Climate Research News

Instead of vainly hassling energy companies, UK Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband should concentrate on reducing the Government’s contribution to high energy prices. 14% of the average domestic electricity bill is the result of ineffective Government climate change policies that provide massive subsidies to the owners of wind farms but do little to reduce emissions. If Miliband stopped posturing and scrapped those policies that would soon lead to big savings for struggling families.

The Taxpayers’ Alliance: ‘Ed Miliband and energy prices’

Renewable Energy Foundation (REF): ‘Climate Change Policy Already a Big Part of Bills’

November 18th, 2008 | Tags: Climate Policy, Energy | Category: News | Leave a comment

Benny Peiser has been interviewed about climate politics and climate policy by Local Transport Today.

Excerpts:

LTT first interviewed Peiser two years ago (LTT 30 Nov 06), just after publication of Sir Nicholas Stern’s report on the economics of climate change and at a time when the topic was rocketing up the agenda in transport. “The political, economic climate has changed beyond recognition globally, in Europe and in Britain, from the time we last met,” he says. “Then we were at the peak of the climate change concern. I said this has to run its course, it’s unstoppable, everyone is shouting ‘The house is burning’ but eventually it will cool down. I did not expect that to happen so quickly and dramatically.”
        –Andrew Forster, 14 November 2008

The political class of Britain is in denial. They just don’t see or they don’t want to see that they are on their own now. No other country is following. It’s exactly the opposite, they are all retreating, whereas Britain is saying, ‘Oh, we are not going far enough, we need even more reductions.’ Apart from the question whether it’s actually feasible economically and energy wise and so on, it’s politically nonsensical.
     –Benny Peiser, LTT, 14 November 2008

One of the big losers in this is the scientific community. Because their advice is no longer sought and their advice is no longer followed. Why? Because they’ve overdone it. I don’t think the decision-makers trust their advice. Not because they are climate sceptics – don’t get me wrong, I don’t think they are – but I think the exaggeration of the problem has made it difficult for decision-makers.
     –Benny Peiser, LTT, 14 November 2008

PDF of full interview available here:

http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/LTTPeiser-Nov08.pdf

Meanwhile, the German government are back-peddling on climate policy:

BERLIN, Nov 14 (Reuters) - The German government wants extensive exemptions for energy intensive industrial sectors for their carbon emissions caps from 2013, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief spokesman said on Friday. “We’ve got to prevent companies from being threatened by climate protection requirements,” government spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm told a news conference. Wilhelm gave no further details and said negotiations were taking place.

The Guardian: ‘Germany wants CO2 relief for energy guzzling firms’

November 17th, 2008 | Tags: Climate Policy | Category: News, Opinion | Leave a comment

Top - GISS Temp as adjusted by James Hansen (Icecap/Watts Up With That)

Bottom - UAH satellite temperatures from Klockarman

Jennifer Marohasy’s Blog: Temperature Data from Satellites: Inconvenient but Accurate

November 15th, 2008 | Tags: Global Temperature, Satellite Temperatures | Category: Observations | Leave a comment

Climate Science is often like a virtual reality computer game, where the players eagerly await the next release. A new climate model paper has been published in the journal Nature, innocently entitled: ‘Transient nature of late Pleistocene climate variability,’ by Thomas J. Crowley  &  William T. Hyde.

In common with all computer models in the virtual world of climate alarmism, climate sensitivity to CO2 is drastically over-estimated. The claim is that man-made CO2 will delay or prevent the next ice age. This is apparently a bad thing, as we eagerly await the Northern Hemisphere to be once again being covered in ice several kilometres thick. The authors predict, with stunning factor of ten accuracy, that the onset of the next ice age is due within the next 10,000 to 100,000 years unless, of course, you or I continue the ‘evil’ practice of heating and lighting our homes, or travelling, or even having a real job. Sorry guys, but dream on. You sound like James Hansen, which isn’t a compliment. Whenever the next ice age is actually due, man won’t be able to stop it. Why? Because CO2 doesn’t drive climate. Never has, never will.

The sub-Marxist government propaganda machine, the BBC, is always eager to report on climate virtual reality and doesn’t disappoint with this: Climate change ‘to halt ice age’

I’ll leave you with a prediction from my Lotto computer model - all 6 Lotto numbers will fall between 1 and 49. Good luck - you’ll need it!

November 15th, 2008 | Tags: Climate Change, Climate Models, Climate Sensitivity to CO2 | Category: News | Leave a comment

A new paper has been published by Jason Rohr et al  entitled, ‘Evaluating the links between climate, disease spread, and amphibian decline,’ November 11, 2008 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The Abstract states:

Human alteration of the environment has arguably propelled the Earth into its sixth mass extinction event and amphibians, the most threatened of all vertebrate taxa, are at the forefront. Many of the worldwide amphibian declines have been caused by the chytrid fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), and two contrasting hypotheses have been proposed to explain these declines. Positive correlations between global warming and Bd-related declines sparked the chytrid-thermal-optimum hypothesis, which proposes that global warming increased cloud cover in warm years that drove the convergence of daytime and nighttime temperatures toward the thermal optimum for Bd growth. In contrast, the spatiotemporal-spread hypothesis states that Bd-related declines are caused by the introduction and spread of Bd, independent of climate change. We provide a rigorous test of these hypotheses by evaluating (i) whether cloud cover, temperature convergence, and predicted temperature-dependent Bd growth are significant positive predictors of amphibian extinctions in the genus Atelopus and (ii) whether spatial structure in the timing of these extinctions can be detected without making assumptions about the location, timing, or number of Bd emergences. We show that there is spatial structure to the timing of Atelopus spp. extinctions but that the cause of this structure remains equivocal, emphasizing the need for further molecular characterization of Bd. We also show that the reported positive multi-decade correlation between Atelopus spp. extinctions and mean tropical air temperature in the previous year is indeed robust, but the evidence that it is causal is weak because numerous other variables, including regional banana and beer production, were better predictors of these extinctions. Finally, almost all of our findings were opposite to the predictions of the chytrid-thermal-optimum hypothesis. Although climate change is likely to play an important role in worldwide amphibian declines, more convincing evidence is needed of a causal link. (Emphasis added by CRN).

November 13th, 2008 | Tags: Amphibian Decline, Climate Change | Category: News | Comments (3)

According to Roger Pielke Jr on his Prometheus blog, World Energy Outlook 2008 has been released by the IEA.

Cutting to the chase, can atmospheric CO2 be stabilised at 450 ppmv using existing technology? The IEA says NO:

“The scale of the challenge in the 450 Policy Scenario is immense: the 2030 emissions level for the world as a whole in this scenario is less than the level of projected emissions for non-OECD countries alone in the Reference Scenario. In other words, the OECD countries alone cannot put the world onto the path to 450-ppm trajectory, even if they were to reduce their emissions to zero. Even leaving aside any debate about the political feasibility of the 450 Policy Scenario, it is uncertain whether the scale of the transformation envisaged is even technically achievable, as the scenario assumes broad deployment of technologies that have not yet been proven. The technology shift, if achievable, would certainly be unprecedented in scale and speed of deployment. Increased public and private spending on research and development in the near term would be essential to develop the advanced technologies needed to make the 450 Policy Scenario a reality.”

If every new power plant built from today onwards were to emit zero CO2, the impact on future emissions growth would be small:

“The rate of capital-stock turnover is particularly slow in the power sector, where large up-front costs and long operating lifetimes mean that plants that have already been built — and their associated emissions — are effectively “locked-in”. In the Reference Scenario, three-quarters of the projected output of electricity worldwide in 2020 (and more than half in 2030) comes from power stations that are already operating today. As a result, even if all power plants built from now onwards were carbon-free, CO2 emissions from the power sector would still be only 25%, or 4 Gt, lower in 2020 relative to the Reference Scenario.”

Read the Executive Summary of the IEA World Energy Outlook 2008 here.

Climate Research News maintains that current climate policy is indeed emission impossible and will not have any measurable effect on climate even if successful at reducing CO2 emissions. Climate policy should therefore be separated from energy policy as a matter of urgency.

UPDATE

See related post on Prometheus: ‘Understating the Mitigation Challenge, IEA 2008′

Today I’d like to illustrate how the IEA’s World Energy Outlook, published yesterday, also dramatically underestimates the magnitude of the mitigation challenge…………..

November 13th, 2008 | Tags: Climate Policy, Energy, Global CO2 Emissions | Category: News | Comments (3)

Some energy experts asked by BBC News warn the UK could face an unacceptable risk of major blackouts in less than 10 years unless policy is improved.

They said the government has dithered for too long over policies vital to energy security and climate security.

But they added that forecasts of an imminent power crisis were far-fetched.

The possible energy gap is being created because of the impending closure before 2015 of nine of our major coal and oil-powered plants.

This is due to an EU directive on acid rain. The issue is compounded by the closure of four ageing nuclear plants during the same period.

We do not claim our questionnaire of 30 experts is definitive. But its findings do help to map out the scale of the huge challenge facing the new secretary of energy and climate change.

BBC News website: UK experts give blackouts warning

November 13th, 2008 | Tags: Climate Policy, Energy | Category: News, Opinion | Leave a comment

The two papers we had submitted to Geophysical Research Letters have both been rejected, with instructions to not resubmit either one. The first paper showed how none of 18 IPCC climate models, in over 1,000 years of global warming simulations, ever exhibits the negative feedback we have measured from global satellite data.

The second paper revealed new satellite evidence that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation modulates the Earth’s radiative balance by an amount that, when put into a simple climate model, can explain 75% of global warming over the 20th Century….including the slight cooling between 1940 and 1980.

Since our previous publications have been basically censored by the news media, and I have now experienced scientific censorship (which I suppose was long overdue), I have decided to take my message to the people in a second book.

In anticipation of trouble getting these papers published, I had already started the book awhile back…it is now about 80% finished, heavily illustrated. The working title is: The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists. My book agent is currently scouting for publishers.

9th November 2008: Roy Spencer’s WeatherQuestions.com

November 12th, 2008 | Tags: Climate Science | Category: News, Opinion | Comments (4)

Well spotted by Roger Pielke Jr on his Prometheus blog - a press release about new open access paper by highly politicised NASA climate alarmist James Hansen (et al) claims that removing 50ppmv CO2 from the atmosphere by air capture would be too costly at $20 trillion:

“[Hansen et al.] also dismiss the notion of “geo-engineering” solutions, noting that the price of artificially removing 50 ppm of CO2 from the air would be about $20 trillion.”

Pileke Jr points out:

So the costs of air capture that Hansen et al. so readily dismiss as too costly are about the same as, or even less than, those costs for other forms of mitigation proposed by Stern, IEA and IPCC. If one accepts the costs presented by Hansen et al. (drawn from the work of David Keith), then one must come to one of the following conclusions:

1. We should be pursuing direct capture of carbon dioxide from the air with great vigor because the costs are in the same ballpark as approaches proposed by Stern, IEA and IPCC, or,

2. If air capture can be dismissed as too expensive, then so too are the approaches proposed by the Stern, IEA and IPCC.

November 11th, 2008 | Tags: Climate Policy | Category: Observations | Leave a comment