Totally new data set – totally new temperature proxy – totally the same Hockey Stick.

Michael Mann, Phil Jones and all the experts are more than vindicated.

Steve McIntyre, Marc Morano, and your “tribes”, will you stand aside, please ?

You’re just getting in the way of the true course of discovery.

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/199607/Climate-change-Failures-of-global-warming-probes-let-down-public-

“CLIMATE CHANGE: FAILURES OF GLOBAL WARMING PROBES ‘LET DOWN PUBLIC’ : Wednesday September 15, 2010 : By John Ingham, Environment Editor : PUBLIC inquiries into the Climategate scandal have failed to restore confidence in the science behind global warming, a report claimed yesterday. It branded as flawed the three inquiries into the leaking of e-mails by scientists at East Anglia university’s world-leading Climate Research Unit. And it called for independent inquiries into the ethos of climate research and the science itself…”

We’re post-modern 21st Century humans. It’s OK to question everything. There’s every likelihood that we control our own destinies by our thoughts; that tobacco doesn’t cause lung and pancreatic cancer; that sexual intercourse between a male and a female is not the cause of human reproduction; that Jesus was Catholic, and not Jewish; that so-called waterborne diseases aren’t caused by microscopic organisms; that infection by the HIV virus doesn’t lead to AIDS; that Barack Hussein Obama is a non-American Muslim; that the CIA planned 9/11 (no, really, they did !); that mobile phone masts are killing bees (well, it can’t be the pesticides, can it ?); the moon landings were staged; that wind power will never amount to much, and that chocolate doesn’t give you spots.

If you want to believe that DDT controls malaria, then go right ahead. We live in a tolerant society, and your knowledge is just as good as mine, really :-

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/09/indor_goklnay_ddt_and_malaria.php

And of course, it’s entirely reasonable to assert that the Earth is the centre of the Universe, for medieval clerics so believed :-

http://www.catholicintl.com/galileowaswrong/index.html

The theory of evolution, of course, is a hoax :-

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1312210/Ireland-science-minsiter-Conor-Lenihan-pulls-evolution-hoax-book-launch.html

“…The author, who has offered 10,000 euros to anyone who can scientifically prove evolution exists…”

(as found on http://johnquiggin.com/).

If we can question all of this, surely it’s not wrong to question not only the working practices of the world’s largest cooperative of Earth scientists, but the outcomes of their research as well ?

I mean, it’s alright to have people studying Climate Change, and keep them busy and out of our sight; but it they come up with answers, well, then we might have to review the whole process and issue lots of caveats and ho-hums.

To resort to anti-science jibes is so painfully weak a strategy on the part of the Climate Change sceptics it doesn’t have any plasma or platelets in its internal juices.

Trying to smear and slur Climate Change scientists hasn’t worked – so now the approach appears to be to deny the very science.

Fortunately, most people are all too clever for that piece of shenanigans, but I suspect that a few may slough off :-

http://www.grist.org/article/2010-09-09-the-rights-climate-denialism-is-part-of-something-much-larger/

“The right’s climate denialism is part of something much larger : 09 September 2010 : David Roberts : …It does seem to me that the [ political ] right’s climate denialism hasn’t been properly linked to the larger phenomenon of epistemic closure on the right [ "libertarian", yet "conservative" wing ]. When Jim Manzi, everyone’s favorite sensible conservative, criticized fellow conservative Mark Levin for peddling intellectually shoddy skeptic arguments in his bestselling book Liberty and Tyranny, Levin went nuts, joined by a half-dozen other NRO writers. How could they not? The very same skeptic talking points in Levin’s book appear in thousands of blogs and comment sections across the interwebs. If they are intellectually bankrupt, a whole lot of people are going to look stupid. Regardless, to restrict discussion to climate science — how many scientists say what, who signed what statement, how many peer-reviewed papers say what — misses the forest for the trees. Climate denialism is part of something much broader and scarier on the right. The core idea is most clearly expressed by Rush Limbaugh: “We really live, folks, in two worlds. There are two worlds. We live in two universes. One universe is a lie. One universe is an entire lie. Everything run, dominated, and controlled by the [ political ] left [ "liberal", yet "socialist" wing ] here and around the world is a lie. The other universe is where we are, and that’s where reality reigns supreme and we deal with it. And seldom do these two universes ever overlap…” …”

How ignorant will we all appear in ten years’ time ?

Dr Judith Curry will probably be wasting a lot of her valuable time in future, as she has started her own “balanced” web log :-

http://judithcurry.com/

Several commentors appear quite relieved that she has decided to stop (pa)trolling their websites and has gone off to draw all the sceptic hormonally-charged untrained non-scientists beta males to hers.

Phew ! Now perhaps we can get on with the Science and the Data in peace !

http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2010/09/curry-blogs.html

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/09/about_time.php

It’s a thankless task, engaging in dialogue with the voracious, capacious sceptics. Hopefully she gets paid for her trouble.

Excruciatingly, she’s in store for recurring complaints from Climate Change Scientists.

The dude from The Way Things Break has written some up-beat positive completely non-offensive non-sarcastic grilling for her :-

http://thingsbreak.wordpress.com/2010/09/12/welcome-to-the-blogosphere-dr-curry/

“Welcome to the blogosphere, Dr. Curry! : Posted on September 12, 2010″

Comment #1

“Thank you Dr. Curry! I know that some might try to hector you with petty complaints, like “she uncritically repeats nonsense from Wegman, Pat Michaels, CEI, and books she doesn’t seem to have actually read.” But I can’t thank you enough for really opening up the “debate” about climate change. If it wasn’t for your boosterism, I would never have seen Steve McIntyre’s published 2kyr NH temp reconstruction, Anthony Watts’ plot of “reliable” surface station temp trends and how they compare to the total average, Tom Fuller’s quotes from polar bear and ice sheet dynamics leading researchers, and so on. I know that some might say that you’re legitimizing anti-science voices for no good reason but they simply haven’t seen the incredible published results you have. Perhaps those (epic results) can be your first postings? I’d also be interested to hear about your latest Antarctic sea ice paper in light of previous work, but I understand that the relevant conversation is happening at WMC’s blog. Cheers!”

Comment #2

“Judith Curry writes: “I refuse to label as “anti-science” anyone that is questioning scientific evidence.” As well you should. Such a label would imply that they only attack science, rather than build it up with their own positive contributions. But as I mentioned, thanks to your tireless promotion of people like Steve McIntyre, I became aware of his own, self-proclaimed “expert” published reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere temperatures for the past 2000 years. Far be it for anyone to accuse him of tribalism and bias! He is truly a productive addition to the field of paleoclimatology. Similarly, through your attempts to legitimize Anthony Watts’s blog, I have learned that we’re actually experiencing cooling, that we’re warming because of the sun, that we’re warming because of CFCs, that we’re warming because of cosmic rays, that we’re cooling, that we’re warming because of ENSO, that we’re warming because of PDO, that we’re cooling, and that we have no idea whether or not we’re warming or cooling because the surface temperature record is worthless. On that last point, I also found Anthony’s published temperature record from sites that have his expert approval to be quite revealing, especially as compared to the so-called “real” surface instrumental record. Through Anthony’s very informative and not at all mendacious blog, I also found some of Tom Fuller’s journalism. Tom has made it quite clear that he contacts experts in the field in order to accurately convey the state of science to his audience, so I found his recent interviews with polar bear biologists and glaciologists to be the very opposite of dishonest and misleading. To label such upright, hard-working members of the blogscience community “anti-science” just doesn’t do them justice, does it? When might we look forward to your discussions of their productive, published work? That certainly would still the wagging tongues who bizarrely think that their actions to date constitute little more than an attempt to delegitimize the field of climate science. Cheers!”

Comment #3 : “Judith Curry writes: “I think the auditors and citizen scientists in the blogosphere have made a remarkable contribution in stimulating public interest in climate science and actually raising and addressing issues that the public is interested in and cares about.” Quite so! They certainly have done much to prolong the public debate about things that have long since been agreed upon in the field itself. I’m sure that I’m not alone in marveling at your useful role in adding a veneer of respectability to their efforts. On a completely unrelated note, I believe that you have referenced Conway and Oreskes’s latest book, Merchants of Doubt, and have attempted to draw a sharp distinction between the actors and activities laid out in that book and the “not anti-science” crowd that you are tirelessly promoting. I recently read the book as well, and I have to say that I’m in agreement with you! One of the key tactics in MoD was not a direct denial of the main aspects of a problem (like tobacco-cancer or acid rain), but rather the continual stressing of uncertainties and disagreement at the expense of what was not really in question. This had the effect of manufacturing doubt in the public discourse that simply didn’t exist in the relevant scientific fields. Thankfully, this is nothing at all like the dynamic that you’ve been fostering. How crazy would that be, right? If someone on the one hand could recognize this tactic for what it is when applied to other fields and groups, but not himself see that he was doing exactly the same thing… But listen to me prattling on about hypotheticals that would never actually happen in the real world, completely off topic in a thread devoted to your creation of a climate blog that promotes positive contributors to science like McIntyre, Watts, and Fuller. I can’t for the life me imagine how I got on such a tangent…”

What wit ! What brightness !

The not-widely-awaited “investigation” into the official inquiries into “Climategate” from the Nigel Lawson “social experiment”, the “Global Warming Policy Foundation”, looks to me rather like a botched piece of cosmetic surgery on first scan.

I’d recommend avoiding it, as it seems to me like a total waste of valuable time, based, as I believe it is, on an obvious absence of leg-shaped support.

I wouldn’t have bothered spending five vacant minutes commenting on it unless I knew my various sceptic readers were standing by, eagerly salivating over tearing me to shreds about any statements I might make.

Lunch, boys ?

If you are a proper Climate Change researcher, unless you’ve got the time and funds and staffing to launch an investigation into how the Climategate Media circus was ever allowed to happen, I’d suggest you avoid entering into any kind of discussion about this latest seemingly vapid wraith of veneer.

http://www.thegwpf.org/climategate/1532-damning-new-investigation-into-climategate-inquiries.html

I am sure you will detect what looks like irascible sniping from Andrew Montford (as known as “Bishop Hll”) in various newspaper reports that follow on from this outpouring of apparently obsessive introspection into a non-scandal that’s deader than a century-old donkey’s fetid tail.

But nothing will trounce the ultimate truth – Climategate will never breathe another modecule of serious Media oxygen, even if it lives on in rabid obscurity in Internet zombie-blog-land.

The question is, for you, have they “gone too far this time” ?

Here’s some e-mail traffic :-

from: Bob Ward
sent: 31 August 2010
subject: Express Denial

If you want to have a good chortle, have a look at this ‘Debate’ just launched on the website of the ‘The Daily Express’:

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/196681/DEBATE-Is-global-warming-just-a-con-

Apart from its one-sided title (‘Debate: Is ‘global warming’ just a con?’), I particularly enjoyed the illiterate reference to “LOSS OF CREDIBITY”. Well, after all, ‘The Daily Express’ should know about loss of credibility!

Bob Ward

Policy and Communications Director
Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment
London School of Economics and Political Science
Houghton Street
London WC2A 2AE
http://www.lse.ac.uk/grantham

from: James Pavitt
date: 31 August 2010

Have you seen the headline and front page??? This is the worst case of climate misrepresentation I’ve ever seen. I have made a complaint to the Press Complaints Committee, and urge others to do so too.

Here is my submission:

Please explain how you believe the Code of Practice has been breached

I believe that the item has breached the code of practice in terms of accuracy.

The article concerns a report by the Inter-Academy Council (IAC) into the workings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The report was critical of the IPCC, especially regarding a mistake in data about Himalayan glaciers. The Express has exaggerated the report’s findings in a way which misleads readers to assume that the IPCC has been generally untruthful. The IPCC admitted the Himalayan Glacier mistake in January this year [ source: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/presentations/himalaya-statement-20january2010.pdf ]

Here are some examples of how the Express has misled the reader:

The headline is misleading. “Climate Lies are Exposed”. My understanding of a “lie” is purposeful misrepresentation. There is no evidence provided in the article that the IPCC (the subject of the article) has purposefully misrepresented anything.

Express: “THE world’s leading climate change body has been accused of losing credibility after a damning report into its research practices.”

This is untrue. The IPCC do not carry out research, they collate and re-publish previous research. The report was critical but not “damning”.

Express: “A high-level inquiry into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found there was “little evidence” for its claims about global warming.”

This is untrue and misleading. The Inter-Academy Council (IAC) report did not examine the science behind global warming. The report is complimentary about much of the IPCC’s work, praising it for creating a “remarkable international conversation on climate research both among scientists and policymakers”.

Express: “The review by the InterAcademy Council (IAC) was launched after the IPCC’s hugely embarrassing 2007 benchmark climate change report, which contained exaggerated and false claims that Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035. The panel was forced to admit its key claim in support of global warming was lifted from a 1999 magazine article. The report was based on an interview with a little-known Indian scientist who has since said his views were “speculation” and not backed by research.”

This is misleading. The “key claim” referred to is not a key claim at all. The Himalayan error was one paragraph in a 938-page Working Group contribution to the underlying assessment. [ source: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/presentations/himalaya-statement-20january2010.pdf ]

The article goes on to quote Peter Taylor, an “Independent climate scientist”. Peter Taylor is not a climate scientist; he is the author of a book called “Chill” refuting global warming.

Express: “Dr Pachauri has been accused of a conflict of interest, which he denies, after it emerged that he has business interests attracting millions of pounds in funding. One, the Energy Research Institute, is set to receive up to £10million in grants from taxpayers over the next five years. Speaking after the review was released yesterday, Dr Pachauri said: “We have the highest confidence in the science behind our assessments.”

This is misleading. The implication is that Dr Pachauri was accused of a conflict of interests in the IAC report. He was accused of a conflict of interests in an article published in the Express [ source: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/156456/UN-climate-change-chief-under-fire ], not in the IAC report.

I believe that the article has been purposefully constructed using untruths and misleading statements and as such it is highly inaccurate.

subject: re Express denial and IPCC?
from: George Marshall
date: 1 September 2010

Dear all

For your interest, this is what Marc Morano makes of the IPCC reports. Morano, former Inhofe staffer and smug self promoter is astute generator of media angles and headlines…if you can stand it, it is worth being on his mailing list for a summary of current denial campaigns

You will also notice clearly here how many of Morano’s links are to UK media. Morano is one of the main gateways through which the US denial machine is fuelled by distortions in the UK media which unfortunately has a reputation in the US for authoritative journalism

George

“From: morano@climatedepot.com : Sent: 31 August 2010 16:30 : To: ‘Marc Morano-ClimateDepot.com’ : Subject: UN IPCC IS ‘FOOL’S GOLD’ — ‘LIES EXPOSED’ – PACHAURI to STEP DOWN? — ‘DUMP IPCC PROCESS’ — ‘Rearrange the chairs’ : For latest go to www.ClimateDepot.com [Morano Statement: “This inquiry into the UN IPCC process by the InterAcademy Council (IAC) is everything the previous Climategate ‘whitewashes’ should have been. The IAC has once again revealed that the UN IPCC is merely a partisan error-riddled pressure group campaigning for their cause. Quite simply, the IPCC is the best science that politics and activists could manufacture. Skeptics worldwide should rally around the discredited UN IPCC chief Pachauri. The longer Pachauri stays, the more damage he does to the pitiful IPCC process. Viva Pachauri!”] : Paper: ‘CLIMATE CHANGE LIES ARE EXPOSED’: UN IPCC ‘accused of losing credibility after a damning report into its research practices’ : FOOLS GOLD: ‘IPCC reports are supposed to be the gold standard…This Discredited IPCC Process Must Be Purged’ — ‘We cannot make sane decisions on global warming if the ‘experts’ present us with evidence that is biased…I thought that IPCC reports were reliable, fair and transparent. No longer’ : Climatologist: ‘Dump the IPCC Process, It Cannot Be Fixed’: ‘UN IPCC was created to use the scientific community to build a case for regulating CO2 emissions. Period’ : UK Telegraph: IPCC report raises fresh questions over Dr Rajendra Pachauri’s leadership — ‘The criticism of the management process is quite severe. It is an indirect call for Dr Pachauri to step down.’ : UK Telegraph: ‘Flawed science’: ‘UN IPCC was rightly warned not to stray into what might be seen as scaremongering and policy advocacy’ — Report should ‘trigger the resignation of Pachauri but he insists he wants to stay on to implement any necessary changes in procedure. Yet his – and IPCC’s – credibility have been tarnished by this affair’ : UK Register: Report recommends UN climate panel shakeup — ‘Rearrange the chairs please’ — ‘IPCC’s work included headline-catching statements which couldn’t be justified’ : UK Daily Mail: UN climate experts ‘overstated dangers’: Keep your noses out of politics, scientists told…”

from: John Nissen
sent: 03 September 2010

I agree, James. We should all complain. The article is a slur on IPCC as well as blatantly misleading [1]. The complaints procedure is here [2].

A rebuke of the Daily Express by the Press Complaints Committee would be welcome news, when we seem to be letting the deniers get the upper hand.

Cheers,

John

[1] http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/196642

[2] http://www.pcc.org.uk/complaints/makingacomplaint.html

from: James Pavitt
sent: 2010/9/3

Thank you for this John.

I should point out that the Press Complaints Commission has now written to me to confirm receipt of my complaint and to suggest that they may be inviting input by the IPCC in their investigations.

They have asked my not to forward their communications with me to others.

Their response confirms that any complaint is taken seriously, so I urge everyone who is able to examine the article, make up your own mind whether it is truthful and if you feel it is not, write your own complaint to the commission (details kindly provided by John in the email below).

I may not have covered the issues in my complaint either well or thoroughly – I am sure than many of you are far better qualified than I am to make a fair and thorough complaint. If you feel so moved – please do.

Kind regards,

James Pavitt

from: P Mac
date: 3 September 2010

Good work. Denialism and attacks on IPCC are financed by fossil-fuel industry.

Regards.

[ TED Talks : Flashback to 2005 ! Of course, one of the main problems with his "triage" suggestion is that Climate Change affects all the other problems in his prioritisation list, so even if they get solved once, they'll need solving again... ]

Reports of Bjorn Lomborg’s conversion to the truth about Global Warming may be perilously exaggerated :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/sep/02/climate-change-bjorn-lomborg

“ I note with interest that Bjørn Lomborg has changed his mind on global warming. I also note that he has a book to sell.”

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/08/lomborg-100-billion-needed.php

Beside a book, he is also touting a film :-

http://www.indiewire.com/film/cool_it/#

http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/climate-change-sceptics-uturn-20100831-14fng.html

Has he really changed his tune ? Nope. :-

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/09/03/interview_bjorn_lomborg

“…In an exclusive interview with FP’s Elizabeth Dickinson, Lomborg says his views haven’t budged an inch. Rather, he argues that the cap-and-trade approach of Kyoto Protocol fame has clearly failed, and it’s time to try a more creative approach — one that doesn’t involve wasting billions of dollars. “At some point,” he says, “we have to ask ourselves, do we just want to keep up the circus of promising stuff but not actually doing it?”…”

http://climateprogress.org/2010/09/01/the-lomborg-deception/

“Lomborg is not a responsible climate commentator.”

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/the_lomborg_deception.php

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/sep/02/climate-change-bjorn-lomborg

Climate Change denial was invented in the United States of America, but has since been imported into the United Kingdom and Australia, tripping up intellects and intelligences everywhere it shows up.

It makes a person look really uneducated when they recite the mantras of Climate Change scepticism and denial. Trouble is, it’s so pervasive and seemingly anodyne when you first encounter it, that many people just fall for it hook, line and sinker.

What’s so wrong about saying “The climate has always changed” for example ? Yes, of course it has, but not like it’s changing now.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?printable=true

“COVERT OPERATIONS : The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama. : by Jane Mayer : AUGUST 30, 2010 : On May 17th, a black-tie audience at the Metropolitan Opera House applauded as a tall, jovial-looking billionaire took the stage. It was the seventieth annual spring gala of American Ballet Theatre, and David H. Koch was being celebrated for his generosity as a member of the board of trustees; he had recently donated $2.5 million toward the company’s upcoming season, and had given many millions before that. Koch received an award while flanked by two of the gala’s co-chairs, Blaine Trump, in a peach-colored gown, and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, in emerald green. Kennedy’s mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, had been a patron of the ballet and, coincidentally, the previous owner of a Fifth Avenue apartment that Koch had bought, in 1995, and then sold, eleven years later, for thirty-two million dollars, having found it too small. The gala marked the social ascent of Koch, who, at the age of seventy, has become one of the city’s most prominent philanthropists. In 2008, he donated a hundred million dollars to modernize Lincoln Center’s New York State Theatre building, which now bears his name. He has given twenty million to the American Museum of Natural History, whose dinosaur wing is named for him. This spring, after noticing the decrepit state of the fountains outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Koch pledged at least ten million dollars for their renovation. He is a trustee of the museum, perhaps the most coveted social prize in the city, and serves on the board of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where, after he donated more than forty million dollars, an endowed chair and a research center were named for him. One dignitary was conspicuously absent from the gala: the event’s third honorary co-chair, Michelle Obama. Her office said that a scheduling conflict had prevented her from attending. Yet had the First Lady shared the stage with Koch it might have created an awkward tableau. In Washington, Koch is best known as part of a family that has repeatedly funded stealth attacks on the federal government, and on the Obama Administration in particular.
With his brother Charles, who is seventy-four, David Koch owns virtually all of Koch Industries, a conglomerate, headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, whose annual revenues are estimated to be a hundred billion dollars. The company has grown spectacularly since their father, Fred, died, in 1967, and the brothers took charge. The Kochs operate oil refineries in Alaska, Texas, and Minnesota, and control some four thousand miles of pipeline. Koch Industries owns Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Stainmaster carpet, and Lycra, among other products. Forbes ranks it as the second-largest private company in the country, after Cargill, and its consistent profitability has made David and Charles Koch—who, years ago, bought out two other brothers—among the richest men in America. Their combined fortune of thirty-five billion dollars is exceeded only by those of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.
The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests….”

I don’t expect much from it in terms of any kind of sensible, relevant reply, but here’s my two eurocents’ worth, as loaded at :-

https://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/forms/

The BBC are undergoing a review on balance in Science reporting. They need to get Climate Change right, and that could start by one of their programme editors actually trying to understand what programmes like this do to an unprepared or semi-prepared audience.

The Newsnight audience have been left with the view that “maybe Climate Change is not so bad after all”, which is the worst take-home message they could be given.

See further down the post for e-mail traffic related to the Newsnight broadcast of 23rd August 2010.

Dear BBC,

I wish to point out to you that certain comments made by Andrew Montford on BBC Newsnight on 23rd August 2010 were inaccurate. I viewed the part of the programme where he was interviewd on iPlayer, but this now appears to have been cut from the online show for that date :-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/newsnight/

One comment in particular will, I believe, require an apology from BBC Newsnight. The segment of the show in which Andrew Montford appeared closed with a question directed to him specifically from the presenter Kirsty Wark, on the subject of Climate Change evidence, to which Andrew Montford replied “we just don’t know”.

This is inaccurate. We have report after report on the clear incontrovertible evidence of Climate Change and its significant impact on the Earth’s biosphere.

The question is not “does Climate Change have any impact or does it have some impact ?” The Science has moved beyond that kind of question, as Kirsty Wark should know and should have reflected in her presentation of the show.

The question is not even, “is Climate Change going to affect us all somewhat or is it going to affect a lot of people quite badly (while the rest of us will be OK) ?”

The real question at the frontline of Science about Climate Change should be “is Climate Change bad or is it really serious ?”, the answer to which is “it’s probably going to get really quite bad indeed”.

I would also like to complain about Kirsty Wark’s introduction to the segment on Climate Change when she smirked at the camera and said “but is is true ?”

Is Kirsty Wark a Climate Change Scientist ? Does she know anything about Climate Change Science ? Can she possibly dare to offer an opinion about it or question what the Scientists have said ?

I think BBC Newsnight was irresponsible in broadcasting this interview without caveats. The last word should have been given to the Science, not the denier Andrew Montford who has no credentials, and now, no credibility whatsoever.

My opinion is that denying the clear, well-documented evidence of significantly damaging changes in the Earth system is as bad as denying the Holocaust, or that HIV infections lead to AIDS, or that smoking gives people cancer.

Climate Change and its damages are not somewhere off in the future, as Andrew Montford asserts. Climate Change is real and it’s happening now, and the overwhelming majority of the world’s Science academics and institutions have produced reports and research articles detailing this fact.

Why Newsnight thought they should invite somebody with views so completely opposed to the facts on to the show to pronounce on Climate Change is beyond my understanding.

There is no debate in Climate Change. There is only one position, and that position is that it’s serious and getting worse, although at the moment we just don’t know whether that’s going to turn out as “horribly bad” or “incredibly dangerous”.

Andrew Montford’s view simply does not count and he should not have been invited, not even in the name of so-called “balance”. The “balance” you should have sought would lie between those Scientists who feel that Climate Change is “abrupt and dangerous” and those who feel that it is “catastrophic”.

I demand an apology from BBC Newsnight and from Kirsty Wark for their biased, inaccurate reporting on Climate Change.

jo.
http://www.joabbess.com

Look, it’s not a brilliant, erudite complaint. There’s no room for citations, references and discussion of the actual Science.

Kirsty Wark messed up. It’s time for her to admit that she now seems a lot like the “Bridget Jones” of Science reporting – embarrassed and embarrassing.

You won’t catch me talking to BBC Newsnight, ever. Such mistreatment of the Science deserves being given a very wide berth.

Here follows some e-mail traffic related to the broadcast.

Here’s what Bob Ward, Policy and Communications Director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science had to say about the Newsnight programme :-

“Subject: ‘Newsnight’ losing the plot? : Andrew Montford has pointed out on his blog that he is due to appear on ‘Newsnight’ this evening about the link between the floods in Pakistan and climate change. I had heard rumours that the Newsnight editor now thinks all climate change coverage should include a ‘sceptic’ and this seems to be confirmation. I’ve left the comment below on the ‘Newsnight’ blog. I see that Andrew Montford is bragging on his Bishop Hill blog that he is an interviewee on this evening’s programme about the link between the floods in Pakistan. His only contribution to the climate change debate so far has been a controversial book about palaeoclimatology, so it is not clear what his expertise on climate change and extreme weather is meant to be. Or perhaps he will be representing Lord Lawson’s group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which now regularly provides the ‘balancing’ voice of dissent every time a scientist is interviewed about climate change on ‘Newsnight’. If so, this is presumably evidence of the commitment of ‘Newsnight’ to impartiality rather than accuracy? And can I look forward to further instances of this balance by for instance, including comments from a creationist every time there is a story about evolution?”

George Marshall of the Climate Outreach Information Network responded, “Dear Bob and all, I believe that it is entirely appropriate (and important) to call a news programme directly and complain about their coverage- all calls are logged and recognised (if not heeded) by editorial staff. Here are the numbers for standard complaints, though I find that it is usually much more effective to ask for the programme office and speak to the desk staff (or better still the editor involved with the problem piece) directly rather than being fobbed off with someone in a call centre. I have done this myself many times and enjoy putting them on the spot and I think a good grilling from you, Bob, would teach them a lesson!”

MEDIA COMPLAINTS

Channel Four and ITV News -0207 833 3000 and ask for liaison line (recorded messages checked hourly)

BBC TV and Radio Complaints Line-08700 100 222 (someone staffing the line 24 hours day)

Channel Five Complaints Line – 0845 7050505

“And if you want to be more personal, you can usually ask for any programme news editor or a specific journalist through the switchboard.”

BBC Radio Switchboard 0207 580 4468
ITN Switchboard 0207 833 3000
Channel Five Switchboard 0207 550 5555
BBC TV Switchboard 0208 743 8000

Chris Keene, green politician wrote in reaction, “I suspect that the editors genuinely believe there is scientific controversy, and thanks to the UEA email theft (I won’t dignify it with the term ‘climategate’ since it implies wrongdoing by UEA) they suspect there is a conspiracy by scientists to exaggerate climate change to get more money for research into it”

Christopher Shaw wrote, “Dear all, I have been following the work of Medialens (one of the editors being…David Cromwell) since the inception of that project. The work of Medialens has shown repeatedly that the BBC is the voice of the establishment on certain areas, such as economics, foreign policy, the wonders of Western democracy etc etc. However, I think the BBC has also tried to ensure that its coverage is accurate (I think a separate thing from bias). Thus I really struggle to make sense of why they insist on airing the opinions of contrarians as science, when of course they are simply value statements, grounded in particular attitudes to risk. What issues are deemed by the BBC to be in need of impartiality is very revealing of the BBC’s relationship to power – for example dead British soldiers are invariably described as heroes, with no perceived need to balance this opinion.”

A reply from John Nissen, “Hi Chris, I think you are dignifying the BBC editors! They really should know better. Any questioning around climate scientists would have put them right. The scientists are not exaggerating global warming or its affects. Indeed, in the program they asked whether the UEA business had made scientists more reticent. So the editors must realise that scientists are liable to understate the dangers, not overstate them. The program asked a simple question – about influence of AGW (anthropogenic global warming) on the floods – and managed to give credibility to the “don’t know” answer, thus giving the oxygen of publicity to climate sceptics. The program was a disgrace. But the BBC is not alone. It seems that, as the effects of global warming become more and more apparent, the media will more and more downplay them. Wishful thinking has become editorial policy. However, there is the occasional glimmer of reality breaking through, from none other than the normally sceptic Daily Mail

If there’s one thing about Climate Change nobody could be able to disagree on, it’s that there’s a huge amount of literature on the subject.

I figure it would be impossible for any one person to have a good grounding in the totality of the Science, spanning, as it does, most of humankind’s discoveries about the physical world.

It would be hard too to have an exceptionally well-rooted understanding even of the Synthesis of the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports.

A human mind is surely not capable of remembering all the facts and figures and how everything relates. My personal forgettery is quite active in selecting what to drop after not using it for a while, and I’m sure others experience the same thing.

For example, I’m sure Dr Judith Curry, accomplished as she is in Earth Sciences, does not remember the entire field, and does not have the tools to look everything up quickly. Which is why she gives shorthand vague, answers on web logs which annoy other people so much :-

http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2010/08/curry_jumps_the_shark.php

I reckon, though, people should give her a break for a while to let her compose herself, and get over the shock of the Anthony Watts “tribe” eating her heart out with steak knives after she published a proper piece of Science.

It distresses and appals me in equal measure that completely uneducated people make huge sweeping statements about the IPCC’s work without knowing anything much about the content of the Fourth Assessment Report.

It also troubles and irritates me that the public face of the Science can be so easily subverted by people who use emotive language, false accusations and constantly recycled errors to dismiss the work of the IPCC.

Have you, dear reader, been distracted from reading the IPCC by the Climategate revelations ? If so, you are one amongst thousands, perhaps millions of people, who have been treated to a smokescreen of nonsense and filibustering by the likes of Steve McIntyre.

If you want to research the culture of Climate Change, you do need to address the fact that so many people, who know next-to-nothing about it, are willing to adopt a contrary position to the body and work of the world’s largest, cooperatively-managed Scientific network (the IPCC).

In the annals of the philosophy of the history of Science (or the history of the philosophy of Science), one name stands out as having laid the foundations for dismissal of the whole project of Science – Thomas Kuhn.

His claim that Scientists form part of an enclave, an inwardly-focussed “paradigm” of theory and understanding, with its own internally maintained unassailable truth (whether really really true, or not), is an idea that has given a very useful stick to beat Science with.

Truth about the natural world, sceptics argue, is only valid within the “paradigm” of a particular Science community. Outside those ivory towers of academe, the real world can be a lot different, they claim. And sometimes, they assert, within the academic community, what is accepted as truth undergoes a shift, a radical Kuhnian “paradigm shift”.

Kuhn theorised that “paradigm shifts” would come about because of revolutionary new facts or theories – but his theory is only that – a theory. In the real world of Science, the society of co-labourers shifts in ways both large and small – but never really apocalpytically, catastrophically. Kuhn was wrong, and Climategate proves it – Science can withstand culture shocks without dissolution of the whole Scientific enterprise.

The promoters of the non-scandal known as Climategate hoped to create a “paradigm shift” in Science, by seeding a revolutionary idea in the mind of the general public, that anybody related to the IPCC and the University of East Anglia (UEA) Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in particular, was not to be trusted.

The Climategaters hoped that public opinion about Scientific untrustworthiness would bleed into the structures of authority, causing a “paradigm shift” in the form of a loss of support of the IPCC work, which would then have repercussions within the academic community, causing a shift from the outside to push a shift on the inside.

To a certain extent, they got what they wanted – there have been enquiries, checks, balances, reports written on Science and Scientists, promises and pledges of more “openness and transparency”. But you know what, Science has come out unscathed.

Experts in specialist fields are still experts in specialist fields, and they are still consulted on. The reason ? It is impossible to know everything about the whole of Climate Change Science, and true expertise is something that a pitchfork-armed witch-hunt cannot unsettle.

We are not living in a “post-paradigmatic”, “post normal science” state – Science still goes on, truth is still discovered. The facts are still the facts and the data is still the data and the evidence is still the evidence.

The collective work of the world’s best minds on Climate Change is still our highest achievement as a species. And Governments are still trying to settle on policy to respond to the clear risks and threats from the changing Climate.

The IPCC are gearing up for their Fifth Assessment Report, and I think you’ll find the management of this exercise will have media outreach of the highest order.

The one thing that Climategate has taught us is that press relations are important when launching important information. In the case of Climategate, the information was pseudo- and dis-information, but they handled the media well, with a full spectrum dominance.

Now that Climategate is really quite dead (I date it to Robin McKie’s righteously angry missive in The Observer on 1st August 2010 “A dark ideology is driving those who deny climate change : People who claim that climate science is a conspiracy or the work of charlatans are talking rubbish…Will Hutton is away”), I think it’s time to come right back around to the substantive nature of the work of the IPCC.

After all, quite a few media commentators know nothing about it. You would have thought it would be in their best interest to know what the IPCC work is about, but no, they haven’t read it. They have views about it, gleaned from sceptic websites, but they haven’t actually read the actual text. They may have been given the unholy, unappetising task of reading every last one of Phil Jones’ e-mails, but they haven’t read the Science.

I read most of the IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR) from 2001, and so far, I have read chunks of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) from 2007 that I thought were the most changed from the previous report – the parts where new discoveries and research have added to our overall knowledge and strengthen our confidence in the conclusions.

However, it is time to read the whole thing, and that is what I intend to do here. I might not finish this little project because other things come in the way. I have studies to complete after all – my own primary, original research. But I do intend to read the whole thing, carefully, and make notes here.

I hope you can join me in this study and stop following the nonsense of the Climate Change sceptic-deniers. Together we can re-focus on the Science rather than the rabble outside the University gates with their grim faces and cynical accusations.

Let’s read the IPCC.

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/energy-discussion-group/browse_thread/thread/68f666ff4f69599b/59dfb3351bb432ec?q=abbess&lnk=ol&

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/energy-discussion-group/browse_thread/thread/68f666ff4f69599b/bfec36913d002b91?lnk=gst&q=abbess#bfec36913d002b91

As you can see, there are Climate Change sceptic-deniers everywhere, even in the most knowledgeable and respectable circles.

Countering Climate Change denial from so-called “sceptics” takes a lot of time and energy, and is a bump-in-the-road nuisance/irritation distraction from the main priority for human civilisation, which is how to stop being addicted to Fossil Fuels.

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

date: 17/08/2010
from: jo abbess
to: Claverton Energy Research Forum

Dear Clavertonians,

If all goes according to plan, I am about to start the second year of a part-time Masters Degree in “*********************************************”.

It should come as no surprise to you that I have chosen Energy, specifically, how to manage the Low Carbon Transition, as the focus area for my original research.

I am interested in how policy and technology frameworks (including targets and standard setting) are changing the landscape for what I call the “Energy Revival”.

I am also engaged by the use of money to effect change, whether through pricing of pollution and emissions, or selectively boosting the uptake of specific technologies, through a combination of subsidy, tax breaks, rebates, regulation, monitoring and targeted investment, in infrastructure or otherwise.

Naturally enough, my tutor has told me I need to do a review of the academic literature before I begin asking documentable questions.

And this is where you, potentially, could come in.

If you know anything I should read, or guess I would find useful, please let me know the citation or reference.

Also, I have no ideas what journals and publications I should be reading regularly, so clues about that too would be welcome.

It would also be useful to have pointers to the organisations that you think are doing the best work on questions of energy investment, “green stimulus”, Green New Deal-type work, policy thinktanking and financial research.

I am interested in developing a network of contacts for the “asking the question” phase of data collection. If you think I should definitely seek the views of particular people, please say who they are. (Yes, before anyone asks, I have already started a dialogue with Gregor Czisch).

Any collaboration will be duly noted in my write-up (about one year from now) !

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

17/08/2010
from: Kevin Chisholm

Dear Jo

# Questions you may want to pursue could include:

1: Why was the IPCC mandate structured to assume Global Climate Change was anthropogenic in nature, and not a natural phenomenon, probably supplemented to some degree by anthropogenic activity?

2: Given that Dr. James Hansen says atmospheric CO2 must be decreased to less than 350 PPM and we are now at 390 and rising, is there any reasonable expectation that teh World can constrain its present CO2 emissions and remove the necessary CO2 from the atmosphere, in time to avoid GCC?

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

17/08/2010
from: Dave McGrath

Jo

Just a thought. Climate change management an “how to manage the Low Carbon Transition”

A low carbon economy implies retaining fossil carbons. Suppose we took a carbon displacement strategy rather than carbon management this simple switch in emphasis changes the debate yet achieves every carbon management objective. As energy then must come locally the transfer of economic activity from exporting cash in exchange for fossils to producing it locally means the money remains within the local economy.

I could go on.

Fossils simply cannot continue to meet global energy demand which continues to rise globally

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

17/08/2010
from: Julia Szajdzicka

Hello Jo is your focus international or UK? And also could I ask which university are doing this masters with?

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

17/08/2010
from: jo abbess

Dear Kevin,

Thanks for your comments.

1. The massive and rapid increase in the concentrations of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere owing to mankind’s activities is the single largest factor in projections for future Global temperatures, which is why the IPCC reports focus on the impacts of this Anthropogenic radiative forcing. It is, in effect, almost directly equivalent to a sudden massive pulse of extra Greenhouse Gas in the Atmosphere, completing overriding any normal warming or cooling factors.

2. We have been dealt a very poor hand – it is unlikely that we will be able to significantly reduce the amount of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere over the short term. I don’t see anybody being prepared to starve the world’s economy to pay for Carbon Capture and Storage. The best that we can hope for is a rapid stabilisation of emissions to air and then a phased reduction of emissions over the next few decades. Even so, the current situation means that a further warming of around 1 degree C is locked in, regardless of emissions control.

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

17/08/2010
from: jo abbess

Hi Julia,

I intend to focus quite strongly on electricity (obviously) – and there is a growing international collaboration in this area – so yes, I’m going to have some global reach, hopefully.

My place of study is *********** College, part of the University of ***************.

The MSc course is convened in the Department of *********************************, so an international flavour to my study is highly appropriate.

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

17/08/2010
from: Andrew Smith

Hi Jo,

what software are you using for reference management? CiteULike, Zotero, Mendeley? I can probably export you my library metadata if that would be helpful. Email me off-board, or ring, for info.

Check out the UKERC TPA studies – their reference sections are a
goldmine of useful leads on the literature, and come in a handy grouped form – all of the papers on intermittency, in the intermittency TPA, and so on:
http://www.ukerc.ac.uk/support/tiki-index.php?page=TPA%20Overview

I take it your Masters gives you a Shibboleth login to get most or all
of the papers you might want?

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

17/08/2010
from: jo abbess

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for all the superb offers of information.

Electrically,

jo.

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

17/08/2010
from: Kevin Chisholm

Dear Jo

QUOTE : “1. The massive and rapid increase in the concentrations of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere owing to mankind’s activities is the single largest factor in projections for future Global temperatures, which is why the IPCC reports focus on the impacts of this Anthropogenic radiative forcing. It is, in effect, almost directly equivalent to a sudden massive pulse of extra Greenhouse Gas in the Atmosphere, completing overriding any normal warming or cooling factors.”

# There have been GW and GC incidents in the past, before the influence of Man. These previous incidents seem to be cyclical in mature, and we seem to be at the point in natural cycles where Nature could be the dominant problem. Certainly, Man could be contributing, but with the absence of clear evidence that anthropogenic activity is the dominant factor, it verges on wishful thinking that mere man can out-dominate Mother Nature.

QUOTE : “2. We have been dealt a very poor hand – it is unlikely that we will be able to significantly reduce the amount of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere over the short term. I don’t see anybody being prepared to starve the world’s economy to pay for Carbon Capture and Storage. The best that we can hope for is a rapid stabilisation of emissions to air and then a phased reduction of emissions over the next few decades. Even so, the current situation means that a further warming of around 1 degree C is locked in, regardless of emissions control.”

# Doing what is advocated as being necessary will result in an unprecedented re-direction of resources. With the World Economy being in its present state, and “down” looking more likely than “up”, it is difficult imagining that the Governments and Peoples of the World will actually commit significant resources to do what the Climate Change People want done.

# Climate Change can be good for some parts of the World, and bad for others. Climate Change is bad for the Status Quo. Are the resources of the World better placed by finding ways to adapt to Climate Change, rather than attempting to prevent it?

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

17/08/2010
from: Neil Crumpton

Jo,

Re your point 2 – why do you see CCS as more expensive than most renewables and new-build nuclear – that’s certainly not many people’s view of relative costs and surely its too early to say.

The world will probably have a much better idea of relative and actual costs of the various new energy technologies by around 2015 when hopefully less than three EPRs have been built *, a few CCS demos will have been built and giving their first operational results and many new, fast-developing RES technologies (from aluminium-mirror CSP manufacture, solar PV efficiency, yields of next-gen biomass to deep-water offshore wind turbine designs) will have been demonstrated and more accurate and probably lower mid-term costs can be projected at global scale.

Indeed, if next-gen biomass shows promise (eg algae cultivation in arid zone / desert greenhouses) then quite a few poor countries may have a valuable indigenous and export product. And biomass with CCS may be one of the most cost-effective way to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations – or extract to reach 350 ppm.

Lets get some demos built.. CCS, seawater greenhouses, bio-gasifiers (inc cold-plasma), deep water WTs etc – to compare with shale-gas CCGT, underground coal gasification (both with CCS !) and the new EPRs (inc interim storage, repositories and full costs – think BP – accident insurance).

* extract from : http://shepperdineagainstnuclearenergy.blogspot.com/2010/07/olkiluto-4-years-behindflammanville.html

There are two European Pressurised Reactors (EPR) being built in Europe right now, one in Olkiluoto in Finland and one in Flamanville in France. Designed by French nuclear giant AREVA, the third generation so-called state of the art design is supposedly about to usher in the nuclear ‘renaissance’ across the planet. We emphasise the ‘supposedly’. How are things looking?
The Olkiluoto-3 reactor is four years late (and counting) and a massive 2.7 billion Euros over budget (and counting). It has been the scene of thousands of construction defects and safety violations. The project has rapidly devoured AREVA’s profits. The farce at Olkiluoto made page 3 of Le Monde last week.
It’s now been revealed that Olkiluoto-3’s sister reactor, Flamanville-3, is two years behind schedule. It’s only been under construction for three. The project is also at least 20% over budget.

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

17/08/2010
from: jo abbess

Hi Kevin,

You wrote : “# There have been GW and GC incidents in the past, before the influence of Man. These previous incidents seem to be cyclical in mature, and we seem to be at the point in natural cycles where Nature could be the dominant problem. Certainly, Man could be contributing, but with the absence of clear evidence that anthropogenic activity is the dominant factor, it verges on wishful thinking that mere man can out-dominate Mother Nature.”

Allow me to point you to this :-

http://www.joabbess.com/2010/08/17/the-sum-of-complexity/

You wrote : “# Doing what is advocated as being necessary will result in an unprecedented re-direction of resources. With the World Economy being in its present state, and “down” looking more likely than “up”, it is difficult imagining that the Governments and Peoples of the World will actually commit significant resources to do what the Climate Change People want done.”

Indeed ! We do need to re-direct the world’s economic resources – into environmentally-protective activities. The current World Economy, based as it is on damaging environmental businesses cannot sustain itself, as the damages outstrip the wealth-creation. It is indeed going “down”. I personally find it easy to imagine that the Governments and Peoples of the World are smart enough to make a firm, regulation-based decision to turn the world economy round to green power and low Carbon transportation.

You wrote : “# Climate Change can be good for some parts of the World, and bad for others. Climate Change is bad for the Status Quo. Are the resources of the World better placed by finding ways to adapt to Climate Change, rather than attempting to prevent it?”

Adaptation will never be enough without Mitigation, reduction in emissions :-

http://www.skepticalscience.com/The-Good-The-Bad-and-The-Ugly-Effects-of-Climate-Change.html

http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2010/08/kloor-calls-me-hypocrite.html

Respectfully

jo.

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

17/08/2010
from: jo abbess

Hi Neil,

Carbon Capture and Storage is always going to be expensive – the rule of thumb I use is based on the Laws of Thermodynamics – the more chemical and energy changes in a process, the less and less efficient and therefore more expensive it becomes. Burning stuff to release Carbon Dioxide is energy-positive, but making that CO2 re-combine with other stuff to make it Global-Warming neutral, now, that’s more difficult. As for pumping it back underground, and hoping it stays there, well, that’s a simple energy-process inefficiency. Why dig it up in the first place ? Why not use lovely, free wind and sunlight to make your energy ? Much cheaper in the long run.

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

17/08/2010
from: Chris Cook

Hi Jo

In my view we are currently going through a transition to a decentralised and networked economy.

The current market system is irretrievably broken, and complementary mechanisms are emerging under the radar – based upon direct instantaneous ‘Peer to Peer’ connections – which will in due course see the existing model wither on the vine.

My take is here

http://www.slideshare.net/ChrisJCook/economic-systems-thinking230710

and re energy in particular, here

http://www.slideshare.net/ChrisJCook/energy-pools-scottish-energy-institute-11-11-2009

Best Regards

Chris Cook

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

17/08/2010
from: Jérôme Guillet

CCS doesn’t exist, it makes no industrial sense and would cost massively more than any other technology if it could ever be implemented. CCS is just a way to channel subsidies to the legacy utilities (or to dither until there is no choice but to extend/replace the existing coal-fired plants). After years of touting CCS, there still are zero (as in: none) demonstrators, let alone commercial CCS projects, and things will remain that way for a long time, I expect
EPR – think of it as the Gillette business model: give the razor away for free and make your money on the blades. Areva quoted a very low price to make sure the plant would get built, and gets a 50-year fuel supply contract (their real business). A couple billion in apparent cost overruns in the beginning is not a real problem for them.

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

17/08/2010
from: Neil Crumpton

Jo,

‘Expensive’ compared to what – unabated fossil generation, offshore wind, new-build nuclear ? And how much more expensive 1% , 20 % 50 % or less expensive 1%, 10% 50 %. The word is simplistic and emotive – it needs qualifying in relative quantity, time, place, circumstance and non-costable outcomes.

You seem very sure of yourself but I can assure you that wind and solar generated energy, and I have been a strong wind and solar advocate for many years, is not free.

Also biomass is using sunlight to make (and store) energy. Storing the carbon dioxide released in biomass energy generation may be one of the most-costeffective was to achieve safe levels of atmospheric concentrations ‘in the longer run’ – especially if such levels are below the current 392 ppm. Then renewables without CCS could have their full day.

Digging up energy (eg natural gas) does suggest that it has been trapped below ground for some time (eg, for millions of years – usually mixed in various concentrations with carbon-dioxide ).

There are the Laws of Thermodynamics and there are established trends of economics – like who cares about how many chemical changes in a process if it cheaper and does the job, or as cheap but does a better job or even more expensive but does a job other things don’t or cannot do.

If Kevin’s anthropogenic warming scepticism turns out to be essentially true then the CCS switch can at least be switched to off and the pipeline infrastructure recycled. That would probably leave any new nuclear station economics high and very dry.

I trust that we will know much more by 2015 about what is a safe atmospheric CO2 concentration and what the likely costs and capabilities of the various new energy technologies are. Doing research which includes such uncertainties in the meantime seems a very useful area for research.

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

17/08/2010
from: Dave McGrath

I concur with Chris on this.

You have an opportunity follow historical energy paradigms or try anticipating the future which I think will be substantially different from what people are portraying. There is enough historical industrial precedent to show what and how things can change.

But this is scary prospect for linear thinkers which is what most politicians and most of society actually are. Most cannot do this.

The future is being shaped in no particular order by
* Explosive growth in clean tech.
* Recognition CO2 is a bigger issue and more urgent than previously
* growing world population, economic growth in developing countries and subsequent energy demand growth
* global fossil production constraints
* ageing energy infrastructure in developed economies
* A dozen other variables
Take the conventional UK approach to things and it is possible your study conclusions are over taken by external events

CCS as solution to carbon discharges?. Consider 186 million barrels of oil equivalent is discharged every single day across the world. Fossil supplies will deal with CO2 discharge much faster than CCS ever could come near to. Uk consumes 20mtoe every year. On a global scale it is irrelevant. So for me looking at the bigger picture CCS is utterly irrelevant, of course I may not be right but I have a right to that view

For simple balance of payments arguments alone fossil displacement seems to me a better bet

Time and tide wait or no one and we have yet to recognise the tide has turned and now rushing in figuratively and literally if the Greenland melts are to be believed.

But what is right for your study. Whatever you decide is right for you is the right thing to do. You will never get every one to agree with whatever you choose to do; 50% would be remarkable. So ignore that which does not sit right with you or you cannot believe in and do not bullied by the likes of us.

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

17/08/2010
from: Nick Balmer

Hello Dave,

You make a very important point here about the nature and swiftness of
the change about to occur here.

I have been trying to get this point over to my bosses, colleagues and
staff, and I think it is a situation a bit like 1840 on the roads.

I live off the Great North Road (A1) in a former coaching town. If you
had been living here then and your son was considering his future
career, you would almost certainly have looked to the many stage
coaches, horses (600+) and inns in the town and you would have put it
very high on the list of jobs with potential.

However just a few short years later gangs of Navvies came tearing up
the hedges and fields, and shortly afterwards those new fangled trains
arrived. No doubt everybody in the town had heard of them, and had
discounted their potential, but within a decade the coaching trade had
collapsed, the hotels and inns were in very real trouble and the
future was on the rails.

These changes from one technology to another, when large vested
interests and industries long so big and powerful that they can never
be expected to go away or fail nearly always come with startling
rapidity, especially when globalisation occurs.

Think of the huge effect Indian muslins and cotton had on woollen
textile producers in the 1680′s. They caused riots and mass
unemployment here.

The same thing happened in reverse to Indian textile workers in the
Carnatic and Bengal with the development of the great textile mills in
Manchester and Lancashire in the 1815 to 1830 period.

The implications of these changes are going to be fascinating.

For instance…

Has anybody ever worked out what the governments tax take on all the
imported coal and uranium?

The government takes more tax revenue off a barrel of oil (as sold as
petrol) than the Saudi Government does from that same barrel.

If your instance it did prove possible to solve the intermittentancy
issues for wind turbines (and I think solutions are very much closer
than many believe) and Passiv building technologies come to the fore,
how would government cope with a 40% or more % fall in taxation
revenues from imported energy fuels?

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

17/08/2010
from: Roy Morrison

I agree CCS is long term scam to extract research money in hope of unlikely low cost capture technology and storage while the band plays once work is bankrolled and supported globally by big coal mining and using nations Australia, China, U.S., Russia, Germany, Britain and supported by long-range projections that it will be cost effective.Best solution is to leave coal sequestered where it is before mining.
You could gasify material and use Fischer-tropes process to grab carbon and burn hydrogen.But why bother? It’s hardly likely to be cost effective.
Renewable transformation is the challenge and the opportunity.

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

18/08/2010
from: Ed Sears

Hello Jo

Just finished my masters last thursday (MSc Climate Change at UEA) and my dissertation was on ‘Life Cycle Assessment of biochar from the UEA BIOMASS gasification CHP power plant’. Part of my results was a comparison of energy balance and greenhouse gas emissions for biomass (woodchip in this case) gasification CHP with biochar production vs other biochar, bioenergy and fossil power production methods. I didn’t look at the economics. I need to negotiate with the university on the exact status of my report – some of its contents may be commercially sensitive. However, the figures I was comparing against are all available in the literature (Google scholar and an athens/shibboleth login are your friends here – other research search engines also available) – the work was mainly by Elsayed and Mortimer. Try Elsayed et al 2003, BEAT2 (Biomass energy assessment tool) 2008, and maybe Mortimer et al 2009.

I’ll get back to you about energy transition scenario references (and some of the other things you mentioned), because I need to look into that area myself.

To Kevin, if you are reading, take a look at the impact of human activity on the planet: we are currently the largest geological force active on the surface of the Earth, we are carrying out a Great Extinction (biodiversity loss), depleting the oceans of fish and lowering the pH of the water (via carbon dioxide emissions), use 20% of the land area directly and another 40% for grazing, have created a hole in the ozone layer via ozone-depleting chemicals and so on. The argument that we, the little innocuous humans, cannot influence the atmosphere (the troposphere, the bit with the weather in it, is about 10km thick) is ludicrous. We are measurably changing the composition of the atmosphere via land use change and emitting greenhouse gasses and other pollutants, and not surprisingly this is having a noticeable effect, with the entirely resonable projection of larger changes if we make a greater impact through increasing emissions. Maxing out on coal power stations to provide for the energy requirements of a world population of 9 billion in 2050 is an extremely bad idea, both in terms of climate change and local air pollution. Therefore, we seek another way, therefore Claverton and these posts.

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

18/08/2010
from: Kevin Chisholm

Dear Ed

QUOTE : “To Kevin, if you are reading, take a look at the impact of human activity on the planet: we are currently the largest geological force active on the surface of the Earth, we are carrying out a Great Extinction (biodiversity loss), depleting the oceans of fish and lowering the pH of the water (via carbon dioxide emissions), use 20% of the land area directly and another 40% for grazing, have created a hole in the ozone layer via ozone-depleting chemicals and so on. The argument that we, the little innocuous humans, cannot influence the atmosphere (the troposphere, the bit with the weather in it, is about 10km thick) is ludicrous. We are measurably changing the composition of the atmosphere via land use change and emitting greenhouse gasses and other pollutants, and not surprisingly this is having a noticeable effect, with the entirely resonable projection of larger changes if we make a greater impact through increasing emissions. ”

# There is no question that Man has had an impact on the Earth. There is also no question that Mother Nature has had an impact on the Earth. CO2 levels in the Atmosphere have been as much as 8,000 PPM, about 20 times as much as now, yet the Earth has survived. Certainly, there were times where it was inconvenient and even deadly for plants, animals, and humans, but Mother Nature will always win Her game. Global Warming is ALWAYS followed by Global Warming, and also, Global Warming is ALWAYS followed by Global Cooling. That is the nature of cycles. Human Population has exploded since the Maunder Minimum 1645 to 1715, ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum ) and Dalton Minimum 1790 to 1830 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalton_Minimum ), because of Global Warming, enabling people to live in more places and grow more food. GW since then has been good, if we equate population growth as “good”. However, too much of a good thing can certainly be bad. Mother Nature can be counted on to send us a corrective message. However, if the IPCC simply ASSUMES that Man is the cause of the problem, which they have by refusing to acknowledge the possibility that Mother Nature “has the controls”, their whole premise is faulted.

QUOTE : “Maxing out on coal power stations to provide for the energy requirements of a world population of 9 billion in 2050 is an extremely bad idea, both in terms of climate change and local air pollution. Therefore, we seek another way, therefore Claverton and these posts.”

# Of course it is an extremely bad idea! The first rule, when you are in a hole, is to stop digging. We are messing around with futile and pointless tactics, such as Carbon Credits, which cannot reduce atmospheric CO2, even if the Carbon Credit Scheme is 100% adopted. What it accomplishes is to allow coal plants to be maxed out. Only through a reduction in the fossil CO2 being sent to the biosphere can we reduce the atmospheric CO2 Levels. A lot of money will change hands, through Carbon Credits… thats the driver. There must be a world scale reduction in the mining of coal and the flowing of oil and natural gas, if there is to be any hope for a reduction in atmospheric CO2.
# Can you see any way that the people of the World can be motivated to reduce their annual fossil fuel consumption?

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

18/08/2010
from: jo abbess

Dear Ed,

Thanks very much for getting back to me with some ideas and clues.

Will be awaiting your reply on energy transition scenarios.

…

Hope your Masters gets the toppest marks !

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

18/08/2010
from: jo abbess

Dear Chris,

Thanks very much for your thoughts and links.

I am thinking “cusp-ish” just as you are, as regards tipping into the New Generation in Energy.

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

18/08/2010
from: jo abbess

Hi Dave,

Thanks for you very interesting reply.

I entirely follow your “re-localisation” of the economy argument about displacing Fossil Fuel use with Local Renewable Power.

The efforts of the Clean Development Mechanism and the Carbon Trading shambles to permit “outsourcing” of Carbon Emissions reductions through the usual model of “globalisation” simply isn’t working. The industrialised countries must, as a necessity, commit to strong Carbon Emissions reductions at home, whilst keeping up their economies through the use of Energy. This essentially moves us through to Renewables.

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

18/08/2010
from: jo abbess

Hi Neil,

1. Regarding the use of the word “expensive”

By using this word I mean that Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) will always be relatively more costly than “proper” Carbon mitigation, in whichever economic “climate” the technology finds itself in.

How can I be sure of that ? CCS is a “remediation” technology. In other words, you create Carbon Dioxide by burning Fossil Fuels or Biomass for Energy and then you burn a bit more Fossil Fuel or Biomass to provide the Energy to pump all that Carbon Dioxide underground (or make some hard core or cement-like stuff with it) to lock it away. So there’s always going to be an Energy penalty for building CCS into a power plant – so it’s always going to be more expensive than the unabated Fossil Fuel or Biomass generation in a like-for-like economic situation.

Long and complicated process chains always incur higher costs – that’s why a massive new round of Nuclear Energy would be too “expensive” for the current poor health of the global economy – or rather the appetite of the financiers.

2. Can CCS draw down Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere ?

Although Biomass burning (all types) could theoretically Carbon-negative, the thresholds are questionable in some cases – for example in the production chain of BioFuels, where studies have shown Carbon-positive BioEthanol, and BioDiesel has been shown to replace rainforest Carbon Sinks with short-lived oil palm, as we want to buy it cheap from South East Asia . Biomass+CCS could tip the balance over into Carbon-positive (and you can’t really do BioFuels+CCS – how are you going to capture all that CO2 from all the tailpipe exhausts around the world ?)

3. The cost of Renewable Energy

I agree that the total cost of Renewable Energy systems is not negligible, especially in the investment phase, but I cannot see anyone trying to impose a price on wind and sunlight – that makes the “fuel” free.

4. Anthropogenic Global Warming scepticism

The world goes through a long, complicated process to report on all the best Science on Climate Change, and Kevin is sceptical about it ? Has Kevin read the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report ? Does he know what is “robust” and “uncertain” in that report ? It’s clearly spelled out, so nobody should be quibbling, now, surely, after 25 solid years of research and evidence gathering ?

Global Warming is a basic fact of Physics – put more Carbon Dioxide in the air and the Earth heats up. Obsessing about the near-surface air temperatures shields most sceptics from what’s going on in the oceans, which is where it’s all at – 90% of the heat ends up there.

You write “I trust that we will know much more by 2015 about what is a safe atmospheric CO2 concentration…” My view is we don’t really have the luxury of time to be more certain about those things that the IPCC still has in the “uncertain” box. We already know the Earth’s Climate is sensitive to Global Warming, and the damages are racking up and the temperature’s only gone up by around 0.6 to 0.8 degrees C.

5. On the Laws of Thermodynamics

I know, I know. People do things on the cheap, even if they are quick and dirty. But there are consequences, as environmental damages become unacceptable, and with good regulation, the pollution can be contained – although prices will rise a bit.

6. On demonstration plants

The Nuclear industry and the Carbon Capture and Storage “think tanks” have been bargaining for taxpayer money at every level of government for many years now – the nukers want their new “Generation X” funded explicitly, the CCS people want their “demonstration” plants financed. There are plans to take a percentage from the Emissions Trading Scheme revenues for CCS, for example.

If companies are not prepared to put their own capital into something, and want a “stimulus” or a “bailout” to do so – such as the governments putting forward huge sums for the insurance costs of both new Nuclear and CCS (think – massive clouds of CO2, anyone ?) – then surely the companies know that these things are not “economic” ?

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

18/08/2010
from: jo abbess

BJ Jerome,

En effet, le CCS est propose avec le but de donner legitimite aux bruleurs de charbon, non ?

Le rapport special du IPCC en 2005 – avec tous ses rechercheurs et editeurs des societes fossilisees…

Le roi est nu.

‘fin,

jo.

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

18/08/2010
from: jo abbess

Hi Dave,

I see a trip point (or “tipping” point) in the way our society views Energy – things will click into place quickly once they start to move. The factors you outline are part of my thinking.

The “energy security” argument, couched in terms of “relocalising energy” is a strong one – as moves to displace or remove carbon can have very dramatic and immediate effects. It starts with a company, for example, installing a green roof and then finding their total electricity bill drops away because of the lesser need for heating and cooling in the office space. And the facilities manager thinks….wow ! And eventually the chief executives will realise that with hugely lower energy bills facilities don’t need to have staff in them all the time to make it worth the company’s while to heat and cool the building…and then you start getting remote working and more flexible working with all the energy efficiencies that can be gained there, too, and everything becomes much more efficient ! And then you can start looking at how you can convert to green power produced onsite, because you’re not using so much brought-in energy as you were before so the physics of the situation have ameliorated…hey presto – a leveraged Carbon reduction plan. Scaling this up means less national imports and all the inefficiency and insecurity surrounding that. Plus, conservation and relocalising energy makes energy costs more stable – making economic planning more efficient. And so on…

Don’t worry. I want to hear from everyone about clues, references, ideas, resources, but I shall follow my own nose on this one !

With a couple of fellow students, I gave a presentation to my class on “Sustainable Business” in March, asking the question “Is BP a sustainable business ?” looking at issues to do with Peak Oil, difficult deepwater drilling, lack of Renewables investment, environmental fines and the like. I asked my fellow students to consider the implications of having really deep subsea wells. BP was selling up the fact that they could engineer wells at such depths, but we thought they were in denial about the risks. The next month was April…and we all know what BP did in April, don’t we ?

I have shown I can be “on the money”, so I shall just carry on in the same vein…

Thanking you,

jo.

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

18/08/2010
from: jo abbess

Hi Nick,

You make a very good point about the tax take from energy and the risks to that from changing the status quo.

One factor is that for those countries that are in oil and gas depletion, such as the UK, the tax take from indigenous energy is probably already dropping away. Is that one of the reasons why the UK Government want to re-open the coalmines ? Something for me to look into…

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

18/08/2010
from: dave andrews

Jo – i think you will find we have used all the coal up! see article on claverton site

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

18/08/2010
from: Kevin Chisholm

Dear Jo

QUOTE : “2. Can CCS draw down Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere ?”

# The important thing is the “new carbon added to the biosphere.” Fossil fuels are new, or additional carbon additions to the biosphere, when they are burned. Biofuels, at their very best, are “carbon positive”, definitely not neutral or negative. This is because of the fossil fuel required for their harvesting, transport, and preparation for burning. However, if biomass is pyrolysed to produce charcoal and pyrolysis gases, with the charcoal being sequestered, carbon can definitely be removed from the biosphere. Charcoal in soil seems to last well in excess of 1000 years. For a given weight of bone dry biomass, the charcoal recovery is about 30% of the starting weight. The energy distribution is about 50-50, between the sequestered charcoal, and the pyrolysis gases. If waste biomass cost say $50 per bone dry tonne ready for retorting, and the charcoal yield was about 30%, the material cost for the charcoal, excluding capital and operating costs, would be about $50/.3 = $166 per tonne of charcoal. It sort of works out that 1 tonne of charcoal has sufficient Carbon content to equal about 3 tonnes CO2, ie, $166/3 = $55 per tonne of CO2 equivalent sequestered. Hopefully, the energy in teh pyrolysis gases, about 9 MJ pre tonne of wood pyrolysed, could run the process, and provide an energy surplus that could be used productively outside the Pyrolysis System.

QUOTE : “4. Anthropogenic Global Warming scepticism : The world goes through a long, complicated process to report on all the best Science on Climate Change, and Kevin is sceptical about it ? Has Kevin read the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report ? Does he know what is “robust” and “uncertain” in that report ? It’s clearly spelled out, so nobody should be quibbling, now, surely, after 25 solid years of research and evidence gathering ?”

# I think it was Josef Stalin, who once said “I don’t care what the answer is, as long as they are asking the wrong questions.” If they investigated the possibility of “Natural GW” (NGW) with the vigour that they are promoting Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) their efforts would be credible. Invariably, one gets the wrong answer when one looks at only one side of the story.

QUOTE : “Global Warming is a basic fact of Physics – put more Carbon Dioxide in the air and the Earth heats up. Obsessing about the near-surface air temperatures shields most sceptics from what’s going on in the oceans, which is where it’s all at – 90% of the heat ends up there.”

# Here is an article on CO2 equivalency..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_equivalent

# Here is another one showing that water vapor is 3 to 4 times as potent a greenhouse gas as is CO2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas

# Don’t you think the entire matter is being seriously distorted by ignoring the effect of water vapor, as a greenhouse gas?

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

18/08/2010
from: Herbert Eppel

Dave

I’m not sure about “used all the coal up” (can you provide a link to the
article on the Claverton site you referred to?), but an article in the
September issue of Scientific American ( see http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-much-is-left ) has this to say on the matter:

“Unlike oil, coal is widely thought to be virtually inexhaustible. Not
so, says David Rutledge of the California Institute of Technology.
Governments routinely overestimate their reserves by a factor of four or
more on the assumption that hard-to-reach seams will one day open up to
new technology. Mature coal mines show that this has not been the case.
The U.K.—the birthplace of coal mining— offers an example. Production
grew through the 19th and early 20th centuries, then fell as supplies
were depleted. Cumulative production curves in the U.K. and other mature
regions have followed a predictable S shape. By extrapolating to the
rest of the world’s coal fields, Rutledge concludes that the world will
extract 90 percent of available coal by 2072.”

I’m taking the liberty of attaching the article (I have a Scientific
American subscription) in the hope that I don’t end up in prison for
breaching some copyright.

The interactive version of the article referred to in the PDF file
doesn’t appear to be available at http://www.scientificamerican.com/section.cfm?id=multimedia yet.

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

18/08/2010
from: Neil Crumpton

Jo,

some responses within text

QUOTE : “So there’s always going to be an Energy penalty for building CCS into a power plant – so it’s always going to be more expensive than the unabated Fossil Fuel or Biomass generation in a like-for-like economic situation.”

The energy penalty bit is obvious – but reducing the CO2 emissions saves money on future climate impacts (see your point 4) do you not factor this as a comparative expense between abated and unabated fossil ?

Anyway we were talking about the RELATIVE expense compared to other energy generation sources. Cost will influence investor choices (as shareholders will tend to choose the best pay-back investments for their money be it energy generation or hotel chains). If abated coal or gas were costing say £ 60 MWh to generate and offshore wind were £ 80 and solar PV £ 90 what would you choose as quickest low-carbon path. I’m all for RES (16 years as a front line energy campaigner for FOE) but given commercial and industrial inertias and complexities then IF CCS does achieve the low cost its various proponents claim (eg around 15% energy penalty – comparatively less if CHP added ) then it may be marginally cheaper than much of the UKs exploitable RES resources (mainly offshore wind wave, tidal, and limited indigenous biomass ). If the CCS infrastructure can progressively be used for biomass sequestration then that opens a cheaper emergency option for reducing UK emissions.

QUOTE : “2. Can CCS draw down Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere ?”

I’m not suggesting current biofuel technologies – see my email re desert algae etc. That would probably be significantly C-neg as the biomass would be pretty low-C (inc solar CSP inputs to fans and pumps) and possibly relatively cheap to produce.

QUOTE : “3. The cost of Renewable Energy”

but is not coal and gas more or less free in the same analogy, indeed some coal seams are barely beneath the ground surface and many oil and gas resources sometimes deliver themselves to the utility under a fair amount of pressure too

anyone no one is suggesting imposing a price on wind etc are they ?

QUOTE : “You write “I trust that we will know much more by 2015 about what is a safe atmospheric CO2 concentration…” My view is we don’t really have the luxury of time to be more certain about those things that the IPCC still has in the “uncertain” box. We already know the Earth’s Climate is sensitive to Global Warming, and the damages are racking up and the temperature’s only gone up by around 0.6 to 0.8 degrees C.”

Your response is a non-sequiter. I trust ongoing climate research does better define what levels are safe in the coming years (eg what degree of risk is posed by say 450 ppm or 350 ppm). If 450 ppm is fine then RES alone may be OK. If 350 ppm is considered safe (low risk from significant impacts) then biomass with CCS may be one of the few possible routes to achieve such significant absolute ppm reductions (IPCC regard BECCS as a potential key technology). Possibly biochar or direct air-capture and storage (DACS) may also achieve such reductions – they need testing too.

We don’t have the luxury of time to ignore possible ppm reduction technology options which we could demonstrate by 2015 and also closely define probable wide deployment costs. No one said anything about waiting except those who oppose CCS who would see us waiting for ever for CCS knowledge. I am suggesting something is done very quickly – ie populations in developed world pay a very small percentage of their wealth to demonstrate a small number of CCS schemes around the world. Private companies are responsible to their shareholders – I wish it were different but I don’t expect that world order to change anytime soon (eg certainly not by 2015). Consumers in some developed countries would pay the difference in price (contract-for-differences) for the at least partially shared learning from their country’s CCS demos. Also some CO2 would get buried (is that not worth anything in your view ?) and some strategic CO2 pipeline assets would be deployed for a range of companies, etc to use (even RES companies want low cost grid connections – eg offshore HVDC grid).

QUOTE : “6. On demonstration plants”

Good re some funds for CCS (see above). Actually some eNGOs (think-tanks) have been calling for CCS demos

Renewables of course have required no funds for demonstration – right ? Indeed, biomass with CCS could be considered a very very low-carbon renewable.

QUOTE : “If companies are not prepared to put their own capital into something, and want a “stimulus” or a “bailout” to do so – such as the governments putting forward huge sums for the insurance costs of both new Nuclear and CCS (think – massive clouds of CO2, anyone ?) – then surely the companies know that these things are not “economic” ?”

Would you also propose that ROCs are removed for RES technologies also ? Surely the RES companies know that their things are “economic”.

And at this point I will cease to put the case for my different point of view – I could spend a long time debating with you.

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

18/08/2010
from: jo abbess

Dear Kevin,

1. Water Vapour

Yes, I agree with you. Water vapour is indeed a major Greenhouse Gas.

Increasing water vapour in the Atmosphere also happens to be a positive feedback from the Global Warming we are now experiencing which has been caused by the exponentially rising Carbon Dioxide concentrations.

Please get your eggs and your chickens in the correct order.

2. Natural Global Warming

Yes, I agree with you. There are many ways in which the Earth can heat up.

Why, only the other day, I was reading part of a fine book by Bryan Lovell called “Challenged by Carbon” in which he describes how magma plumes from the Earth’s interior have contributed to warming of the surface of the planet.

And as the Earth spins and tilts and shifts the ellipsicity of its orbit around Sol, yes, insolation changes, and cooling and warming take place.

Even further, oscillations in the coupled atmospheric-oceanic climatic cells have been shown to change local and regional temperatures, shift rain bands, storm tracks and so on and so on.

But fine scientists with pedigrees longer than my dog’s have determined through studies in “Detection and Attribution” that the current bout of Global Warming in the last 50 years is for the most part due to the increased radiative forcing from the rising levels of Greenhouse Gases in the Atmosphere caused by increasing emissions from humankind’s activities.

Have you read the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report ? They have made a good effort to write in an easy way to describe all the things they have found in their review of the Science.

Please stop reciting to me the worn-out and frankly ridiculous, debunked and discredited pseudo-theories of the Climate Change sceptic-deniers. Please start reading the Science.

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

19/08/2010
from: jo abbess

Hi Herb and Dave,

I have been in correspondence with David Rutledge before now, and I put his theories to Ron Oxburgh of the CCS Association at a conference :-

http://www.joabbess.com/2009/03/26/carbon-capture-and-storage-merely-an-elastoplast-technology/

I have also in the last day done my own little calculations on remaining reserves – all terribly ballpark – trying to show that a heating planet with lots of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere produced lots of lifeforms, and then killed them with catastrophic Global Warming and the catastrophically dead things sedimentised to become the Coal, Oil and Natural Gas we in a much cooler Climate so love, dig up and burn, putting all that Carbon right back in the Atmosphere from which it originally came – heating the planet up again…I feel a Sixth Great Extinction coming on with nothing left with a sufficiently good brain to document what happens afterwards and make sure it never happens again, unless we get a grip on the scale of what’s happening and make the appropriate big changes with Energy :-

http://www.joabbess.com/2010/08/18/judith-curry-carbon-lockdown/

Don’t call me Cassandra – but if you do, remember she was always right :-

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,712113,00.html

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

19/08/2010
from: Herbert Eppel

Hi Jo

Thanks for your reply.

Please note that I was by no means suggesting that we should endeavour to dig up and burn all the coal that is left in the ground. Having been actively involved with Friends of the Earth etc. for 20 years I am, of course, well aware that there are indeed very good arguments for leaving the coal where it is. I was merely responding to Dave’s comment that we have already “used all the coal up”.

As for the Spiegel article – I was about to post it myself as recommended reading for Kevin Chisholm, who may also find this article of interest: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/07/15/bad-science-global-warming-deniers-are-a-liability-to-the-conservative-cause/#ixzz0uIrxcAqA

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

19/8/2010
from: Kevin Chisholm

Dear Jo

QUOTE : “Please get your eggs and your chickens in the correct order.”

# You have a good point, as far as you go, but you don’t go far enough. When one digitizes your generalities, we are led to a different conclusion.

# Firstly, you may have your eggs and chickens in the wrong order. You ASSUME that GW is of an anthropogenic origin, as does the IPCC; it simply ignores the possibility of “Natural Cause.” Their “anthropogenic hammer” sees only anthropogenic CO2 as the nails causing GCC, and by following their approach, you are making eh same mistake they are. On several occasions, I brought up this point, and you slough over it.

# Secondly, In teh range of about 45 F to 60 F, 100% saturated air will hold between 44 and 78 grains of moisture per pound of dry air. That is, the incremental change is about 34/15 = 2.26 grains per 1 deg F change in temperature. At 45 Degrees F, saturated air holds 44 grains of moisture, ie, 44/7000 parts moisture per part air, or roughly 6,300 PPM moisture. As mentioned previously, water vapor is 3 to 4 times as powerful a “greenhouse gas” as is CO2. If you do some arithmetic, you can clearly see that water vapor has a much greater “Greenhouse Effect” than does CO2, at a mere 390 PPM, about 1/16 as much. The Greenhouse Effect caused by water vapor is very much more than that which is caused by CO2. If there was any tendancy to “Natural Global Warming”, the water vapor already present is far more effective in exaggerating it than would be CO2

QUOTE : “2. Natural Global Warming…But fine scientists with pedigrees longer than my dog’s have determined through studies in “Detection and Attribution” that the current bout of Global Warming in the last 50 years is for the most part due to the increased radiative forcing from the rising levels of Greenhouse Gases in the Atmosphere caused by increasing emissions from humankind’s activities.”

If trehse pedigreed folks are of teh IPCC Mindset, then they may very well have been misdirecting their efforts. If they observe GW or GCC, and if they are only allowed to attribute the cause to Humankind, then they blame Mankind. What other explanation are tehy permitted to publish?

QUOTE : “Have you read the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report ? They have made a good effort to write in an easy way to describe all the things they have found in their review of the Science.”

# No. I have not read it because it is faulted, by refusing to acknowledge the possibility of naturally caused GW or CC. How can you have true science when you eliminate a possible cause from consideration? The IPCC Work is called “Consensus Science.” That means it is based on opinion and not fact. It was Consensus Science that got Galileo into trouble when he had teh gall to suggest that the Earth rotated around the Sun.

QUOTE : “Please stop reciting to me the worn-out and frankly ridiculous, debunked and discredited pseudo-theories of the Climate Change sceptic-deniers. Please start reading the Science.”

# That is very unscientific of you, and is all too typical of people who are worried about being on shakey ground. They switch to ad hominum attacks, rather than dealing with the facts or science of the matter. That is bad form.

# Do you have any palpable evidence that the present GCC situation is NOT the result of natural causes?

Best wishes,

Kevin Chisholm, MD, DD, LLD

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

19/8/2010
from: David McGrath
subject: Just a thought

As we get hot and bothered about the stance we take on whatever it is remember it is only our interpretation; which we choose. We can and do portray data in whatever way we choose.

Consider www.dhmo.org

Every thing stated is actually factually correct. It is presented in a particular way to tell a story, in this case to achieve an outcome, entertainment as it happens for the perpetrators.

Lets have the courage to question our own views, motives and interpretations remaining rational, logical, generous of the views of others, open to alternative concepts and devoid of acrimony

We may be looking out different windows as we argue over the view we see, and both right in describing what we are looking at.

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

19/08/2010
from: Richard Hellen

Very well put Dave.

The enthusiastic, even passionate promotion of the insights we have and therefore wish to share with others should never lead to personal insult.

And if others seem to not account for our crystal clear understanding of the issues and the inevitable solution we see, then we can always choose to disengage. Something about, there are none so blind as those who will not see.

It is well recognised in psychological circles that what we see is often what we want to believe. If you want an example together with a bit of a chuckle at the end have a look at http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shermer_the_pattern_behind_self_deception.html and by the way, take a few minutes to scan around TED if you have not come across it before – there are some interesting energy / environment related presentations.

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

19/08/2010
from: George Wallis

Dear Kevin

Could you please explain the phrase ‘digitizes your generalities’ since I find it somewhat confusing? Perhaps it is jargon of which I am not aware?

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

19/08/2010
from: Peter Rowberry

This is the last post on the subject which I will make to the list, as the argument is in danger of becoming unscientific diatribe, but

Kevin,

What question about climate science would you have us ask? Your assertion that natural effects of global warming is not being investigated as thoroughly as anthropogenic change is unfounded and flies in the face of the facts. The fossil fuel industry has been spending large amounts on research and public relations to downplay the effects of climate change. There may be vested interests in climate change acedemia, but these are more than balanced by the industry perspective. In a celebrated recent case, the UK the climate change unit at the Univeristy of East Anglia was criticised for bias in its publications and emails, but after investigation none of the charges aaginst them was found to have any foundation, It was not a surprise that these “revelations” came in the run up to the climate change conference.

I am sorry Kevin, but you obviously have not taken the time to read the Grist site that I refered to in my previous email. If you want to do this you will find the difference between water vapour as a feedback effect and CO2 as a forcing agent explained http://www.grist.org/article/water-vapor-accounts-for-almost-all-of-the-greenhouse-effect/. The historic levels of CO2 and how it is measured are explained. The claim that no consensus exists is rebutted. All of the questions which I can ever remember being asked by climate change sceptics are addressed with many references to support their views. For those climate change sceptics that demand proof of the link between mans’ activities and climate change I can only say that the only science which can offer such certainty is mathematics. Since Heisenberg put forward his uncertainty principle we know that we cannot even predict both the position of a particle and its momentum. The fact that climate change models accurately predict the record of climate change in the recent past means that if nothing else changes their predictions for the future are likely to be reliable.

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

19/08/2010
from: Andrew Smith

QUOTE: “If they investigated the possibility of “Natural GW” (NGW) with the vigour that they are promoting Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) their efforts would be credible.”

That has been investigated, for decades. Where on earth did you get the idea that it hadn’t? All of the authoritative overviews of the subject – IPCC reports and others – cover these issues.

QUOTE : “Don’t you think the entire matter is being seriously distorted by ignoring the effect of water vapor, as a greenhouse gas?”

Again, this has been studied for decades, and it’s thoroughly explored in the scientific literature. So wherever you’ve been getting your information is a deeply unreliable source.

QUOTE : “No. I have not read it [IPCC 4] because it is faulted, by refusing to acknowledge the possibility of naturally caused GW or CC”

How on earth do you know what it contains if you haven’t read it?

And what is it in “MD, DD, LLD” that gives you a particular insight into
climate science that you believe has escaped all of the world’s climate
scientists for the past 40 years? I’m struggling to see how a Doctorate
in Divinity is relevant.

Ah, wait a minute. Water vapour, “Doctor of Divinity”, North American
spellings Is there a theme, here, Kevin? Are you by any chance a fan of
Dr Roy Spencer? And there was I thinking that you just had a Bachelors
in Mechanical Engineering. Well, congratulations on the additional
training in medicine, divinity and law – you have been busy. Might one
ask as to the names of the fine institutions that granted these degrees?

And so, finally, to Roy Spencer. For those who don’t know of him, Roy’s
a creationist with a whizzo theory that God has given the Earth a
natural thermostat so that we won’t make a mess of things with global
warming. He thinks it may be something to do with water vapour, even
though this is completely contradicted by empirical data; but then, I
hear that for those people of faith, it trumps the real world.

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

19/08/2010
from: jo abbess

Hey Andrew,

Not everybody who has religion denies real world data !

And not everyone who says that they believe real world data actually knows what the real world data is evidence for !

Like Sir John Houghton and John Cook of SkepticalScience.com I have a Christian faith, but the form that it takes has enough room for Science. My faith’s scriptures contain very important guidance for the treatment of the people and environment around us, and you can’t be a proper “Steward of Creation” as the scriptures urge, without empirical data.

The Bible is full of Climate Change, including the story of the famine in Egypt, which Joseph is narrated to have managed by building grain silos…but I’m not going to preach religion, since my version of my faith includes social tolerance not “holier than thou” isolationism. I believe that God speaks to each person directly through what they learn, so I don’t need to tell them what to believe, and I can work with anyone who does Science, regardless of what they believe about spiritual matters.

We are left with the blessings and curses of Moses in Deuteronomy, slightly updated, which include direct mention of Climate Changes : we have the option : follow the evidence and choose to protect Life on Earth; or ignore the Laws of Nature and choose chaotic, possibly catastrophic Climate Change.

Peace & Fried Plantain,

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

19/08/2010
from: Bill Bordass

A lovely quote from Infosys, the Indian IT company.

“In God I trust. Everybody else must bring data.”

The evidence clearly supports the man-made climate change hypothesis. But even if it didn’t, there are lots of other good reasons for stopping using fossil fuels.

With good wishes

Bill

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

19/08/2010
from: Andrew Smith

Hey Jo,

in this particular context, *those* people of faith I referred to were
creationists. I apologise for having separated the relevant clauses by
so much intervening text that that particular line of argument became
obscured:

QUOTE : “And so, finally, to Roy Spencer. For those who don’t know of him, Roy’s a creationist … I hear that for those people of faith, it trumps the real world.”

Such a position necessitates denial of empirical data that does not
conform to a pre-judged position, even where it means rejecting
fundamental aspects of physics, chemistry and geology.

No comment was intended on those people whose faith does not contradict known science.

Kind regards,
Andrew

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

03:03
from: Dave McGrath

Kevin,

May I urge some temperance. Personal attacks are unbecoming

GW may be drive by human activity and natural events. Probably a combination of both % attribution? impossible to say. Some suggest AGW is countering a natural cooling period, who knows. Remember the big numbers 186mboe every single day. Instantaneous release (geologically) of geologically sequestered carbon. This represents for me discontinuity. Nature responds harshly to discontinuities

But interestingly you state “water vapour is 3 to 4 times as powerful a “greenhouse gas” Consider the implication of this statement. As fuel is combusted the carbon is releases as CO2 the hydrogen as H2O So the sequestered hydrogen is being re-released as H2O which does not decompose. It is released as water vapour. Thus the GW impact of each kG of CO2 discharge is in fact amplified 2-5 fold depending on he volumes of water vapour released.

Fun to speculate and I am sure we can create any story we like around it, I shall not though.

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

19/08/2010
from: Kevin Chisholm

Dear Dave

QUOTE : “Kevin, May I urge some temperance. Personal attacks are unbecoming”

# I do agree with you. Please speak to Jo about “…Please stop reciting to me the worn-out and frankly ridiculous, debunked and discredited pseudo-theories of the Climate Change sceptic-deniers. Please start reading the Science….”

I thought my reply to her dismissive comment was temperate

QUOTE : “GW may be driven by human activity and natural events. Probably a combination of both % attribution? impossible to say. Some suggest AGW is countering a natural cooling period, who knows. Remember the big numbers 186mboe every single day. Instantaneous release (geologically) of geologically sequestered carbon. This represents for me discontinuity. Nature responds harshly to discontinuities.”

# It is my feeling that Global Climate Change is probably driven by both Anthropogenic and Natural Causes. By ignoring the possibility of Natural Causes as a possibile contributor, the IPCC places undue weight on the Anthropogenic contribution, and, as a consequence, undue weight on the ability of Anthropogenic Activity to reverse GCC

QUOTE : “But interestingly you state “water vapour is 3 to 4 times as powerful a “greenhouse gas” Consider the implication of this statement. As fuel is combusted the carbon is releases as CO2 the hydrogen as H2O So the sequestered hydrogen is being re-released as H2O which does not decompose. It is released as water vapour. Thus the GW impact of each kG of CO2 discharge is in fact amplified 2-5 fold depending on he volumes of water vapour released.”

# Yes, indeed. However, the “increment of water vapor” will quickly drop out of the atmosphere, if the atmospheric temperature drops below condensation temperature. The important thing here, however, is that with temperatures as they are now, the “equilibrium water vapor content” is such that its greenhouse effefct is much larger than the effect from CO2

QUOTE : “Fun to speculate and I am sure we can create any story we like around it, I shall not though.”

# Sadly, if we have a premise that is based on Consensus, rather than Science, we cannot be confident that we really are working toward the best solution for dealing with Global Climate Change.

Best wishes,

Kevin

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

19/08/2010
from: Kevin Chisholm

Dear Herbert

QUOTE : “As for the Spiegel article – I was about to post it myself as recommended reading for Kevin Chisholm, who may also find this article of interest: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/07/15/bad-science-global-warming-deniers-are-a-liability-to-the-conservative-cause/#ixzz0uIrxcAqA”

# I read the article, and did find it interesting. It is basically an Editorial Opinion that “people on the fringe” can act irresponsibly if they have views that go contrary to “the mainstream.”

# Perhaps GCC is 100% caused by Anthropogenic Activity, and perhaps it can indeed be reversed in a sensible and affordable manner. I do not know. However, I do know that when the IPCC eliminiates the possibility of natural causes from consideration, their basic premise is faulted. Certainly, there are some skeptics who advocate silly positions, and the “Entirely Anthropogenic” supporters are quick to dismiss them with fact but they then go on to dismiss all skeptics as “deniers” and “dis-believers”. Science is based on fact, not belief. Dismissing skeptics because they are “dis-believers” is not at all scientific. The IPCC work is based on “Consensus Science”, and this term itself was promoted by the IPCC itself. True Science is based on fact and truth, while Consensus Science is based on belief and agreement. “Consensus Science” is an oxymoron.

# At this point in time, I feel we have three fundamental choices:
1: Do nothing.
2: Assume we can reverse GCC, and direct our resources and activities toward reversing GCC.
3: Assume we cannot reverse GCC, and direct our resources and activities toward adapting to GCC.

# What do you feel is the most sensible way for the World to proceed?

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

19/08/2010
from: Kevin Chisholm

Dear George

QUOTE : “Could you please explain the phrase ‘digitizes your generalities’ since I find it somewhat confusing? Perhaps it is jargon of which I am not aware?”

# That is a term of my own coinization”

QUOTE: “What the phrase means is basically “provide specific fact and numbers to support your generalized statement”.”

# For example, I can say “Photo-voltaic power is too expensive.” If I am connected to a Utility, providing power at say $.15 per kw-hr, then this statement is true. However, if I am operating a communications relay tower that was:
* 4 miles from an Utility line,
* had only seasonal road access,
* was in an area subject to icing,
* and need only a peak solar output of 2 kW to keep my batteries charged,
then, when I costed things out, I would find that PV Power was the most sensible alternative.

# I hope this clears things up.

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

19/08/2010
from: Herbert Eppel

Dear Kevin

Thank you for your reply.

You commented on the National Post article but not the Spiegel article Jo had sent – any comments?

As for the three fundamental choices you offered, option 1 is certainly not the most sensible way for the World to proceed.

I’ll send a more detailed reply on my view of the most sensible way forward in due course, but I need to get a few translation jobs out of the way first.

Meanwhile, I hope you will find this short video entertaining: http://blogs.news.com.au/couriermail/greenblog/index.php/couriermail/comments/walking_the_dinosaur#63248

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

19/08/2010
from: Dave Elliott

I’ve been following this discussion and felt I’d add my comments briefly.

1 IPCC accept that natural climate processes are responsibe for some warming (and coollng) – last time I looked I think they said 20%. The rest seems to be down to us, since no other smoking gun can be identified.

2. If they are right, whatever we do now we will need a massive adapations across the world- its not either adapatation or mitigation, we need both.

3. But it makes sense to deal with the problems at source and reduce emissions- to put in simply we cant just keep building higher dikes /flood defences,as sea levels continually rise, or evacuate more and more central belt zones as temperatures rise.

Much of the debate is about what mix of mitigation and adpatation we need and can afford . Mitigation can involve investment which will take time to pay off in climate terms ; adapation can deal with immediate problems, but doesn’t help much long term.

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

19/08/2010
from: Andrew Smith

QUOTE : “Dave Elliott wrote…Much of the debate is about what mix of mitigation and adpatation we need and can afford . Mitigation can involve investment which will take time to pay off in climate terms ; adapation can deal with immediate problems, but doesn’t help much long term.”

And an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. That is to say,
money spent on mitigation now saves a fortune in adaptation later.

Furthermore, within the power sector, everything we have to do for
mitigation, we have to do at some point anyway, because the fossil fuel supply is finite.

So, at a conference somewhere, a renewables presentation ends with the summary:
* Clean, safe, endless energy
* No more resource depletion
* Huge reductions in local and global pollution
* Traffic much quieter
* Air much cleaner
* higher energy security
* freedom from strategic dependences on fuel imports
… and at the back, a voice squeaks: “but what if global warming is a
giant conspiracy, and we’ve built a better world for nothing?”

(not my joke – I nicked it from someone at a presentation at
Cambridge Energy Systems week – Nafees Meah from DECC I think – sorry Nafees)

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

20/8/2010
from: jo abbess

Hi Clavertonians,

Just a note about consensus and independence.

http://www.joabbess.com/2010/08/20/on-consensus/

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

20/8/2010
from: Peter Ravine

Well said Jo! You have a gift for making common sense understandable. Thanks.
Regards, Peter Ravine.

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

from: Herbert Eppel

QUOTE : “… and at the back, a voice squeaks: “but what if global warming is a giant conspiracy, and we’ve built a better world for nothing?”

Excellent!

See also this video, which demonstrates in a rather simplistic but
pretty clear way that non-action re. climate change would be plain
stupid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zORv8wwiadQ&feature=related

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====

from: David McGrath

Mitigation, adaptation…

Lets add displacement to the lexicon

=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====xxxxx=====