JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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Royal Dutch Shell is concerned we won’t sequester away enough of that pollutant, carbon dioxide.
Carbon capture and storage [CCS], a way of cutting emissions from industry by burying them underground, needs more state support for the European Union to meet clean-energy goals, a Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) adviser said.
“We’ve got to be clear that the EU’s climate goals in the long run cannot be met without clear policy intervention and that CCS is vital for the delivery of that,” Graeme Sweeney, who advises Shell on carbon-dioxide strategy, said by telephone. — Bloomberg
If Royal Dutch Shell had so much as suggested that the warming threat might be exaggerated, a team of activists from Greenpeace, WWF and the IPCC would issue press releases overnight declaring “Vested Interests Promote Doubt and Denial”. Other lobbyists like, say, The Royal Society, would write a letter to Shell blasting it for “disinformation“.
But when Shell asks for more government handouts to fund its ventures in Carbon Capture and Storage, the vested interest is obvious, but the apoplexy and conspiracist accusations are nowhere to be seen. Shell, of course, sells oil, but it also sells CCS. And things haven’t been going well for Shell’s [...]
It’s not rocket science. If energy costs more, that means we have to make do with less of it, or make do with less of something else. Thus if the government forces everyone to pay more for electricity, companies have less spare cash to employ people. Their margins are tighter, they can’t make and sell as many products. So when we are told the clean energy revolution is creating jobs, is it virtually self-evident that’s a mythical fairy claim.
I say “virtually”, because it is theoretical possible it could work, but only if this green power provided some productivity or efficiency gain — that is, if it helped us build more widgets, bake more cakes or warm more toes. In the case of windturbines, the big hope is that they reduce emissions, lower CO2 globally, and in turn stop storms, tornados, floods and what-not and gave us perfect weather again (like the kind we never had).
Might as well bury bottles of money I say. More jobs. Less cost. No infrasound, and no dead bats.
Each green job in Britain costs £100,000 (and 3.7 other jobs):
The Telegraph points out how expensive it is to support a wind-industry job. My plan [...]
In history studies of the Great Global Warming Scare, people will ask, is this the bargaining stage or the start of acceptance?
Adapting to _ not just fighting _ climate change is taking the heat out of global warming talk
Seth Borenstein for The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Efforts to curb global warming have quietly shifted as greenhouse gases inexorably rise.
The conversation is no longer solely about how to save the planet by cutting carbon emissions. It’s becoming more about how to save ourselves from the warming planet’s wild weather. — Newsdaily
On the five stages of grief, this is partly acceptance, but mostly it’s bargaining. Fans of Man-Made Global Warming are realizing they can’t have Deity Status — where they manage global financial markets and play God with the weather. Instead they hope they can still play hero, and direct less financially lucrative projects. They just want to hold back the tides, that sort of stuff.
It was Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s announcement last week of an ambitious plan to stave off New York City’s rising seas with flood gates, levees and more that brought this transition into full focus.
After years of losing the fight against rising [...]
The bottom line is that a third of people are concerned enough to be willing to act, a third say they are concerned but are only paying it lip service, and a third are openly skeptical.
What matters is that 63% of people around the world don’t want their governments to take any money from them to address environmental issues.
There is constant media spin that skeptics are a tiny fringe minority. (See Al Gore deny a third of the population. See the BBC call them mavericks and say they give too much weight to “fringe views”.) The marketeers pushing the meme know that many people are swayed away from “extreme” views and towards the dominant paradigm. Life is just “easier” if you follow the herd, so the big-scare campaign scores a free kick if the public believe that skeptics are rare. If the media reported the situation accurately, more people would be happy to sit in the “skeptical” camp as it would be perceived as equally valid.
As usual, those who believe in man-made global warming use every deceptive trick to push their policy, while skeptics simply benefit if the truth is told.
While skeptics just outnumber believers in [...]
This beautiful graph was posted at Roy Spencer’s and WattsUp, and no skeptic should miss it. I’m not sure if everyone appreciates just how piquant, complete and utter the failure is here. There are no excuses left. This is as good as it gets for climate modelers in 2013.
John Christy used the best and latest models, he used all the models available, he has graphed the period of the fastest warming and during the times humans have emitted the most CO2. This is also the best data we have. If ever any model was to show the smallest skill, this would be it. None do.
Scores of models, millions of data-points, more CO2 emitted than ever before, and the models crash and burn. | Graph: John Christy. Data: KMNI.
Don’t underestimate the importance of the blue-green circles and squares that mark the “observations”. These are millions of radiosondes, and two independent satellite records. They agree. There is no wiggle room, no overlap.
Any sane modeler can only ask: “But how can the climate modelers pretend their models are working?” Afterall, predicting the known past with a model is not-too-hard; the modeler tweaks the assumptions, fiddles with the fudge [...]
Climate Analytics say that developed nations have paid $35.9 billion dollars into the UN Aid program called FastStart. This was the project rescued from the aftermath of the 2009 Copenhagen climate convention. Somehow $3 billion of private finance has been tossed in as well, making it nearly $39 billion since late 2009.
As usual, when other-people’s-money is spent on the poorest of the poor, the poor seem to get no say, and not much use out of it either.
[Bloomberg] “Seventy-one percent of the total finance went to emission-reduction ventures rather than adaptation projects such as water conservation or flood defense, today’s report shows.”
Sooner or later, the aid-recipients are going to suffer through a flood or a drought (thanks to climate-sameness). But two thirds of this aid money won’t add up to a dime’s worth of protection. Seventy percent of the funds were used to stop emissions of a fertilizing trace gas instead of preparing people against the ravages of the weather. Indeed most of the money was spent reducing something that would be considered an asset if not for the decree of climate models that we already know are wrong.
Hey, but it’s only $27 billion or so [...]
Image by Luc Viatour www.Lucnix.be
The Moon has such a big effect — moving 70% of the matter on the Earth’s surface every day, that it seems like the bleeding obvious to suggest that just maybe, it also affects the air, the wind, and causes atmospheric tides. Yet the climate models assume the effect is zero or close to it.
Indeed, it seems so obvious, it’s a “surely they have studied this before” moment. Though, as you’ll see, the reason lunar effects may have been ignored is not just “lunar-politics” and a lack of funding, but because it’s also seriously complex. Keep your brain engaged…
Ian Wilson and Nikolay Sidorenkov have published a provocative paper, Long-Term Lunar Atmospheric Tides in the Southern Hemisphere. It’s an epic effort of 14,000 words and a gallery of graphs. As these atmospheric tides swirl around the planet they appear to be creating standing waves of abnormal air-pressure that slowly circle the planet, once every 18 years. If this is right, then it could be the key to finally understanding, and one day predicting, the mysterious Pacific ENSO pattern that so affects the global climate. Even at this early stage, brave predictions are on [...]
Stephan Lewandowsky (and John Cook) got excited that Barack Obama ‘retweeted’ the (fallacious) 97% consensus study. In The Conversation, Stephan Lewandowsky made it the leading line (right under the name-calling headline):
“When President Obama last week tweeted that “97% of scientists agree: climate change is real, man-made, and dangerous” it drew the attention of his 31 million followers to the most recent study pointing to the consensus in climate science.”
As a Professor of Psychology on a academic site, we might assume Lewandowsky might be more factual and less like a direct marketing campaign. (Dear Stephan, there is no chance 31 million followers read his tweets. Twitter is not like that. Obama is following 662,021 people. You think he reads them?)
Worse, that tweet was not by Barack Obama. The @barackobama account is run by an activist group called Organizing for Action (OFA). It’s the fourth biggest twitter account in the world, but Obama gave the account to OFA earlier this year, and he doesn’t appear to have used it since. (Still it’s not like Lewandowsky’s career depends on understanding how people work, and how to spot a fake right? Oh. Wait… )
OFA use Obama’s photo and his name, [...]
[The Local] A combination of an icy winter and a chilly spring has meant that for the first time ever in the month of June, skiers will have the option of heading to the pistes in the French Pyrénées, French TV TF1 reported on Wednesday.
After recent cold weather, bosses at the ski station Porte Puymorens in the Pyrénées-Orientales region of the mountain range that divides France from Spain have taken the exceptional step to re-open the slopes this weekend after they had closed them at the end of the season in April.
[...]
Is it cold where you are?
Increasing CO2 makes life easier for plants that live in hot dry places.
Thanks to satellites we know the world has “greened up” since 1980, but we were not sure how much of that was due to the fertilizing effect of CO2. To solve that, one group suggests we need to look in warm arid environments where water is the predominant limiting factor. These are the areas which ought to show whether CO2 was really helping plants grow, because when there is more CO2 it enables plants to use water more efficiently for photosynthesis. In places where there is already a lot of water, it won’t make as much difference. So Donohue et al. did that, studying regions with a low level of rainfall. They found that the fertilization effect is real and significant and that the cover in these arid zones increased 11% from 1982 – 2010 and CO2 played a significant role.
(Thanks to pollution, trees are invading grasslands. Whatever will the Greens do to get us back to the Halycon pre-carbon days? Call Gunns?)
CO2 may be the only “pollution” that greens the deserts.
“Using gas exchange theory, we predict that the 14% increase in atmospheric CO2 [...]
Tim Yeo, conservative MP who heads the UK climate change committee has broken the litany. This is a man who’s wanted to decarbonize the Brits for years, and he has just admitted “natural phases” might be to blame. He is only saying the bleeding obvious, but what happened to the official “no debate” doctrine? What exactly are deniers denying now, and where did that overwhelming evidence go?
Tim Yeo 2009:
“The dying gasps of the deniers will be put to bed. In five years time, no one will argue about a man-made contribution to climate change.”
Before he changed his mind. | Daily Mail, Gerry Peev.
Tim Yeo 2013:
[Telegraph, Matthew Holehouse]: “He (Yeo) insisted such action is “prudent” given the threat climate change poses to living standards worldwide. But, he said, human action is merely a “possible cause”.
Asked on Tuesday night whether it was better to take action to mitigate the effects of climate change than to prevent it in the first place, he said: “The first thing to say is it does not represent any threat to the survival of the planet. None at all. The planet has survived much bigger changes than any climate [...]
Paul Syvret seems to be hoping no one will notice that he doesn’t even try to respond to arguments about wind turbines. His technique to avoid debate is to decree that some other people were wrong once on a different topic. They used a rapid fire technique called a Gish Gallop, so therefore, thusly and henceforth anyone with a rapid fire technique can be dismissed with a handy wave of The Gish. It’s just another label in Syvret’s all-purpose excuse-list for not having a grown up conversation.
Those who have no evidence just make things up and toss insults. Syvret of The Courier Mail defends the wind industry from its critics — not with data about windfarms, but with allegations of imaginary astroturfing and denialism. He uses all his biggest scientific words: it’s “a barrage of BS”, “pseudo-science”, and a crusade run by a rat-bag in an incestuous network. He wants to make sure his readers know the critics are shills and conspiracy nutters because, well… he says so.
The Australian Environment Foundation is his main target today. What’s it guilty of? Well, it links to unpaid bloggers that Syvret doesn’t like: those ” sites promoting climate-change denial (such as [...]
During the northern winter, there were more speculators in the carbon market than genuine players.
Those bankers must be very concerned about the environment.
Speculators main buyers in EU carbon auctions -report 17 May 2013
LONDON, May 17 (Reuters Point Carbon) – Banks and trading houses bought more than two thirds of the 138 million carbon permits sold by 25 European governments between Nov. 2012 and Feb. 2013 to help power plants and factories comply with the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, an EU Commission report published Friday showed.
Six “credit institutions” and six “investment firms” dominated the 35 auctions held over that period, picking up as much as 80 percent of the allowances sold in January alone, the report said, adding that only one of those companies was eligible to bid on behalf of clients.
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2378205 paywalled.
Things have changed in the carbon market. From 2005-2012 most allowances were given away free, but now they are being sold at auction. So the period starting Nov 2012 was probably the first sales under the new system. It is expected that the bankers and traders will sell the permits to the power companies in the futures [...]
Sorry about that spot of maintenance. Out of my hands… back up now.
And you thought advertising or certificates couldn’t get more stupid. Thanks to Christopher Essex for spotting this gem: http://www.dominosugar.com/carbonfree/
You’ll have to click to go to the Domino site to see the helpful man tell you that “This is Big”.
They probably paid a lot for that ad.
Some of the poor users are not sure what it means. That’s OK, Domino helpfully provides an FAQ page: Is it the same sugar? Will it function the same way in my recipes?
Yes, it is still 100% pure cane sugar with 15 calories per teaspoon. And, it functions just like all Domino® Pure Cane Granulated Sugar. Use it cup for cup exactly like the original Domino® Pure Cane Granulated Sugar.
Look out. You might think that carbon free sugar would be the ultimate diet-sugar. But it’s not so. Carbon free is not low-calorie. Lucky it is still useable at high temperatures “just like” normal sugar, eh? Just so everyone can appreciate this special-chemistry-moment: in the sugar molecule below, the grey circles with a “C” are the carbon ones.
A glucose molecule. C stands for Carbon.
… Remember the low-carbon crowd that this product appeals to are the ones who [...]
Here are the questions Tony Jones could have asked if only he or his billion-dollar organization had the time to use the Internet. Is he a journalist or an activist pretending to be one?
And how much does Jones get paid by the taxpayer for allowing McKibben a free pass to say things that are easily shown to be false? The ABC wants to keep that a secret. It wants your money, but not your opinion.
The full transcript is on the ABC site, I’ve selected parts below. (My cost to the taxpayer: $0).
ABC Lateline
“Stop investing in carbon intense industries”
TONY JONES: Let’s start with the statement most frequently used by climate change sceptics: the planet has stopped warming since 1998 and started to cool, actually cool, since 2003. True or false?
[Tony Jones is offering a blatantly false position for McKibben to knock over.... skeptics most frequently point out that there has been no significant warming (there are 350 million google results for that compared to 10 million for global cooling since 2003). The UK Met office, and the head of the IPCC say the same thing. The issue that matters is the "pause" that [...]
UPDATE from Hoyt himself below…
I like Hoyt.
Two earnest young chaps drive out to meet the slimy-ogre-from-the-hobbit who posts skeptical comments all over the web, and discover, shock, Hoyt is actually a nice guy. He’s not only normal looking, he’s well spoken, and he has good manners. He’s likeable.
Watch: The secret life of internet climate trolls: part one – 5 min video
They young fans of the climate scare get excited when Hoyt admits he doesn’t believe a Democrat. (Hmm, I suspect they are thinking “ideologue”.)
They also got excited when he said he was a prostate cancer survivor, not because he survived (though I say, Thank Goodness) but because it gave them an excuse to talk about “doctors”. There’s an attempt at a James Delingpole-BBC moment coming where they play up a logical fallacy as if it tells us something about the climate. You trust medical science, but not climate science? I do hope Hoyt responded that if his medical doctors had been hiding data and losing records he would have been skeptical of them too.
[...]
The mouth of the Amazon is the worst source of “pollution”.
Bad news for fans of The Amazon River. A new study shows that while the Amazon rain forest is the Lungs of The Planet, pulling down gigatonnes of CO2, the river undoes all the good the trees do, and pours all the CO2 back into the sky. Damn that river eh? Lucky it only discharges one fifth of the worlds freshwater.
Apparently most researchers thought bacteria couldn’t digest the tough woody lignin of tree debris fast enough to prevent it getting to the ocean*. Underestimating microbial life seems a common affliction, and we hear was a big surprise that only 5% of the lignin actually ends up reaching the ocean where it might sink to the floor and be sequestered. The rest is broken down by bacteria and released into the air. The clues were there for years that the Amazon was giving off lots more CO2 than people expected, but the consensus was that it “didn’t add up”. So much for that consensus.
Yet another victory for observations over opinions.
Until recently, people believed much of the rain forest’s carbon floated down the Amazon River and ended [...]
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