A petition worth signing

To the British government

Responsible department: Department for Energy and Climate Change

I petition for the following action to be taken:

To stop immediately  the closure of any Power Station

To update existing conventional fuel Power Stations including Coal.

Not to allow any Power Station to close unless a replacement is up and fully running

To be self sufficient in Power Generation within the next five years

SOURCE




QUEENSLAND ITINERARY FOR LORD CHRISTOPHER MONCKTON

Talks on the great climate fraud

·         Tuesday 12th March: Evening (7:00 pm) Irish Club, 175 Elizabeth Street Brisbane CBD. opp. The HILTON

·         Wednesday 13th March: Gold Coast: Wednesday 13 March: 7:30 pm (Daylight saving time) at Coolangatta/Tweed Heads Golf Club, (end of) Soorley St, Tweed Heads South

·         Thursday 14th March - Evening (7:00) Gold Coast:  288 Gooding Drive CARRARA ~Reach Out For Christ Church; ~QLD launch of Rise Up Australia Party.

·         Friday 15th March - Cairns - Evening (7:00) Croswell Hall, Cairns State High School, Digger Street Entrance

·         Saturday 16th March - Daytime (1:00pm) Rockhampton - Elizabethan room, Leichardt Hotel, Bolsover Street





Another bite at Marcott and his egregious spin on the climate record

I have already pointed out that what we are dealing with here is prophecy.  But there are other holes in the story too.  You would never know that from the media, however.  Almost all of them ran the story and did so subserviently, with no hint of critical thinking.  I therefore reproduce the opening paragraphs of the WSJ version below followed by an email to the story author from Denis Ables of Virginia

New research suggests average global temperatures were higher in the past decade than over most of the previous 11,300 years, a finding that offers a long-term context for assessing modern-day climate change.

The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, aims to give a global overview of Earth's temperatures over the past 11,300 years—a relatively balmy period known as the Holocene that began after the last major ice age ended and encompasses all of recorded human civilization.

The research shows that a one-degree temperature variation that took 11 millennia to occur since the end of the last major ice age has been replicated in the 150 years since the early days of the Industrial Revolution.

Within that framework, the decade 2000-2009 was one of the warmest since modern record-keeping began, but global mean temperatures didn't breach the levels of the early Holocene. Now they are on track to do so, according to the Science paper. If the scientists' forecasts are correct, the planet will be warmer in 2100 than it has been for 11,300 years.

More HERE

Reply:

With regard to current acceleration of warming, the start of our current warming (such as it is) began not in the late 1800s, but at the bottom of the little ice age --in the mid 1600s, so almost four centuries ago. That implies about 3 centuries of natural climate variation. (CO2 did not begin increasing until the mid 1800s, and at an average annual rate of increase of 2 ppmv would at best not have had any impact on warming for another century).  That takes us to the mid 1900s and from the 40s to the 70s was a cooling period (still no apparent impact from co2 increase. )

You also overlooked, or ignored, the fact that numerous previous studies show several earlier periods during which the temp was higher than now.  You also failed to mention that there has been no additional statistically significant warming for the past two decades.

Finally, you talk about CO2 driving the planet temperature as if there is some basis for that claim, when there is no CO2 correlation with planet warming, either currently or in the more distant past.  It is also well known that atmospheric feedbacks are not well understood.  Cloud cover variations brought on by sun activity and cosmic rays appear to be a sufficient offsetting negative feedback.

This new study appears to be just another variation of the bogus hockey stick fiasco.

Email from Denis Ables [denis@ablesfamily.com]



Bad Science and Bad Journalism are a Bad Combination

By Alan Caruba

On Wednesday, March 6, the House Science, Space and Technology Committee sent out a notice that its hearing on global warming was cancelled due to the chilly weather and a snowstorm that was about to hit the nation’s capital.

The Committee was going to be treated to “a comprehensive briefing on how well scientists understand the climate and humans’ effect on it.” On the same day in 1961, the temperature had hit a record 81 degrees. In 1888, it had been 10 degrees. Anyone who thinks that humans had anything to do with either is mistaken. When it comes to the weather, the only thing that humans do is endure or enjoy it.

Making sense of the weather and climate is something that puzzles paleoclimatologists, climatologists, and meteorologists. For example, none of these folks understand why clouds do what they do. That’s probably because the best definition of the weather is “chaos.” It’s the reason meteorologists cannot predict what the weather will be more than four or five days from now.

Instead, we continue to be the victims of global warming charlatans, some of whom are “scientists”, while other scientists with far more integrity have been engaged in debunking their lies since the 1980s. The only thing we know for sure is that the global warming “scientists” are destroying the public’s confidence in the integrity of climate science.

The Wall Street Journal ran a story on March 9, “In Study, Past Decade Ranks Among Hottest”. It was about a study published in a recent issue of the Journal Science claiming that a one degree temperature variation resulted in 2000-2009 being “one of the warmest since modern record-keeping began.” Their claim is that the planet will be warmer in 2100 than it has been for 11,300 years. That’s about the amount of time since the end of the last ice age and the beginning of the Holocene, an epoch of warm weather that gave rise to civilization—about 5,000 years ago. The length of the periods between ice ages is about 11,500 years. Another ice age will kick in any day now.

Predictions such as appeared in Science are utterly bogus. They are based on rigged computer models which have been constantly exposed for their lies. Both the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the U.S. government engage in this fraud. The study cited was funded by the National Science Foundation.

Climatologists measure changes in centuries, not decades. The article asked whether the alleged hottest decade is the result of “greenhouse gas emissions from human activity—or can it be explained as part of natural, long-term variations in temperature?” Generally unknown to the public is the fact that water vapor is a major “greenhouse gas” and plays a significant role in the earth’s overall temperature. Moreover, the oft-cited carbon dioxide plays no role in the earth’s temperature.

The “Science” study drew immediate criticism. James Taylor, the editor of The Heartland Institute’s “Environment & Climate News”, a national monthly, said “Global temperatures are essentially the same today as they were in 1995, when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were merely 360 parts per million.” These levels “rose ten percent between 1995 and 2012, yet global temperatures did not rise at all.” That’s worth repeating, “global temperatures did not rise at all.”

This does not stop the “Warmists” from concocting their “studies” or journalists from repeating their lies in newspapers like The New York Times. The Wall Street Journal article was more cautious and balanced.

As Marc Morano noted at ClimateDeport.com, a leading skeptics’ website, the earth is cooler today than 28% of the past 11,300 years. Yes, cooler. More recently, it has been cooling for nearly seventeen years and it is the direct result of an unusual solar condition. It is supposed to be in a “solar maximum” with lots of sunspots, magnetic storms, but there are few at this time, resulting in less radiation and cooler temperatures for the Earth.

“The new study is also counter to the preponderance of existing peer-reviewed studies,” said Morano, “showing the Medieval Warm Period and the Roman Warming were both as warm or warmer than today without benefit of modern emissions or SUVs.”

In 2009, one of the nation’s leading climatologists, MIT’s Dr. Richard Lindzen, wrote, “The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in (a) global mean temperature anomaly of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations.”

“Such hysteria,” warned Dr. Lindzen, “simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well. Climate is always changing.”

SOURCE




CHAOS

By Prof. Vincent Gray

The world is a very confusing unpredictable place. Humans have, from the very beginning tried to create some sort of order and means of reducing its uncertainty.

They began by trying to find ways of ensuring the continuation of the regularities of the daily appearance of the sun, and of the annual cycle of the seasons. The responsible Gods had to be propitiated by sacrifice and ritual. The beginnings of this process are described in “The Golden Bough”1 .

The rituals that developed are still in existence in the form of daily prayers and annual holidays for Easter and Christmas, absorbed by more recent religions.

By the time of the Middle Ages it was believed that the world was basically static and unchanging, apart from any deviation which could be blamed on the Gods and solved by prayer or sacrifice.

The beginnings of modern science came with Kepler, Galileo and Newton who found that the behaviour of solid bodies could be predicted successfully by a fairly simple mathematical model. In order to do this Newton had to invent friction and gravity. It became possible to predict the movements of the planets as well as solid objects on the earth. The principle of mathematical models took hold to the extent that it was believed that the entire universe resembled a huge clock operated by mathematical formulae.

The complacency was disturbed by Einstein’s theory of relativity and by Planck’s quantum theory, but the idea has survived even the discovery of evolution, and the structure of atoms, ..

Science depends on measurement and all measurement inevitably involves inaccuracy. It was only in early 20th century that inaccuracy itself became subject to mathematical models. It is unfortunate that so many people who make use of them do not take care that their measurements comply with the assumptions of the model used.

The scientific study of the climate began, as with other disciplines, by the measurement of its properties. The science of meteorology is today amongst the most successful of all scientific institutions in its ability to measure and forecast local climate anywhere on the globe.

By comparison with other scientific disciplines it is faced with serious handicaps. Science demands that an experimental determination cannot be accepted unless it can be repeated, to an agreed level of accuracy, by an independent observer. Climate observations cannot be verified in this way. In addition, instruments, procedures, supervision, location are not standardised and the qualifications or the identity of the observer is often unknown. Recently the observer may just be automatic.

The climate is dominated, not by solid objects, but by the behaviour of fluids, by the atmosphere, and the oceans. Over the years many efforts have been made to try and develop a mathematical theory for the behaviour of fluids which can be used to assist weather and climate forecasting. The best that has been achieved involve the use of non linear equations with second order differential quantities. In order for this treatment to be successful it is necessary to define precisely the boundary conditions for the treatment to begin.

It was only with the work of Edward Lorenz2 that it was realized that the use of this type of model for the climate had serious limitations. He found that a very slight error in the setting up of the boundary conditions (for example, the movement of a butterfly’s wing) would be escalated by the equations to a very large extent if the equations are used to forecast long term future behaviour and thus make such a forecast impossible.

He concluded that for the climate “the prediction of the sufficiently distant future is impossible by any method”.

I have been reading “Chaos: Making a New Science” by James Gleick3. This book is claimed to be “The National Best Seller” in the USA in 1987. This is surprising as it is entirely concerned with the subject of what is now called “Chaos”, behaviour which is currently incapable of compliance with a mathematical formula. Unlike most books on mathematics there are no mathematical equations or symbols. There is mich information about the people who have developed the discipline, plus a layman’s account of what they have discovered. There are parts of it which can give predictable results, notably the beautiful “Fractals” and pictures of snowflakes and plant forms in some of the illustrations.

The applications are very widespread. They include the difficulty of deciding the length of the perimeter of a coastline, the behaviour of drops of water from a tap, and irregularities in heartbeats.

He remarks that climate scientists welcomed the arrival of better computers, believing that it would improve the accuracy and range of weather forecasts, but they have been disappointed. Despite the increased capacity of the computers, current weather forecasts are very little better in forecasting future weather than they were 50 years ago.

The book points out that chaotic observations are often referred to as “noise” and therefore neglected. The term accurately describes most current measurements of the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide. The existence of more than 90,000 accurate measurements in peer reviewed Journals that goes back to 18124 is never mentioned by the IPCC because they show that the atmospheric concentration varies with time of day, wind direction and strength and proximity to sources and sinks. It is chaotic. Simlarly no measurements over land surfaces today are published. Efforts to reduce “emissions “ of carbon dioxide, are therefore never checked as to whether they are effective in the localities where they are made.

In New Zealand a facility for the measurement of atmospheric carbon dioxide was set up in Makara, just over the hill from this house, in the 1980s. Because most of its measurements were “noise” it was moved to the coast at Baring Head where only “baseline events” are allowed to be revealed, defined as follows

“A baseline event is normally defined as one in which the local wind direction is from the South and the standard deviation of minute-by-minute CO2 concentrations is less than 0.1ppm for 6 or more hours” The other measurements are discarded as “noise”.

The IPCC claims that its “projections” have successfully “managed chaos" in the following quote from “Frequently asked Questions No 1.

“The chaotic nature of the weather makes it unpredictable beyond a few days. Projecting changes in climate (i.e long-term average weather) due to changes in atmospheric composition or other factors is a very different and much more manageable issue”

Note that they do not claim “prediction” only “projection” .

They go on to mention the work of Lorenz but fail to mention that he was concerned with the movement of fluids which he, and all genuine meteorologists, know is the main influence on the climate.

Illustrations of IPCC models almost always ignore the movement of fluids altogether, and claim that all energy exchanges are due to radiation, the only procedure that is not subject to chaos but can only be calculated if you know the highly varying temperature of the emitter

But they cannot escape chaos. The formation and movement of clouds, periods of overcast behaviour and precipitation are chaotic and they decide how much of the sun’s radiation actually reaches the earth. The ocean oscillations which have an important effect on the climate are also chaotic and all efforts to predict them have failed.

The behaviour of the sun, volcanic eruptions, and even earthquakes, are chaotic. The solar wind, which influences cloud formation, is also chaotic6

To summarise: there are many phenomena whose future behaviour is not currently capable of being forecast successfully by a mathematical model. One of them is the climate.

Admittedly the IPCC do not claim that they can do it. All they can do is provide “projections” .

It is regrettable that so many people do not realise this

SOURCE





Time for Europe to let British farmers grow GM food, says environment minister

Genetically modified crops should be sold in Europe, despite consumers' concerns about 'Frankenstein foods’, the Environment Secretary Owen Paterson will say.

Mr Paterson, who has previously spoken out about the benefits of GM technology, has decided to make a high-profile speech in the hope of turning the tide on the issue.

It is understood he has the firm backing of Chancellor George Osborne, who believes GM food could provide opportunities for British farmers.

Brussels has so far only approved two GM crops for human consumption, although they are widely used in the US and China, and can be fed to animals in the EU. Supporters say Europe will suffer food shortages and be more reliant on imports if it continues to reject GM products.

But the Mail has highlighted concerns over 'Frankenstein foods' for years, amid fears that tampering with the genes in crops could damage natural ecosystems or even affect human health.

The Environment Secretary has dismissed these concerns as 'complete nonsense’. He believes Britain should be open to using the GM science to increase crop yields and prevent disease.

Last year he called critics of the technology 'humbugs' and said the case for GM  food needed to be made 'emphatically' in Britain.

But Mr Paterson, who has been criticised for his handling of the horsemeat scandal, faces an uphill struggle convincing the British public of the benefits of GM food.

A survey last month by the Food Standards Agency found two out of three UK shoppers wanted products from animals fed a GM diet to be labelled.

Mr Paterson will also have to win over countries who are deeply opposed to any form of GM farming or food such as France and Germany.

His most viable option is for every nation to be allowed to choose whether to sell GM food in their shops.

In 2010, the EU Commission considered giving back control over GM crop approval to member states.

But this policy was abandoned last year after widespread opposition, as the food industry is too globalised for it to work.

An aide to Mr Paterson  said: 'He wants to have a national conversation about it, based on scientific evidence, and the Prime Minister supports that.'

Tory MP George Freeman has been advising Whitehall on the UK’s agri-tech policy. He believes the safety debate is over.

He told the Financial Times: 'Over a trillion meals containing GM food have now been eaten in what is effectively  the biggest ever global clinical trial in the history of mankind, without one adverse health report.

'The world is adopting genetic crop science. The question is whether the UK is going to benefit or not?’

The Coalition has so far allowed scientists to carry out small-scale GM cultivation trials, but its use in consumer products is effectively banned.

However, British farmers have reportedly written to supermarkets warning them that they will not be able to guarantee chickens are fed on solely non-GM feed by May.

SOURCE





Windmills at Sea Can Break Like Matches

 Medium-sized waves can break wind turbines at sea like matches. These waves occur even in small storms, which are quite common in the Norwegian Sea.

"The problem is, we still do not know exactly when the wind turbines may break," says Professor John Grue from the Department of Mathematics at the University of Oslo, Norway. Grue is one of the world's foremost experts on wave research. In 1989 he discovered an inexplicable wave phenomenon called ringing, which is a special type of vibration that occurs when choppy waves hit marine installations. The discovery was made in a 25-metre long wave laboratory located in the basement of the mathematics building at Blindern Campus.

So far scientists have studied ringing in small and large waves, but as it turns out, ringing is more common in medium-size waves.

For wind turbines at sea with a cylinder diameter of eight metres, the worst waves are those that are more than 13 metres high and have an 11-second interval between them.

Financial ruin

The ringing problem may increase significantly in the years ahead. There are plans to build tens of thousands of wind turbines at sea.  "If we do not take ringing into consideration, offshore wind turbine parks can lead to financial ruin," warns John Grue to the research magazine Apollon at University of Oslo.

Today, the largest windmill parks at sea are outside the coasts of Denmark and Great Britain. They are nevertheless like small miniatures compared to Statkraft and Statoil's enormous plans on the Dogger Bank outside Scotland. This windmill park is to produce as much electricity as 60 to 90 Alta power plants. A windmill park with the capacity of two Alta power plants will be built outside Møre og Romsdal in West-Norway.

"Thus far it has not been possible to measure the force exerted by ringing. Laboratory measurements show that the biggest vibrations in the wind turbines occur just after the wave has passed and not when the wave hits the turbine. Right after the crest of the wave has passed, a second force hits the structure. If the second force resonates with the structural frequency of the wind turbine, the vibration is strong. This means that the wind turbine is first exposed to one force, and is then shaken by another force. When specific types of waves are repeated this causes the wear to be especially pronounced. This increases the danger of fatigue."

It is precisely this secondary force that creates ringing and that the mathematicians until now have not managed to calculate.

Unfortunate vibrations

All structures have their own vibration frequencies, whether they are wind turbines, bridges, oil rigs or vessels.

When the vibration matches the structural frequency, things get tough. This phenomenon is called resonance, and can be compared to the steady march of soldiers on a bridge. If the soldiers march in time with the structural frequency of the bridge, it can collapse.

Unrealistic calculations

The Norwegian University of Science and Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have already made a number of calculations of ringing. Ecole Centrale Marseille and the French Bureau Veritas have also made such calculations. Det Norske Veritas is among those who use versions of these models.

"Current models are the best we have, but the estimates are too rough and erroneous. The theories are applied far outside of their area of validity. This means that we cannot calculate the fatigue adequately."

Ringing is not related to turbulence. Ringing is systematic and is about high underpressure at back of the cylinder.

Difficult mathematics

Internationally, very little has been done on this phenomenon. John Grue now has two Doctoral Research Fellows calculating these movements. He also collaborates with the Danish research community on wind power at Risø National Laboratory and the Technical University of Denmark.

"Ringing is very difficult to calculate. There is great uncertainty. We want more precise descriptions of the physics of ringing. We are now trying sophisticated surface elevation models and complex calculations to reproduce these measurements accurately. We want to show that the ringing force arises systematically according to a general mathematical formula."

Saga Petroleum has previously conducted an extensive set of measurements of the ringing force in waves.  "These fit our measurements very well," says Grue.

Differences between deep and shallow waters

The scientists must also consider whether the installations are in deep or shallow waters.  "The structural frequency also depends on the conditions on the seabed.

You can compare it to a flagpole in a storm. The flag pole vibrates differently depending on whether the pole is fixed in concrete or on softer ground."  "There has been no research on the connection between vibrations and the conditions on the seabed."

Oil rig damaged

Ringing does not just harm wind turbines. Ringing has already been a great problem for the oil industry. The designers of the YME platform did not tak ringing into account, and lost NOK 12 billion.

"It is possible to build your way out of the ringing problem by strengthening the oil rigs. However, it is not financially profitable to do the same with wind turbines," says John Grue.

Arne Nestegård, Chief Specialist in hydrodynamics at Det Norske Veritas, confirms to Apollon that wind turbines at moderate depths may be exposed to high-frequency resonant oscillations if the waves are extreme, but they safeguard against this. Nestegård says that in the past twenty years, Veritas has developed ringing models and that they now work on improving the models for wind turbines at sea.

SOURCE





Australia: We'll fire climate staff and sub-let offices, warns Federal conservative spokesman

An incoming Coalition government might sack staff from the doomed Climate Change Department if they refuse to take redundancies.

The subsequent surplus office space in the Nishi building could be sub-let, or the Coalition might cancel the department's 15-year $158 million lease.

Opposition climate action spokesman Greg Hunt detailed plans for abolishing the department amid reports the government might get in first to make savings in the budget.

Abolishing the Climate Change Department would reduce overlap with other areas, Mr Hunt said.

"From a managerial perspective, I think it makes a lot more sense. It's a significant and genuine efficiency and improvement," he said on Sunday. "It's more logical and more efficient to have a single department of climate and the environment."

Mr Hunt said the merger would result in job reductions. "The merged department will be significantly smaller," he said.

"Our preference is to have voluntary redundancies - we've never hidden that it would be a significantly smaller department."

Mr Hunt described the Climate Change Department's lease as one of the worst property deals for the Commonwealth in the past 20 years.  "They've managed to lock us in for an extraordinary amount of time with a building that is arguably surplus to needs," he said.

"We'll review the contract and review the options for sub-leasing to the private sector. I don't want to pre-empt the outcome of what would be a genuine review process.

"I am extremely confident from discussions I have had that we can save the Commonwealth very, very significant amounts of money.  "We will make significant savings in terms of staffing and associated administrative and building costs."

A Coalition government would also abolish the Energy Security Council, the Climate Change Authority and the Climate Change Commission, as well as the $10 billion Clean Energy Fund.

Speculation on the Climate Change Department was sparked after Prime Minister Julia Gillard said last month its secretary, Blair Comley, would leave.

Nishi developers Molonglo Group said on Wednesday the apartments were nearly finished but was unable to give a firm idea of when the project would be completed. Most work at the Acton site has been shut down since last Monday, when Ply, the main contractor, allegedly owing millions to local subcontractors, called in the administrators.

SOURCE

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Preserving the graphics:  Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here and here

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