Lean times for the alarmists - by Richard... Monday, March 08, 2010

Lean times for the alarmists - by Richard... Monday, March 08, 2010

"It may just be one of the most ominous bits of evidence yet that global warming could run out of control," writes Geoffrey Lean. 

"Scientists are beginning to find that methane frozen in permafrost under the Arctic Ocean is bubbling up to the surface and reaching the atmosphere, raising concerns that one of the most-feared potential self-reinforcing effects of climate change may be starting to get under way."

You have to read right down to the end of the report, however, to find the great man writing: "It is far too early to draw firm conclusions from the findings." 

Then we learn that "Only a tiny amount of methane has been released so far compared to what is emitted elsewhere in the world and the Alaskan researchers are only beginning to track how the methane moves into the atmosphere." 

Aha, though, never fear ... er ... please do fear. Be very afraid, please – my job depends on it. This, Lean assures us: " ... certainly bears watching closely. It could turn out to be one more piece of evidence that the effects of climate change are becoming evident faster than anyone predicted."

They are getting desperate. It'll be farting cows next.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

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No answers in the soil - by Richard... Sunday, March 07, 2010

In The Observer is a report on a fascinating scientific dispute which provides a graphic illustration of the uncertainties of climate science and the unreliability of predictions offered by disparate scientists – to say nothing of the utter shambles of the research effort.

The nature of the dispute seems clear enough from the article headline, which tells us: "Rise in UK carbon emissions disputed by report". The strap lines further elucidates the issue, with the information that "Soil deposits of CO2 'not fuelling global warming yet – but will in future'".

Thus informed, we learn from the text that a major study for the UK government "has cast doubt over claims that rising temperatures are causing soil to pump greater amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, further fuelling global warming."

The original claim was reported in September 2005 in the journal Nature (Bellamy, P H, et al) covered at the time by The Guardian. Then, under one of those classic scare headlines, we were told that, "Loss of soil carbon 'will speed global warming'", the piece retailing the claim that, over the previous 25 years 100 million tons of carbon dioxide had been released by the soil of England and Wales. 

Leaving us in no doubt as to the importance of this release, we were told that the figure cancelled out all emissions cuts in the UK since 1990.

As to the source of the information upon which the claim was made, we learn that it was derived from the National Soil Inventory, carried out initially between 1978 and 1983, and again from 1994 to 2003, by the National Soil Resources Institute at Cranfield University.

In full scare mode, professor Guy Kirk of the university – and a co-author of the Nature paper - declared that it had been reckoned that the CO2 fertilisation effect was offsetting about 25 percent of the direct human-induced carbon dioxide emissions. He added that it was reckoned that the soil temperature emission effect would catch up in maybe 10 to 50 years' time. But, according to his analysis, "We are showing that it seems to be happening rather faster than that."

To complete the current Observer "take" on this claim, we are now told that a national survey of the soils of Great Britain, funded by DEFRA, claims to have found no net loss of carbon over approximately the same period. Now, a special study group is being proposed, with an independent statistical expert, to examine why the reports differ and which result is more likely to be correct.

However, if we now step aside from the newspaper report and look at the National Soil Inventory, we find some fascinating detail which would seem completely to re-frame the debate.

The concept, it appears, arose in 1976 from a recommendation of the Soil Science Committee of the Joint Consultative Organisation for Research and Development in Agriculture. It wanted information on "the total content and extractable amount of biologically important trace elements in soil samples representing their principal soil series," entirely for agricultural purposes.

From the outset, then, this was not intended as a climatic research tool. Soil sampling was restricted to the uppermost six inches of mineral soil (or less if rock intervened), or of peat, as appropriate. Litter layers were not sampled. 

Furthermore, when samples were estimated to have an organic carbon content of greater than 18 percent, these were classified organic soils and no carbon estimation was made. It was considered that the contribution of mineral matter to their behaviour was small. In other words, no attempt was made to determine climatically relevant carbon assays. That could hardly be scaled up to give an accurate national carbon budget.

Nevertheless, with the signing of the Kyoto agreement, the British government needed data on carbon level in soil and between 2000 and 2003 financed a project costing £183,219 to quantify soil carbon fluxes associated with land management and land use change. This was led by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH).

In 2001, the department launched another project, this one costing £90,971, to set up a UK soil database.

The subject was of sufficient concern for Professor D Powlson of Rothamsted Research to set a project entitled: "Impact of soil carbon decomposition on future global climate." Starting in March 2004 and lasting a year, this cost £28,104. Before that was complete, though, along came Kirk with his assertions in the Nature paper. In response, DEFRA commissioned a review – at a cost, incidentally, of £11,000 – under the heading: "Unravelling the loss of Soil Carbon". 

Interestingly – and this was back in 2006 - its report noted that there was a "high degree of uncertainty" in the data. This, it was surmised, mainly derived from:

… limitations in our measurement and sampling strategies, a lack of background information (e.g. management / history) at re-sampling sites, the lack of standard reference depth markers in the soil (so that the soil sampled at successive samplings can be compared on a like-for-like basis), lack of knowledge of C loss processes, lack of knowledge concerning the interaction of soil C conserving practices and future environmental change.

The following year an expert group was set up, this little exercise costing £40,124. It noted:

Current literature on the state of soil carbon levels in UK soils is equivocal. Predictions of future changes in soil carbon levels related to land use and climate change are highly uncertain, so evidence-based policy setting is extremely difficult.

It took another year for it to identify "a strategic and coordinated programme of work to deliver integration of existing UK data on soil carbon (and greenhouse gas fluxes)." It also established a practical methodological framework through which data could be integrated, allowing gaps and uncertainties to be quantified. 

Crucially, it reported on the need to collate UK data on soil carbon and the release of greenhouse gases in relation to land management. This would, it said, enable a clear picture to be gained of the current state of UK soil carbon and the processes driving change, and inform model predictions of future changes. 

Even as the expert group was being recruited, however – and long before it had reported – Kirk had been busy obtaining funding from the Natural Environment Research Council. With a grant of £176,931, he set up a project labelled: "An improved empirical model of soil carbon dynamics in temperate ecosystems."

Starting on 2 Jan 2007 - 1 Jul 2009, Kirk repeated the 2005 mantra, that previously "it was thought that most soil carbon was safely locked away. But a recently-completed survey of the soils of England and Wales by members of the proposed project has shown losses of carbon over the past 25 years on an enormous scale: enough to cancel the UK's reductions in carbon emissions from fossil fuels." For the money, Kirk proposed to improve the soundness of current computer model predictions, based on updated mathematical modelling.

Even while he was thus toiling, the DEFRA soil survey was being updated having started once more in 2005. By 2008, data collection was complete, requiring the department then to spend £134,430 on another project to assemble all the data and present it in useable form, the work having been completed last year.

This brings us back to the Observerreport, where the work is fronted by professor Bridget Emmett (in left of picture, addressing our illustrious leader) of the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH). She contradicts Bellamy, P H, et al, stating: "Overall there was no change in carbon concentration ... and [we] cannot confirm the loss reported by the National Soil Inventory." 

Needless to say, she offers as consolation prize, with the assertion that the absence of carbon loss should not be taken to mean the absence of a threat. In the long term, she says, on the basis of computer modelling, scientists predict a "tipping point" when the faster activity of microbes in warmer soils starts to generate more CO2 than can be absorbed by plants.

Kirk, however, is unrepentant. His team is still "confident in our results [that] there was a net loss of carbon". But he said subsequent studies had suggested that "at best" 10 percent of the loss of carbon was due to climate change, and the rest was due to changes in land use and management, such as conversion of grassland to crops.

Emmett has the last word on this. "The amount of carbon in topsoils across England and Wales is about 2 billion tons, so detecting a change of even 4 million tonnes per year is very challenging," she says. "Small differences in methods between the two surveys can therefore have a large effect." 

Tactfully, she does not mention an earlier critique of Bellamy, P H, et al which noted the admission from the Kirk team that they "do not have sufficient data at the scale of the National Soil Inventory to explore these [land use]effects." Then as now, they did not know the role played by land use, which means that, even if carbon levels had fallen, they had no idea of the role played by climate change.

Meanwhile, despite Kirk spending £176,931 on modelling carbon dynamics in temperate soils, DEFRA is shelling out another £99,712 on a project entitled: "Modelling the impact of climate change on soils using UK Climate Projections," aiming to finish this year.

Not to be outdone, the NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Boorman , theUniversity of Exeter and the University of Leeds are sharing a £354,109 grant on the "impacts of climate change on erosion, sediment transport and soil carbon in the UK and Europe."

Tackling these challenges at national and regional scales will necessitate the development of new modelling approaches capable of investigating the feedbacks, we are told, with the researchers seeking to discover whether the effects of future changes in climate on the redistribution of soil organic carbon within the landscape be quantified and incorporated as a feedback into future models of terrestrial carbon biogeochemistry.

With more models than an Airfix catalogue, however, and £1,118,600 of taxpayers' money spent, it seems we are no further forward than when we started. The answer, most definitely, does not lie in the soil.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

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Real politics - by Richard...

The statement last week from the Met Office that they were no longer going to rely on their seasonal forecasts provoked obvious responses, but one wonders whether the implications have fully sunk in.

While the headline "barbeque summer" predictions have provided endless entertainment, these forecasts have a strategic purpose. They are used by local authorities, power generators and others for planning purposes. And it was last year's optimistic forecast that contributed to the lack of preparedness for the hard winter, leaving many highway authorities short of grit and salt.

Thus, if the Met Office is no longer going to offer forecasts to public utilities and other commercial users, these will be "flying blind", and will either have to plan on a worst case scenario or risk not being able to deliver if we experience next winter anything like we have just suffered – or even worse.

No more so it this the case than with electricity generation. During the intense cold last month, reserve capacity was briefly down to seven percent. An outage by a major power station would have precipitated power cuts, leaving vast areas of the country in the dark and cold.

Delays and incompetence by successive administrations, and the slavish adherence to the "green" agenda means that we are already operating with inadequate margins. And, to that extent, we are already living on borrowed time. Our lights stay on in the winter entirely by luck, rather than judgement. 

For sure, the utilities are responding to an expected shortfall by building new CCGT plants, which means that price rather than power cuts may be the future issue. But that does not rule out the possibility of major breakdown, or a deterioration in the political situation elsewhere in the world, that leaves us short of power.

Thus, the Booker column today is particularly apposite, with him pointing out that, in order of political priorities, the security of our energy supplies probably comes second only to dealing with the mounting deficit.

The specific issues that Booker raises have been rehearsed so frequently on this blog that they need no repetition, other than to point out that Mr Cameron seems to be on the brink of achieving what many might have thought impossible – delivering an energy policy which is even worse than Labour's. 

What is particularly damning though is that the Tory response, as is so often the case, is simply to ignore the issue. One assumes that they hope that by not talking about it, it will not become a debating point during the election campaign.

However, that may be a forlorn hope. Last week, energy and climate change secretary Ed Miliband – possibly sensing that there is political advantage to be gained - challenged Cameron to spell out his "renewable energy strategy", claiming that conflicting signals from Conservatives were "creating uncertainty for industry".

Miliband homed in on the inconsistencies in the Tory approach to wind power, where they are opposing onshore turbines, allowing free rein to Conservative controlled councils which have turned down 60 percent of applications for new wind farms.

This challenge, if repeated, may force Cameron out into the open, fronting a repost with his commitment (so far unpublished) to ramp up micro-generation. This stance could propel energy policy into the mainstream as the likes of Monbiot pitch in and tear the Tory plans to shreds. That will sour both the greens and the hard-headed realists, leaving the Boy with another political wreck on his hands.

One can see the Boy's problems though. The only short-term answers to this mess are to commit to lifting the closure threat to the coal-fired powers stations, imposed by the EU's large combustion plant directive, supporting the rapid development of new coal-fired plants, expanding the coal industry and ditching the renewable policy altogether.

In the longer term, he needs to put the nuclear energy programme on an emergency footing, with the sort of priority afforded to it that is usually only given in wartime.

Not only would that be personally impossible for Cameron to do – he is, after all, a sincere believer in the warmist cult – it would destroy his party's carefully nurtured, if fading, green credentials. Tellingly, it would also put him on a collision course with the EU. None of those things the Boy could even contemplate. The fact that a robust, no-nonsense approach might win him the election is neither here nor there.

Thus, it seems, the Tories will continue to attempt a fudge, skirting round the edges, trying to avoid a real debate. Labour will continue cherry-picking inconsistencies while studiously avoiding mention of their own, aided and abetted by the political claque and the media lobby correspondents who are completely out of their depths.

Yet, despite their self-important prattling, this time they may not have it all their own way. There is now the growing influence of the internet. Legend has it that president Obama's online presence and e-mail campaigning made a significant contribution to his electoral victory last year, and this is provoking discussion on this side of the Atlantic on the role the "new media" will play in the election.

Some pundits appear to be believe it will be quite limited, not least as the overtly political blogs have degenerated into poor replicas of MSM political diaries, concentrating on low-grade party political tat and personality politics.

But that is to ignore the wide range of "technical" blogs such as Watts up with that, which have readership levels which outstrip even the biggest of the British political blogs. They are dealing with highly political issues – real politics instead of Westminster bubble gum. And it is real politics, such as whether the lights are going out, which may increasingly call the shots and decide where votes are cast.

Unless Mr Cameron can answer satisfactorily the deceptively simple question, "how are you going to keep the lights on?", he may be riding for a fall.

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