfall down 22 to 26%
FACT – Up 33%
Winter Snowfall
CLAIM – Snowfall down by 54 to 68%
FACT – No trend in air frost days since 1990. (The Met Office do not keep snowfall statistics). As with most of the UK, heavy snowfall has occurred in every winter since 2007.
Sea Levels
CLAIM – Sea level increase of 0.35M by 2050.
FACT – No acceleration of rate of rise since the early 20thC. From the start of the record in 1896, sea levels at North Shields have risen 231mm, a rate of 19.7mm/decade. Between 2001 and 2011, the rise was 5mm. (No figures are available yet for 2012).
Furthermore, the land in the North East of England is sinking by about 0.8mm/year, as a result of isostatic rebound. This accounts for most of the increase seen in the last century.
Conclusions
“Whatever may happen to the climate as we approach 2050, it is clear that the scientists and their models have no earthly idea about it.”
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