Natural Gas in the UK

The contribution of coal-fired power generation to the UK’s domestic electrical energy supply appears to have increased recently, according to the December 2012 “Energy Trends” released by the Department of Energy and Climate Change. This is most likely due to coal plants using up their remaining allotted operational hours until they need to retire.

It could also be due to a quirk of the international markets – coal availability has increased because of gas glut conditions in the USA leading to higher coal exports. Combatting the use of coal in power generation is a global struggle that still needs to be won, but in the UK, it is planned that low carbon generation will begin to gain ascendance. The transition to lower carbon energy in Britain relies on getting the Natural Gas strategy right. With the imminent closure of coal-fired power plant, the probable decommissioning of several nuclear reactors, and the small tranche of overall supply coming from renewable resources, Natural Gas needs to be providing a greater overall percentage of electricity in the grid. But an increasing amount of this will be imported, since indigenous production is dropping, and this is putting the UK’s economy at risk of high prices and gas scarcity. Demand for electricity for the most part changes by a few percentage points a year, but the overall trend is to creep upwards (see Chart 4, here). People have made changes to their lighting power consumption, but this has been compensated for by an increase in power used by “gadgets” (see Chart 4, here). There is not much that can be done to suppress power consumption. Since power generation must increasingly coming from renewable resources and Natural Gas combustion, this implies strong competition between the demand for gas for heating and the demand gas for electricity. Electricity generation is key to the economy, so the power sector will win any competition for gas supplies. If competition for Natural Gas is strong, and since we don’t have much national gas storage, we can expect higher seasonal imports and therefore, higher prices. It is clear that improving building insulation across the board is critical in avoiding energy insecurity. I shall be checking the winter heat demand figures assiduously from now on, to determine if the Green Deal and related measures are working. If they don’t, the UK is in for heightened energy security risks, higher carbon emissions, and possibly much higher energy prices. The Green Deal simply has to work.

A Referendum for Energy

As I dodged the perfunctory little spots of snow yesterday, on my way down to Highbury and Islington underground train station, I passed a man who appeared to have jerky muscle control attempting to punch numbers on the keypad of a cash machine in the wall. He was missing, but he was grinning. A personal joke, perhaps. The only way he could get his money out of the bank to buy a pint of milk and a sliced loaf for his tea was to accurately tap his PIN number. But he wasn’t certain his body would let him. I threw him an enquiring glance, but he seemed too involved in trying to get control of his arms and legs to think of accepting help.

This, I felt, was a metaphor for the state of energy policy and planning in the United Kingdom – everybody in the industry and public sector has focus, but nobody appears to have much in the way of overall control – or even, sometimes, direction. I attended two meetings today setting out to address very different parts of the energy agenda : the social provision of energy services to the fuel-poor, and the impact that administrative devolution may have on reaching Britain’s Renewable Energy targets.

At St Luke’s Centre in Central Street in Islington, I heard from the SHINE team on the progress they are making in providing integrated social interventions to improve the quality of life for those who suffer fuel poverty in winter, where they need to spend more than 10% of their income on energy, and are vulnerable to extreme temperatures in both summer heatwaves and winter cold snaps. The Seasonal Health Interventions Network was winning a Community Footprint award from the National Energy Action charity for success in their ability to reach at-risk people through referrals for a basket of social needs, including fuel poverty. It was pointed out that people who struggle to pay energy bills are more likely to suffer a range of poverty problems, and that by linking up the social services and other agencies, one referral could lead to multiple problem-solving.

In an economy that is suffering signs of contraction, and with austerity measures being imposed, and increasing unemployment, it is clear that social services are being stretched, and yet need is still great, and statutory responsibility for handling poverty is still mostly a publicly-funded matter. By offering a “one-stop shop”, SHINE is able to offer people a range of energy conservation and efficiency services alongside fire safety and benefits checks and other help to make sure those in need are protected at home and get what they are entitled to. With 1 in 5 households meeting the fuel poverty criteria, there is clearly a lot of work to do. Hackney and Islington feel that the SHINE model could be useful to other London Boroughs, particularly as the Local Authority borders are porous.

We had a presentation on the Cold Weather Plan from Carl Petrokovsky working for the Department of Health, explaining how national action on cold weather planning is being organised, using Met Office weather forecasts to generate appropriate alert levels, in a similar way to heatwave alerts in summer – warnings that I understand could become much more important in future owing to the possible range of outcomes from climate change.

By way of some explanation – more global warming could mean significant warming for the UK. More UK warming could mean longer and, or, more frequent heated periods in summer weather, perhaps with higher temperatures. More UK warming could also mean more disturbances in an effect known as “blocking” where weather systems lock into place, in any season, potentially pinning the UK under a very hot or very cold mass of air for weeks on end. In addition, more UK warming could mean more precipitation – which would mean more rain in summer and more snow in winter.

Essentially, extremes in weather are public health issues, and particularly in winter, more people are likely to suffer hospitalisation from the extreme cold, or falls, or poor air quality from boiler fumes – and maybe end up in residential care. Much of this expensive change of life is preventable, as are many of the excess winter deaths due to cold. The risks of increasing severity in adverse conditions due to climate change are appropriately dealt with by addressing the waste of energy at home – targeting social goals can in effect contribute to meeting wider adaptational goals in overall energy consumption.

If the UK were to be treated as a single system, and the exports and imports of the most significant value analysed, the increasing net import of energy – the yawning gap in the balance of trade – would be seen in its true light – the country is becoming impoverished. Domestic, indigenously produced sources of energy urgently need to be developed. Policy instruments and measured designed to reinvigorate oil and gas exploration in the North Sea and over the whole UKCS – UK Continental Shelf – are not showing signs of improving production significantly. European-level policy on biofuels did not revolutionise European agriculture as regards energy cropping – although it did contribute to decimating Indonesian and Malaysian rainforest. The obvious logical end point of this kind of thought process is that we need vast amounts of new Renewable Energy to retain a functioning economy, given global financial, and therefore, trade capacity, weakness.

Many groups, both with the remit for public service and private enterprise oppose the deployment of wind and solar power, and even energy conservation measures such as building wall cladding. Commentators with access to major media platforms spread disinformation about the ability of Renewable Energy technologies to add value. In England, in particular, debates rage, and many hurdles are encountered. Yet within the United Kingdom as a whole, there are real indicators of progressive change, particularly in Scotland and Wales.

I picked up the threads of some of these advances by attending a PRASEG meeting on “Delivering Renewable Energy Under Devolution”, held at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in Westminster, London; a tour to back up the launch of a new academic report that analyses performance of the devolved administrations and their counterpart in the English Government in Westminster. The conclusions pointed to something that I think could be very useful – if Scotland takes the referendum decision for independence, and continues to show strong leadership and business and community engagement in Renewable Energy deployment, the original UK Renewable Energy targets could be surpassed.

I ended the afternoon exchanging some perceptions with an academic from Northern Ireland. We shared that Eire and Northern Ireland could become virtually energy-independent – what with the Renewable Electricity it is possible to generate on the West Coast, and the Renewable Gas it is possible to produce from the island’s grass (amongst other things). We also discussed the tendency of England to suck energy out of its neighbour territories. I suggested that England had appropriated Scottish hydrocarbon resources, literally draining the Scottish North Sea dry of fossil fuels in exchange for token payments to the Western Isles, and suchlike. If Scotland leads on Renewable Energy and becomes independent, I suggested, the country could finally make back the wealth it lost to England. We also shared our views about the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland being asked to wire all their new Renewable Electricity to England, an announcement that has been waiting to happen for some time. England could also bleed Wales of green power with the same lines being installed to import green juice from across the Irish Sea.

I doubt that politics will completely nix progress on Renewable Energy deployment – the economics are rapidly becoming clear that clean, green power and gas are essential for the future. However, I would suggest we could expect some turbulence in the political sphere, as the English have to learn the hard way that they have a responsibility to rapidly increase their production of low carbon energy.

Asking the English if they want to break ties with the European Union, as David Cameron has suggested with this week’s news on a Referendum, is the most unworkable idea, I think. England, and in fact, all the individual countries of the United Kingdom, need close participation in Europe, to join in with the development of new European energy networks, in order to overcome the risks of economic collapse. It may happen that Scotland, and perhaps Wales, even, separate themselves from any increasing English isolation and join the great pan-Europe energy projects in their own right. Their economies may stabilise and improve, while the fortunes of England may tumble, as those with decision-making powers, crony influence and web logs in the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail, resist the net benefits of the low carbon energy revolution.

[ Many thanks to Simon and all at the Unity Kitchen at St Luke's Centre, and the handsomely reviving Unity Latte, and a big hi to all the lunching ladies and gents with whom I shared opinions on the chunkiness of the soup of the day and the correct identification of the vegetables in it. ]

Other Snapshots of Yesterday #1 : Approached by short woman with a notebook in Parliament Square, pointing out to me a handwritten list that included the line “Big Ben”. I pointed at the clock tower and started to explain. The titchy tourist apologised for non-comprehension by saying, “French”, so then I explained the feature attraction to her in French, which I think quite surprised her. We are all European.

Other Snapshots of Yesterday #2 : Spoke with an Austrian academic by the fire for coffee at IMechE, One Birdcage Walk, about the odd attitudes as regards gun ownership in the United States, and the American tendency to collective, cohort behaviour. I suggested that this tendency could be useful, as the levels of progressive political thinking, for instance about drone warfare, could put an end to the practice. When aerial bombardment was first conducted, it should have been challenged in law at that point. We are all Europeans.

Other Snapshots of Yesterday #3 : Met a very creative Belgian from Gent, living in London. We are all European.

Other Snapshots of Yesterday #4 : We Europeans, we are all so civilised. We think that we need to heat venues for meetings, so that people feel comfortable. Levels of comfort are different for different people, but the lack of informed agreement means that the default setting for temperature always ends up being too high. The St Luke’s Centre meeting room was at roughly 23.5 degrees C when I arrived, and roughly 25 degrees C with all the visitors in the room. I shared with a co-attendee that my personal maximum operating temperature is around 19 degrees C. She thought that was fine for night-time. The IMechE venue on the 2nd floor was roughly 19 – 20 degrees C, but the basement was roughly 24 degrees C. Since one degree Celsius of temperature reduction can knock about 10% of the winter heating bill, why are public meetings about energy not more conscious of adjusting their surroundings ?

Boris’ Entirely Accurate Assessment

Image Credit : jgspics

It’s lucky for Londoners that we have a Mayor of the intellectual stature of Boris Johnson. Not only is he a fashion icon, a promotor of safe cycling, and a total sex god, especially dangling from high wires at Olympic Stadia wearing a rumpled suit, but he’s also a sheer genius on science. He’s as learned as the best taxi chauffeur in the City’s Square Mile, and not only that, he’s studied Earth Sciences in depth, and has so much wisdom from his knowledge, that he feels justified in challenging an entire pantheon of climatologists.

Here he is writing philanthropically, no doubt, for our general edification, in the Daily Telegraph online, “…I am sitting here staring through the window at the flowerpot and the bashed-up barbecue, and I am starting to think this series of winters is not a coincidence. The snow on the flowerpot, since I have been staring, has got about an inch thicker. The barbecue is all but invisible. By my calculations, this is now the fifth year in a row that we have had an unusual amount of snow; and by unusual I mean snow of a kind that I don’t remember from my childhood: snow that comes one day, and then sticks around for a couple of days, followed by more. I remember snow that used to come and settle for just long enough for a single decent snowball fight before turning to slush; I don’t remember winters like this. Two days ago I was cycling through Trafalgar Square and saw icicles on the traffic lights; and though I am sure plenty of readers will say I am just unobservant, I don’t think I have seen that before. I am all for theories about climate change, and would not for a moment dispute the wisdom or good intentions of the vast majority of scientists. But I am also an empiricist; and I observe that something appears to be up with our winter weather, and to call it “warming” is obviously to strain the language…” I must defer to the man – his memory is incredibly accurate, and the conclusions based on his impressions entirely valid. It cannot be true that in the winter of 1967-1968, for example, when he was a little brat, that snow was so deep and so treacherous in parts of London that cars could not drive up slopes steeper than about 25 degrees; and that the snow lasted for several weeks and caused major infrastructure disruption, especially when there was a second phase of snowfall. It cannot be true that winters in the UK in the late 1970s and early 1980s were really quite bad, because Boris cannot recall them, despite being nearly aged 50, unless of course, he grew up in another, more tropical part of the world. As his claim to be an “empiricist” is backed up by his winter recollections, we can trust what he says about Piers Corbyn, obviously. Piers Corbyn, alone among his generation, perhaps, is reported by BoJo to believe that “global temperature depends not on concentrations of CO2 but on the mood of our celestial orb.” And he has a fascinating, entirely convincing explanation for recent hard winters, “When the Sun has plenty of sunspots, he bathes the Earth in abundant rays. 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.” It’s all so simple, really, and we have to thank Piers Corbyn, shake his hand warmly, and thump him on the back to express our deep gratitude for explaining that history is repeating itself, all over again. Nothing, of course, has changed in the Earth’s atmosphere, so its composition couldn’t be accentuating the Greenhouse Effect, whereby minute amounts of Greenhouse Gases keep the surface of the planet above the 18 or 19 degrees Celsius below freezing point it would be otherwise. So of course, just as he is right about solar activity being the primary driver of global temperatures today, just as it was clearly the only significant driver in the past, Piers Corbyn must be entirely correct about his predictions of future cooling, especially because he’s being quoted by Borish Johnson, on the website of a very well-read newspaper, no less, “We are in for a prolonged cold period. Indeed, we could have 30 years of general cooling.” The Daily Telegraph have hit on a superb way of guaranteeing web hits. The strategy of setting a cool cat amongst the warming pigeons is even acknowledged by Mr Johnson himself, “all those scientists and environmentalists who will go wild with indignation on the publication of this article”. But it appears that despite this clownish, jokey, provocative stance, Boris might actually believe there is something in Piers Corbyn’s analysis : “I am speaking only as a layman [a "layman" with a platform in a national newspaper, which pay him to write this stuff] who observes that there is plenty of snow in our winters these days, and who wonders whether it might be time for government [just a "layman" with some old university pals in the Cabinet] to start taking seriously the possibility – however remote – that Corbyn is right. If he is, that will have big implications for agriculture, tourism, transport, aviation policy and the economy as a whole.” BoJo then dives off the psychological deep-end, “Of course it still seems a bit nuts to talk of the encroachment of a mini ice age. But it doesn’t seem as nuts as it did five years ago [oh yes, it does]. I look at the snowy waste outside, and I have an open mind.” Open minded ? About things that have been established as reality ? I suppose we should stay open minded about the entire field of Chemistry or Physics, then ? Or how about the Theory of Gravity ? Was Boris being open minded about gravity when he took to the harness and wire during London 2012 ? Am I giving “oxygen” to the madness of the global warming deniers by writing about this truly ill-informed opinion from Boris Johnson ? The media are already giving more than enough oxygen to people in high office with quaint, outdated views. Should I be silent as major newspapers continue to pour forth ineptitude ? Am I “scoring an own goal” by pointing out his piece is a travesty of the scientific facts ? No, I am pointing out that his article contains invalid scientific opinion. When I first read this piece, I thought it was a parody, but now I’m not so sure. It appears to be a deliberate attempt to skew the confidence of other people – confidence in the main body of science, and the decades of patient work by people with thousands of data sets of measurements from the natural world, not just poor memories of winters past.

Statistical Elephants Roam Chamber

Image Credit : appinsys.com

Somewhere on the Internet, as I write, somebody will be arguing about global warming – or rather, several somebodies, since disputes require multiple parties, and global warming is, as claimed by some, to be sufficiently contentious to have spawned ongoing vituperativeness. Many of the lines of reasoning will include references to the cyclic nature of Nature. Most of the data considered will be from measurements of “surface” temperatures – the temperature of the atmosphere near the land surface of the Earth, and the temperature of the oceans near the surface with the atmosphere.

These are of course, the easiest things to measure, as this is the part of the Earth system that people inhabit, and all kinds of surface temperature records, of varying validity and accuracy, have been recorded for millenia. The lower reaches of the air and the upper waters of the oceans, are, however, prone to quite wide swings in temperatures, owing to the turbulent nature of heat, air and water transport in and around the surface of the Earth. And so, easily distracted creatures that we are, if we have any honour in our research into global warming, we consider this see-sawing surface temperature data, and we apply our best analysis techniques to try to comprehend its “walk” – the direction it is taking overall. And herein lies a faultline, that despite decades of obsession, is not easily vaulted. The use of statistical techniques to analyse surface temperature data suffers from two key problems :- (a) An assumption that we can determine accurately the period of time over which we can confidently apply statistical analysis techniques in order to be able to determine trends in surface temperatures; and (b) An assumption that surface temperatures can be treated with the usual statistical toolbox of techniques – that surface temperatures would, unless forced, fall into a distribution curve of random readings, spread like a bell curve around a central mean. And so an army of inspectors applies probabilistic statistical methods to the Earth’s surface temperature data sets, and some say it comes up with more questions than answers. For example, there may, or may not be, evidence that trends can only be claimed over decadal, or multi-decadal, periods; that all the apparent warming can be put down to natural cycles of the oceans, so a cooling phase will be next; that no trend can be claimed in 50 years because of the wild swings in the data ; that all the data is confused with volcanic episodes; that lots of mini-cycles in the Earth system are confusing us. And so on. When I find people arguing about the surface temperature records, and whether a global warming trend can be picked out from them, I ask them if they’ve looked at the bigger picture : the global heat transport system. Water can retain heat better than air – a very large proportion of the heating caused by sunlight ends up in the oceans – at different places in the depths of the oceans. Over time, this heat is exchanged with the atmosphere, rather like global Gas Central Heating, but a lot of it stays down there – so if there is a trend for global warming, it’s probably best to look in the oceans for it. And when we do, all the arguments about statistical analysis of surface atmospheric temperatures vapourise into meaninglessness, almost. The trend of ocean warming is so clear, you don’t need to apply any kind of statistical methods (apart from a couple of years of averaging) :- Image Credit : Climate4You Actually, the trend of atmospheric warming is also clear, if you take the long view :- Image Credit : NASA GISS Anybody who is still arguing about the periodicity of surface temperatures, as if natural cycles could explain global warming, should think again. Surface temperature cycles are perhaps able to explain whether the next 10 years or so will see more or less global warming – but they cannot explain away the 100 year trend in global warming. And when people have come to terms that statistics cannot wipe away the reality of global warming, then comes the sting in the tail. Because the ocean is exchanging heat with the atmosphere over time, this creates a time lag – between the heat being generated in the oceans, and surface temperatures rising as a result. We ain’t seen nothing, yet. 18th January 2013 Twitterverse —————————————- @joabbess @richardabetts Think focus on air temps waste of time: most heat ends up in oceans http://www.climate4you.com/images/NODC%20GlobalOceanicHeatContent0-700mSince1955%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif … @lucialiljegren @nmrqip @ed_hawkins @richardabetts Number of reasons why air temps bounce around making short-term interpretation difficult @lucialiljegren @nmrqip @ed_hawkins @richardabetts …but oceans temps could well continue a solid upwards gradient over next decades @lucialiljegren @nmrqip @ed_hawkins @richardabetts If oceans continue recent warming gradient, will drag air temps on average up with them @lucialiljegren @nmrqip @ed_hawkins @richardabetts If ENSO taking new shape/profile/cycle, this could obscure some of atmospheric temp rise @lucialiljegren @nmrqip @ed_hawkins @richardabetts Even ENSO obfuscation can’t put off ~1.2degC warming next 30 years http://www.joabbess.com/2010/07/19/simple-integration/ … @lucialiljegren @nmrqip @ed_hawkins —- @ClimateOfGavin Sometimes distrust obsession re atmospheric temps: look at ocean warming @lucialiljegren @ed_hawkins @richardabetts @nmrqip @ClimateOfGavin However much @lucialiljegren obsesses on air temperatures I only care about ocean warming @ed_hawkins @richardabetts @nmrqip @ClimateOfGavin Lower atmosphere temperatures flip-flop all kinds of reasons: not oceans @lucialiljegren @ed_hawkins @richardabetts @nmrqip @ClimateOfGavin Thermal capacity of oceans means they should show more reliable trend ? @lucialiljegren @ed_hawkins @richardabetts @nmrqip ———————————————————— @ed_hawkins @joabbess @ClimateOfGavin Probably, but we only have good enough sub-surface observations of past ~50 years or so. ———————————————————— @joabbess @ed_hawkins Yet since oceans good heat retainer even mediocre records of past relevant 4 comparison eg http://www.livescience.com/19414-oceans-warming-135-years.html … @ClimateOfGavin @ed_hawkins We should definitely use what we know about thermal capacity of oceans to accept ships etc historical records @ClimateOfGavin @ed_hawkins Ocean records of last 50 years allow for calibration between surface and depths, & with historical records too @ClimateOfGavin —————————————————– @ed_hawkins @joabbess @ClimateOfGavin Of course – deep ocean observations are very relevant, but not the only type of measurement that are useful! —————————————————– @joabbess @ed_hawkins I’m sure there must be mines data going back several hundreds of years, doing same trick for mass earth temps @ClimateOfGavin —————————————————— @JohnRussell40 :- @joabbess Surely mines data will be swamped by core heat? V. hot down there. @ed_hawkins @ClimateOfGavin —————————————————— @ClimateOfGavin (Gavin Schmidt) @JohnRussell40 @joabbess @ed_hawkins borehole temperatures can in fact be deconvolved to show widespread recent warming Henry Pollack et al —————————————————— @joabbess @ClimateOfGavin I assume you mean this http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/borehole/core.html … http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/pollack.html … Think that’s pretty clear ! @JohnRussell40 @ed_hawkins @ClimateOfGavin Interestingly reflects surface up-blip in 1940s, which Phil Jones et al keep trying to smooth @JohnRussell40 @ed_hawkins @ClimateOfGavin That up-blip in 1940s was what got us all started looking for historical marine records: v useful @JohnRussell40 @ed_hawkins — @ed_hawkins I’m trying to hint that endless debates about cyclicity/statistics of air temps = time-wasting & not productive @ClimateOfGavin @ed_hawkins If read 1 more mangled media article about statistical trends of air temperatures, going to scream & jump about @ClimateOfGavin @ed_hawkins The overall graph speaks for itself – or it should – louder than anything http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2013/20130115_Temperature2012.pdf … Fig. 1 @ClimateOfGavin ———————————————

Cross-Motivation

A fully renewable energy future is not only possible, it is inevitable. We need to maximise the roll out of wind and solar renewable electricity systems, and at the same time fully develop marine, geothermal and hydropower energy, and of course, energy storage. We need strong energy conservation and energy efficiency directives to be enacted in every state, sector and region. But we need to get from here to there. It requires the application of personal energy from all – from governments, from industry, from society.

In arguing for focus on the development of Renewable Gas, which I believe can and will be a bridge from here to a fully renewable energy future, I am making an appeal to those who view themselves as environmentalists, and also an appeal to those who view themselves as part of the energy industry. Those who cast themselves as the “good guys”, those who want to protect the environment from the ravages of the energy industry, have for decades set themselves in opposition, politically and socially, to those in the energy production and supply sectors, and this has created a wall of negativity, a block to progress in many areas. I would ask you to accept the situation we find ourselves in – even those who live off-grid and who have very low personal energy and material consumption – we are all dependent on the energy industry – we have a massive fossil fuel infrastructure, and companies that wield immense political power, and this cannot be changed overnight by some revolutionary activity, or by pulling public theatrical stunts. It definitely cannot be changed by accusation, finger-pointing and blame. We are not going to wake up tomorrow in a zero carbon world. There needs to be a transition – there needs to be a vision and a will. Instead of a depressive, negative, cynical assessment of today that erects and maintains barriers to co-operation, we need optimistic, positive understanding. In the past there has been naievety – and some environmentalists have been taken in by public relations greenwash. This is not that. The kind of propaganda used to maintain market share for the energy industry continues to prevent and poison good communications and trust. I no more believe in the magic snuff of the shale gas “game changer” than I believe in the existence of goblins and fairies. The shine on the nuclear “renaissance” wore off ever before it was buffed up. And the hopeless dream of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) becoming a global-scale solution for carbon emissions is about as realistic to me as the geoengineering described in Tolkein’s “The Lord of the Rings”. Nuclear power and CCS are actually about mining and concrete construction – they’re not energy or climate solutions. I’m not taken in by token gestures of a small slice of wind or solar power or the promise of a segment of biofuels from large oil and gas companies. Public relations and lobbying are the lowest form of faked, usurping power – but simply attacking brands will fail to make real change. I think honesty, realism and pragmatism are the way forward – and there is nothing more practical than pushing for Renewable Gas to back up the accelerated deployment of renewable electricity to its fullest scale. My appeal to those in control of energy provision is – to see through the fog to the unstoppable. State support, both political and financial, of new energy technologies and infrastructure has to be a short- to medium-term goal – because of the volatility of the economy, and the demands of your shareholders. The need to build public support for new energy means that we the citizens must all be offered the opportunity to own energy – and so that means building a common purpose between the energy sector and society – and that purpose must be Zero Carbon. There is and will continue to be a porous border between the energy industry and governments – energy is a social utility of high political value. However, the privilege and access that this provides should not automatically mean that the energy industry can plunder public coffers for their own profit. What contribution can the energy industry make to society – apart from the provision of energy at cost – in addition to the subsidies ? Energy, being so vital to the economy, will mean that the energy sector will continue to survive, but it has to change its shape. You can dance around the facts, but climate change is hitting home, and there is no point in continuing to be in denial about Peak Oil, Peak Coal and Peak Natural Gas. These are genuine risks, not only to the planet, or its people, but also your business plans. We need to be using less energy overall, and less carbon energy within the eventual envelope of energy consumption. So the energy sector needs to move away from maximising sales of energy to optimising sales of energy services and selling low carbon energy systems, power and fuels. You would be wrong to dismiss me as an “eco warrior” – I’m an engineer – and I’ve always believed in co-operation, expertise, professionalism, technology and industrial prowess. What impresses me is low carbon energy deployment and zero carbon energy research. Progress is in evidence, and it is showing the way to the future. Realistically speaking, in 20 years’ time, nobody will be able to dismiss the risks and threats of climate change and energy insecurity – the evidence accumulates. We, the zero carbon visionaries, are not going to stop talking about this and acting on it – as time goes by, the reasons for all to engage with these issues will increase, regardless of efforts to distract. Nothing is perfect. I no more believe in a green utopia than I do in unicorns. But without reacting to climate change and energy insecurity, the stock market will not carry you, even though the governments must for the mean time, until clean and green energy engineering and service organisations rise up to replace you. Lobbying for pretences will ultimately fail – fail not only governments or peoples, but you. You, the energy industry, must start acting for the long-term or you will be ousted. As your CEOs retire, younger heads will fill leadership shoes – and younger minds know and accept the perils of climate change and energy insecurity. This is the evolution, not revolution. It is time to publicly admit that you do know that economically recoverable fossil fuels are limited, and that climate change is as dangerous to your business models as it is to human settlements and the biosphere. Admit it in a way that points to a sustainable future – for you and the climate. The pollution of economically borderline unconventional fuels is wrong and avoidable – what we need are renewable energies, energy conservation and energy efficiency. One without the others is not enough. How can your business succeed ? In selling renewable energy, energy conservation and energy efficiency. You have to sell the management of energy. You have to be genuinely “world class” and show us how. No more spills, blowouts and emissions. No more tokenistic sponsorship of arts, culture and sports. The veneer of respectability is wearing thin. As an engineer, I understand the problems of system management – all things within the boundary wall need to be considered and dealt with. One thing is certain, however. Everything is within the walls. And that means that all must change. http://houstonfeldenkrais.com/tag/cross-motivation/ “…Of course, the money would be great. But adding in the reward/punishment dimension is a sure way to sabotage brilliant performance. Moshe Feldenkrais observed that when one is striving to meet an externally imposed goal, the spine shortens, muscles tense, and the body (and mind) actually works against itself. He called this “cross motivation,” and it occurs when one forsakes one’s internal truth to maintain external equilibrium. There are lots of examples of this: the child stops doing what she’s doing because of the fear of losing parental approval, love, protection. The employee cooks the books to keep his job. The candidate delivers the sound bite, and dies a little inside. Feldenkrais attributed most of our human mental and physical difficulties to the problem of cross motivation. If you watch Michael Phelps swim, you can’t help but notice that he makes it look easy. He is clearly strong and powerful, but all of his strength and power are focused on moving him through the water with the greatest speed and efficiency. There’s no wasted effort, no struggle, no straining. He is free of cross-motivation! Would straining make him faster? Of course not. Unnecessary muscular effort would make him less buoyant, less mobile, less flexible. Will dangling a million dollars at the finish line make him swim faster? Probably just the opposite, unless Michael Phelps has some great inner resources to draw upon. The young Mr. Phelps has already learned how to tune out a lot of the hype. He’ll need to rely on “the cultivation of detachment,” the ability to care without caring…”

No Cause for Alarm

Odds in the Arctic

[ UPDATE : The images and charts are current - meaning that the situation has changed since the post was written on 14 September 2012. Thus, if you try to tie the diagrams in with the text, it won't make much sense. Apologies. ]

It’s about this time of year that bleak-humoured atmospheric scientists and statisticians all over the world start to place bets on the low point of the volume (or area, or extent, or thickness) of Arctic Sea Ice. The rumour yesterday was that the low point was going to be called for today. But…there are some odd things going on in the Arctic, and that could shift the odds. Read the rest of this entry »

London Skies

Image Credit : epeigne37

Yesterday evening, I was caught by the intensity of the London Sky – there was little air movement in most of the lower summer-heat space above the city, and virtually no cloud except very high strands and sprurls and bones and smears. Most of the cloud was clearly the result of aeroplane contrails – numerable to small children and their educational grandparents on various buses.

As the sun began to set, or rather, as the Earth rolled to curve away from facing the sun, the sky took on the colour of bright duck egg blue with a hint of pale green, and the sprays of high contrail-cloud took on a glorious orange-fuchsia colour with flashes of gold, bronze and vanadium reds, fading slowly to chromium reds as twilight approached. At a certain moment, I understood something – as I watched an aeroplane high up, make its way west to Heathrow, the angle of the sunset showed its contrail as a murky ink, messing up the rest of the clouds as it brushstroked its way along, with its slate and muddy hues. As I watched, other parts of the clouds began to appear brown and grey, and since I knew that most of the cloud was jet engine exhaust that hadn’t moved because of the lack of high winds, I finally realised I was watching dirt, high up in the troposphere – careless, unthinking toxic waste. Read the rest of this entry »

Un égard, un regard, un certain regard

What is my agenda ?

Tamino’s Arctic Sea Ice Poll

For some time I have not felt a keen sense of “mission” – a direction for my climate change and energy activities. However, I am beginning to formulate a plan – or rather – I have one important item on my agenda. I am aware that perception can be fatal – and that people in many “camps” are going to dismiss me because of this.

Suddenly I don’t fit into anybody’s pigeonhole – so the needle on the dial will probably swing over to “dismiss”. However, I think it’s necessary to pursue this. I think I have to try. I am prepared to hold several conflicting ideas in the balance at one time, and let the data add mass to one version of the truth or another. I’m prepared to accept the possibility of low climate change sensitivity (the reaction of the Earth biosystem to global warming) – apart from the fact that the evidence is accumulating – pointing heavily towards rapid instabilities emerging on short timescales. I don’t think I ever really left behind the hope – and I’m crossing my fingers here – that some massive negative carbon feedback will arise, heroically, and stem the full vigour of climate chaos. But as time slips by, and the Arctic cryosphere continues to de-materialise before our very eyes, that hope is worn down to the barest of threads. And on energy security, I am prepared to accept the reasoning behind the IEA, BP, Shell and other projections of increasing overall energy demand between now and 2035, and the percentage of fossil fuel use that will inevitably require – apart from the fact that some evidence points towards increasing uncertainties in energy provision – if we are relying on more complex and inaccessible resources, within the framework of an increasingly patchy global economy. If access to energy becomes threatened for more people globally, and also if climate change becomes highly aggressive in terms of freshwater stress, then I doubt that human population growth can carry on the way it has been – and in addition the global economy may never recover – which means that overall energy demand will not grow in the way that oil and gas companies would like their shareholders to accept. My impression is that energy producing companies and countries are not openly admitting the risks. If energy supply chaos sets in, then the political and governance ramifications will be enormous, especially since the energy industry is so embedded in administrations. It is time, in my view, that projections of world energy use to 2035 included error bars based on economic failure due to energy chaos. What do I need to do – given these pragmatic positions ? I need to include realists in the crisis talks – pragmatic, flexible thinkers from the energy industry. Just as we are not going to solve climate change without addressing energy provision, we are not going to solve energy insecurity without addressing climate change impacts on energy infrastructure. And so I need to find the energy industry people, meet them and invite them to the discussions on the risks of chaos. I need people to take in the data. I need people to understand the problems with slipping back into “thinking as usual”. As to the setting – whether I should be an employee or an independent advisor/adviser, consultant or a researcher, I don’t have any idea what would be best. Collaborators would be useful – as I am but one person with a track record of being rather awkward – despite trying to engage my best behaviour. But then, nobody’s perfect. In a sense it doesn’t matter who does the job, but we have to break the public relations-guided psychology of denial. People are not generally stupid, and many are snapping out of their drip-fed propaganda delusions. I wonder exactly how many other imperfect people are out there who are coming to the same conclusions ? And what will be the game changer ?

Obey the Future

Disobedience only gets you so far. Resistance can be fertile, but intellectual ghettos can be futile. The human tendency to generalise creates too much negativity and prevents us from being constructive. We complain about the “evil” oil and gas companies; the “greedy” coal merchants and their “lying” bankster financiers; but refuse to see the diamonds in the mud.

We should obey the future. In the future, all people will respect each other. There will no longer be war propaganda carried by the media, demonising leaders of foreign countries, or scorn for opposing political parties. In the future, human beings will respect and have regard for other human beings. So we should live that future, live that value, have care for one another. I don’t mean we are obliged to give money to charity to help needy people in poor countries. I don’t mean we should campaign for our government to commit funds to the Climate Finance initiatives, whose aim is to support adaptation to climate chaos in developing countries. No, charity is not enough, and never matches the need. Philanthropy will not answer climate change, and so solutions need to be built into the infrastructure of the global economy, sewn into the design, woven into the fabric. There should be no manufacture, no trade, no form of consumption that does not take account of the climate change impacts on the poor, and on the rich, on ecosystems, on ourselves.

Yes, it’s true that corporations are destroying the biosphere, but we cannot take a step back, grimace and point fingers of blame, for we are all involved in the eco-destructive economy. We are all hooked on dirty energy and polluting trade, and it’s hard to change this. It’s especially hard for oil, gas and coal companies to change track – they have investors and shareholders, and they are obliged to maintain the value in their business, and keep making profits. Yes, they should stop avoiding their responsibilities to the future. Yes, they should stop telling the rest of us to implement carbon taxation or carbon trading. They know that a comprehensive carbon price can never be established, that’s why they tell us to do it. It’s a technique of avoidance. But gathering climate storms, and accumulating unsolved climate damages, are leading the world’s energy corporations to think carefully of the risks of business as usual. How can the governments and society of the world help the energy companies to evolve ? Is more regulation needed ? And if so, what kind of political energy would be required to bring this about ? The United Nations climate change process is broken, there is no framework or treaty at hand, and the climate change social movement has stopped growing, so there is no longer any democratic pressure on the energy production companies and countries to change.

Many climate change activists talk of fear and frustration – the futility of their efforts. They are trapped into the analysis that teaches that greed and deceit are all around them. Yet change is inevitable, and the future is coming to us today, and all is quite possibly full of light. Where is this river of hope, this conduit of shining progress ? Where, this organised intention of good ?

We have to celebrate the dull. Change is frequently not very exciting. Behind the scenes, policy people, democratic leaders, social engineers, corporate managers, are pushing towards the Zero Carbon future reality. They push and pull in the areas open to them, appropriate to their roles, their paid functions. Whole rafts of national and regional policy is wedded to making better use of energy, using less energy overall, displacing carbon energy from all economic sectors.

And then there’s the progressive politics. Every leader who knows the shape of the future should strive to be a Van Jones, or a Jenny Jones, any green-tinged Jones you can think of. We should enquire of our political leaders and our public activists what flavour of environmental ecology they espouse. We should demand green policies in every party, expect clean energy support from every faction. We should not only vote progressive, we should promote future-thinking authority in all spheres of social management – a future of deeper mutual respect, of leaner economy, of cleaner energy.

The future will be tough. In fact, the future is flowing to us faster than ever, and we need resilience in the face of assured destructive change – in environment and in economy. To develop resilience we need to forgo negativity and embrace positivity. So I ask you – don’t just be anti-coal, be pro-wind, pro-solar and pro-energy conservation. Where leaders emerge from the companies and organisations that do so much harm, celebrate them and their vision of a brighter, better, lower carbon future. Where administrations take the trouble to manage their energy use, and improve their efficiency in the use of resources, applaud them, and load them with accolades. Awards may be trite, but praise can encourage better behaviour, create exemplars, inspire goodly competition. Let us encourage the people with good influence in every organisation, institution and corporation. Change is afoot, and people with genuine power are walking confidently to a more wholesome future.

Protect your soul. Don’t get locked into the rejection of evil, but hold fast to what is good. Do not conform to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds. Be strong for goodness, even as you turn your back on a life of grime.

Live the Zero Carbon future, and make it come as soon as it can.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Engagement of Reason

This is just a snippet from a long email trail about climate change…

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From: Jo Abbess

Dear KC,

You are a human being. What you think is important. What you know is useful.

What I want to ask you is : who do you read ? Whose opinions do you value ? Whose information do you choose to accept ? And are you as sceptical about these authors as you are about the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] community of scientists ? If not, why not ? Do you discredit climate change science because of the views of others, or because you have read the IPCC science for yourself and you have a dispute with their conclusions ?

The question of authority is important here – not the authority of power or influence, but the authority of expertise. Who do you think has more expertise and authority to make claims about the state of the world’s climate and the causes of the obvious perturbations in it ? If you think that discernment should be a matter for yourself, then I would ask you to actually review the IPCC science reports and give me (us) a summary from your point of view. If you think that people other than the IPCC have the right and authority and expertise to pronounce on climate change, who are they ? And what science have they done to support their views ?

With my full respect, as one human being to another,

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From: KC

Thanks, thanks, and thanks.

There is an enormous body of information on all aspects of the issue, and obviously, I have not read all of it. I am not a Climate Scientist, so I have to go with the views of others. On the one hand, we have the IPCC, and its supporters, and on the other hand, we have those who disagree with the IPCC. There are many, but for the sake of simplicity, I think WUWT [Watts Up With That] is a fair, reasonable and credible “disbeliever/skeptic site” that presents teh alternative views in a reasonable and competent manner. I started off supporting the IPCC view, and on the surface, it seemed to make sense.. I was a “Believer”. As I read more, I found a lot of loose ends starting to show up, and I became a skeptic. At the moment, I am neither a “Believer” or a “Dis-believer.” There are points pro and con for each side. My position is in the “muddy water in the middle” There are always “two sides to every story.” I find the best way to read IPCC and “believer” sites, to get their views on the points of the Disbelievers/Skeptics”, and vice-versa. I presently remain in the “muddy water in the middle”, simply because neither side has presented what I feel is a “slam/dunk case” to support their position.

The Authority/Expertise issue is an important one. I started off as an IPCC Believer, and went with the flow of their “Experts”. Then the “Disbelievers/Skeptics” started to present disturbing points. I think the first was the BBC Program that suggested that “Temperature Change came first, and CO2 rise followed.. [ Channel 4's "The Great Global Warming Swindle" perhaps ? ] Then there was the revelation about the quality of US Weather Station Data. Then there was the issue of “non-transparency of data and computer models”. Then there was the issue of ‘Carbon Credits”, which are useless as a mechanism for reducing Atmospheric CO2. Then there was the issue of Terra Preta/Biochar being promoted by ardent “Believers” whose major thrust of effort was promoting Biochar based on future carbon credit payments, rather than on its merits as an agricultural tool. Then there was the issue of the change in direction from “Global Warming” to “Global Climate Change”. Then there was the Stern Report which over-emphasises threats, and under-estimates benefits of climate change, and the cost to implement remediation measures. Then there was the extreme intolerance of the views of “Dis-believers or Skeptics.” Then there was the issue of the IPCC claiming that “Consensus Science” was science, when it is not. Etc, etc. All these “loose ends” and many more detract from the credibility of the IPCC Camp, to the point that I cannot personally accept their views blindly, and go with their flow.

I do like your concept of “… discernment should be a matter for yourself.” That is EXACTLY where I stand. I am confused about the IPCC Position, and as a “confused mind”, I say “No!” to blind and complete acceptance of their views. I neither accept nor reject the “authority” of either side. What I am looking for is “clear water”, and few enough “loose ends” that I can comfortably “go with the flow” of one side or the other. Hence, I remain a skeptic. Given that the IPCC has “staked out a position”, I feel the “burden of proof” rests with them to show that their position is correct. I feel it is only necessary for the dis-believers and skeptics to raise “reasonable doubts” for the IPCC case to collapse. I feel the IPCC position is basically “We have staked out our position, and we are right unless you prove us wrong.” Thats not the way it works in the Courts… the Prosecution must prove its case “beyond all reasonable doubts” in order to win. The Defence only has to present “reasonable doubt” to win.

I personally “have no dog in the fight”, and it is not necessary for me, at this stage, to move firmly into the “Believer or Disbeliever” camp. Many are like me…. simply wanting to know enough to feel comfortable supporting one side or another. Others are in the difficult position of having to “take a stand” even though they may not be confident in taking a position. Or, in the case of Policy Makers, if unsure, “The Confused Mind says “No”", and they base their policy decisions on considerations other than Climatge Change. For example, while the Politicians mouth support for Climate Change amelioriation, the outcome of the Durban Meeting was basically “Yes, we support climate change controls, and we will implement them after 2020, but we can’t say what we will do, or how long after 2020 we wil do it.”

Thanks also, for your open-ness and understanding.

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From: Jo Abbess

I understand where you are.

The problem with the discourse on climate change is that a lot of it is very shallow, and people are prone to emotional reactions such as hand-waving dismissiveness, angry retorts and sadly, even personal insults. It’s easy to get submerged in this and not find solid ground.

When I first encountered the Internet wranglings of Steve McIntyre and the ramblings of Anthony Watts, it took me some time to realise that they were guilty of the behaviour they accuse others of. As I researched what they were claiming, I realised it was all vapourware.

We find we are wading into an academic dispute, with people trying to protect the shreds of their careers and reputations as it becomes clear that they are in error. But who exactly is in error, here ? And who is producing the smoke and mirrors fluff to try to hide the fact that they are losing ground ?

As in law, it is almost impossible to come to a clear understanding of what the actual situation is by just relying on confusing “circumstantial evidence” or hearsay from second- or third-hand witnesses.

A number of “sceptical” scientists and deeply involved people such as Anthony Watts have contributed to the body of knowledge on climate change. The IPCC and leading research agencies and universities have taken note of their contributions – and have even included them in literature reviews, research analysis and invited the “sceptics” to take part in report review and writing teams.

However, if you look carefully, behind the web log waffle, you will find that the conclusions of Richard S. Lindzen, John R. Christy, Anthony Watts, Roger Pielke Sr and so on have been successfully challenged by other climate change experts.

Although they may claim they have been ignored, they have been included. And although they may claim they have uncovered flaws or deliberate science misconduct, they have not, and the mainstream climate change scientists have been repeatedly vindicated.

I invite you, as I do everyone, to read the IPCC science reports as a first step to learning about the foundation of the issue of climate change. In the Fourth Assessment Report, you will find the work of the climate change “sceptics” discussed, and some of the climate change “sceptics” listed in the co-author lists. You will also find that the overwhelming conclusion from the body of evidence is as outlined in the IPCC synthesis on the state of the science.

The recent pre-paper by Anthony Watts, which was released in a flurry of Internet wreckage in response to the “conversion” of Richard Muller of the BEST project, is merely an update of work Watts released before, which was duly noted by the American science agencies, and taken note of in later data analysis. The current Watts paper is possibly not going to be published because of flaws already discovered :-

http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=1561

whose “conclusion is not supported by the analysis in the paper itself”.

Because Americans appear to believe in free speech above truth telling, we can expect more hate speech and false claims to come from the climate change “sceptic” echo chamber, unfortunately, before it becomes clear that Anthony Watts latest contribution is interesting, but not a “gamechanger”.

Regards,

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From: FH

Jo,

You have hit the nail on the head. Very few read the IPCC science reports, maybe the exec summary, but not the detail. And therein lies the problem, a few hot head deniers pick one little point and build a huge conspiracy theory out of it.

Sad, because whether we like it or not we ARE all in this mess together, climate does not recognise national boundaries, wealth, status or anything else, we will all suffer.

…

James Delingpole Kludges Forth

I sometimes wonder whether James Delingpole writes just to wind people up, or whether he really believes what he is saying. For sure his “opinion pieces” if one may call validly them that, are full of shock ! And awe ! And blame ! And scandalous notions ! But if one strips away the outrage, is there anything really of substance there ? I suppose, on balance, that he puts way too much effort into his anti-science outpourings, so I guess he is serious about his stance, even if he’s way too crazed in his emotive language. Here he is falling once again for the Anthony Watts’ school of thought. Sensation gets the punters in, (at the last count over 2,800 comments), so I assume that his affronted manner is deliberate. I’m sorry, it’s really tiring to read, but I think it’s instructive – about the state of climate change “scepticism” – or rather in this case “outright denial” – today. As a climate change denier, James Delingpole imitates his leaders in archetypal fashion. He focuses on a small proportion of all the reams and reams of global warming data, and ignores the bigger picture. Typical. He name calls and blames without any solid foundational evidence. And he gets to entirely the wrong conclusion without realising he’s gone badly wrong. So, here’s a lesson for James Delingpole about global warming :- 1. The continential/contiguous states of the USA are not the whole world. The temperature record of the continental/contiguous states of the United States of America (CONUS) in no way equates to overall global warming. There are other places in the world. You cannot extrapolate from the USA to the globe. 2. The surface station global warming data is not the only temperature data in the world. There are records of ocean warming, for example, and measurements of temperature derived from satellite observations. Everything needs to have context to be seen in true relief. 3. Surface temperatures are not the most consistent measurement of global warming. You have to go up a couple of kilometres to avoid surface wind effects, and localised heating from buildings and other infrastructure, before you can safely say you have overall consistency in your temperature readings. Surface station data needs treatment, or adjustment, or homogenisation. [ Or as David Appell in his Quark Soup puts it, "Then there are the inconvenient facts that : (1) USA48 is 1.6% of the Earth's surface area, and : (2) the trend of the USA48 lower troposphere, as measured by satellites as calculated by UAH, is 0.23 ± 0.08 °C from 1979 to present (95% confidence limit, no correction for autocorrelation). Satellite measurements almost completely avoid the urban heat island problem." ] James Delingpole claims, without any foundation whatsoever, “the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – the US government body in charge of America’s temperature record, has systematically exaggerated the extent of late 20th century global warming. In fact, it has doubled it.” No, James, that’s simply just not true. NOAA have not “systematically exaggerated” global warming temperatures. If you care to take a look at the actual research for once, you will find that the methods used to draw up analysis figures are rigorous, tested and verified. And peer reviewed. And actually published in a journal. Unlike Anthony Watts’ paper that you are bleating about :- ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2/monthly/ ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2/monthly/williams-menne-thorne-2012.pdf ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2/monthly/vose-etal2003.pdf ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2/monthly/menne-williams2009.pdf http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2008BAMS2613.1 ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2/monthly/menne-etal2010.pdf http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/ ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/v3/techreports/Technical%20Report%20NCDC%20No12-01-Distribution.pdf By contrast to NOAA’s integrity, let’s look a moment at what Anthony Watts has done, according to Tamino :- http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/08/01/much-ado-about-nothing/ “What Watts has shown is that he can get a lower warming trend for the continental USA than others get. All you have to do is systematically eliminate the data you don’t like, while ignoring things like station moves, instrument changes, and recording data at different times of day. Don’t you dare correct for known biases (unless of course doing so would make the estimate of global warming smaller)! And if the satellite data should be in better agreement with others than with yourself, don’t breathe a word about that.” Ah. Cherrypicking. Where have we seen climate change deniers do that before ? Yet more from James Delingpole, “But I think more likely it is a case of confirmation bias. The Warmists who comprise the climate scientist establishment spend so much time communicating with other warmists and so little time paying attention to the views of dissenting scientists such as Henrik Svensmark – or Fred Singer or Richard Lindzen or indeed Anthony Watts – that it simply hasn’t occurred to them that their temperature records need adjusting downwards not upwards.” Actually, James, you’re wrong again. In fact the output of Henrik Svensmark, Richard Lindzen, Anthony Watts, Roger Pielke Sr, John Christy and a number of other climate change “sceptics” have indeed been paid attention to by the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. For example, Svensmark in Chapter 2 of Working Group 1 of the Fourth Assessment Report, and Lindzen in Chapters 8 and 9 :- http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch2s2-references.html (Search “Svensmark”) http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch3s3-references.html (Search “Christy”, “Pielke”) http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch8s8-references.html (Search “Lindzen”) http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9s9-references.html (Search “Lindzen”) In fact, some of these scientists have been contributing authors or even editors of the IPCC reports. Surprised ? You shouldn’t be, James. This is an academic spat you’ve waded into, with no intellectual equipment to help you comprehend what is going on. So, Anthony Watts’ new paper is not yet peer-reviewed, and not published (and does not even have a fixed, agreed list of authors), and some have already started to pick it apart. Apparently, he has ignored certain crucial information about surface station temperature measurements :- http://rabett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/bunny-bait.html “Thus we now have three reasons, why the technical problems may cause a difference in the trends of the raw data: 1. Time of observation bias stronger in rural stations. 2. More problems due to the UHI [Urban Heat Island effect] in the bad stations. 3. Selection bias (bad/good stations at the end of the period may have been better/worse before). Sounds like the first two problems can be solved by homogenization. And the third problem is only a problem for this study, but not for the global temperature trend. Time for the Team Watts to start analyzing their data a bit more.” Does the Anthony Watts data actually back up the claim made in the press release ? “The new improved assessment, for the years 1979 to 2008, yields a trend of +0.155C per decade from the high quality sites, a +0.248 C per decade trend for poorly sited locations, and a trend of +0.309 C per decade after NOAA adjusts the data. ” Well, it seems not. http://variable-variability.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/blog-review-of-watts-et-al-2012.html “In his press release, Anthony Watts does not explicitly state that these trends are for raw data. The manuscript does state this important “detail”…” He lifts a table from Figure 17 of the Anthony Watts paper – and, correct me if I’m wrong, but the more “trustworthy” results are almost exactly that same as those from NOAA ! dana1981 and Kevin C on Skeptical Science, go so far as to say “Ultimately the paper concludes “that reported 1979-2008 U.S. temperature trends are spuriously doubled.” However, this conclusion is not supported by the analysis in the paper itself.” ! :- http://www.skepticalscience.com/watts_new_paper_critique.html To those who watch the development of climate change science closely, Anthony Watts’ revelations about surface station data problems are not exactly new :- http://www.livescience.com/22019-weather-records-climate-change-skeptics.html “In a previous survey, Watts found numerous problems with the placement of the monitoring stations, and a U.S. Government Accountability Report, published a year ago, found 42 percent of stations did not meet at least one standard regarding their location, such as being too close to extensive paved surfaces or obstructions such as buildings or trees. However, a study published in 2010 by NCDC researchers in response to these concerns, found no evidence that the temperature trend was inflated as a result, and other work has come to similar to conclusions, Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told LiveScience in an email. This is of course not the answer that Watts et al want to hear, and so they keep talking about it as if this work doesn’t exist,” Schmidt wrote. The controversy extends to a statistical process, called homogenization, which climate scientists use to correct for bias in the data, which Watts’ analysis says further inflates the warming trend. However, the homogenization methods used by NCDC have been heavily reviewed and ranked among the best internationally, according to Peterson. “There is no network in the world that does not have this problem, so scientists all over the world are working on this,” [NCDC Dr Thomas C.] Peterson said.” And people appear to be used to unpicking and rebutting his claims. As @caerbannog666 tweeted, “How many lines of code does it take to prove Anthony Watts wrong? 65, if it’s python: http://skepticalscience.com/watts_new_paper_critique.html … (scroll down a bit for the code)” Other self-styled climate change “sceptics”, such as Steve McIntyre and Roger Pielke Sr appear to be sliding away and distancing themselves from the Anthony Watts “pre-paper” – so why is James Delingpole so excited about it ? :- http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2012/07/30/why-wattss-new-paper-is-doomed-to-fail-review/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/post/more-evidence-attention-grabbing-climate-studies-prematurely-rushed-and-potentially-flawed/2012/07/31/gJQAYJkCNX_blog.html http://www.webcitation.org/69ZTmCiE9 http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2012/07/29/comments-on-the-game-changer-new-paper-an-area-and-distance-weighted-analysis-of-the-impacts-of-station-exposure-on-the-u-s-historical-climatology-network-temperatures-and-temperature-trends-by-w/ http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2012/07/31/summary-of-two-game-changing-papers-watts-et-al-2012-and-mcnider-et-al-2012/ http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2012/08/01/my-involvement-with-watts-et-al-2012-and-mcnider-et-al-2012-papers/ Meanwhile, here’s real global warming data :- And here’s what the mainstream climate change scientists made of Anthony Watts’ previous contributions :- ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2/monthly/menne-etal2010.pdf “Given the now extensive documentation by surfacestations.org [Watts, 2009] that the exposure characteristics of many USHCN stations are far from ideal, it is reasonable to question the role that poor exposure may have played in biasing CONUS temperature trends. However, our analysis and the earlier study by Peterson [2006] illustrate the need for data analysis in establishing the role of station exposure characteristics on temperature trends no matter how compelling the circumstantial evidence of bias may be. In other words, photos and site surveys do not preclude the need for data analysis, and concerns over exposure must be evaluated in light of other changes in observation practice such as new instrumentation. Indeed, our analysis does provide evidence of bias in poor exposure sites relative to good exposure sites; however, given the evidence provided by surfacestations.org that poor exposure sites are predominantly MMTS sites, this bias is consistent with previously documented changes associated with the widespread conversion to MMTS-type sensors in the USHCN. Moreover, the bias in unadjusted maximum temperature data from poor exposure sites relative to good exposure sites is, on average, negative while the bias in minimum temperatures is positive (though smaller in magnitude than the negative bias in maximum temperatures). The adjustments for instrument changes and station moves provided in version 2 of the USHCN monthly temperature data largely account for the impact of the MMTS transition, although an overall residual negative bias remains in the adjusted maximum temperature series. Still, the USHCN adjusted data averaged over the CONUS are well aligned with the averages derived from the USCRN for the past five years. The reason why station exposure does not play an obvious role in temperature trends probably warrants further investigation. It is possible that, in general, once a changeover to bad exposure has occurred, the magnitude of background trend parallels that at well exposed sites albeit with an offset. Such a phenomenon has been observed at urban stations whereby once a site has become fully urbanized, its trend is similar to those at surrounding rural sites [e.g., Boehm, 1998; Easterling et al., 2005]. This is not to say that exposure is irrelevant in all contexts or that adherence to siting standards is unimportant. Apart from potentially altering the degree to which a station’s mean value is representative of a region, poor siting in the USHCN may have altered the nature of the impact of the MMTS transition from what it would have been had good siting been maintained at all stations. Moreover, there may be more subtle artifacts associated with siting characteristics such as alterations to the seasonal cycle. Classification of USHCN exposure characteristics as well as observations from the very well sited USCRN stations should prove valuable in such studies. Nevertheless, we find no evidence that the CONUS average temperature trends are inflated due to poor station siting. Acknowledgments. The authors wish to thank Anthony Watts and the many volunteers at surfacestations.org for their considerable efforts in documenting the current site characteristics of USHCN stations.”

Bosworth: “We are not going soft on coal”

At the annual Stop Climate Chaos coalition chin-wag on Friday 20th July 2012, I joined a table discussion led by Tony Bosworth of the environmental group Friends of the Earth. He was laying out plans for a campaign focus on the risks and limitations of developing shale gas production in the United Kingdom.

During open questions, I put it to him that a focus on shale gas was liable to lay Friends of the Earth open to accusations of taking the pressure off high carbon fuels such as coal. He said that he had already encountered that accusation, but emphasised that the shale gas licencing rounds are frontier – policy is actively being decided and is still open to resolution on issues of contention. Placing emphasis on critiquing this fossil fuel resource and its exploitation is therefore timely and highly appropriate. But he wanted to be clear that “we are not going soft on coal”. I suggested that some experts are downplaying the risks of shale gas development because of the limitations of the resource – because shale gas could only contribute a few percent of national fuel provision, some think is is unwise to concentrate so much campaign effort on resisting its development. Bosworth countered this by saying that in the near future, the British Geological Survey are expected to revise their estimates of shale gas resource upwards by a very significant amount. He quoted one source as claiming that the UK could have around 55 years of shale gas resource within its borders. I showed some scepticism about this, posing the question “But can it be mined at any significant rate ?” It is a very common public relations trick to mention the total estimated size of a fossil fuel resource without also giving an estimate of how fast it can be extracted – leading to entirely mistaken conclusions about how useful a field, well or strata can be. Tony Bosworth said that shale gas reserve estimates keep changing all the time. The estimate for shale gas reserves in Poland have just been revised downwards, and the Marcellus Shale in the United States of America has also been re-assessed negatively. Bosworth said that although campaigners who are fighting shale gas development had found it useful to communicate the local environmental damage caused by shale gas extraction – such as ozone pollution, traffic noise, water pollution and extraction, landscape clearance – the best argument against shale gas production was the climate change emissions one. He said academics are still being recruited to fight on both sides of the question of whether the lifecycle emissions of shale gas are higher than for coal, but that it was becoming clear that so-called “fugitive emissions” – where gas unintentionally escapes from well works and pipeline networks – is the key global warming risk from shale gas. Opinion around the table was that the local environmental factors associated with shale gas extraction may be the way to draw the most attention from people – as these would be experienced personally. The problem with centring on this argument is that the main route of communication about these problems, the film Gasland, has been counter-spun by an industry-backed film “Truthland”. The Royal Society recently pronounced shale gas extraction acceptable as long as appropriate consideration was paid to following regulatory control, but even cautious development of unconventional fossil fuels does not answer the climate change implications. There is also the extreme irony that those who oppose wind farm development on the basis of “industrialisation of the landscape” can also be the same group of people who are in favour of the development of shale gas extraction – arguably doing more, and more permanently, to destroy the scenery by deforestation, water resource sequestration and toxification of soils, air and water. Tony Bosworth told the group about the Friends of the Earth campaign to encourage Local Authorities to declare themselves “Frack-Free Zones” (in a similar way to the “Fair Trade Towns” campaign that was previously so successful). He said that FoE would be asking supporters to demand that their local governments had a “No Fracking” policy in their Local Plans. It was suggested in the discussion group that with the current economic slowdown and austerity measures, that Local Authorities may not have the capacity to do this. Tony Bosworth suggested that in this case, it might be worth addressing the issue to church parish councils, who can be very powerful in local matters. It was pointed out that frequently, parish councils have been busy declaring themselves “Wind Free Zones”. It was considered that it would be ineffective to attempt to fight shale gas production on a site-by-site direct action basis as the amount of land in the UK that has already and will soon be licenced for shale gas exploration made this impossible. Besides which, people often had very low awareness of the potential problems of shale gas extraction and the disruption and pollution it could bring to their areas – so local support for direct action could be poor. One interesting suggestion was to create a map of the United Kingdom showing the watersheds where people get their tap supplies from superimposed on where the proposed shale gas exploration areas are likely to be – to allow people to understand that even if they live far away from shale gas production, their drinking water supplies could be impacted. In summary, there are several key public relations fronts on which the nascent shale gas “industry” are fighting. They have been trying to seed doubt on low estimates of actual shale gas production potential – they have been hyping the potentially massive “gamechanging” resource assessments, without clear evidence of how accessible these resources are. They have also been pouring scorn on the evidence of how much damage shale gas could do to local environments. And they have also been promoting academic research that could be seen to make their case that shale gas is less climate-damaging than other energy resources. Shale gas, and the issue of the risks of hydraulic fracturing for unconventional fossil fuels, is likely to remain a hot ecological topic. Putting effort into resisting its expansion is highly appropriate in the British context, where the industry is fledgeling, and those who are accusing Friends of the Earth and others of acting as “useful idiots” for the ambitions of the coal industry just haven’t taken a look at the wider implications. If shale gas is permitted dirty development rights, then that would open the gateway for even more polluting unconventional fossil fuel extraction, such as oil shale and underground coal gasification, and that really would be a major win for the coal industry. Friends of the Earth Briefing : Shale gas : energy solution or fracking hell ?

Just like they said it would be – how extreme weather is proving climate change theory

Nature has been sending a strong, chaotic message to many people in the last few months – drought, floods, storms, and very unusual temperatures and weather events. Public communicators of science have been explaining the underlying phenomena – the ENSO cycle in the Pacific Ocean has been flipping winds and sea surface temperatures from a condition known as La Nina, towards the El Nino configuration; plus, in the northern hemisphere, wind flow high above our heads has been erratic.

Scientists have been careful not to claim every extreme weather event as proof of climate change theory. After all, any one violent storm or unprecedented high could be just that – freak – never to be repeated. Climatologists instead talk of “loading the climate dice”, a way to explain that extreme weather is more likely in a warming world. Reticence and restraint are in evidence, however, now is a prime moment to assert, without triumphalism, that all this crazy weather does indeed offer confirmation of climate change theory – everything is happening just the way the atmospheric scientists said it would. Arctic amplification There is no doubt that surface of the Earth is warming up, and the Arctic region of the globe is warming faster than anywhere else. This is to be expected in a world with added Greenhouse Effect from rising carbon dioxide levels in the air. The climatologists projected that this would happen, due to localised additional heating resulting from the side effects of melting ice, snow and permafrost in the northern pole. Antarctica, on the other hand, would not show the same kind of strong “albedo” feedback response as it was still too cold and ice-and-snow bound and surrounded by isolating ocean and wind currents. Up there, where the air is clear Scientists predicted that because of Arctic amplification, the profile of the planet’s atmosphere would change under global warming conditions. And so it has. The tropopause – the place where the lower, thicker atmosphere – the troposhere – meets the upper, thinner stratosphere, has shifted, and the temperature change profile or “inversion” at this height has also been modified. While the air close to the Earth’s surface has become warmer, the air in the stratosphere has become colder. All just as the scientists predicted would happen. Jet stream weaker and loopier Close to the surface of the planet, wind tracks and the passage of storms, pressure systems and clouds are turbulent and pretty chaotic. But above this zone, winds flow freely. The winds stream because the atmosphere drags whilst the Earth turns. Because of the general patterns of billowing air below them, jet streams are usually centred at particular places – the polar jets at around 30 degrees angle from the poles, the subtropical jets at around 30 degrees from the Equator. Atmospheric scientists have been monitoring these winds for change, as the models indicated that the northern polar jet, in particular, would shift its position northwards, because of the other climate changes, and weaken. As it weakened, they worked out that the normal wavy kinks in the jet stream would become big loops, and maybe even lock into certain shapes for longer than usual, a situation known as a blocking event. Wobbly weather Because jet streams have an impact on the movement of weather systems further down, the scientists projected that the more meandering jet stream would carry weather systems out of their usual tracks, and also create bubbles of unusual temperature. Normally cold places would see heatwaves, normally hot places would have cold snaps, and everywhere would experience unseasonal and more extreme weather. And this is exactly what we have been seeing. The number of freak weather events is mounting, along with insurance company manager blood pressure readings. The flooding and drought that would be expected with the periodic Pacific ENSO system flip from La Nina to El Nino have been highly damaging, and when the final accounting is done, probably more damaging than previously. The food on the table Climate change scientists have long predicted altered patterns and increased variability of rainfall with global warming. There are real concerns that farmers can no longer predict when, or for how long, it will rain, and this is affecting major food growing regions. The major global rice, wheat and maize corn harvests are at risk, and recent years of failings have dented confidence and ballooned prices. Strange weather is impacting on fruit and vegetable growing, as seasons are becoming unclear and even swapping their normal order. The weather has gone wrong, and this is exactly what the scientists have been warning us about for several decades in official reports. How much easier would we have accepted changing realities if we had understood the language of the early research papers from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change !

George Monbiot : Peak Agitation

My electronic mail inbox and Twitter “social media” timeline are full of people sparking and foaming about George Monbiot’s latest kow-tow to American academia. Apparently, he has discarded the evidence of many, many researchers, energy engineers and market players and poured luke-warm, regurgitated scorn on the evidence and inevitability of “Peak Oil”.

The level of agitation contradicting his stance has reached a new peak – in fact, I think I might claim this as “Peak Agitation”.

Here is just one example from Paul Mobbs, author of “Energy Beyond Oil”, and a multi-talented, multi-sectoral educator and researcher.

I initially read it in my inbox and nearly fell of my chair gobsmacked. When I had recovered from being astonished, and asked Mobbsey if I could quote him, perhaps anonymously, he wrote back :-

“No, you can quite clearly and boldly attach my name and email address to it ! And perhaps ask George for a response ?”

Sadly, George Monbiot appears to have jammed his thumbs in his ears as regards my commentary, so he is very unlikely to read this or become aware of the strength of opposition to his new positioning. But anyway – here’s for what’s it’s worth (and when it comes from Paul Mobbs, it’s worth a great deal) :-

Re: Peak oil – we were wrong. When the facts change we must change.

Hi all,

I’ve sat patiently through the various emails between you all — mainly to
take soundings of where you’re all at on this matter. In addition, over the
last few days I’ve separately received four dozen or so emails all asking
to “take on” Monbiot. I wasn’t going to reply because I’ve so many more
pressing matters to take care of, but given the weight of demands I can’t
avoid it.

I don’t see any point in “taking on” Monbiot; the points he raises, and the
debate that he has initiated, are so off beam compared to the basis of the
issues involved that it there’s no point proceeding along that line of
thought. You can’t answer a question if the question itself is not
understood!!

Let’s get one thing straight — present economic difficulties are not simply
to do with “oil”, but with the more general issue of “limits to growth”.
That’s a complex interaction of resource production, thermodynamics,
technology, and relating all of these together, economic theory. Reducing
this just to an issue of oil or carbon will fail to answer why the trends
we see emerging today are taking place. Instead we have to look towards a
process which sees energy, resources, technology and human economics as a
single system.

The problem with this whole debate is that those involved — Monbiot
included — only have the vaguest understanding of how resource depletion
interacts with the human economy. And in a similar way, the wider
environment movement has been wholly compromised by its failure to engage
with the debate over ecological limits as part of their promotion of
alternative lifestyles. Unless you are prepared to adapt to the reality of
what the “limits” issues portends for the human economy, you’re not going
to make any progress on this matter.

Monbiot’s greatest mistake is to try and associate peak oil and climate
change. They are wholly different issues. In fact, over the last few years,
one of the greatest mistakes by the environment movement generally (and
Monbiot is an exemplar of this) has been to reduce all issues to one
metric/indicator — carbon. This “carbonism” has distorted the nature of
the debate over human development/progress, and in the process the
“business as usual” fossil-fuelled supertanker has been allowed to thunder
on regardless because solving carbon emissions is a fundamentally different
type of problem to solving the issue of resource/energy depletion.

Carbon emissions are a secondary effect of economic activity. It is
incidental to the economic process, even when measures such as carbon
markets are applied. Provided we’re not worried about the cost, we can use
technological measures to abate emissions — and government/industry have
used this as a filibuster to market a technological agenda in response and
thus ignore the basic incompatibility of economic growth with the
ecological limits of the Earth’s biosphere. As far as I am concerned, many
in mainstream environmentalism have been complicit in that process; and
have failed to provide the example and leadership necessary to initiate a
debate on the true alternatives to yet more intense/complex
industrialisation and globalisation.

In contrast, physical energy supply is different because it’s a prerequisite
of economic growth — you can’t have economic activity without a
qualitatively sufficient energy supply (yes, the “quality” of the energy is
just as important as the physical scale of supply). About half of all
growth is the value of new energy supply added to the economy, and another
fifth is the result of energy efficiency — the traditional measures of
capital and labour respectively make up a tenth and fifth of growth. As yet
mainstream economic theory refuses to internalise the issue of energy
quality, and the effect of falling energy/resource returns, even though this
is demonstrably one of the failing aspects of our current economic model
(debt is the other, and that’s an even more complex matter to explore if
we’re looking at inter-generational effects).

The fact that all commodity prices have been rising along with growth for
the past decade — a phenomena directly related to the human system hitting
the “limits to growth” — is one of the major factors driving current
economic difficulties. Arguably we’ve been hitting the “limits” since the
late 70s. The difficulty in explaining that on a political stage is that
we’re talking about processes which operate over decades and centuries, not
over campaign cycles or political terms of office. As a result, due to the
impatience of the modern political/media agenda, the political debate over
limits has suffered because commentators always take too short-term a
viewpoint. Monbiot’s recent conversion on nuclear and peak oil is such an
example, and is at the heart of the report Monbiot cites in justification of
his views — a report, not coincidentally, written by a long-term opponent
of peak oil theory, working for lobby groups who promote business-as-usual
solutions to ecological issues.

Likewise, because the neo-classical economists who advise governments and
corporations don’t believe in the concept of “limits”, the measures they’ve
adopted to try and solve the problem (e.g. quantitative easing) are not
helping the problem, but merely forestall the inevitable collapse. For
example, we can’t borrow money today to spur a recovery if there will be
insufficient growth in the future to pay for that debt. Basically, whilst you
may theoretically borrow money from your grandchildren, you can’t borrow
the energy that future economic growth requires to generate that money if
it doesn’t exist to be used at that future date. Perhaps more perversely, a
large proportion of the economic actors who have expressed support for
limits are not advocating ecological solutions to the problem, they’re
cashing-in by trying to advise people how to make money out of economic
catastrophe.

Carbon emissions and resource depletion are a function of economic growth.
There is an absolute correlation between growth and carbon emissions. I
don’t just mean that emissions and the rate of depletion fall during
recessions — and thus “recessions are good for the environment”. If you
look at the rate of growth in emissions over the last 50 years, the change
in energy prices has a correlation to changes in carbon emissions as the
price of fuel influences economic activity. That’s why carbon emissions
broke with their historic trend, halving their previous growth rate, after
the oil crisis of the 1970s; and why they then rebounded as energy prices
fell during the 90s.

The idea that we can “decarbonise” the economy and continue just as before
is fundamentally flawed. I know some of you will scream and howl at this
idea, but if you look at the research on the interaction between energy and
economic productivity there is no other conclusion. Due to their high
energy density and relative ease of use, all fossil fuels have an economic
advantage over all the alternatives. That said, as conventional oil and gas
deplete, and “unconventional” sources with far lower energy returns are
brought into the market, that differential is decreasing — but we won’t
reach general parity with renewables for another decade or two.

Note also this has nothing to do with subsidies, or industrial power –
it’s a basic physical fact that the energy density of renewables is lower
than the historic value of fossil fuels. On a level playing field, renewable
energy costs more and has a lower return on investment than fossil fuels.

We do have the technology to develop a predominantly renewable human
economy, but the economic basis of such a system will be wholly different to
that we live within today. Unless you are prepared to reform the economic
process alongside changing the resource base of society, we’ll never
see any realistic change because all such “ecological” viewpoints are
inconsistent with the values at the heart of modern capitalism (that’s not
a political point either, it’s just a fact based upon how these systems
must operate). E.g., when the Mail/Telegraph trumpet that more wind power
will cost more and lower growth/competitiveness, they’re right — but the
issue here is not the facts about wind, it’s that the theory/expectation of
continued growth, which they are measuring the performance of wind against,
is itself no longer supported by the physical fundamentals of the human
economy.

The present problem is not simply “peak oil”. Even if volumetric production
remained constant, due to the falling level of energy return on investment
of all fossil fuels the effects of rising prices and falling systemic
efficiency will still disrupt the economic cycle (albeit at a slower rate
than when it is tied to a simultaneous volumetric reduction). Allied to the
problems with the supply of many industrial minerals, especially the
minerals which are key to the latest energy and industrial process/energy
technologies (e.g. rare earths, indium, gallium, etc.), what we have is a
recipe for a general systems failure in the operation of the human system.
And again, that’s not related to climate change, or simple lack of energy,
but because of the systemic complexity of modern human society, and what
happens to any complex system when it is perturbed by external factors.

The worst thing which can happen right now — even if it were possible,
which is entirely doubtful — would be a “return to growth”. The idea of
“green growth”, within the norms of neo-classical economics, is even more
fallacious due to the differing thermodynamic factors driving that system.
Instead what we have to concentrate upon is changing the political economy
of the human system to internalise the issue of limits. At present, apart
from a few scientists and green economists on the sidelines, no one is
seriously putting that point of view — not even the Green Party. And as I
perceive it from talking to people about this for the last 12 years, that’s
for a very simple reason… it’s not what people, especially the political
establishment, want to hear.

Rio+20 was an absolute failure. In fact what annoyed me the most was that
the media kept talking about the “second” Rio conference, when in fact it
was the third UNCED conference in the Stockholm conference in ’72. If you
contrast 1972 with 2012, the results of this years deliberations were worse
than the policies sketched out in the 70s ! Seriously, the environment
movement is being trounced, and as I see it that’s because they have lost
the intellectual and theoretical rigour that it possessed in the 70s and
80s. Rather than having a clear alternative vision, what they promote is
“the same but different”. Once environmentalism became a media campaign
about differing consumption options, rather than an absolute framework for
evaluating the effects of consumption, it lost its ability to dictate the
agenda — because its the ability to look forward and observe/anticipate
trends unfolding, however unwelcome those truths might be, which gives
groups political power.

Politicians have lost control of the economy because their materialist
ambitions no longer fit to the extant reality of the economic process. This
outcome was foreseen over 40 years ago by economists like Georgescu-Roegen
and Boulding but ignored, even amongst many liberals and especially the
left, for political reasons. These same principles, based around the issue
of limits, were also the founding reality of the modern environment
movement — but over the last 20 years the movement has lost this basic
grounding in physics and economics as it has moved towards an
aspirationally materialist agenda (green consumerism/sustainable
consumption, etc.).

Unless you’re prepared to talk about limits to growth, and the fact that
the economic theories developed over two centuries of unconstrained
expansion now have no relevance to a system constrained by physical limits,
then you will not solve this problem. Just as with Monbiot’s “change” on
the issue of nuclear, his failure is a matter of basic theory and
methodological frameworks, not of facts or data. Unfortunately people keep
throwing data at each other without considering that the framework within
which those facts are considered and understood has changed, and that
consequently their conclusions may not be correct; and until the movement
accepts that the rules governing the system have changed we’ll not make
progress in advancing viable solutions.

To conclude then, Monbiot’s mistake isn’t about peak oil, or climate
change, it’s a failure to internalise the physical realities of the
“limits” now driving the human system. Unless you consider the interaction
of energy, economics and pollution, any abstractions you draw about each of
those factors individually will fail to tell you how the system as a whole
is functioning. Those limits might dictate the end of “growth economics”,
but they DO NOT dictate the end of “human development”. There are many ways
we can address our present economic and environmental difficulties, but that
cannot take place unless we accept that changing our material ambitions is
a prerequisite of that process.

Let’s be clear here. The principles which drive the economy today would be
wholly alien to Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and others who first laid down
the rules of the system two centuries ago. Likewise Marxism and similarly
derived ideas have no validity either because they were generated during an
era when there were no constraining limits. There is no “going back” to
previous theories/ideologies on this issue because we face a scenario today
which humans society — with the exception of those ancient societies who
experienced ecological overshoot (Rome, Mayans, Easter Islanders, etc.) –
have never had to face before.

We have to move forward, to evaluate and understand is the role of
ecological limits within the future human economic process and how this
changes our advocacy of “solutions”. That debate should be at the heart of
the environment movement, and the issue of limits should lead all
discussions about all environmental issues — not green/sustainable
consumerism and other measures which seek to reassure and pacify affluent
consumers. That said, especially given the demographic skew within
membership of the environment movement, we have to begin by being honest
with ourselves in accepting the “limits agenda” and what it means for the
make-up of our own lives.

In the final analysis, you cannot be an environmentalist unless you accept
and promote the idea of limits. That was at the heart of the movement from
the early 70s, and if we want to present a viable alternative to disaster
capitalism then that is once again what we must develop and promote as an
alternative.

Peace ‘n love ‘n’ home made hummus,

P.
–

.

“We are not for names, nor men, nor titles of Government,
nor are we for this party nor against the other but we are
for justice and mercy and truth and peace and true freedom,
that these may be exalted in our nation, and that goodness,
righteousness, meekness, temperance, peace and unity with
God, and with one another, that these things may abound.”
(Edward Burrough, 1659 – from ‘Quaker Faith and Practice’)

Paul’s book, “Energy Beyond Oil”, is out now!
For details see http://www.fraw.org.uk/mei/ebo/

Read my ‘essay’ weblog, “Ecolonomics”, at:
http://www.fraw.org.uk/mei/ecolonomics/

Paul Mobbs, Mobbs’ Environmental Investigations
email – mobbsey@gn.apc.org
website – http://www.fraw.org.uk/mei/index.shtml

Will the Green Deal Deliver ?

Here is a transcription of part of the notes I took this morning in a seminar in the UK House of Commons. The meeting was convened by PRASEG, the Parliamentary Renewable and Sustainable Energy Group.

This transcription is based on an unverified long-hand paper-based recording of the words spoken. Items in quotation marks are fairly accurate verbatim quotations. Items in square brackets are interpolation, and not the exact language the person used to present their thoughts.

[Alan Whitehead MP]
Will the Green Deal deliver ? In the last few days, in 140 character statements [Twitter], the Government have been telling has “all the hurdles have now been overcome.” But “is it really all systems go ?” What effect do we think the Green Deal will have on sustainability ? On carbon reduction goals ? Tracy Vegro from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has been key in setting up the Green Deal.

[Tracy Vegro, DECC, Director, Green Deal]
“It’s been a busy old time for us.” We are in the final stages of passing the framework [of the Green Deal]. Just have the laws now [the legislation that is needed]. Those orders will come into force in October [2012]. There will be some parallel working – not a switch to the Green Deal all at once. I think it will open up a wider market in energy efficiency. We’ve been getting out and about [for the consultation process] – a women’s panel, an industry panel. We did it with an awful lot of help. “We’ve got to get energy efficiency moving in this country.” The CERT [Carbon Emissions Reduction Target - an energy supplier obligation] at the end of this year there will be “not an unlagged loft” [internal roof insulation over the top of ceilings]. There have been some gaps – with solid wall insulation numbers for example. “Whole swathes got nothing under CERT.” We have to to start delivering. I hope the Green Deal will drive it – with many more entrants into the [energy efficiency] market. Our roadshows with small businesses were encouraging. Beyond the framework we are trying to ensure a lot of choice. The Green Deal is going to have accredited goods and services in the whole thing. The [Office of Fair Trading] has been doing research to ensure [quality and competence] – “because at the end of the day it’s the bill payer who’s paying”. There’s a new oversight body. There will be a lot more data [coming back]. You know under the CERT, 300 million energy efficient lightbulbs were distributed [and we don't know where they all went and whether they were all used]. We need to build confidence. Have the Local Authorities get behind the Green Deal assessments [process], and [capitalised on] community aspects. [We hope/aim to] see the market grow much faster. So far we can see that a lot of cavities got filled but [that's only the beginning]. [We hope/aim that the Green Deal will be] driving demand. People will see their neighbours do this [and want to do it for themselves.] There’s the £200 million incentive scheme – that’s money in the bank. [Need to drive] confidence [not having people saying it's just the] new FiT [Feed-in Tariff scheme - intended to drive solar photovoltaic uptake, but poorly managed]. The Green Deal is going to be conditional on minimum energy efficiency standards being undertaken [by those taking up the offer]. [This will determine] the order in which you do these [energy efficiency] technologies – “we need to get energy efficiency into peoples’ heads” – [where they may have been deterred previously by] mostly upfront capital. We have a new helpline. We need to make it a “no-brainer solution”. How are we going to ensure training ? People will be coming out of loft and cavity wall insulation into a new sector. These are asset skills, and a lot of money is committed. to funding [re]training and assessors. There are implications on people in existing roles – but “this is a finite market”. We’re confident in this business model – for the first time there will be competition – not just the Big 6 [energy companies : British Gas, Electricite de France (EdF), E.On, npower, Scottish Power (Business), Scottish & Southern (SSE) - companies that collectively supply 99% of the UK's heating and lighting] delivering. It is slightly easier to explain [than other schemes]. We do need an awareness campaign – people in the industry don’t want this – they want to do their own communications to customers – to ensure demand is right. The [big] energy companies are to be mandated a lot. If the scheme is ECO (Energy Company Obligation) only – it would only guarantee a steady state [no growth in uptake of energy efficiency products]. The Impact Assessment has only been done for pure Green Deal.

[John Sinfield, Managing Director, Knauf Insulation]
CERT helped, but there is still a huge amount to deliver – need to approach the market in a different way. The deep retrofit of our housing stock – the only way to deal with Fuel Poverty and other problems. My early reaction to the Green Deal was hope, excitement, and confusion, followed by more confusion. It could deliver what no scheme has done before to 14 million homes [untouched so far]. We have to deal with the fabric [of the building] first – then deal with the occupant. The occupant is sometimes the barrier to energy efficiency. Could we use private money to leverage 20 times the amount put forward [for the Green Deal and Green Investment Bank] ? We could stop shifting 40 billion euro to the Middle East (and elsewhere) for our energy. Can we create ethical investment for pension funds ? Then I got to depression and confusion. In the draft Impact Asssessment, there would be a 93% drop in loft insulation installations and 73% drop in cavity wall insulations from Day One of the Green Deal. What’s going to happen to existing companies ? [I obviously have an interest here] I’ve invested in four factories. But it’s not only me, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) wrote to Government on the trajectory resulting not meeting our carbon cap. It’s not just insulation manufacturers and installers. I’m trying to understand where the policy’s going. Why are DECC against cheaper measures ? The Minister says that the “loft job” is nearly done. But DECC themselves say that 9 million lofts have inadequte insulation. Frankly, I doubt I’ll see that by the the end of the year. There are 7.5 million cavities to fill. The consultation on the Green Deal came back with good changes – but little to address the cliff edge – the significant drop in lofts and cavities [at the changeover to the Green Deal]. I’m veering between hope and despair. I hope the Government, deep down, really want this. They need to do more to drive this programme. I wouldn’t invest money if I didn’t think [they were really behind this.] What about other options ? Stamp Duty [on sale of properties], a carbon tax, a Local Authority mandate ? If the Government can drive the value of the Green Deal up – it makes it more attractive [to engage in the sector]. My hope is balanced off by a sense of despair – the mechanism will not be ready in time. The so-called “soft launch” of the Green Deal [is inadequate] – really has to be up and running by 1st January [2013]. The Green Deal loans have to have affordable interest rates. The Green Deal finance company is 9 months away from offering comprehensive finance – and how are they going to receive the money from the Green Investment Bank ? If the interest rate of the Green Deal loans are 7.5% (6% – 8%) then only 7% of the population will take them up. Where’s the market ? What’s going to drive the market ? Where we are challenged – the Green Deal doesn’t feel ready. The environment to work within – sorted. But the mechanism – for example the Green Deal finance – not ready. Need to bridge the gap. Do we need to extend the CERT / CES(P) (Community Energy Saving Programme) ? A bridge until a competitive rate of interest is available. If the Government is going to drive the deep retrofit, it needs to drive the take up. Putting in place the framework is not going to sell this scheme. Some [companies] here are ready to market this scheme – but all parts need to be there. If the Green Deal is not ready – when ?

Alan Whitehead MP
“So, an amber light there…”

This Is My Thesis

I have recently been awarded a postgraduate Master of Science (MSc) degree, and several of my contacts suggested that I might consider studying for the academic qualification of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD). To be awarded a doctorate, I would need to make a valuable contribution to the body of knowledge and achievement in my chosen field. I do not think that paper-based research on its own would count as taking collective human understanding a step further, and so I must consider what forms of theorising, construction, engineering, creation, experimentation, configuration, data collection, analysis and argumentation I would need to make accomplishments in, in order to gain the good review of my peers, and the acceptance of my skill. It is not enough to love Wisdom, she has to be sought out, and introduced to your friends.

My first instinct is collaborative – how can I find a place where I can nurture my learning and strategy, in co-operation with others – where I can find a welcome, and make statements and discoveries that gain me a status, get me recognition ? I want to shine, in order to become useful, to serve my fellow woman and man. I don’t want to be competitive, winning out over others, but be part of a vanguard, a flight formation, spurring each other on to make progress together, striving as a group. I’m not ambitious, except for truth, beauty and good technology. I can share acclaim and I want to bring everybody with me. We can, standing elbow to elbow, vanquish destructive forces.

Yet, this proud, altruistic aim, to be part of the pack of pioneers, to offer something helpful, is marred by reality. Whilst I want to be constructive, others adopt divisiveness, in order to isolate outliers, and clamber over others to win the crown. I must not only reserve my right to speak against the herd, I must also wield it. I am relegated to the Zone of Insignificance, the people whose voices do not count because they articulate criticism. I do not want to join those who act as if they have the only viable formulation of reality – with their patronising stance – offering to host the public conversation, claiming they are at the centre of the debate, whilst at the same time undermining others with clever cynicism and sneering dismissal of those who will not join them.

I cannot be bought, and neither can I be seduced into a false alliance. I will not support meta-narrative, nor other contrivances. But this leaves me conflicted. One of the most significant problems with public discourse on science and technology in relation to resource limits and environmental damage is the persistence of the “anti” lobby – those people who feel bound to continue to be negative about things that have not yet been resolved. Many have been anti-nuclear, anti-fossil fuels, anti-coal, anti-energy companies, anti-Government policy, anti-hijacking of the United Nations process on climate change by economists. These voices, these positions, are important, but do not own the platform, and so they continue to rage. It is impossible to make progress without having something to rally around, to have a positive flag to muster under, but people with genuine influence continue to mis-step in their proposals and policies.

I want to bridge the gaps between the social groupings – I need to – in order to offer a way forward that can put some of the anti-thesis to bed, and galvanise efforts towards real, workable, cost-effective solutions. A genuine peoples movement for progress can accrete consensus, enormous non-hierarchical power, and can even draw in its detractors if it can be seen to be working. I am going to have to step out in faith, and at much risk – for I am going to attempt to join together the direction of the energy sector with the concerns of the environmentalists. I am not going to use a marketing strategy, nor sell a public relations pill to financiers and investment funds. I am not going to paint a green picture that has no details or exists only in a dream world. I am fairly certain that everybody is going to hate me, at least for a while, but in the end, I hope they will see that I am right, as I feel I am not generally mistaken.

Since I expect to be slighted and put down, and for people to work to marginalise me, I do not expect to be adopted by an academic institution or an energy or engineering company in the pursuit of my goals. In fact, I would resist such appropriation, for I am intellectually liberated. So, my work will not be accorded a standard accolade by a respectable institution or corporate body, and in fact, since that is the case, I can choose to work in any way that I see fit. Since, according to many scientists, we do not have much time to gain global assent for workable climate change solutions, as we must have a peak in greenhouse gas emissions in the near term, I cannot measure out five or seven years to complete a body of work which would then be reviewed. Instead, I shall publish in stages, and take peer review, including negative criticism, if any should be offered, as I go.

Although I wish to be practical rather than purely written, I shall not have much access to the funds, laboratories or engineering workshops where I could do the work myself. Instead, I shall have to ask questions of those who are already doing the work I am following, and try to ascertain their progress, and make my recommendations for their advancement. I seek to investigate live uses of the technology and systems I write about – as I expect them to be put to use before I have completed documenting them. My work will therefore be literature, but I want my intelligence to be fully accessible, so I will not use academic forms of composition. I shall write in what I hope is an easy, open way, and provide a mechanism for reply. I am going to offer my work by subscription, and I hope that those who register to receive my report in sections, will participate in making my work better.

The human race needs to be for something, not merely against, in all the myriad multitude of complaints that rise up like evaporating water, or steam from boiling pots, all and every day. However, a false unity, or a crooked one, cannot help us. We need to use what we’ve already got, and only imagine small gains in technological prowess. We should stop believing in public relations and advertising. We should stop being lulled into passivity by those glossing over our concerns, or those outspending logic. We should not give up in the face of overwhelming ineptitude and embedded vested interests. We cannot overhaul everything overnight, and somebody’s got to pay for change, and so they had better be the right changes. We need to be pragmatic, and not overreach, nor over-commit ourselves where technology could fail.

Climate Change : No Guarantee

Image Credit : Eliasson Family

Walking out to buy a few household essentials from the corner shop, I ran into somebody I’ve known since my childhood, practically, returning from the drycleaners with two trailing kids in tow. “Happy Spring !” I said, and smiled, and pointed out the lovely blossom on the urban street tree. Eldest child grumbled about hayfever. Parent mentioned April Showers.

“It’s been the wettest drought, ever !”, proclaimed eldest child, who I noticed was wearing a Team GB tracksuit and therefore probably up to speed with current events. “It has been rather damp”, I admitted, “and yet the drought’s not over yet. If you look at the Met Office records, you can see we’re still not up to normal levels of rainfall. And it was like this last year.” “And the year before that”, added parent, “although I expect for this month it might show we’ve had quite a lot more than normal.” (Select “Rainfall”) Read the rest of this entry »

Engagement Can Be Tiring

Image Credit : Skeptical Science	This is a record of a short email exchange. I feel it encapsulates some of the difficulties of communicating climate change science when there are a large number of people in the conversation who have a destructive agenda. They may have different reasons for attacking the process of science learning by the general population, but they unite on strategies that belittle people and spread doubt.
At the same time, there are people with accurate knowledge who take different positions about how much emphasis they should place on the risks posed by climate change. We need to get our act together and form a united front, surely ? Read the rest of this entry »

Met Office Data Uncertainties

Image Credit : Met Office	And the people cried “Let my data go !” And lo, it came to pass, that the time came for the UK’s Met Office’s Hadley Centre’s new HadCRUT4 near surface temperature analysis data set to be born online. And across the land, the people wielded Excel spreadsheets and the like in the quest for visual engagement with the hot new numbers.
And it was seen that the year 2010 was hotter than 1998, and a number of other years in between were similarly warmer than 1998, and many climate change sceptics who had been so withering in their blanket denial of global warming quaked in their doubtful boots. Interestingly, trends could be seen in the global averages, and so a linear trendline was plotted :- Read the rest of this entry »

What’s Up ? Answer : Everything #3

	Having found data that supports the argument that there is an acceleration in sea level rise, ocean heat uptake and atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, I have now turned my attention to global warming – the warming of the close-to-ground (“near surface”) air and upper ocean water temperatures.
I’m still waiting to see the data for the new HadCRUT4 adjustments, so in the meantime, I have taken a look at the work of NASA GISS, and the international team who have agreed historical global warming influences – known as “radiative forcings”. Here’s the overall picture :- Read the rest of this entry »

What’s Up ? Answer : Everything #2

Image Credit : Santer et al. (2011)

The El Nino Southern Oscillation is a flip-flop pattern, throwing wind and ocean currents periodically into reverse along the line of the Equator in the Pacific Ocean. When it’s in the La Nina configuration, cold water from the ocean depths is cycled up to the surface, causing a massive plume of cooler-than-average temperatures. When the winds start looping in the other direction, a spear of warmer-than-average water spreads out across the ocean.

To even the most casual observer of global ocean and land temperatures, this see-saw is clearly a major influence on the data measurements – temperatures go up and down in a very regular fashion at decadal scale. The size of the temperature swing has caused many to doubt or ignore the underlying global warming signal – but the instrumental record of temperatures is now long enough to reveal that despite the ENSO swings, temperatures as a whole are creeping upward. Read the rest of this entry »

Bishop Hill : Wrong Conclusions

What’s Up ? Answer : Everything

Image Credit : CSIRO State of the Climate 2012

I get up in the morning and everything looks fine. The Earth is still spinning on its axis, still wobbling around it’s axis, and still encircling, or rather enellipsoiding, the Sun. Birds tweet, the grass rises, and there’s the usual random selection of weather. But, almost invisible, there’s a climate emergency, an ongoing and grinding crisis happening right here, right now, demanding my attention.

Despite what some would have me believe, climate change is not a low-level, marginal effect. Although it seems at the moment that we have plenty of time to adapt to changing circumstances, the problems are mounting up. You see, climate change is not happening in a steady, measured manner. There are some climate indicators that are not only rising, but accelerating. The pace of change is racing ahead. Climate change is already having a significant effect, and as change speeds up, these effects will become dangerous. Some people are not aware of these dangers in the Earth’s climate system, but it doesn’t make them any less real or any less serious. It’s time that people in general had better access to the facts. Read the rest of this entry »