Climate Clips from CCnet & Benny Peiser

Britain’s Anti-Green Rollback Accelerating

‘Chris Huhne’s Zealous Ambition Is Being Reined Back’
 

Ministers are preparing to veto major new wind farms in the British countryside and cut back their subsidies, according to senior Whitehall sources. The decision to pull back from onshore wind farms comes after more than 100 backbench Conservative MPs mounted a rebellion against turbines blighting rural areas. Senior Conservatives have seen an opportunity to re-think policy since Chris Huhne, the former Liberal Democrat Energy Secretary, resigned to fight charges of perverting the course of justice in a speeding case. “Chris Huhne’s zealous ambition is being reined back,” one top Whitehall source said. “There’s already enough being built and developed." --Rowena Mason, The Daily Telegraph, 16 April 2012



Ministers are to scrap plans for a ‘conservatory tax’ following a massive Tory backlash. A senior Government source told the Mail that the proposals are ‘dead in the water’. This latest abrupt U-turn comes only a week after we revealed the move which would force homeowners to fork out hundreds of pounds extra on measures to improve energy efficiency when they build an extension or fit a boiler. Although the Liberal Democrat-inspired plans are still out for consultation, the source said: ‘We are absolutely not going to have a conservatory tax. It is an attack on aspiration and we want nothing to do with it. It will be blocked.’ --Jason Groves,Daily Mail, 16 April 2012




A powerful group of Conservative ministers has launched an attempt to torpedo the coalition’s flagship “green” home improvement scheme in a move which will spark a major new rift with the Liberal Democrats. Leading Tories inside and outside the cabinet believe the £14 billion “Green Deal” – due to start in six months’ time – must be ditched because it risks leaving key “squeezed middle” voters out of pocket by several thousands of pounds. A senior Tory source told The Sunday Telegraph last night: “The Green Deal was Chris Huhne’s baby. He has gone now and this is the right time to kill it off. Forcing people to pay thousands of pounds extra for unwanted home insulation is the last thing hard-pressed families need at the moment. It’s madness.” --Patrick Hennessy, The Sunday Telegraph, 15 April 2012



The recent setbacks reflect deep confusion over the main governing party's direction on green policy. Chancellor George Osborne has repeatedly taken the side against green subsidies. MPs and Lords are under near-constant lobbying [the Guardian's phrase for CCNet] from Lord Lawson's climate sceptic group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation. One prominent Tory MP said: "As someone who's convinced by the science, and wants to tackle climate change, I'm finding myself an endangered species within my own party." --Fiona Harvey, The Guardian, 16 April 2012



It did not take long. Last month, Matt Ridley argued in a Spectator cover story that the wind farm agenda is in effect dead, having collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions. The only question is when our ministers would realise. In an interview with the Sunday Times, climate change minister Greg Barker admits that his department has adopted an ‘unbalanced’ approach to wind farms and will now look at other options.  To Ridley, this was – at root – an intellectual error. An example of how the establishment, and entire government machine, can sponsor something that makes no economic or environmental sense – but no one dares point this out, because the cause is seen as noble. --Fraser Nelson, The Spectator, 15 April 2012




To an almost audible sigh of relief from householders across the land, the Government has now promised to scrap its hare-brained scheme to impose a spurious environmental ‘tax’ on home improvements. The proposal was to force anyone building an extension or conservatory, or installing new windows or a boiler, to spend a small fortune putting in extra insulation. It was all part of the Coalition’s largely bogus Green agenda which also involves covering large swathes of the countryside with pointless wind farms, risking an energy crisis by dithering over building a new generation of nuclear power stations, and trying to tax air travel to death. But while the U-turn marks a welcome outbreak of common sense, why on earth was the tax ever contemplated? --Editorial, Daily Mail, 16 April 2012



Emperor penguins, whose long treks across Antarctic ice to mate have been immortalised by Hollywood, are heading towards extinction, scientists say. Based on predictions of sea ice extent from climate change models, the penguins are likely to see their numbers plummet by 95% by 2100. That level of decline could wreak havoc on the delicate Antarctic food chain. The research is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. --BBC News, 26 January 2009


Nearly twice as many emperor penguins inhabit Antarctica as was thought. UK, US and Australian scientists used satellite technology to trace and count the iconic birds, finding them to number almost 600,000. The extent of sea ice in the Antarctic has been relatively stable in recent years (unlike in the Arctic), although this picture hides some fairly large regional variations. --Jonathan Amos, BBC News, 13 April 2012



Many know Benny Peiser only as the pesky director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation who routinely embarrasses man-made climate change diehards with his weekly compilation of green policy flops -- washouts such as Solon, Q-Cells, Solar Millennium and Solarhybrid. These are all once-thriving German solar energy firms that recently filed for bankruptcy, like America's Solyndra. The irreverent Peiser email report usually consists of a half-dozen or so stinging mainstream news clips with links, chosen partly because they include a "Benny" -- a ready-made, slap-in-the-face headline -- such as the London Daily Telegraph's "Climate scientists are losing the public debate on global warming." But every now and then, a wickedly droll "Double Benny" headline will unexpectedly pop up. --Ron Arnold, The Washington Examiner, 13 April 2012


1) Anti-Green Rollback: Ministers Preparing To Veto Windfarms - The Daily Telegraph, 16 April 2012

2) U-Turn: Government To Scrap Green Tax On Home Extensions - Daily Mail, 16 April 2012

3) Top Tories Try To Torpedo Green Deal - The Sunday Telegraph, 15 April 2012

4) UK Energy Minister Vows: ‘No More Wind Farms’ (On Land) - The Sunday Times, 15 April 2012

5) Fraser Nelson: Downfall - The Spectator, 15 April 2012

6) London Debate Tomorrow: EU Climate Policy – Priority or Backseat? - European Centre for Energy and Resource Security

Polar bears 'larger population than ever.'

CCNet – 5 April 2012
The Climate Policy Network

Healthy Polar Bear Count Confounds Doomsayers

The debate about climate change and its impact on polar bears has intensified with the release of a survey that shows the bear population in a key part of northern Canada is far larger than many scientists thought, and might be growing. The number of bears along the western shore of Hudson Bay, believed to be among the most threatened bear subpopulations, stands at 1,013 and could be even higher, according to the results of an aerial survey released Wednesday by the Government of Nunavut. The study shows that “the bear population is not in crisis as people believed,” said Drikus Gissing, Nunavut’s director of wildlife management. “There is no doom and gloom.” He said the media in southern Canada has led people to believe polar bears are endangered. “They are not.” He added that there are about 25,000 polar bears across Canada’s Arctic. “That’s likely the highest [population level] there has ever been.” --Paul Waldie, The Globe and Mail, 5 April 2012

A recent aerial survey of Western Hudson Bay polar bears shows the population has increased slightly to about 1,000 animals, according to the Government of Nunavut. A 2006 study hypothesized that if the climate continued to warm, the polar bear population would decline. "If I could convey one message here, it's that polar bears are not endangered,” Drikus Gissing, director of wildlife with the Government of Nunavut, said. “And this confirms it. They are not endangered. There are concerns about the effects of global warming, but they are not endangered." --Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 5 April 2012

Securing The Future? The Government debate.

As a non science person, I welcome good news. Why is Dave so determined on bad negative news that Government and profiteers can use to make my life, my kids lives and my grandchildren's lives bad right now? Whilst we argue one thing is for sure, the economics of green is killing people and making their life harder now and yet they reverse the truth by saying 'what if we are wrong? It's like insurance. We can't take a chance' they say. So they confess it is only theory.  But what isn't theory is that they are ruining us now already and they don't know they are correct. They insist that the rest of us, who do not believe them one iota, must make sacrifices for theory and modelling. Ok we on the other side are quite happy to disagree and allow the Greens to follow their beliefs and take the Hair Shirt if they wish but they want the rest of us to go down with them. So for starters let people like Dave live without all the essentials and show the rest how its done but please allow us to disagree and decide unilaterally. Of course there has been warming. We have been climbing out of the Little Ice Age since about 1750. Why do these people ignore history to make their cases? I do not need references to make the historic points I have made in my last post. It is obvious to me that bullsh-t baffles brains and there is nothing better than academics arguing about the obvious to illustrate that. So please do tell me. If the Planet has been too hostile for mankind most of its life, and we have only been here for the last second of a day of its life, why, as we like it, is as it is supposed to be? Ok tell me. Who gets to choose how it should be? And if 7 billion of us reach a consencus on that, how do we keep it like it? How big and effective do these Greens think mankind really is? The Planet will become too hostile for mankind no matter what we do and it too will eventually be consumed. So no we cannot 'Save The Planet' and that means the whole premise is false then doesn't it? So Dave grab the good news with glee. Don't knock it mate!

Dr David Evans lays a challenge on AGW.

The evidence against AGW and the gauntlet laid

Malaria 2007 & Malaria 2011

Malaria 2007

Global warming will put millions more people at risk of malaria and dengue fever, according to a United Nations report that calls for an urgent review of the health dangers posed by climate change. Increases in rainfall, temperature and humidity will favor the spread of malaria-transmitting mosquitoes over a wider range and to higher altitudes, according to the 2007-2008 Human Development Report, released today. That could put 220 million to 400 million additional people at greater risk of the disease that kills about 1 million a year, mostly in Africa. --Bloomberg, 27 November 2007

Malaria 2011

Malaria-carrying mosquitoes are disappearing in some parts of Africa, but scientists are unsure as to why. Figures indicate controls such as anti-mosquito bed nets are having a significant impact on the incidence of malaria in some sub-Saharan countries. But in Malaria Journal, researchers say mosquitoes are also disappearing from areas with few controls. Data from countries such as Tanzania, Eritrea, Rwanda, Kenya and Zambia all indicate that the incidence of malaria is dropping fast. --Matt McGrath, BBC News, 26 August 2011

Thanks to the GWPF

With thanks to Benny Peiser and The Global Warming Policy Foundation. 

The China Syndrome

5) Andrew Orlowski: Chinese coal blamed for global warming er... cooling

The Register, 5 July 2011

The refusal of the global temperatures to rise as predicted has caused much angst among academics. "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't," wrote one in 2009. Either the instruments were wrong, or the heat energy had gone missing somewhere.

Now a team of academics, after tweaking a statistical model to include sulphur emissions, suggest that coal power stations may be to blame for a lack of global warming since 1998. The IPCC's 2007 assessment but acknowledged the negative radiative forcing (aka, cooling effect) of both natural aerosols from volcanoes and manmade aerosols, but admitted the level of scientific understanding was low.

A team of two geographers and two economists headed by Professor Robert Kaufmann at the Department of Geography in Boston publish their results in a new paper Reconciling anthropogenic climate change with observed temperature 1998-2008 [PDF], which includes manmade emissions of sulphur and simulates the flat temperatures since 1998. Kaufmann has a PhD in energy management policy. In this paper, he and his colleagues revisit "a simplified model" from 2006 (PDF) containing statistically estimated equations for three variables: global surface temperature, CO₂ and CH₄. The actual temperature differences described in the new paper are tiny – with variations from model predictions of 0.1°C.

"Results indicate that net anthropogenic forcing rises slower than previous decades because the cooling effects of sulfur emissions grow in tandem with the warming effects greenhouse gas concentrations. This slow-down, along with declining solar insolation and a change from El Nino to La Nina conditions, enables the model to simulate the lack of warming after 1998," the team explains.

The model estimates a 0.06W/m² increase in cooling since 2002. Declining sulphur emissions between 1990 and 2002 – caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the switch to gas – had a warming effect of 0.19W/m².

Kaufmann et al declare that aerosol cooling is "consistent with" warming from manmade greenhouse gases. Recent studies suggest greenhouse gas emissions may be masking a long-term cooling trend as solar activity declines.

Climate scientist Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology, doesn't find the economists' statistical theatrics convincing. She wonders why the short-lived regional increases in particulates should have a global effect on temperatures. She also notes that there has been no increase in aerosols, either globally or over East Asia, from 2000 to 2006; Chinese emissions only rose in the period 2004 to 2007. Kaufmann et al do acknowledge that a La Nina weather pattern cooled the planet between 1998 and 2000, while a warm El Nino increased temperatures in 2002 and again in 2010.

"The political consequence of this article seems to be that the simplest solution to global warming is for the Chinese to burn more coal, which they intend to do anyway," writes Curry.

Doubtless they will. First we blame them for warming the planet, but now we blame them for cooling the planet.

Wind Turbine Waste Mountain.

Broken Wind Turbine Blades Create Mountainous Waste Problem  - June 12th,

Ultra-green Denmark admits it has no idea what to do with a worrisome mountain of old and broken wind turbine blades. The composite material can’t be recycled. In a story from Denmark’s leading business newspaper Dagbladet Børsen (June 10, 2011) experts warn, “As the wind becomes a central part of energy supply, a huge waste problem is growing with similar speed.”  Windy Scandinavia has hit this unanticipated hurdle because a key material in constructing wind turbines, carbon fibre composite, cannot be recycled and is fast filling landfills or else is being burned creating toxic emissions. The report admits, “a gigantic mountain of scrap blades is building up.”

Tom Løgstrup Andersen from Risø DTU, a senior development engineer who has spent two decades researching fiberglass composites admits, "When a turbine is operating, it produces green energy. But when it is worn, it is suddenly a problem. There exists no concrete solution to reusing blades from wind turbines.”

Poor Planning, Poor Technology Defeats Renewables Goal - Denmark has 6,000 wind turbines serving a population of 5.3 million and when the wind conditions are just right wind produces a mere 19 percent of its electricity. Yet despite huge financial investment no conventional power plant has yet been shut down while Danish electricity costs to consumers are the highest in Europe, according to research by energy specialist, Dr. Vic Mason.

Turbine blades routinely exceed 60 meters in length and nearly all are manufactured from thermoset plastics that cannot be recycled once their useful life has expired. The special plastic is the only material currently known that meets reliability standards due to their relatively high strength and low weight properties.

Dr. Mason cites evidence that many small turbines have collapsed in close proximity to human dwellings [1; 2; 3], and recently two big Danish wind turbines lost blades and scattered sharp pieces of carbon fibre up to 500 meters from the tower base in high winds [4.]. Similar events have also been reported in Sweden, northern England and Scotland [5.]. Blade failure can be lethal and catastrophic as shown by  video footage.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=cdd_1203701257

Indeed, the death toll from wind turbines in recent decades is huge when compared with nuclear accidents. In 2008 in the U.S. alone there were 41 worker fatalities and 16 non-worker deaths. As the film shows, ironically, in high winds the turbines must be stopped because they are easily damaged. Carbon fibre has been the material of choice because of lightness and efficiency of construction. But the stress damage to fibre composites is poorly understood to begin with and wear and tear on blades can be considerable. Also, over time a build-up of dead bugs, plus other wear and tear reduces the power generated by 20 to 30 percent. So for safety and efficiency the blades must be regularly replaced.

Europe Fears Toxic Waste Wind Turbine Mountain - Currently the global market for wind turbine blades is growing at over 10 percent growth per annum and worth around US$2 billion a year. But shortsighted thinking has lead to a situation where the greatest challenge now is to develop a profitable and safe recycling process for the unwanted carbon fibre blades. Since 2004, most European Union (EU) member states passed laws forbidding landfill disposal of carbon fibre composites. Further, incineration of plastics is discouraged because of the potential release of toxic byproducts.

Professor Henning Albers from the Institut für Umwelt und Biotechnik, Hochschule Bremen, calculates that at current growth rates by 2034, there will be a mountain of 225,000 tonnes of unwanted rotor blade material waste EACH YEAR. That’s a lot of landfill!

Investors Bail out of Renewables Sector. The aircraft industry, a long-time user of composite plastics has, itself, had little success in solving the landfill problem. The aviation industry has tried to minimize landfill tipping by grinding down the thermoset composites into granules for use as filler materials (e.g., in asphalt). But there isn’t a commercial market for such waste. A report by Compositesworld.com agrees, “a major cost barrier in composites recycling is that collected composite waste must be sorted — one of the more labour-intensive aspects of conventional recycling processes.”

Summing up the lack of forward planning about wind turbines physicists and environmental activist, John Droz, jr, warns, “just because a power source is an alternative, or a renewable, does NOT automatically mean that it is better than any conventional or fossil fuel source.”

http://johnosullivan.livejournal.com/

References:

[1.] B.B., 2000: “Vindmølle lækkede olie. Kollapset vindmølle ved Rærup erstattes snart af ny”. “[Wind turbine leaked oil. Collapsed turbine near Rærup will soon be replaced by a new one]”. Nørresundby Avis, 09-02-2000.

[2.] Bülow, T., 2001: “Exit Tjærborg”. Eltra magasinet, August 2001.

[3.] Ritzau, 2005: “Vindmølle mistede sine vinger”. “[Wind turbine lost its blades]”. Jyllands-Posten, 21-01-2005.

[4.] LiveLeak, 2008: “Windmill out of control” (Video of wind turbine exploding).

[5.] Krøyer, K., 2008: “Endnu en Vestas-mølle kastede vinge 100 meter væk i blæsten”. “[Yet another Vestas wind turbine throws its blade 100 metres in the wind]”. Ingeniøren, 25-02-2008