Still working it out - by Richard... Friday, February 26, 2010

Still working it out - by Richard... Friday, February 26, 2010

Highly significant – without any doubt – is the news that Pachauri has cancelled a high-profile speaking engagement in the United States (the blog reporting this having some delicious comments of its own). This comes on the back of a report in WSJ and Earth Times on major changes afoot in the IPCC.

Whether this is simply damage limitation, with cosmetic changes being made, or there is something more profound going on, is difficult to judge. My guess is that we've damaged the IPCC far more than they are admitting openly, and there is some real heart-searching going on.

However, quick and dirty knee-jerk comment is often wrong – as I have found to my cost, all too often. I'm going to read around this one, and think about it, coming up with a more considered post over the weekend.

Meanwhile, it looks as if I've been outed (see page 11). I'd better crawl back under my stone and hide.

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD

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A strange and ugly place - by Richard...

Sky News is by no means alone amongst the media pundits suggesting that the Cameron experiment is about to crash and burn, his party not even being the largest in the next parliament.

This is, of course, just fluff based on a run of bad polls. The election campaign has yet formally to begin and, as we are constantly reminded, a week is a long time in politics. Anything can happen.

However, prediction in politics is as much a black art as it is a science. Reading the mood and "gut instinct" has as much to play as does the number-crunching and all the rest.

As a "player" who campaigned in both the 1997 elections – as a candidate for the Referendum Party – in the 2001 elections, as an agent for UKP, running a troika of candidates, and in the 2005 elections for the Tories, alongside a sitting MP, I was well-placed to read the mood music in each. And in each, the result was predictable, and I – with millions of others – called the result correctly.

This election is different. There is, as I have recorded many times, a different mood abroad. But there is also a sullenness, indifference and occasionally anger, at the whole political process. And with all the confounding factors, of which there are too many to explore in a short post, the outcome of this coming contest is unreadable.

One thing I know for sure. Never in my adult life have I ever loathed a challenger with such intensity. I have disliked politicians, distrusted them – even hated them. But never have I loathed an individual so much as I do Cameron that I feel physically ill watching him on television or hearing his voice.

In that, I know I am not alone. How much that will be a factor in the coming election is impossible to say. But the polls seem to reinforce the mood and the "gut instinct" – Cameron isn't cutting it. He may drag a narrow "victory" out of the election – just as he did with the euros, with ten percent of the popular vote. But it will not be a mandate.

Politics has become a strange and ugly place. We are perhaps seeing history made, the like of which few alive in England have seen before.

COMMENT THREAD

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Don't laugh - by Richard...

Close to the mood of the public, that is what theDaily Express is telling its readers – with some panache, putting their injunction on the front page.

Our dedicated band of climate "scientists" have a real problem here, as the paper declares that they "stunned" Britons suffering the coldest winter for 30 years by claiming last month was the hottest January the world has ever seen.

The legend is conveyed to us by Australian "weather expert" professor Neville Nicholls, of Monash University in Melbourne. He is cited as saying: "January, according to satellite data, was the hottest January we've ever seen." He adds: "It's not warming the same everywhere but it is really quite challenging to find places that haven't warmed in the past 50 years."

But we also get UK forecaster Jonathan Powell, of Positive Weather Solutions. He tells us: "If it is the case and it is borne out that January was the hottest on record, it is still no marker towards climate change." Powell then adds: "It's all part of a cyclical issue and nothing should be read too deeply into that."

He continues: "It's been the coldest for 30 years in Britain but we predicted that and climate change always tends to throw up anomalies. It's all in line with predictions and I won't be sold on climate change at all. The data is (sic) either faulty or manufactured to make it look like it shouldn't."

There is, of course, no question about the latter assertion. The "global" temperature is manufactured. It isn't real. All it represents is a particular value from a particular set of heavily adjusted temperature measurements, assembled using questionable and less than transparent methodology.

The flaws in the whole concept were pointed out by none other than James Hansen, and now the absurdity is being revisited, with predictable results. Given what has been made of it though, tears rather than laughter are perhaps more appropriate.

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD

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€3.9 billion out of thin air - by Richard...

So desperate is the EU commission to pursue its fantasy of "carbon capture and storage" (CCS) for coal-fired power stations that it is conjuring money out of thin air to kick-start the scheme – a cool €3.9 billion.

Needless to say, though, there is no such thing as a free euro. The bill will eventually have to be picked up by electricity consumers throughout the EU.

The magic trick being pulled off by the commission is to issue 300 million carbon "allowances", supposedly from a reserve stock, and to give them – entirely free of charge - to generators who are willing to build CCS demonstration projects.

At the current market price of about €13 each, equivalent to one ton of carbon dioxide, the price could increase significantly if the price rises. Generators who are given the allowances can sell them to other generators who are short of carbon quota, the sums paid being recovered through hidden levies on electricity bills.

The first tranche of 200 million will be awarded in 2011, with the remainder issued in 2013, covering up to eight schemes. Provision is also being made to fund experimental renewable energy projects.

Contributions from national governments and generators are also expected and, if the Energy Bill currently going through parliament succeeds, four of the projects may be built in Britain, at an estimated cost of up to £1 billion each.

As if this wasn't sufficient madness, the Tory and Lib-Dim oppositions ganged up on the government this week, demanding mandatory emission caps on coal-fired plants – sufficiently restrictive to ensure that no generator could continue in business.

Even this government had the sense to realise quite how mad the opposition proposal was, using its majority to defeat an amendment to the Bill. But the vote was a close-run thing, slashing the in-built 57-strong majority to just eight.

There really is a special kind of madness infecting this current batch of MPs, in what is contemptuously referred to as the "rotten parliament" – one which seems oblivious to the consequences of its actions and is determined to saddle the British public with unaffordable costs, all to pursue its obsession with global warming.

But, if that madness is afflicting MPs, it has spread to the media as well. Although it can get worked up about the EU paying £200,000 for a propaganda comic, the idea that the EU commission can, effectively, write a cheque for €3.9 billion and give it to generators so that they can bury their flue gasses in the ground, seems wholly unworthy of comment.

And nor does the madness stop there. Only this week, the European Investment Bank (EIB) announced that it hoped to lend at least €20 billion to fund climate change initiatives during the forthcoming year.

This is up from the almost €17 billion that was lent in 2009, itself a 73 percent increase on 2008 when €9.8 billion was handed out. The Bank now prides itself on having "delivered" on its promise to make the fight against climate change one of its priorities in 2009.

Of the €16.9 billion lent, the highest category of lending was for renewable energy projects, which received €4.2 billion, split mainly between solar projects and windmills. For energy efficiency €1.5 billion was lent, R&D for cleaner transport got€4.7 billion and urban transport improvements got €5.5 billion.

There is, of course, a major opportunity cost to pay here, as money directed at these valueless schemes cannot be lent to enterprises engaged in more productive and necessary schemes – like building urgently needed conventional power stations.

And just to put the cap on the madness, the British government announced yesterday that is was offering grants of up to £30m to encourage Mitsubishi to invest £100m in the first phase of a wind power research programme.

Apart from anything else, one wonders why this is necessary as the EU is already contributing €14.6 million to a €22.6 million research project on the design of advanced windmills, calledUPWIND. It is not due to finish until February next year.

When madness grips, though, sense and reason goes out the window – together with huge amounts of our money. And such is the scale of the madness that no one seems to know nor care.

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD

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Quality, not volume - by Richard... Thursday, February 25, 2010

The global warming began falling in Staten Island NY at 8 am their time (five hours behind the UK). By the time it has finished, perhaps by tomorrow morning, 12-14 inches may have accumulated, whipped up by strong winds, possibly gusting to hurricane force.

Not under any conceivable circumstances however, are the warmists prepared to concede that this – or the exceptionally hard winter throughout the northern hemisphere – in any way affects their beliefs.

Instead, we hear tell that climate scientists must do more to work out how exceptionally cold winters or a dip in world temperatures fit their theories of global warming if they are to persuade an increasingly sceptical public.

And there lies a brilliant illustration of exactly where the so-called science has gone completely off the rails. The mindset is focused on trying to make "inconvenient truths" fit the hypothesis, rather than evaluating the new conditions to see if they refute it.

This mindset is further betrayed by the egregious Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research. As to why global temperatures have not matched a peak set in 1998, or in 2005, his view is that there could be a failure to account for rapid warming in parts of the Arctic, where sea ice had melted, and where there were fewer monitoring stations.

In other words, Trenberth is unable to accept evidence of cooling. It must be an artefact – the result of an incomplete monitoring network.

There is no place to go with this kind of distorted logic. It comes from the same wellspring as Dr Judith Curry, who believes that the rise in scepticism stems from a failure of the "climate community" to communicate effectively.

This line, it seems, is very much the preferred alibi of failed doctrines. We heard exactly that from former Tory leader Michael Howard, after the Tory trouncing at the 2004 Euro elections. We are hearing very much the same from Cameron's Conservatives, to explain their lacklustre performance in the polls. And we hear it constantly from the European Union, as the "people of Europe" fail to love it.

Trenberth says, viz à viz the "non cooling" that we (the warmists) need better analysis of what's going on, so that "everyone, politicians and the general public, are informed about our current understanding of what is happening." Furthermore, he wants more statements in a much quicker fashion instead of waiting for another six years for the next IPCC report.

He, like so many others, in so many disparate fields, fails to understand that it is the quality of the message, not the volume and speed with which it is delivered, which eventually prevails.

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD