INSIDE THE BBC SAUSAGE FACTORY

A leaked internal BBC memo below. Note the "high" level of literacy: "principle" instead of "principal". Sometimes spellcheckers cannot rescue ignorance -- or is it just that the BBC would not know a principle if it fell over one?

From: Roger Harrabin - Internet
Sent: 12 October 2007 08:12
Subject: Guidance on Gore and Nobel Prize - please publish.

In any future reporting of Gore we should be careful not to suggest that the High Court says Gore was wrong on climate

The judge didn't say that. He said Gore's principle message on climate change was mainstream and uncontroversial. But he asked the government to make it plain in guidance notes to kids that nine points in the film were controversial.

He used the word "errors" but put it in inverted commas because the issues were not factual errors but issues of scientific debate.

We might say something like: "Al Gore whose film was judged by the High Court to have used some debatable science" or "Al Gore whose film was judged in the High Court to be controversial in parts".

The key is to avoid suggesting that the judge disagreed with the main climate change thesis.

Please pass to presenters because this issue about Gore will arise again.





Picayune "peace" prize

Post below lifted from Taranto. See the original for links. Note that Fat Al's prize was a POLITICAL one, not a science one

On Tuesday the Nobel Foundation announced that Albert Fert of France and Peter Gruenberg of Germany had won the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of giant magnetoresistance. This morning Al Gore won a Nobel Prize for his global warmist propagandizing. But despite Gore's scientific pretensions, his prize was not in physics, or in any other scientific discipline. The best he could do was the Peace Prize.

Gore became only the second former U.S. vice president to win the Nobel Peace Prize. The first was Theodore Roosevelt, 101 years ago. (A sitting veep, Charles Dawes, also won in 1926.) A comparison between Roosevelt's prize and Gore's shows how far the Nobel Peace Prize has strayed from its original purpose: Roosevelt won the prize for negotiating a peace treaty between Russia and Japan. Gore won it for something that has nothing to do with peace.zlist of Nobel Peace Prizes, you'll see that in recent years it has often gone to people or organizations whose work, while often worthy, has little to do with the promotion of peace per se. Last year the prize went to a Bangladeshi banker and a bank for their efforts to make credit available to the very poor. In 2004, it went to Wangari Maathai for planting trees in Kenya.

One reason for this may be that the Norwegian Nobel Committee has had reason to be disappointed in the results when it has given awards to more traditional peacemakers.

* In 1994, the Nobel Peace Prize notoriously went to Yasser Arafat (along with Israel's prime and foreign ministers) for signing the Oslo accords--which, far from establishing peace, enabled Arafat to set up a terror statelet in the West Bank and Gaza.

* In 1973, the Nobel went to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and North Vietnam's Lu Duc Tho for negotiating the Vietnam peace accord--which, far from establishing peace, led to conquest, repression and mass murder in Indochina.

* In 1926, 1930 and 1931 the Nobel Peace Prize went to men involved in the Briand-Kellogg Pact, which "outlawed war." By 1939 it was clear how well that was working out.

When the Nobel Peace Prize was established more than a century ago, wars were largely fought between traditional nation-states over material interests. But the 20th century saw the rise of a series of aggressive ideologies--communism, Nazism, radial Islam--that render old-fashioned notions of war and peace quaint. Determined ideologues cannot be appeased; peace through strength is the only alternative to war.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee rejects strength as well as war--hence its failure to award a Nobel to Ronald Reagan for winning the Cold War (Mikhail Gorbachev got one for losing, in 1990), or, say, to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for averting armed international conflict in Europe for half a century after World War II.

But why Al Gore? Here's one explanation: Global warmism is an all-encompassing ideology, but one that, unlike communism, Nazism and radical Islam, has yet to inspire anyone to take up arms. Maybe in defining "peace" the Norwegians have simply decided not to set their sights too high.




When the wind doesn't blow, power doesn't flow, even in Denmark

Comment from Australia: Wind power is nothing more than an expensive vanity, writes Terry McCrann

"IN the early hours of Saturday morning, two weeks ago, Denmark achieved something that makes John Howard's goals for lifting the use of renewable energy in Australia look pretty modest. "At 12.17am, as steady winds swept in from the North Sea and most Danes were in their beds, the nation's wind farms churned out 70 per cent of the electricity being consumed across the country."

That's how The Australian's European correspondent Peter Wilson began a glowing piece on wind energy last week. Where do I sign? Hallelujah! The world is saved. Just roll out the turbines. A future of clean, green, carbon-free electricity beckons. Well, actually no. Wilson didn't manage to get around to detailing how barely 48 hours later, those wind farms were supplying all of 2 per cent of the electricity being consumed across Denmark. From a bracing 2300MWh/h or so -- the output of two largish conventional power plants -- to less than 100 MWh/h, barely enough to keep the night lights burning. When the wind don't blow, the power don't flow.

So when that happened, where did the electricity come from? From Norway, from Sweden and from Germany. All up, around 1500MWh/h for some hours. In effect, the three neighbours jointly running a very large conventional power station just to keep the lights on in Denmark.

There, in a nutshell, is the twin problem with wind. On average, across a year, you might get 30 per cent of its theoretical capacity, but often you get zero or so close to zero as not to matter. It happens frequently and at any time; and when the wind chooses, not you. "Somebody", therefore, has to keep unused surplus capacity in some other form of generation equivalent to all the wind generation capacity. And keep it either operating, or able to at the flick of a switch.

Now, no, I didn't have those figures fed to me by the "competing power industries like coal and nuclear power", as Wilson's piece asserted, attacking an earlier critique I had written on wind power. I have spoken to no one from the coal or nuclear industry, or indeed any other lobbyist, or indeed had any communication, before writing.

In contrast, Wilson quoted no fewer than four spinmeisters for wind and the huge taxpayer and consumer dollars that flow so evenly and strongly to the industry around the world, unlike the electricity flowing from it. They were Anders Dalegaard, a project manager at the Danish Wind Industry Association; Isabelle Valentiny, communications director of the European Wind Energy Association; Stefan Gsaenger, secretary general of the World Wind Energy Association; and "(wind) industry association spokesman" Peter Rae. Surprisingly, all of them thought wind was the absolute bee's knees.

Analyse the data on the Danish power network's website -- energinet.dk -- and you should be able to see clearly the two problems with wind power. The first is its low capacity factor. As I had earlier noted, Germany's biggest power grid operator, E.ON Netz, over the year got an average of just 18 per cent of the rated capacity of its wind network. This produced an interesting response from one of the windmeisters: the German windmills weren't in the right places. In contrast, other networks were over 30 per cent, with Denmark claiming 45 per cent for its offshore turbines.

The much bigger problem, which the wind-meisters neatly sidestepped, is that at times you get almost zero power out of the entire network. As noted, 2500MWh/h one minute, less than 100MWh/h two days later. Another example, less than 10MWh/h -- effectively zero -- across all of Denmark for four hours straight. Back in February, less than 100MWh/h for 36 hours straight. If you were relying on wind, a day and a half with no power.

The obvious point about this is that power has to come from somewhere else to make up the difference. The less obvious but far more crucial point is that you need permanent surplus power-generating capacity somewhere for the full wind capacity. In your own grid or one to which you are hooked up. So if, say, in Australia we opted for the next 10,000MWh/h from wind, we wouldn't just have to build 7000MWh/h of coal or nuclear or gas to "cover" for the 70 per cent on average that wind doesn't provide relative to its sticker capacity. We would have to build the full 10,000 MWh/h of conventional power generation anyway, for when the wind doesn't blow at all! You can't rely on the wind blowing "somewhere"' to cover for the wind not blowing somewhere else.

Alternative gas power could be turned on when needed, but if you went for coal and nuclear they would essentially have to be ticking over all the time anyway. You can't just fire up the boilers the moment the wind stops blowing. Now, obviously, some games could be played at the margin. We mightn't need the full 10,000 MWh/h of conventional, we could probably get by with, say, 7000MWh/h -- another three Loy Yangs. We'd still essentially be getting one power station for the price of at least two.

Denmark has the biggest wind component in its power generation in the world. The reason it sort of works in Denmark, price aside, but can work only in Denmark, is that the country is small and connected to Norway, Sweden and Germany. Indeed, Denmark's wind works rather well joined to Norway's hydro, because the hydro can be turned on and off. But if the wind don't blow, it's still drawing power from Sweden's hydro and nuclear and Germany's coal and nuclear.

The key point is that extra power Denmark might need at points in time could be huge in its own terms -- 40 or even 50 per cent of total consumption. But it will be tiny when spread around Norway, Sweden and Germany. They can accommodate a small neighbour hooked on wind. But there's no way they could accommodate a Germany with the same wind intensity. Without someone building surplus conventional power stations.

Indeed, when the wind doesn't blow in Germany -- which now gets high single digits of its total power from wind -- it goes to nuclear France. And none of this touches on the grid challenges from having 2000MWh/h suddenly dropping to, say, 10MWh/h. Nor does it explain how it would "work" in Australia. Yes, you can connect all the state grids; but if you had a huge investment in wind in, say, Victoria, you would still need equivalent coal/nuclear/gas somewhere -- as essentially idle surplus capacity.

Unless you were prepared to literally turn off the lights, and everything else, when the wind didn't blow. Yes, Denmark's wind story has a huge lesson for Australia. That there is no way wind can make a sensible major contribution to mainstream power generation in Australia. Or even to the very objective it is purportedly directed at, greenhouse gas abatement. It is just an expensive, feel-good vanity.

Source





Antarctic Ice Once Again GROWS to Record Levels

Excerpt from the website of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois Polar Research Group.

UPDATE: Monday, October 1, 2007 - Record SH sea ice maximum and NH sea ice minimum - Just when you thought this season's cryosphere couldn't be more strange .... The Southern Hemisphere sea ice area narrowly surpassed the previous historic maximum of 16.03 million sq. km to 16.17 million sq. km. The observed sea ice record in the Southern Hemisphere (1979-present) is not as long as the Northern Hemisphere.

Source




Antarctic has cooled about 1 degree F since 1957

Excerpt:

While the news focus has been on the lowest ice extent since satellite monitoring began in 1979 for the Arctic, the Southern Hemisphere (Antarctica) has quietly set a new record for most ice extent since 1979. This can be seen on this graphic from this University of Illinois site The Cryosphere Today, which updated snow and ice extent for both hemispheres daily. The Southern Hemispheric areal coverage is the highest in the satellite record, just beating out 1995, 2001, 2005 and 2006. Since 1979, the trend has been up for the total Antarctic ice extent.

While the Antarctic Peninsula area has warmed in recent years and ice near it diminished during the Southern Hemisphere summer, the interior of Antarctica has been colder and ice elsewhere has been more extensive and longer lasting, which explains the increase in total extent.

This dichotomy was shown in this World Climate Report blog posted recently with a similar tale told in this paper by Ohio State Researcher David Bromwich, who agreed "It's hard to see a global warming signal from the mainland of Antarctica right now". Indeed, according the NASA GISS data, the South Pole winter (June/July/August) has cooled about 1 degree F since 1957 and the coldest year was 2004. This winter has been an especially harsh one in the Southern Hemisphere with cold and snow records set in Australia, South America and Africa. We will have recap on this hard winter shortly.

See full story here





GREENLAND HAS COOLED SINCE 1930 & 1940's!

A look at peer-reviewed literature thoroughly debunks fears of Greenland and the Arctic melting and predictions of a frightening sea level rise. An introductory excerpt:

The July 27-29 2007 U.S. Senate trip to Greenland to investigate fears of a glacier meltdown revealed an Arctic land where current climatic conditions are neither alarming nor linked to a rise in man-made carbon dioxide emissions, according to many of the latest peer-reviewed scientific findings. Research in 2006 found that Greenland has been warming since the 1880’s, but since 1955, temperature averages at Greenland stations have been colder than the period between 1881-1955.

A 2006 study found Greenland has cooled since the 1930's and 1940's, with 1941 being the warmest year on record. Another 2006 study concluded Greenland was as warm or warmer in the 1930’s and 40’s and the rate of warming from 1920-1930 was about 50% higher than the warming from 1995-2005. One 2005 study found Greenland gaining ice in the interior higher elevations and thinning ice at the lower elevations. In addition, the often media promoted fears of Greenland’s ice completely melting and a subsequent catastrophic sea level rise are directly at odds with the latest scientific studies. These studies suggest that the biggest perceived threat to Greenland’s glaciers may be contained in unproven computer models predicting a future catastrophic melt.

Source

***************************************

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

*****************************************