Green Omertà
There is a conspiracy of silence about wind power costs
I know, I do tend to be a bit repetitive about the cost of wind power. How many times have I explained that the data is completely clear: that it’s expensive; and that if it’s getting any cheaper, it’s only doing so very slowly. In fact, for onshore wind the trend is clearly upwards.
My determination on the subject is prompted by the refusal of anyone in official circles to accept the facts. To a man (and woman) they are absolutely resolute in their insistence that wind is staggeringly cheap because windfarms have agreed staggeringly low-priced “strike prices” for power. And because industry bodies and Whitehall says it is.
The fact that nobody has ever delivered power at such a price cuts no mustard with these people. Nor does the observation that windfarm developers are all saying that new construction will not go ahead without further handouts. And of course, if you point to the hard data in windfarm financial accounts, they really, really do not want to know at all.
Consider, Jonathan Pocklington, the Permanent Secretary at the energy department. He recently told the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee that wind was super cheap, signally failing to mention the accounts data. Are we really expected to believe that he and his generously funded staff know nothing about it? Really? Of course, the committee, under its chairman, Meg Hillier, knows all about the hard data, because I sent my own submission of evidence, setting out all the unfortunate details. However, let’s just say that I have yet to receive an invitation to give oral evidence on the subject. Should we be surprised that Ms Hillier is not interested?
Another recent example of this absolute refusal to address the data comes in the shape of a new report from the UK Energy Research Centre, which repeats the claim that wind power is super-cheap. On Twitter, I pointed out to members of the author team that nobody is delivering power under these low strike prices, and that the data contradicts claims of low costs. However, most of them ignored me. Imagine that – researchers not wanting to discuss their research! That said, one team member (by his own admission, a minor one) did post a reply, observing that loopholes on delivering power at agreed strike prices were being tightened up. However, when I pressed him on the accounts evidence, he went strangely quiet.
Then consider Emma Pinchbeck, the boss of Energy UK, who proclaimed the other day that she was happy to engage with people who wanted to discuss data in a respectful way. My Twitter thread, deferentially setting out details of the cost data for wind power, was completely ignored.
Finally, take Sir Christopher Llewellyn-Smith, the physicist who is running the Royal Society’s ongoing study on energy storage. In a podcast interview a few weeks back, he revealed that his team’s report will be using those low CfD strike prices as their assumed cost for electricity input to storage facilities. Through the good offices of a colleague, I was able to get in touch, and draw his attention to the data. I got a response, pointing to cost claims published by officials in Whitehall and the the usual suspects in the Green Blob, but when I pointed out that the data refuted these claims, I was again greeted by a stony silence.
It’s clear that there is a conspiracy of silence about wind power costs. Only strike prices and unverifiable industry claims can be mentioned. The fairy tale of cheap renewables is so central to the Establishment’s direction of travel towards decarbonisation that the facts simply cannot be acknowledged.
It’s all very reminiscent of the way the Westminster machine has dealt its disastrous handling of the Covid pandemic: refuse to engage on facts and data, and carry right on as if nothing has happened.
Looking down the list of those who are engaging in this green omertà, it’s hard to avoid the impression that they are all passengers on a very plush gravy train. If they even mention the inconvenient facts, they will be effectively be pulling the emergency brake, and the whole thing would grind to a halt. Let’s just say they will not be popular for doing so. To purloin a quote from Lord Frost’s recent GWPF lecture, you can wake a man who’s asleep, but you can’t wake a man who’s pretending to be asleep.
https://www.netzerowatch.com/green-omerta/
*******************************************Effects Of Deliberately Exaggerating the Risks of Climate Change
The effects of deliberately exaggerating the risks of climate change can do tremendous harm. This can lead to the destruction of people’s mental health and trust in science – or, better put, trust in what science used to be.
In March of last year, The Washington Post reported on the increased risks of flight turbulence due to climate change. More recently, the World Economic Forum reiterated this concern in a blog, highlighting that “erratic” clear air turbulence is projected to rise by two or three times in the next few decades.
Climate change affected by flights?
It is believed that flights are becoming more turbulent due to climate change. However, it is important to note that despite this, there has been no significant increase in accidents or injuries caused by turbulence over the past 30 years. In fact, the number of passengers has quadrupled during this time, resulting in a decrease in harmful turbulence activity relative to the increase in passengers, according to the International Civil Aviation Organization.
Have you ever wondered where the exaggerated and alarming information originates from? Well, it seems that both of the stories are based on the research of Professor Paul Williams from Reading University.
According to his findings, there have been noticeable changes in atmospheric dynamics since the late 1970s, which were first observed through satellite data.
Based on climate models and utilizing the RCP8.5 scenarios, it has been projected that there will be a significant surge in clear air turbulence. It’s worth noting that RCP8.5 is considered the most extreme climate scenario outlined by the IPCC, along with its later variant, SSP5-8.5. This scenario is based on high greenhouse gas emissions, which may lead to a temperature increase of 4-5C within the next 80 years.
Many scientists do not find these climate pathways to be believable, and even the IPCC describes them as having a “low likelihood.” However, politicians and the press who are trusted by the IPCC do not share these reservations.
Yet it seems these implausible scenarios are so addictive for climate alarmists that about half the impact mentions in both the IPCC reports and across the wider scientific community still incorporate them.
It’s evident that this mindset influences much of the sensationalist content churned out by mainstream media, as they peddle the “established” scientific beliefs required to stir up panic and advance the collective Net Zero political program. I suggest that you check out the latest details about all of this in the original article posted by Daily Sceptic.
It’s worth noting that excessive worrying about the impact of climate change might be adding to the mental health struggles faced by young individuals. As per a recent global survey, 45% of young people stated that thinking about climate change had a detrimental effect on their day-to-day existence, and 40% expressed apprehension about having children.
The effects of all these exaggerations do enormous harm to people’s minds and the trust they used to have in science.
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The Social Cost of Carbon game
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault recently announced that the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC), or the dollar value of supposed damages associated with each tonne of carbon dioxide emissions, is about $247, nearly five times higher than the old estimate of $54. He made it sound like a discovery, as if a bunch of experts had finally been able to measure something they previously only guessed at. Like when scientists were finally able to measure the mass of an electron or the age of the Earth, now finally we can measure the SCC.
But in reality there has been no breakthrough in economics comparable to those physics breakthroughs. Countless SCC estimates already exist ranging from small negative amounts (i.e. carbon dioxide emissions are beneficial) to many thousands of dollars per tonne. Every such estimate is like a complex “if-then” statement: if the following assumptions hold, then the SCC is $X. Yale economist William Nordhaus won the 2018 Nobel Memorial Prize in economics for developing some of the first methods for combining all the “if” statements into systems called Integrated Assessment Models or IAMs. And using conventional economic and climate modelling methods, he tended to get pretty low SCC values over the years, which has long been a sore point among climate activists and the politicians who share their agenda.
But economists are on the case. The $247 figure referenced by Guilbeault comes from a new report from the Biden administration that tossed out all the previous models, including Nordhaus’s, and instead cobbled together a set of new models that when run together yield much higher SCC values.
In many ways the new models are just like the old ones. For example they persist in using an Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity of 3 degrees C. This refers to the warming expected from doubling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. The authors cite the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as the basis for this decision, apparently unaware that that estimate has already been shown in the climate literature to be flawed. Using the IPCC’s own method on updated data yields a sensitivity estimate of about 2.2 C or less, and as I have shown in a recent publication this is enough to cause the SCC estimate in a standard model to drop to nearly zero.
The biggest boosts to the new SCC figure hailed by Guilbeault come from revisions to agricultural productivity impacts and mortality costs from climate warming. The evidence for large negative agricultural impacts comes from a 2017 article by Frances Moore and co-authors that looked at the combined effects of CO2 fertilization and warming, concluding the net effect would harm global agriculture. Oddly, they used the same data as a 2014 study by Andrew Challinor and co-authors who had found the opposite: the combination of increased CO2 and warming would have much more benign, and in some cases even beneficial, results.
How did Moore et al. get different results from the same data? They used a different statistical model but unfortunately didn’t provide evidence showing it is better than the one Challinor used, so it’s unclear whose results are stronger. But we know whose are more popular. The Biden administration team referred only to the Moore study and left out any mention of the Challinor one, and it is a safe assumption that the reviewers didn’t notice the omission. See how the game is played?
Regarding the mortality effect, the report relies on evidence in a new study that apparently shows that warming will mean fewer deaths from cold and more from heat, and the combined effect globally is a much larger overall death toll than previously thought. The study is by an impressive team led by economist Tamma Carleton and 15 co-authors. In their preface they thank 17 research assistants, four project managers, 13 reviewers and seminar participants at 20 prestigious academic institutions around the world. It’s a high-quality piece of work, but like tens of thousands of other splashy climate impacts studies it relies for its headline conclusions on the discredited RCP8.5 emissions scenario. How did all those prestigious researchers and reviewers miss this flaw?
The authors compiled mortality data from selected countries around the world and matched them to temperature records, then built a statistical model to extrapolate over the entire world. They used some clever economic modelling to estimate the beneficial effects of adaptive behaviour (like installing air conditioning) as well as the costs. Then they estimated a “mortality function” that spits out the number of additional deaths between now and the year 2300 attributable to each additional tonne of emissions, both from warming itself and the costs of adaptation. To compute this number the authors needed emissions and income projections out to 2300.
For this they used two scenarios: the extreme, coal-blackened Dickensian fiction called RCP8.5, and a mid-range emissions projection called RCP4.5. In my 2020 JSW column I discussed the efforts of climate analysts to convince their colleagues to stop using the RCP8.5 scenario because of its unrealistic assumptions. Interestingly the Biden administration report moves away from both RCP scenarios and focuses on a new one from Resources for the Future (RFF) which, through most of the rest of this century, projects emissions even below RCP4.5.
https://financialpost.com/opinion/junk-science-week-social-cost-of-carbon-game
*************************************************Australia: Slap on the wrists for Climate activists who halted coal train
CLIMATE activists who brought a coal train to a grinding halt in Newcastle have been slapped with fines ranging from $750 to $450 in court.
At least 30 of the Rising Tide protesters who faced court on Thursday pleaded guilty to entering enclosed lands and assisting in the obstruction of a rail locomotive.
One member, Jack Ruben Thieme, pleaded guilty to a further charge of property damage after a fence was cut to allow members of the group onto the rail corridor.
He was fined a total of $750.
Magistrate Stephen Olischlager warned the group that the right to protest isn't absolute.
"Arguments are never won through either the use of force or disregard for the rights of others, at the end of the day, support for worthy causes is won by changing minds, exposing truths and respectful communication of arguments," he said.
More than 50 members had their matters heard in court, represented by defence solicitor Olivia Freeman who argued her clients acted the way they did out of desperation in the face of "climate inaction".
"The science is now at a point where there can be no dispute that there are a number of members of our community with sincere and strongly held beliefs that to address the climate crisis and a rise of 1.5 degrees that we can't keep burning fossil fuels," she said.
She pointed out there was a common thread across the reference letters handed into the court in support of the offenders.
"Every person before the court today is a person with the utmost integrity, compassion, concern and passion about the environment," she said.
"These are all strongly community-minded individuals that give back in various ways to the community in which they all live and are described as caring and generous."
Ms Freeman pushed for good behaviour bonds and non-convictions for those of her clients without a criminal history, but Mr Olischlager said there was a need to deter the public from similar action.
Police prosecutor Harry Hall was unsuccessful in his attempt to have each of the offenders banned from any coal storage or loading facility across the state and rail corridors except for when travelling.
"The NSW Police accepts that all individuals have the right to protest, but it must be done in a lawful and safe manner," he said.
"There are always methods individuals can use rather than this unlawful example."
He argued the protesters put police and emergency services at risk and dragged resources away from people in need, potentially endangering lives.
More than 10 of the activists had their matters adjourned to July 10. Some live interstate and will appear via audio visual link on the next occasion
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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