Fudging figures: Europe emits more to emit less

From Euractiv.com

SPECIAL REPORT / Practically half of the EU’s renewable energy currently comes from wood and wood waste, according to the EU statistics office Eurostat, but a lack of sustainability criteria for measuring its environmental impact is stoking fears of a hidden carbon debt mountain.

The new Eurostat numbers were issued in conjunction with the UN’s Year of Sustainable Energy For All (SE4ALL), which sets ambitious renewables, energy efficiency and universal energy access targets.

According to the Eurostat statistics, on average, 49% of renewable energy in the EU 27 states came from wood and wood waste last year, and most EU states met the majority of their renewable energy obligations this way.

Reverse polarity sunspot emerging – Are we past solar cycle 24 maximum?

Vukcevic commented yesterday that the polar fields are now both across the zero line.

vukcevic

Submitted on 2012/11/26 at 6:26 pm OT An important moment for the SC24, the solar magnetic field has finally changed polarity http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC6.htm a bit later than expected.

Last night solen.info reports a new high latitude feature with reversed polarity – an emerging spot.

A bipolar reversed polarities region emerged at a high latitude and was located at N70E03 at midnight. No spots have been observed so far.

Overnight talkshop contributors ‘project722′ and Bill McKintyre reported the spot as definite.

Open letter to UN Secretary-General: Current scientific knowledge does not substantiate Ban Ki-Moon assertions on weather and climate, say 125-plus scientists

Reblogged from Financial Post | Opinion:

Policy actions that aim to reduce CO2 emissions are unlikely to influence future climate. Policies need to focus on preparation for, and adaptation to, all dangerous climatic events, however caused

Open Letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations

 

 

 

 

 

 

H.E. Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary-General, United Nations

First Avenue and East 44th Street, New York, New York, U.S.A.

November 29, 2012

Mr. Secretary-General:

Read more… 4,708 more words

Energy Bill Sparks Protests

Feelings are running high as the Govt. energy bill details go public. Plans to exempt the big energy users while hammering household tax payers for ‘green energy taxes’ are particularly contentious. I’m down in London for a couple of meetings and happened across this demo at the corner of Horse Guards Parade near St James Park. New Green party chief Natalie Bennett was there to rouse the attendees with some illogical twaddle – vid on youtube soon. I grabbed the microphone and told them about the UBS report I blogged last year. And got a round of applause!

 

Bad Correlation: Climate Hype Vs Global Temperature

Robert Bryce: The backlash against BIG WIND continues

From the National Observer, via the GWPF

Last month, 60 residents of New York’s Herkimer County filed a lawsuit in Albany that provides yet another example of the growing backlash against the wind-energy sector. It also exposes the double standard that exists in both the mainstream media and among environmental groups when it comes to “green” energy.

The main defendant in the lawsuit is the Spanish electric utility Iberdrola, which is the second-largest wind-energy operator in the U.S. The Herkimer County residents — all of whom live within a mile or so of the $200 million Hardscrabble Wind Power Project — are suing Iberdrola and a group of other companies because of the noise and disruption caused by the wind project.

Wayne Jackson: New Identity Linking Meteorological Phenomena

Err, wow…. I think. Wayne Jackson has been mostly absent  over the last six months but obviously not idle. Now he has dropped in on an old thread of Stephen Wilde’s and left this remarkable comment:

Sorry it has taken me six months to reply to this thread Stephen but it has taken a LOT of digging to get myself a handle on what really matters in planetary atmosphere temperature profiles. I have picked up a lot of clues from many including gallopingcamel, Nikolov & Zeller, Miskolczi, Ramanathan and the CERES team, even Huffman, but none of them seemed to give the complete, 100%, answer but each had hints in their texts.

gallopingcamel said:
“The derivation of the adiabatic lapse rate is taught in high schools and provides an explanation of the observed temperature gradient in Earth’s atmosphere.”

Absolutely. I have come to realize that a lapse rate is a terrible metric to use if you are striving to describe an atmosphere, it is the pressure ratio between two layers and the mean heat capacity ratio (λ=Cp/Cv) adjusted for the natural greenhouse function (1 minus 1/3) that exactly describes each atmosphere. The GH adjustment is therefore G=2/3 for optically thick atmospheres.

French Meteo Forecast for Nov 30: It Aint Pretty

My thanks to Michele Casati for suggesting this image from meteociel.fr . A split in the polar vortex is imminent, with cold arctic air spilling down into northern Europe and as far south as Andalucia and the Italian Lakes. Times to antifreeze the vehicles and get your  split timber ready for burning.

 

Ian Wilson: Tidal-Torque model of Solar-Planetary Interaction

My thanks to Ian Wilson for an update on his tidal-torquing model, which relates the motion of Venus, Earth and Jupiter to changes in sunspot numbers and the flows observed on the Solar surface. This elegant solution looks very promising in terms of forecasting solar variation, as well as offering a hypothesis explaining a mechanism underlying the strong correlations between solar variation and planetary motion. The following article is reposted from Ian’s excellent blog.

THE UPDATED V-E-J TIDAL TORQUING MODEL
Ian Wilson : November 2012

The problem with the collective blog postings about the
Spin-Orbit Coupling or Tidal-Torquing Model that are described
at the end of this post is that they only look at the tidal-torquing
(i.e. the pushing and pulling of Jupiter upon the Venus-Earth
tidal bulge in the Solar convective zone) when Venus and Earth
are inferior conjunction (i.e. when Venus and Earth are on the
same side of the Sun). However, a tidal bulge is also produced
when Venus and the Earth align on opposites sides of the Sun,
as well (i.e at superior conjunction).

This means that in the real world, tidal bulges are induced in
the convective layer of the Sun once every 0.8 years rather
than every 1.6 years, as assumed in the original basic model.
This is achieved by a sequence of alternating conjunctions
of Venus and the Earth:

Very British Humour: Jonathan Sale, and Marriot Edgar

Here’s an interesting article which was published in ‘Punch’ in 1976. My thanks to Ian Laidlaw for providing copy. It provides some historical context to the climate debate, and shows not much has changed in terms of uncertainty. It’s also a fun, well written piece. Following that, some more very british humour from Marriot Edgar, for the amusement of those hit by flooding this weekend.