CCNet –  19 March 2012
The Climate Policy Network

 

Europe’s Cold War Over Shale
Green Campaigners Accuse Polish MEP Of-Anti-Russian Bias
 

The environmental group Food & Water Europe has accused the Polish author of a European Parliament report on shale gas extraction of resorting to "Cold War" rhetoric against Russia to support the industry's development. In a statement released on Monday, Food & Water Europe blasted the draft report by MEP Bogusław Sonik (European People's Party) on the environmental impacts of shale gas and shale oil extraction activities. Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Europe, also accuses the report's author of anti-Russian bias. --EurActiv, 18 April 2012

The biggest risk for Russia is not the US shale gas but the potential of the development of similar reserves in neighbouring Bulgaria, Romania, Poland and Ukraine. Natural gas is one of the key economic engines of Russia. Could the boom in shale gas challenge the leadership of Russia in gas? Until now, Moscow and Gazprom have seemingly been nonchalant about the threat. But as the impact of the boom in US natural gas production becomes clear, depressing prices to levels not seen in 10 years and increasing the prospect of the country becoming an exporter, the Kremlin is beginning to pay attention. --Javier Blas, Financial Times, 19 April 2012

The dynamic rise of shale gas has raised alarm bells in the highest reaches of the Kremlin. Why? Because Gazprom’s European customers, tired of being ripped off by Gazprom, are avidly exploring the possibilities of undertaking fracking to develop their own sources of the “blue gold,” and nowhere is interest higher than in the Russian Federation’s neighbors Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and China. Gazprom’s exports to Europe are already falling because of increased competition. Moscow’s National Research University Higher School of Economics Center for evaluation of commodity assets director Valery Kryukov noted that while Gazprom previously supplied 37 percent of Europe’s natural gas needs, that had slipped to 25 percent and concluded, “Russia risks losing its main source of income - the export of natural gas.” --John Daly,Oil Price, 13 April 2012

American sources have told British counterparts of hopes that their nation's energy security headaches could be transformed by fracking shale formations to release American oil and gas. If all goes well, America could find itself much less dependent on the Middle East and troublesome allies in the Arab world, is the message from Washington. The nightmare scenario for some British government insiders is the reverse. Namely, Britain discovers promising reserves, but then is hobbled by irrational European environmental rules and as a result finds itself stuck in the only rich-world economic block that is still dependent on the Middle East for energy. –Bagehot, The Economist, 17 April 2012

The British government will allow shale-gas exploration to resume in northern England. This could be the harbinger of some very good news for consumers in the U.K. and throughout Europe. Britain and Europe could be on the brink of a shale revolution—or at least an end to chronic undersupply—if its governments don't stand in the way. On that point, the U.K. isn't the only good-news story. Poland, which is keen to throw off the yoke of dependence on Russian fuel, continues to press forward with shale-gas exploration. Efforts from Greens in the European Parliament to ban or restrict fracking throughout the European Union have gone nowhere. --Editorial, The Wall Street Journal, 19 April 2012

The battle over the development of France’s unconventional hydrocarbon resources is set to reignite with the publication of a report in favour of research activities in hydraulic fracturing to investigate shale oil and gas resource potential. The release of the report, eight months after France implemented a ban on the extraction of hydrocarbon resources by hydraulic fracturing, comes at a time when the energy mix and energy pricing is playing a heighted role in the French Presidential elections. Speaking to RTL, the Socialist Candidate for President indicated a policy shift from the party's previous unequivocal opposition to shale oil and shale gas development. Francois Hollande commented: "You should never rule out anything, especially if research shows that one can obtain this gas without harming nature." --Natural Gas Europe, 1 April 2012

The case of shale gas development cannot be considered closed in Bulgaria, according to Energy and Economy Minister Delyan Dobrev. In a Friday interview for the morning broadcast of the Bulgarian National Television (BNT), Dobrev announced that a parliamentary committee would be set up this week to review the shale gas moratorium. The Energy Minister explained that the ban on hydraulic fracturing could be revoked if the ad hoc committee declared the technology harmless. "If it turns out that shale gas is not harmful to the environment and the environmental impact assessment (EIA) comes out positive, then we should really take advantage of it," Dobrev stated. --Sofia News, Agency 2 April 2012

A UK study into hydraulic fracturing offers New Zealand "some reassurance" the process causes only very small, normal-range earthquakes, a GNS scientist says. Head of Petroleum Geoscience at GNS Science, Rosemary Quinn, told TV ONE's Breakfast the study conducted on the use of fracking in the English town of Blackpool last year found it caused only "very small earthquakes" up to 2.3 magnitude. "We get about 150,000 earthquakes in New Zealand every year that are magnitude 2.3 and above, so that's about 50 a day and most people just don't feel them. That level of seismicity in New Zealand is normal." --TV New Zealand, 18 April 2012

The Independent newspaper wants all shale gas exploration halted, to save the planet. “A new age of shale gas holds the risk that the decarbonisation of the UK energy system, essential if we are to meet our demanding climate change targets, will be pushed back and back,” the paper declares in an editorial. “Mass use of shale gas would make these targets unattainable.” But two recent economic studies prove the opposite. The UK and Europe could meet their own carbon dioxide reduction targets by replacing dirty coal with cleaner gas and nuclear energy capacity. --Andrew Orlowski, The Register, 19 April 2012


1) EU Shale War: Green Campaigners Accuse Polish MEP Of-Anti-Russian Bias - EurActiv, 18 April 2012

2) Russia Faces Challenge To Gas Supremacy - Financial Times, 19 April 2012

3) Russia Rattled By Rising Importance Of Shale Gas - Oil Price, 13 April 2012

4) After The Elections, France May Join Shale Rush: Socialists In Policy Shift - Natural Gas Europe, 1 April 2012

5) Bulgaria To Review, May Revoke Shale Moratorium - Sofia News, Agency 2 April 2012

6) EU Deadlocked Over Failing Carbon Market - Financial Times, 18 April 2012

7) BBC Pension Fund, Big Climate Investors Concerned About Green Misinvestment - BusinessGreen, 18 April 2012
 

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.