Winter, In May.

Winter, In May.

We’ve just put the heating back on in our house.  I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one.

Meanwhile, the news is talking about last winter as the “Coldest winter for a generation” or somesuch – though every month some record or other seems to be broken so it’s hard to keep them all at the front of your mind.

At the beginning of this month we were told we might be heading into a drought – though it’s rained for about half a year.  Since that announcement its rained more days than not.

I’m sure we’ll get a bit of Summer at some point, but like last year, and the year before, and the year before that – it’s not exactly rushing forwards to make itself known, is it?  The sun has not precisely “got his hat on.”

None of this really meets with what the warmist doommongers predicted and many people are noticing the doom-laden figures being fudged revised of late.  Of course “weather is not the same as climate” – except when it suits the warmists to say it is of course.  But even so, has anybody else noticed the gentle easing out of the Warmist message.  Fewer TV programs, fewer mentions (and more cursory when it is mentioned.)  It’s become almost like the bogeyman.  Presenters and spokespeople mention it in passing, like warning of something lurking in the closet or under the bed.

You really have to wonder how many years of no warming and failed predictions are required before even those dwindling proponents of catastrophic man-made global warming begin to run out of wriggle room.  I’m sure the day must be getting quite close.

“Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You don’t fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgement, repeated every day.” – Jim Rohn

For The Purposes Of Balance

For The Purposes Of Balance

You’re always hearing people telling you how Global Warming*  is / is not responsible for (delete as appropriate for current narrative) the weather / the temperature / the latest disaster / the poor / the acidification of the oceans / the rising of the oceans / the melting of glaciers / the heat / the cold / the complete lack of any actual warming (delete as appropriate for the current narrative).  Just for balance, here’s another point of view.  Take it or leave it.

http://www.cfact.org/issues/climate-change/climate-change-truth-file/

*Yes, I do deliberately still use Global Warming rather than Climate Change.  I know the warmists hate being reminded of the older term, for obvious reasons.  That’s sort of the point.

Watts Up With That?

Watts Up With That?

PRESS RELEASE – July 29^th, 2012 12PM PDT – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

A reanalysis of U.S. surface station temperatures has been performed using the recently WMO-approved Siting Classification System devised by METEO-France’s Michel Leroy. The new siting classification more accurately characterizes the quality of the location in terms of monitoring long-term spatially representative surface temperature trends. The new analysis demonstrates that reported 1979-2008 U.S. temperature trends are spuriously doubled, with 92% of that over-estimation resulting from erroneous NOAA adjustments of well-sited stations upward. The paper is the first to use the updated siting system which addresses USHCN siting issues and data adjustments.

The new improved assessment, for the years 1979 to 2008, yields a trend of +0.155C per decade from the high quality sites, a +0.248 C per decade trend for poorly sited locations, and a trend of +0.309 C per decade after NOAA adjusts the data. This issue of station siting quality is expected to be an issue with respect to the monitoring of land surface temperature throughout the Global Historical Climate Network and in the BEST network.

Go here.  Read this.  It’s important.

All The Pain For Zero Gain

All The Pain For Zero Gain

Please do all take the time to read Matt Ridley’s excellent essay: “The Beginning Of The End Of Wind.”  And if you enjoy it, which i’m sure you will, to buy his book “The Rational Optimist” which I very highly recommend.

Hat Tip : Watts Up With That

Energy Policy Based On Renewables

Energy Policy Based On Renewables

I’m not a fan of the Independent.  In fact, it falls only behind the Guardian in the list of “newspapers I won’t ever buy.”  But credit where credit is due.  They have published an excellent article on Wind Farms. I cannot recommend it highly enough.  It’s like somebody has taken all the things I’ve been trying to say – and said them properly.  Which, I guess, is why I’m an amateur blogger and not a journalist.

It’s here.

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/kevin-myers-energy-policy-based-on-renewables-will-win-hearts-but-wont-protect-their-owners-from-frostbite-and-death-due-to-exposure-3012098.html

Is That Right?

Is That Right?

The views expressed by me in my blog are my personal views only.  They do not represent the views of the party to which I belong, nor the views of the Cambridgeshire County Council nor any other body or person other than me.

 The Cambs Times has an interesting article this week about how wind farms in Doddington will compensate nearby neighbours in order, one presumes, to help get planning approval.  They’re going to pay their electricity bills for twenty-five years!

This is actually quite a Libertarian approach to planning.  The idea being that people who will be directly affected by a new development might be compensated for that by an agreement with the developer.  In  principle, this could be appropriate.

Of course, where turbines are concerned, there’s a little matter that must be considered.  Where is the money coming from?

As anybody who has ever bothered to look into the actual output of turbines (the net output, once their own energy use is factored in and the genuine energy is calculated, not the suspect figures you often see bandied around by invested parties) knows that they’re not going to be making any huge amounts of money any time soon.  Well, not via their energy production anyway.  The cost of the electricity produced – when its windy enough, but not too windy – is immense compared to much cheaper traditional energy production methods. 

So how do a few turbines manage to turn such a healthy profit that they are able to pay out to the installation company, the owner of the site and still have enough left over to pay the electricity bills for four households for twenty-five years? Just how much profit are these developers going to make?  A lot.  Clearly.  But how?

No, it’s not the Magic Money Tree again.  Those only grow in Greece.  And in the lush gardens of the shadow chancellor.  All that lovely money to encourage take-up to the nearest four neighbours, might it just come from that most excellent of sources – State subsidy*?  Could be.

So what do we call the collusion of the State and Big Business?  Corporatism.  And what do you call it when money is used to persuade people to act in a way that might otherwise be considered detrimental?  I’m too polite to say.

If wind farms actually worked, by which I mean that they produced enough energy to pay for themselves and did so reliably and without the need for constant fossil fuel backup, then they would be much harder to oppose.  And this plan might be quite a good one. 

But instead, it seems to me to be rather grim.  Even now a great many people die in the cold each year due to fuel poverty.  Each additional hidden subsidy enabled through taxation makes that more pronounced.  If those four households agree to this deal – when they are sitting in their warm living room during bitter winters over the next twenty-five years they will be doing so while some very poor, very vulnerable people will be desperately struggling to pay their energy bills.  Their comfort will be subsidised by the discomfort, illness and possibly in some severe cases even the death of others.  Is that right?

*State subsidies for wind farms are hidden in plain sight by being enacted indirectly.  Instead of directly paying the wind farms money, the government mandates that energy firms must purchase a set amount of energy via “renewable” sources, regardless of whether they would ever do so in reality (they almost certainly wouldn’t, it being so much more expensive.)  Energy firms then pass this on to the consumer in their bills.

It is VERY Serious

It is VERY Serious

When the Lib Dems “called in” the County Council decision not to let people build windfarms on county farm land, their press release said: “The Conservatives clearly are not taking Climate Change seriously.”

I don’t speak for my colleagues, or for the Conservative Group, or for the Conservative leader or for anybody but myself (and my Conservative colleagues all have their own varied views on this issue, I am sure).  But I can tell them that I personally take “Climate Change” very seriously indeed.  I take it seriously because the current policy direction is crippling our economy, hurting the poor and the vulnerable, driving a stake through the chance of a national commercial recovery and will continue doing all these things for decades to come.  In fact, their predilection to the whirling money-burners suggests to me that it is they who don’t understand the gravity of what they are proposing. 

I argued, vehemently, that we should not have wind farms on county farm land.  Not because I think it’ll stop this whole crazy panic in its tracks, but because it’s a start.  And because it’ll make the people threatened by these pointless, whirling monstrosities sleep easier at night.

Even if you take the whole Man-Made Global Warming argument at face value (which, as a sceptic, I do not) windfarms are no solution.  Anybody who has taken the time to do  the research and examine the business case will quickly see that trying to use wind as a viable, affordable energy source is utterly bonkers (not a technical term.) 

The Liberal Democrats seem to think: “The people of Cambridgeshire want wind farms.”  Well, my yellow friends, perhaps in the city of Cambridge they do.  Where it’s unlikely they’ll actually have to have any.  I’m of the opinion that if Lib-Dem voting areas are so very keen on windfarms then surely that is the obvious place to put them all?  If we must have them, if we must waste money subsidising immensely expensive energy that will never meet our needs in any significant way – then lets put them in a place where they will be welcomed with open arms.  I look forward to the many Lib Dem election leaflets in a year-and-a-half stating: “We will campaign for hundreds of windfarms around your homes, because we know you love them so!”  And then we’ll see, won’t we?

The awesome Watts Up With That website has some recent Wikileaks and other interesting quotes on its latest post.  They are so interesting that I’m going to repost them here.  Admiring Hat tip http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/30/wikileaks-major-un-climate-programme-basically-a-farce/

_________________________________________________________________

Newsbytes from Dr. Benny Peiser at The Global Warming Policy Foundation

A diplomatic cable published last month by the WikiLeaks website reveals that most of the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects in India should not have been certified because they did not reduce emissions beyond those that would have been achieved without foreign investment. Indian officials have apparently known about the problem for at least two years. The revelations imply that millions of tonnes of claimed reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions are mere phantoms, she says, and potentially cast doubt over the principle of carbon trading. –Quirin Schiermeier, Nature News, 27 September 2011 

But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore. – Ottmar Edenhoffer, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 14 November 2010

North Sea gas production has slumped by 25% in the second quarter of the year, an alarming increase in the rate of decline that will cut tax revenues and could put more pressure on government to agree controversial shale gas developments. –Terry Macalister, The Guardian, 30 September 2011

The costs of Alex Salmond’s green energy revolution are “going through the roof” and threaten to bankrupt companies by doubling energy bills, business leaders have warned the First Minister. The Scottish Chambers of Commerce (SCC) said electricity is currently about nine times more expensive to generate from wind farms than gas-powered plants. It warned this would hold back the Scottish economy and lead to businesses going under. –Simon Johnson, The Daily Telegraph, 29 September 2011

Poland would veto any EU legislation that threatened its sovereignty in energy policy, Maciej Olex-Szczytowski, an adviser to the Polish foreign minister on economics and business, said yesterday. –Bloomberg, 28 September 2011

In an age of austerity, cheap gas—domestically produced and available in large quantities—could be a major tool for restoring European prosperity. It allows EU member states to directly tackle their alarming growth of fuel poverty while providing a new means to help rebuild competitiveness. That is an investment no country in Europe can afford not to make. –-Alan Riley, The Wall Street Journal, 30 September 2011

The shale boom of oil & gas is one of the few bright spots in the Obama economy. So it seems more than a bit paradoxical that Obama’s EPA and Department of the Interior continue working in attempts to find an excuse to shut it down — or at least slow it to a crawl. –Al Fin Energy, 29 September 2011

NASA Data Blows Hole In Global Warming Alarmism

NASA Data Blows Hole In Global Warming Alarmism

I didn’t write this.  It’s a repost directly from Yahoo! News Editor’s Picks, written by James Taylor.  It’s just so interesting I couldn’t resist republishing it.

NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth’s atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.

Study co-author Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite, reports that real-world data from NASA’s Terra satellite contradict multiple assumptions fed into alarmist computer models.

“The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show,” Spencer said in a July 26 University of Alabama press release. “There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans.”

In addition to finding that far less heat is being trapped than alarmist computer models have predicted, the NASA satellite data show the atmosphere begins shedding heat into space long before United Nations computer models predicted.

The new findings are extremely important and should dramatically alter the global warming debate.

To read the rest, go HERE.  It’s a great article.

No Offence Intended

No Offence Intended

Chris Huhne, my most favourite of Lib Dems, has made a speech in which he indirectly (but not subtlely) compares Climate Change sceptics to Nazi Appeasers.

Now many of you will know that I’m not given to strong language and try to argue and debate rather than throw a wobbly – but WHAT?

I think, under the circumstances, I have fair reason to declare: “Gloves off” and so I shall.

So let us first remember what the Munich Agreement was all about.  In 1938, as an effort to prevent another world war, the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signed the agreement whose aim was to prevent further military expansion by the Germans.  Winston Churchill and others criticised the deal and were ultimately proved right when it failed to prevent the oncoming global conflict.

So, if you take the Warmists at face value, there are one or two similarities. The world was in danger back then, they believe the world is in danger now.  Chamberlain tried to avoid difficult decisions to preserve the peace, they would say that sceptics want to avoid difficult decisions now (albeit to protect the poor, preserve international prosperity and guard modern life in the face of an ever more ragged theory.)

Now look Chris, there are a few things you need to understand.  Science, you see, doesn’t advance by “consensus”, nor by politics, nor by the edict of powerful men in grey suits with grand titles or well-paid jobs on international panels.  It advances by theory, by evidence, by observation and by test.  Those observations, that evidence and those tests are still going on and they are by no means incontrovertible.

You want to change the world because you believe the world needs changing to avoid destruction.  I understand that and I respect your ambition, if not your position.  Others are terrified that you’ve got it all wrong and will destroy our economy and endanger our society with your extreme plans.  But this is all fair argument.  You believe one thing, others take a different view.  Nothing wrong with that.  This is how adults discuss important issues in the real world.

It becomes problematic because of the unsubtle attempt conflate climate scepticism with Nazi Germany.  When you try and counter people who have perfectly reasonable sceptical points of view and simply wish to challenge some of the things that those on the climate gravy train are pronouncing as absolute fact.  Or who wish to remind you that there are no absolute facts.  Even the best scientific theory is only right until somebody shows it is wrong.

On the one hand, even if you believe the dire predictions of climate alarmists in full, you surely do not believe that the climate is alive?  That is is dominated by a malevolent ideology headed by an evil man?

Do you think that the climate intends to herd millions of innocent people into death camps?  Will the climate remove the gold teeth of its victims in order to fund its further activities?  Will the climate employ doctors to experiment and mutiliate children, sterilise women (without anaesthetic, no less, not that it would be in any way okay if anaesthetic was available)?  Will the Climate force people to dig their own mass graves and then murder them with volleys of machine gun fire while they huddle in terrified little lines?  Will the Climate, under its National Socialist banner, set up a series of death camps whose main and only business is to find ever more convenient ways to kill people?

I put it to you, Chris Huhne MP, that there are only two reasons to use your subtle nazi suggestion.  The first is that you are not very good at debate and prefer to use nasty innuendo as your tool of choice.  The second is that you are so convinced you are right that you are prepared to say anything, do anything, to create your envisioned world utopia.  If the former, shame on you for being so feeble.  If the latter – that rather reminds me of somebody else.

By all means make your case and your speeches.  You might be right, you certainly seem to strongly believe you are.  But how about giving the references to the holocaust, the second world war, or the nazis a rest, hmmm?  There’s nothing big or clever about comparing people who don’t agree with you to nazis or their appeasers.  Chris Huhne, MP, this sort of dialogue just makes you sound like a nasty little man.  For myself, I’d rather you take your petty, simplistic, wrong-headed accusations and your ill-placed and inaccurate Nazi metaphors and stick them where the sun doesn’t shine.  No offense intended.  Mate.

Sketching Ideas

Sketching Ideas

Whatever side of the global warming climate change argument you sit, you have to admit this is a very well-made little piece, I think.

Enjoy!