Global warming, global cooling

[MrBishop]

Our hottest so far is 80ºF and our lowest is 45ºF (June and July)

 

[jimpeel]

Denver hit 94 today and the humidity has been off the map. Really not Colorado dry this year. Rain every day with southerly air masses drawing moisture from the Gulf.

 

[Professur]

Energy policy 'too wind focused'
Wind turbines near the Mersey
The CBI says the government targets wind power too much

The UK must invest more in nuclear and clean coal energy and put less emphasis on wind power if it wants a secure low-carbon future, business leaders say.

The CBI says government energy policy is "disjointed" and it is urging a "more balanced" energy mix.

The current approach means the UK might miss climate change targets, it added.

The government said putting in place a balanced mix of renewables, new nuclear and cleaner fossil fuels was at the heart of its energy policy.

It is due to set out its Energy White Paper on Wednesday.

But the CBI is calling for more action in its report "Decision Time".

"The government's disjointed approach is deterring the private sector investment needed to get our energy system up to scratch, bolster security and cut emissions," said CBI deputy director general John Cridland.

"While we have generous subsidies for wind power, we urgently need the national planning statements needed to build new nuclear plants.

"If we carry on like this we will end up putting too many of our energy eggs in one basket."

Energy war

The CBI's comments are based on computer modelling of current power sector investment by consultants McKinsey.

The CBI wants the government to:

• reduce the percentage of wind power expected by 2020 under the Renewables Strategy later this week, to encourage investment in other low-carbon energy sources.


The document is timed to influence the government's Energy White Paper due this week. It is the latest salvo in the business war between nuclear, coal and wind.

A recent study by the consultants Poyry suggested that wind power could become so dominant in the UK that it leaves nuclear and CCS coal in competition with each other instead of holding the dominant position they have enjoyed since the 1950s.

The McKinsey study projects that under 'business as usual' by 2030, gas would provide 36% of the UK's energy, coal 1%, wind 24%, nuclear 20%, other renewables 12%, and clean coal 8%.

That would mean 64% of electricity would come from low-carbon technologies, behind the Climate Change Committee's 78% target. The investment cost is estimated at £125-£173bn.
Marsh wind farm officially opened

• speed up the planning process for energy supplies

• produce rules and funding arrangements for for Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) demonstration plants

• accelerate investment in the grid

• improve energy efficiency in the electricity, heating and transport sectors, including offering financial sweeteners for consumers choosing more efficient products.

'No surprise'

A spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said: "We know that big investments need certainty, and we're on track with our promise to remove costly unnecessary barriers to new nuclear, such as the planning reforms already in train."

Andrew Warren, director of the Association for the Conservation of Energy and formerly a member of the CBI's energy policy committee, told the BBC's environment analyst Roger Harrabin that the increase in wind power was threatening to the big power generators who he said dominated the committee.

"This document is no surprise. EDF have been lobbying very hard for less obligations on renewables, saying it will distract from nuclear," he said.

"This is precisely what Patricia Hewitt [the former trade and industry secretary] warned would happen when she published the 'no-new-nukes' 2003 energy white paper."

How wind turbines are constructed

Greenpeace executive director John Sauven said that by calling for wind power's contribution to the UK's renewable energy targets to be reduced the CBI is actually doing its members a great disservice.

"Nuclear power is less effective than wind power at tackling climate change, while investment in renewables would create much needed British jobs in one of the few growth sectors in the global economy," he said.

"Here in the UK we have one of the best renewable energy resources anywhere in the world and a manufacturing sector champing at the bit to capture the lead in marine technologies like offshore wind and tidal power."

Meanwhile a DECC spokesman told Roger Harrabin the government was "fully behind" the 15% renewables target.

"We're not setting fixed sub-targets [for electricity, heat, transport], but our projections are about finding the most practicable and cost effective mix.

"Our analysis supports the approach we're taking. We don't believe it inhibits new nuclear - there are a myriad of other considerations to factor in."

source

 

[MrBishop]

I read recently that we only have a wee bit over 200 years of Uranium that we can use for nuclear power. After that We'd better have a grip on cold fusion, eh

 

[Professur]

I read recently that we only have a wee bit over 200 years of Uranium that we can use for nuclear power. After that We'd better have a grip on cold fusion, eh

It's always been my position that scientists should never be trusted, because they're experts. As we all know, the definition of an expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing at all.

Frankly, any fusion is better than fission ... if they can ever manage it at all. But I do agree that they need to have their eggs in more baskets than what they're looking at now. More fission isn't one of them, tho, unless they can come up with better ways to recycle the waste instead of just storing it uselessly (and dangerously). In the same breath, tho, most nations right now are experiencing a serious shortage of medical isotopes. The smart move would be to spend some of that dough getting A and B to equal X and G.

 

[Gonz]

I read recently that we only have a wee bit over 200 years of Uranium that we can use for nuclear power.

Bet there's more than that.

A galaxy is composed of gas and dust and stars — billions upon billions of stars

 

[Frodo]

I read recently that we only have a wee bit over 200 years of Uranium that we can use for nuclear power.

I hear there are tons of it in Iran, you just have to mine it from the bomb craters.

 

[spike]

As we all know, the definition of an expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing at all.

Nope, pretty often they learn more and more about more and more.

 

[jimpeel]

If they say it is not political you can bet your sweet ass that it is political.

Global warming is as political as it gets.

SOURCE

June 26, 2009 11:09 PM
EPA May Have Suppressed Report Skeptical Of Global Warming

Posted by Declan McCullagh

The Environmental Protection Agency may have suppressed an internal report that was skeptical of claims about global warming, including whether carbon dioxide must be strictly regulated by the federal government, according to a series of newly disclosed e-mail messages.

Less than two weeks before the agency formally submitted its pro-regulation recommendation to the White House, an EPA center director quashed a 98-page report that warned against making hasty "decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data."

The EPA official, Al McGartland, said in an e-mail message to a staff researcher on March 17: "The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward... and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision."

The e-mail correspondence raises questions about political interference in what was supposed to be a independent review process inside a federal agency -- and echoes criticisms of the EPA under the Bush administration, which was accused of suppressing a pro-climate change document.

Alan Carlin, the primary author of the 98-page EPA report, told CBSNews.com in a telephone interview on Friday that his boss, McGartland, was being pressured himself. "It was his view that he either lost his job or he got me working on something else," Carlin said. "That was obviously coming from higher levels."

E-mail messages released this week show that Carlin was ordered not to "have any direct communication" with anyone outside his small group at EPA on the topic of climate change, and was informed that his report would not be shared with the agency group working on the topic.

"I was told for probably the first time in I don't know how many years exactly what I was to work on," said Carlin, a 38-year veteran of the EPA. "And it was not to work on climate change." One e-mail orders him to update a grants database instead.

For its part, the EPA sent CBSNews.com an e-mailed statement saying: "Claims that this individual’s opinions were not considered or studied are entirely false. This Administration and this EPA Administrator are fully committed to openness, transparency and science-based decision making. These principles were reflected throughout the development of the proposed endangerment finding, a process in which a broad array of voices were heard and an inter-agency review was conducted."

Carlin has an undergraduate degree in physics from CalTech and a PhD in economics from MIT. His Web site lists papers about the environment and public policy dating back to 1964, spanning topics from pollution control to environmentally-responsible energy pricing.

After reviewing the scientific literature that the EPA is relying on, Carlin said, he concluded that it was at least three years out of date and did not reflect the latest research. "My personal view is that there is not currently any reason to regulate (carbon dioxide)," he said. "There may be in the future. But global temperatures are roughly where they were in the mid-20th century. They're not going up, and if anything they're going down."

Carlin's report listed a number of recent developments he said the EPA did not consider, including that global temperatures have declined for 11 years; that new research predicts Atlantic hurricanes will be unaffected; that there's "little evidence" that Greenland is shedding ice at expected levels; and that solar radiation has the largest single effect on the earth's temperature.

If there is a need for the government to lower planetary temperatures, Carlin believes, other mechanisms would be cheaper and more effective than regulation of carbon dioxide. One paper he wrote says managing sea level rise or reducing solar radiation reaching the earth would be more cost-effective alternatives.

The EPA's possible suppression of Carlin's report, which lists the EPA's John Davidson as a co-author, could endanger any carbon dioxide regulations if they are eventually challenged in court.

"The big question is: there is this general rule that when an agency puts something out for public evidence and comment, it's supposed to have the evidence supporting it and the evidence the other way," said Sam Kazman, general counsel of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a non-partisan think tank in Washington, D.C. that has been skeptical of new laws or regulations relating to global warming.

Kazman's group obtained the documents -- both CEI and Carlin say he was not the source -- and released the e-mails on Tuesday and the report on Friday. As a result of the disclosure, CEI has asked the EPA to re-open the comment period on the greenhouse gas regulatory proceeding, which ended on Tuesday.

The EPA also said in its statement: "The individual in question is not a scientist and was not part of the working group dealing with this issue. Nevertheless the document he submitted was reviewed by his peers and agency scientists, and information from that report was submitted by his manager to those responsible for developing the proposed endangerment finding. In fact, some ideas from that document are included and addressed in the endangerment finding."

That appears to conflict with an e-mail from McGartland in March, who said to Carlin, the report's primary author: "I decided not to forward your comments... I can see only one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office." He also wrote to Carlin: "Please do not have any direct communication with anyone outside of (our group) on endangerment. There should be no meetings, e-mails, written statements, phone calls, etc."

One reason why the process might have been highly charged politically is the unusual speed of the regulatory process. Lisa Jackson, the new EPA administrator, had said that she wanted her agency to reach a decision about regulating carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act by April 2 -- the second anniversary of a related U.S. Supreme Court decision.

"All this goes back to a decision at a higher level that this was very urgent to get out, if possible yesterday," Carlin said. "In the case of an ordinary regulation, these things normally take a year or two. In this case, it was a few weeks to get it out for public comment." (Carlin said that he and other EPA staff members asked to respond to a draft only had four and a half days to do so.)

In the last few days, Republicans have begun to raise questions about the report and e-mail messages, but it was insufficient to derail the so-called cap and trade bill from being approved by the U.S. House of Representatives.

Rep. Joe Barton, the senior Republican on the Energy and Commerce committee, invoked Carlin's report in a floor speech during the debate on Friday. "The science is not there to back it up," Barton said. "An EPA report that has been suppressed... raises grave doubts about the endangerment finding. If you don't have an endangerment finding, you don't need this bill. We don't need this bill. And for some reason, the EPA saw fit not to include that in its decision." (The endangerment finding is the EPA's decision that carbon dioxide endangers the public health and welfare.)

"I'm sure it was very inconvenient for the EPA to consider a study that contradicted the findings it wanted to reach," Rep. James Sensenbrenner, the senior Republican on the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, said in a statement. "But the EPA is supposed to reach its findings based on evidence, not on political goals. The repression of this important study casts doubts on EPA's finding, and frankly, on other analysis EPA has conducted on climate issues."

The revelations could prove embarrassing to Jackson, the EPA administrator, who said in January: "I will ensure EPA’s efforts to address the environmental crises of today are rooted in three fundamental values: science-based policies and programs, adherence to the rule of law, and overwhelming transparency." Similarly, Mr. Obama claimed that "the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over... To undermine scientific integrity is to undermine our democracy. It is contrary to our way of life."

"All this talk from the president and (EPA administrator) Lisa Jackson about integrity, transparency, and increased EPA protection for whistleblowers -- you've got a bouquet of ironies here," said Kazman, the CEI attorney.

 

[spike]

Yep, those new arctic routes that have never been open are all political.

 

[Frodo]

OH MY GOD!!! The Polar Bears are dying...not as fast as they are reproducing, but the're dying!!

I wonder when they will actually use these shipping lanes? I guess we will have to wait until the Earth gets as warm as it was in the 10th century.

 

[Gonz]

The new lanes may be needed to go around the ice forming over there

 

[jimpeel]

I read recently that we only have a wee bit over 200 years of Uranium that we can use for nuclear power. After that We'd better have a grip on cold fusion, eh

Ever hear of a breeder reactor?

 

[jimpeel]

On all things unknown it is always the fault of global warming or George W. Bush.

SOURCE

Black goop afloat off Arctic coast identified as algae

ALGAE: Still, experts don't know why there's so much of it.

By KYLE HOPKINS
[email protected]

Published: July 16th, 2009 07:57 PM
Last Modified: July 17th, 2009 04:49 PM

A sample of the giant black mystery blob that Wainwright hunters discovered this month floating in the Chukchi Sea has been identified.

It looks to be a stringy batch of algae. Not bunker oil seeping from an aging, sunken ship. Not a sea monster.

"We got the results back from the lab today," said Ed Meggert of the Department of Environmental Conservation in Fairbanks. "It was marine algae."

Miles of the thick, dark gunk had been spotted floating between Barrow and Wainwright, prompting North Slope Borough officials and the Coast Guard to investigate last week. A sample was sent to a DEC lab in Anchorage, where workers looked at it under a microscope and declared it some kind of simple plant -- an algae, Meggert said.

The goo fast became an Alaska mystery. And the new findings still leave questions unanswered: Why is there so much of it in a region where people say they've never seen anything quite like it?

Local hunters and whalers didn't know what to make of it. The Coast Guard labeled the substance biological, but knew little else. The stuff had hairy strands in it and was tangled with jellyfish, said a borough official.

Terry Whitledge is director of the Institute of Marine Science at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He hasn't had a chance to look at the DEC's sample yet, but a friend with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration e-mailed him a picture of the gunk.

"Filamentous algae," he concluded.

Filamentous?

"It means it's just stringy."

Whitledge said he doesn't know why an unprecedented bloom of algae appeared off the Arctic coast.

"You'll find these kind of algae grow in areas that are shallow enough that light can get to the bottom ... If you had a rocky area along the coast, you could have this type of algae."

It could have been discharged from a river, he said, flushed out by runoff from spring breakup and melting ice. But that's just speculation, he warned.

The North Slope Borough took samples of the stuff too, for a separate round of testing, said Coast Guard Petty Officer 1st Class Terry Hasenauer.

The results of the state's analysis came in at 10:30 a.m. Thursday. It was the last day on the job for Meggert, the retiring on-scene coordinator.

"Had it been petroleum, then we really would have had our work cut out for us," he said.

That was the initial fear -- that an oil spill had appeared in the Chukchi Sea, or maybe the blob was oil bubbling up from a sunken vessel or underwater seam.

The goo didn't fit any pattern that made it easy to identify from afar, Meggert said. "First of all, it was at the end of the Earth. Pretty hard to get to.

"While we've seen some algae bloom from time to time, we really haven't seen something quite like this."

The color, in particular, didn't make sense, he said. You might expect to see green or reddish algae but not this black, viscous gunk. Whitledge, with the university, said one possible explanation is that the algae has partially decomposed into a darker hue.

He looks forward to the university examining the sample too, to identify exactly what kind of algae it is.

It's worth noting that Alaska Natives in the region reportedly hadn't seen anything like it before, he said.

But asked if the blob's surprise appearance could be connected to global warming, Whitledge hesitated to draw a link.

"The water's actually very cold this year compared to other years," he said.

 

[jimpeel]

Hillary apologizes for America polluting the atmosphere and India tells her to go piss up a rope.

Krauthammer gives an excellent analysis. What he lacks in mobility he more than makes up for in intelligence.

VIDEO LINK

 

[jimpeel]

BWAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Al Gore's home town belies his contentions. In yer face, Gore. In yer face!

SOURCE

Coolest July 21 recorded in Nashville as cool wave continues in Tenn.

By Associated Press

7:59 AM CDT, July 21, 2009
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Cool weather has broken a previous low temperature for July 21 in Nashville that was set when Rutherford B. Hayes was president.

When the temperature at the National Weather Service station dipped to 58 degrees at 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday, it wiped out the previous record low for the date of 60 degrees, which was set in 1877.

NWS forecaster Bobby Boyd noted it was the third consecutive morning when Nashville either tied or broke a daily low temperature record.

Temperatures were cool, but did not break records at several Tennessee cities.

Knoxville dropped to 59 degrees Tuesday morning, Chattanooga had 60 degrees, Tri-Cities recorded 58 degrees and Memphis was 69 degrees.

 

[spike]

Actually that doesn't do anything to belie his contentions. You must not understand this very well.

 

[Professur]

Windfarm Britain means (very) expensive electricity

A recent industry study into the UK energy sector of 2030 - which according to government plans will use a hugely increased amount of wind power - suggests that massive electricity price rises will be required, and some form of additional government action in order to avoid power cuts. This could have a negative impact on plans for electrification of transport and domestic energy use.

The study is called Impact of Intermittency, and was carried out by consulting group Pöyry for various industry players such as the National Grid and Centrica at a cost of more than £1m. Pöyry modelled the likely effects on the UK electricity market of a large windpower base of the sort needed to meet government carbon targets - assuming no major change in the amount of nuclear power available.
more ....

There's three pages of it, but you get the gist. Free wind power ain't gonna be free.
source

 

[spike]

I don't who was suggesting wind power would be free. That is an odd publication though. Interesting, I'll check it out for a bit.

 

[jimpeel]

Actually that doesn't do anything to belie his contentions. You must not understand this very well.

No warming in eleven years belies his contentions. He says we are on our way to a runaway warming. Hard to do when the planet is cooling.