UK windfarms being paid to turn off turbines

21 June, 2010 by

Spectacular failure

No, you did read that correctly. Wind farms are being paid to turn off their turbines – even when the wind is blowing! But hang on a minute, isn’t wind power a key plank in the whole “green economy” that we’re seamlessly transitioning towards? Aren’t we supposed to be able to decommission our coal and gas fired power stations and rely on wind and solar instead? From the UK Telegraph:

Energy firms will receive thousands of pounds a day per wind farm to turn off their turbines because the National Grid cannot use the power they are producing.

Critics of wind farms have seized on the revelation as evidence of the unsuitability of turbines to meet the UK’s energy needs in the future. They claim that the ‘intermittent’ nature of wind makes such farms unreliable providers of electricity.

The National Grid fears that on breezy summer nights, wind farms could actually cause a surge in the electricity supply which is not met by demand from businesses and households.

The electricity cannot be stored, so one solution – known as the ‘balancing mechanism’ – is to switch off or reduce the power supplied.

The system is already used to reduce supply from coal and gas-fired power stations when there is low demand. But shutting down wind farms is likely to cost the National grid – and ultimately consumers – far more. When wind turbines are turned off, owners are being deprived not only of money for the electricity they would have generated but also lucrative ‘green’ subsidies for that electricity.

The first successful test shut down of wind farms took place three weeks ago. Scottish Power received £13,000 for closing down two farms for a little over an hour on 30 May at about five in the morning.

Can we finally abandon this nonsensical “green economy” myth now please?

Read it here. (h/t WUWT)

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Global sea temperatures continue to plunge

20 June, 2010 by

Wave goodbye to El Niño, say hello to La Niña and widespread cooling, as Dr Roy Spencer reports:

Sea Surface Temperatures (SSTs) measured by the AMSR-E instrument on NASA’s Aqua satellite continue their plunge as a predicted La Nina approaches. The following plot, updated through yesterday (June 17, 2010) shows that the cooling in the Nino34 region in the tropical east Pacific is well ahead of the cooling in the global average SST, something we did not see during the 2007-08 La Nina event:

And Dr Spencer’s conclusion is timely:

At this pace of cooling, I suspect that the second half of 2010 could ruin the chances of getting a record high global temperature for this year. Oh, darn.

Read it here.

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Latest climate scare: whales

18 June, 2010 by

Yet another scare

Add them to the list… hang on, they’re there already. The Sydney Moonbat Herald is recycling climate scares now:

A record number of whales is expected to be spotted passing Sydney this winter, but scientists warn that global warming could put their future at risk.

The first big-picture review of the world’s oceans shows human activity is driving changes at a rate not seen for millions of years. Many species are threatened and increases in disease are predicted.

This could have dire consequences for hundreds of millions of people, a series of scientific reports concludes. Oscar Schofield, of Rutgers University in the US, said environmental change had been profound in the West Antarctic Peninsula and was altering the food chain on which whales in that region depended.

We can rely on our old friend Ove Hoegh-Guldberg to come up with an idiotic quote to get some column-inches (and more funding):

Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, of the University of Queensland, the co-author of another review, said the world’s oceans were the heart and lungs of the planet, but they were showing signs of ill health due to greenhouse gas emissions.

“It’s as if the Earth has been smoking two packs of cigarettes a day,” he said. “We are entering a period in which the very ocean services upon which humanity depends are undergoing massive change and, in some cases, beginning to fail.”

Yawn. Next.

Read it here (if you really must).

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Idiotic Comment of the Day: Frank Fenner

18 June, 2010 by

Frank Fenner

Today’s lunacy comes from virologist Frank Fenner:

“We’re going to become extinct,” the eminent scientist says. “Whatever we do now is too late.”

“Homo sapiens will become extinct, perhaps within 100 years,” he says. “A lot of other animals will, too. It’s an irreversible situation. I think it’s too late. I try not to express that because people are trying to do something, but they keep putting it off.”

Read it here.

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Daily Bayonet GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

18 June, 2010 by

Skewering the clueless

As always, a great read!

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Alarmists should learn some common courtesy…

17 June, 2010 by

"Manners maketh man"

Anthony Watts of Watts Up With That? fame is currently in Australia on a speaking tour. I had the pleasure of meeting Anthony at the talk in Rockdale, Sydney on Sunday. Now it appears that Anthony has been given a rough time by our old “friend” Ove Hoegh-Guldberg (see here), who demonstrates that he has fewer manners than you’d expect to find in a kindergarten playground:

The Tuesday night meeting in Brisbane on the WUWT Australian tour had a bit of unexpected fireworks courtesy of Aussie reef scientist Ove Hoegh-Guldberg. The meeting started off with some protestors outside holding placards with the tired old messages claiming “funding by big oil”…etc. Ove actually incited this on his blog, saying that “The Climate Shifts crew and other scientists will be there en masse to record and debunk the lies that will be told.”

The “en masse” was about 5, maybe 6 people by my count.

I’ve never met Ove, never corresponded with him, and after watching his behavior firsthand, I’m not sure I would have wanted to. His behavior left me with the impression that he was the antithesis of a professional person. At least the lady from Oxfam and the fellow in the green shirt who came up to me afterwards had manners, even though they disagreed with me, and I thank them for that. Ove never made the effort to say hello.

I think that tells us all we need to know about Ove.

Read it here.

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Obama politicises BP spill to push climate bill

16 June, 2010 by

Cheap politics

This environmental disaster could not have come at a better time for the Obama administration, desperate to push their economy-wrecking climate bill through the Senate, and he shamelessly hijacks the BP oil spill to lecture the American people on the evils of fossil fuels (despite the fact that cheap energy is what drives economic growth and prosperity – duh):

In his first Oval Office address, Obama compared the need to end the country’s “addiction to fossil fuels” to its emergency preparations for World War II and the mission to the moon. Hours after the government sharply increased its estimate of how much oil is flowing into the gulf, the president warned that risks will continue to rise because “we’re running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water.” He called for fast Senate action on an energy bill that has already passed the House.

“There are costs associated with this transition, and some believe we can’t afford those costs right now,” Obama said. “I say we can’t afford not to change how we produce and use energy, because the long-term costs to our economy, our national security and our environment are far greater.”

In other words, because of one spill (albeit a big one) we should take our economies back to the Dark Ages, right? I can just see people abandoning their SUVs on the roadside as we speak…

Read it here.

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Climate scientists meet to improve brainwashing skills

15 June, 2010 by

Washes away scepticism faster than other leading brands

Note that they’re not meeting to hang their heads in shame and discuss the shonky science, fudged data, blocking of FOI requests or intimidation of sceptical climate journals, which is all par for the course. No, this is all about communication – it’s just that they’re not getting their message across properly, obviously. The science is just fine, the public are just too stupid to understand:

REPRESENTATIVES of scientific organisations including the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology will meet today to discuss better communication of the science behind man-made climate change, in the wake of crumbling political and public consensus on global warming.

The conference in Sydney, organised by the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies (FASTS), is part of a long-term bid to develop a ”national communication charter” for major scientific organisations and universities to better spruik the evidence of climate change.

The conference will hear an address from Australia’s chief scientist, Penny Sackett [who is a fully paid up alarmist – see here]. Representatives of the CSIRO, Bureau of Meteorology, Australian Academy of Science and Department of Climate Change, among others, will attend [all on the alarmist bandwagon, of course, because without it, they would lose their juicy funding cheques].

…

FASTS president Cathy Foley said although public scepticism was on the rise, scientific evidence of man-made climate change had not changed, and it was sad the community was less and less trusting of scientists. [And who do you have to blame for that? The scientists themselves – think “Hockey Stick” and “Climategate”]

Dr Foley said a well-organised and funded climate sceptics’ movement had increasingly captured attention [That old chestnut again – a bunch of retired scientists and lone bloggers are better funded and better organised than the entire global warming industry? Yeah, right].

”We are concerned the debate around climate change has become a left-wing versus right-wing debate – or a kind of religious argument – when it should really be about the strength of the scientific evidence,” Dr Foley said.

The conference was not about politics or ”brainwashing” the public, she added.

The thought never entered my head. Oops, just noticed the title. Maybe it did.

Read it here.

UPDATE: Listen here to how the ABC treats this entire story with kid gloves, and allows Cathy Foley to misrepresent the science as having been settled for hundreds of years. Yes, the principle of greenhouse warming is settled, but the science of climate feedbacks (which is what we need to understand to determing whether we will get catastrophic warming) is most definitely not.

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Thousands of IPCC scientists? Try a handful…

15 June, 2010 by

More of the same

The so-called consensus of thousands of IPCC scientists all telling us the world is going to hell in a handcart thanks to our SUVs is phoney, according to an article in the National Post (h/t WUWT).

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change misled the press and public into believing that thousands of scientists backed its claims on manmade global warming, according to Mike Hulme, a prominent climate scientist and IPCC insider.  The actual number of scientists who backed that claim was “only a few dozen experts,” he states in a paper for Progress in Physical Geography, co-authored with student Martin Mahony.

“Claims such as ‘2,500 of the world’s leading scientists have reached a consensus that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate’ are disingenuous,” the paper states unambiguously, adding that they rendered “the IPCC vulnerable to outside criticism.”

More of what we have all come to expect from the IPCC: spin, spin and yet more spin.

Read it here.

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Prepare yourselves for IPCC Mark 2

14 June, 2010 by

Oh noes, another IPCC

ACM has reported previously that the UN is beginning to realise that climate change isn’t going to deliver the global government it so craves, so it is now casting around for another cause through which to regulate, tax and generally meddle in peoples lives. And the answer is: biodiversity! And they have taken the first step by approving the new UN body to look into it:

Representatives from close to 90 countries gathering in Busan, Korea, this week, have approved the formation of a new organization to monitor the ecological state of the planet and its natural resources. Dubbed the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) [it has its own web site already], the new entity will likely meet for the first time in 2011 and operate much like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

In essence, that means the IPBES will specialize in “peer review of peer review”, says Nick Nuttall, a spokesman for the United Nations Environment Programme, which has so far hosted the IPBES birth process. Its organizers hope that its reports and statements will be accepted as authoritative and unbiased summaries of the state of the science. Like the IPCC, it will not recommend particular courses of action. “We will not and must not be policy prescriptive”, emphasized Robert Watson, chief scientific advisor to the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and a vice-chair of the Busan meeting. “That is critical, or it will kill the process.”

“Authoritative and unbiased”? You mean like the IPCC’s authoritative and unbiased climate propaganda? Don’t make me laugh. And as for not being policy prescriptive, the UN is running the entire global emissions reduction programme – how is that not policy prescriptive?

It’s déjà vu, all over again.

Read it here (h/t Climate Realists).

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