Scottish grid unable to cope with variable input from wind turbines

From Scotland Against Spin

By Simon Johnson, Scottish Political Editor

Alex Salmond’s drive to promote the rapid spread of wind farms is again under fire after energy companies were paid nearly £2 million to stop Scottish turbines producing electricity on a single day just over a week ago.

Critics claim that there are already too many turbines producing too much electricity that consumers do not need or cannot use because it cannot be transmitted.

The Scottish Conservatives said the “constraint payments” to wind farm companies demonstrated the “utter folly” of building yet more turbines when the electricity generated by the existing ones cannot be used.

Anti-wind farm campaigners warned the payments – which total £33.7 million in barely two years – will only increase as more developments come online.

Letter from the Chairman of Balcombe Parish Council

The voice of civility and polity speaks.

Balcombe Parish Council

Over next weekend, from 16^th to 21^st August, the No Dash for Gas protest group is planning to hold their Reclaim the Power action camp somewhere in Balcombe.  As yet the location for the camp has not been disclosed and remains a mystery.

There have been reports in the media and on the group’s website that they will be here in response to a call from Balcombe to protect our interests. I have yet to establish who, if anybody, issued this invitation. It most certainly was not the Parish Council, and the local anti-fracking group, NoFibs, has confirmed it was not them.

For perhaps too long I have been sitting on the fence balancing the opinions in our village and tolerating extreme views, but the time has come to speak up.

Whilst villagers have voted that we oppose any future fracking and whilst having respect for those who…

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Lars Sørum: The three perceived risks of fracking

From risk management company DNV

Lars Sørum, Director of Shale Gas, DNV:

The below three issues are in my opinion the most important only because they are the most debated. Let’s be clear; the risks associated with unconventional gas are not significantly different from those of conventional exploration. Nor are the most relevant risk areas below ground, but on the surface and mostly non-technical . So the reason to highlight the below as the top 3 challenges is related to the “perceived risks” rather than the “actual risks”. These perceptions in turn can topple the best of business plans and are therefore still pretty important. Important are also the economics of a unconventional business – but in this piece I figured I would stay with the “popular ones”, also covered in DNVs Recommended Practice, which gives guidance to this and other issues.

BREAKING*** Did CIA and Dept of State lose 400 MANPADS? Whistleblower says YES! #Benghazi

Where is Oliver North at the moment anyway? H/T Andrew williams

The Future Defines the Past

ATTORNEY FOR WHISTLEBLOWER: 400 U.S. MISSILES STOLEN IN BENGHAZI

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by AWR HAWKINS 12 Aug 2013, 12:05 PM PDT 1POST A COMMENT

On August 12, Joe DiGenova, attorney for one of the Benghazi whistleblowers, told Washington D.C.’s WMAL that one of the reasons people have remained tight-lipped about Benghazi is because 400 U.S. missiles were “diverted to Libya” and ended up being stolen and falling into “the hands of some very ugly people.”

DiGenova represents Benghazi whistleblower Mark Thompson. He told WMAL that he “does not know whether [the missiles] were at the annex, but it is clear the annex was somehow involved in the distribution of those missiles.”

He claimed his information “comes from a former intelligence official who stayed in constant contact with people in the special ops and intelligence community.” He said the biggest concern right now is…

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Coe on Ocean CO2 regulation, IPCC flat wrong

Bishop Hill is hosting a four part series “A new look at the carbon dioxide budget” where David Coe presents four PDF explaining what is going on.

Andrew Montford writes

A new look at the carbon dioxide budget
Jul 30, 2013
Climate: carbon budget

As readers are probably aware, I don’t spend a lot of time on new hypotheses about global warming. Apart from intermittent looks at Svensmark’s cosmoclimatology work, I’ve tended to concentrate on mainstream science and its relationship with policy, as well as a lot of “meta” stuff like peer review.

However, I was recently sent a paper by reader David Coe that piqued my interest. It seemed to me to be put together pretty well, and was about an area of the science that I knew nothing about.

Tim writes, this deserves wide coverage.

In a nutshell Henry’s law does apply without the invented special pleading cited by the climatic community to explain why human CO2 is different.

David Cameron MP: We cannot afford to miss out on shale gas

UK Prime Minister David Cameron has finally realised Shale gas development is a no brainer. From the Telegraph:

We cannot afford to miss out on shale gas
David Cameron MP 12-8-13

Fracking has become a national debate in Britain – and it’s one that I’m determined to win. If we don’t back this technology, we will miss a massive opportunity to help families with their bills and make our country more competitive. Without it, we could lose ground in the tough global race.

As with any advance in technology, fracking – drilling for so-called “unconventional” gas – has rightly drawn scrutiny. But a lot of myths have also sprung up. So today I want to set out why I support it – and deal with the worst of the myths at the same time.

First, fracking has real potential to drive energy bills down. Labour’s mismanagement of the economy means that many people are struggling with the cost of living today. Where we can act to relieve the pressure, we must. It’s simple – gas and electric bills can go down when our home-grown energy supply goes up. We’re not turning our back on low carbon energy, but these sources aren’t enough. We need a mix. Latest estimates suggest that there’s about 1,300 trillion cubic feet of shale gas lying underneath Britain at the moment – and that study only covers 11 counties. To put that in context, even if we extract just a tenth of that figure, that is still the equivalent of 51 years’ gas supply.

Ian Wilson: The VEJ Tidal Torquing Model can explain changes in the level of solar activity – Part 2 Halstatt Cycle

Reposted from Ian WIlson’s website Astro Climate Connection, this article looks at the congruence of the motions of Venus and Earth and Jupiter to produce a periodicity which matches a cycle seen in paleoproxy data believed to relate to changes in solar activity levels.

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The VEJ Tidal Torquing Model can explain many of the long-term changes in the level of solar activity.  

II. The 2300 year Hallstatt Cycle.(*)

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It has long been recognized that there is a prominent 208 year de Vries (or Suess) cycle in the level of solar activity. Its appearance, however, is intermittent. Careful analysis of the Be10 and C14 ice-core records show that the de Vries cycle is most prominent during epochs that are separated by about 2300 years (Vasiliev and Dergachev, 2002).  This longer modulation period in the level of solar activity is known as the Hallstatt cycle ( Vitinsky et al., 1986; Damon and Sonett, 1991; Vasiliev and Dergachev, 2002).It can be shown that the VEJ Tidal Torquing Model naturally produces changes in the planetary torques acting on the base of the Sun’s convective layer that exhibit a Hallstatt-like cycle.(*) Note that most of the values used in this blog post are stated to four decimal places. This is not being done to claim that the values have a precision to this level of accuracy but solely for the purposes of delaying the curtailment of the number of decimal places until the end of the calculations. In addition, it is important to note that the calculation done here are just a preliminary attempt to explain why the VEJ Tidal-Torquing model produces changes in planetary torque acting upon the Sun that exhibit a Hallstatt-like cycle. A detailed analysis of ephemeris data will have to be done before these preliminary results can be confirmed.

Venus-Earth Alignments in a Reference Frame That is Fixed with Respect to the Stars.

The following diagram shows five consecutive alignments of Venus and the Earth following the alignment of 2004. Each inferior conjunction of the Earth and Venus (i.e. VE alignment) is separated from the previous one by the Venus-Earth synodic cycle i.e. 1.59866 years. This means that, on average, the Earth-Venus-Sun line moves by 144.4824 degrees in retrograde direction, once every VE alignment. Hence, E-V-S line returns to almost the same orientation with respect the stars after five VE alignments or eight Earth (sidereal) years [actually 7.9933 years].

Newly discovered asteroid 2013PS13 shadowing 2005WK4 whizzes past Earth today

Some more confirmation that asteroids go around in pairs:

Discovered just 48 hours ago, asteroid 2013 PS13 is whizzing by Earth today at only 0.5 Lunar Distances from Earth alongside asteroid 2005 WK4, which is only 8.1 Lunar Distances away from Earth! Slooh tracked both asteroids this morning from the Canary Islands observatory – come check out the spectacular results along with Paul Cox.

GLOBAL LOOTING: The new EU bailin law was passed 8 days ago….did you notice?

Read then, then remove your savings from your bank account and put them somewhere safe. That’ll get their attention.

The Slog

Revealed: official details on how the EU will steal from us

Are you a citizen with rights, or just a helpless crustacean?

Three beaming eurocrats – Barroso, Van Rompuy and Lithuanian Dalia Grybauskaite – emerged triumphant from a session two days ago, in which they mapped out the biggest bank heist in world history. This is to put flesh on the eurozone law hastily passed on August 1st (while EU citizens were on holiday) to deal with the inevitability event of a bank collapse. Under this draft proposal – which many expect to be applied to the entire EU – no depositor big or small will in future be able to feel safe with money deposited in a bank. The Slog now calls for those who represent us, across the entire cultural spectrum of European society – to do something.

In a barely read piece a month ago, the International…

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Cameron Finally Catches up With UKIP Policy on Shale Gas Fracking

From the Scotsman:

Britain would be “making a big mistake” if it did not seriously consider fracking and the prospect of cheaper gas prices, the Prime Minister has said.

David Cameron said the country is “missing out big time at the moment” as he compared the number of shale gas wells dug in the European Union compared with the United States.

But he cautioned safety needs to be assured and that “very clear” environmental procedures would have to be met before companies are given the go-ahead to start fracking. Cameron said:

We would be making a big mistake as a nation if we did not think hard about how to encourage fracking and cheaper prices right here in the UK…If you look what’s happening in America with the advent of shale gas and fracking, their energy costs in business and their gas prices are half the level of ours.

Lavabit: Email Service Snowden Reportedly Used, Abruptly Shuts Down

From BoingBoing. Not much needs to be said here, apart from; Fuck You, Obama.

Lavabit, email service Snowden reportedly used, abruptly shuts down
Xeni Jardin at 12:05 pm Thu, Aug 8, 2013

Remember when word circulated that Edward Snowden was using Lavabit, an email service that purports to provide better privacy and security for users than popular web-based free services like Gmail? Lavabit’s owner has shut down service, with a mysterious message posted on the lavabit.com home page today. Below, the full message:

Jaime Jessop: A Sensitive Issue and Why Advocacy is not a Moral Imperative

This article is a repost from new climate blogger Jaime Jessop’s site Notes on a Scandal. One for the bookmarks file.

A Sensitive Issue and Why Advocacy is not a Moral Imperative
Jaime Jessop : August 6 2013

So, the climate debate rushes swiftly on, not so meandering now, not gently spreading out and forming nice ox-bow lakes of comfortably ‘settled science’, but gushing anew, foaming and bubbling as ‘radical’ viewpoints begin to be expressed in the mainstream media and observations of ‘non-warming’ start piling up like so much drifting snow against the front entrance of the warmists’ enclave.

I would say that this paper by Otto et al in Nature Geoscience caused the first really major geological upheaval and set the waters rushing downhill once more. It is authored principally by IPCC scientists and is peer-reviewed (a must it seems, on any papers having to do with climate science, though noticeably not so in many other scientific research fields). I quote:

“The authors include fourteen climate scientists, well known in their fields, who are lead or coordinating lead authors of IPCC AR5 WG1 chapters that are relevant to estimating climate sensitivity. Two of them, professors Myles Allen and Gabi Hegerl, are lead authors for Chapter 10, which deals with estimates of ECS and TCR constrained by observational evidence. The study was principally carried out by a researcher, Alex Otto, who works in Myles Allen’s group.”

“Surprised” scientists find Ozone Hole may have caused warming not cooling

Stephen Wilde will like this article on PhysOrg:

A lot of people mix up the ozone hole and global warming, believing the hole is a major cause of the world’s increasing average temperature. Scientists, on the other hand, have long attributed a small cooling effect to the ozone shortage in the hole.

Now a new computer-modeling study suggests that the ozone hole might actually have a slight warming influence, but because of its effect on winds, not temperatures. The new research suggests that shifting wind patterns caused by the ozone hole push clouds farther toward the South Pole, reducing the amount of radiation the clouds reflect and possibly causing a bit of warming rather than cooling.

“We were surprised this effect happened just by shifting the jet stream and the clouds,”

said lead author Kevin Grise, a climate scientist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University in New York City.

Mike Hulme: ‘After Climategate … Never the Same’

H/T @WarrenPearce
Mike Hume asks:

What has changed since Climategate?

(9 August) ‘The 97.1% consensus’. While I was away on holiday, my criticism at Making Science Public of the Cook et al. study in Environmental Research Letters attracted a fair amount of comment on several climate blogs (for example see here). In partial response I have posted here an extract from one of my new essays (‘After Climategate … never the same’) which appears in my latest book, published yesterday by Routledge (see below).

Galileo Movement Video: It’s Steam – Stupid

One of my pet peeves is the way the media always use images of power stations shot from an angle at a time of day when the steam condensate coming out of cooling towers is made to look like smoke. I mentioned it quite recently as being at the top of my list of annoyances about the way climate and energy issues are reported. Now the Galileo Movement in Australia has made a nice short (2min) video to alert the public to the way they are being lied to, manipulated and deceived.

 

The Hockey Schtick reports on geometry causing ice ages, no CO2 involved

Copied from THE HOCKEY SCHTICK

New paper finds ice ages explained even with constant levels of CO2
A paper published today in Nature finds that ice ages in the Northern Hemisphere can be explained by Milankovitch cycles and the unique geography of the North American ice sheet, finding, “the crucial mechanism for the 100,000 year cycles is the delayed glacial isostatic rebound which keeps the ice elevation low, and, therefore, the ice ablation high, while the ice sheet retreats.” The authors are able to reproduce the saw-tooth pattern of ice ages using a model that assumes a constant level of atmospheric CO2.

Lisa Murkowski: Obama Admin Should Expedite LNG Exports to Non-FTA Countries

US Senator Lisa Murkowski has written a report which urges the Obama Administration to stop dragging its feet and aid its allies.

 

Big Bear brings bigger, better blow-ups beyond blindingly bright boundaries

From Spaceref:

Researchers at New Jersey Institute of Technology’s (NJIT) Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) in Big Bear, CA have obtained new and remarkably detailed photos of the Sun with the New Solar Telescope (NST). The photographs reveal never-before-seen details of solar magnetism revealed in photospheric and chromospheric features.

The most precise sunspot image ever taken is shown. With the unprecedented resolution of the Big Bear Solar Observatory’s New Solar Telescope (NST), many, previously unknown, small-scale features are revealed. They include the twisting flows along the penumbra’s less dark filaments, as well as the complicated dynamical motion in the light bridge vertically spanning the darkest part of the umbra, as well as the dark cores of the small bright points (umbra dots) apparent in the umbra. The telescope is currently being upgraded to include the only solar multi-conjugate adaptive optics system to fully correct atmospheric distortion over a wide field of view, as well as the only fully cryogenic solar spectrograph for probing the sun in the near infrared. Other instruments have been brought on-line since 2009, to enable the NST to probe the sun with its full scientific capability for measuring magnetic fields and dynamic events using visible and infrared light. Credit: BBSO/NJIT.

With our new generation visible imaging spectrometer (VIS), the solar atmosphere from the photosphere to the chromosphere, can be monitored in a near real time. 

said Wenda Cao, NJIT Associate Professor of Physics and BBSO Associate Director.

Ian Wilson: Long-Term Lunar Atmospheric Tides in the Southern Hemisphere

This open access paper from Ian Wilson is the culmination of exhaustive work on surveying terrestrial climate data and relating it to celestial motion. Co-authored with Nicolai Sidorenkov, it is another major step forward in verifying the connections between Earth’s climatic change and Solar System Dynamics. Next we’ll be looking at Ian’s Subsequent paper: ‘Are Global Mean Temperatures Significantly Affected by Long-Term Lunar Atmospheric Tides?’

Long-Term Lunar Atmospheric Tides in the Southern Hemisphere

Ian R. G. Wilson 1 and Nikolay S. Sidorenkov *,2

 

1 The Liverpool Plains Daytime Astronomy Centre, Curlewis, NSW, Australia

2 Hydrometcenter of Russia, Bolshoy Predtechensky 11-13, 123242 Moscow, Russian Federation, Russia

The Open Atmospheric Science Journal, 2013, Volume 7 Bentham Science

 

Fig. (1a). The NOAA SST anomaly map for the 25th of January 1981.

Tony Abbot: Within a fortnight we’ll abolish the carbon tax, and all government climate agencies

Tony Abbot is vying with Kevin Rudd for leadership in Australia. Neck and neck on immigration, other issues are now up for strong minded policy. Tony Abbott intends to be tough on climate tax, and tough on the causes of climate tax, if his party wins the impending Australian General Election:

From the Herald Sun:

TONY Abbott has written to the chair of Labor’s $10 billion green investment bank to request it suspend its operations during the election campaign.

The opposition leader has vowed to abolish the Clean Energy Finance Corporation as a matter of priority if elected on September 7.

In a letter to CEFC chair Jillian Broadbent, Mr Abbott on Monday reiterated the coalition’s policy in regards to the corporation.

“As you are aware, the coalition does not support the CEFC or the expenditure of $10 billion of borrowed money on projects which the private sector has deemed too risky to invest in,” Mr Abbott wrote.