More UK ‘green’ energy subsidies facing the axe

Under threat?

Who will complain if their energy bills go down or at least rise at a slower rate, when ‘out of control subsidies’ are cut or abolished?

Subsidies for new wind farms and solar power plants are set to be cut as ministers move to protect millions of families from rising energy bills, says the UK Daily Telegraph.

The government is expected to announce the decision this week, after official figures revealed that so-called “green” energy schemes will require £1.5 billion more in subsidies – paid for by customers – than originally planned.

Ministers in Paris to boost flagging climate talks

Climate talks ‘flagging’ ?[image credit: The Clinic]

Usual story – rich and poor countries fighting about money. Things are so bad, they need a pre-conference conference to try and figure out what they’re going to say and do at the real conference, apart from wave ‘projections’ and ‘scenarios’ at each other. Or – anyone fancy a trip to Paris in July?

Foreign and environment ministers and other high-level officials from 45 countries are set to gather in Paris Monday seeking to re-energise climate talks mired in technical details and political squabbling, reports Yahoo News.

Colorado’s Dream of “Clean Energy” Sabotaged by Pot Growers

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What’s this? [image credit: mendonews]

What effect does pot-smoking have on green energy fantasies?

Scope for a government-funded survey there perhaps 😉

American Elephants

Steven Hayward noted a recent story from the Denver Post at Powerline. It seems that surging electricity consumption by Colorado’s new marijuana industry is sabotaging Denver’s push to use less energy—as urged  by the White House’s Clean Power Plan to shut down coal-fired power plants because carbon pollution.

Citywide electricity use has been rising at the rate of 1.2 percent a year, and 45 percent of that increase comes from marijuana-growing facilities, Denver officials said Wednesday.

Denver has a goal of capping energy use at 2012 levels. Electricity is a big part of that.

The latest Xcel Energy data show cannabis grow facilities statewide, the bulk of which are in Denver, used as much as 200 million kilowatt hours of electricity in 2014, utility officials said. City officials said 354 grow facilities in Denver used about 121 million kwh in 2013, up from 86 million kwh at 351 facilities in…

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Graham Stringer and Peter Lilley join GWPF as Trustees

Hmm… times of Chinese curses

The Global Warming Policy Foundation is pleased to announce that Graham Stringer and the Rt Hon Peter Lilley have joined the GWPF’s Board of Trustees.

Graham Stringer is a Labour MP. He was the leader of Manchester City Council and the Parliamentary Secretary in the Cabinet Office under Tony Blair.

Peter Lilley is a Conservative MP. He was Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and Secretary of State for Social Security in the Cabinets of Margaret Thatcher and John Mayor. He was appointed by David Cameron to the Number 10 Policy Board with responsibility for Foreign Affairs, Europe, Defence and International Development.

A few day ago

Peter Lilley & Graham Stringer Vote Against Climate Committee’s IPCC Report

Date: 28/07/14
Peter Lilley MP and Graham Stringer MP

Peter Lilley and Graham Stringer voted against the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee’s report on the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Report because “we believe the role of the Select Committee is to hold public institutions critically to account not to act as their cheer leaders”.
– See more at: http://www.thegwpf.com/peter-lilley-graham-stringer-vote-against-climate-committees-ipcc-report/#sthash.kPwXjCR4.dpuf

Orcus – the anti-Pluto

Orcus in blue, Pluto in red, Neptune in grey
[credit: Eurocommuter / Wikipedia]

The ‘anti-Pluto’ label arose from the fact that the orbit of probable dwarf planet Orcus looks like a mirror-image of that of Pluto (as shown above), and is less than three years shorter than Pluto’s 248 years. It also has its own relatively large moon – or binary neighbour – just like Pluto. [More details about the graphic here]

Wikipedia says: 90482 Orcus is a Kuiper belt object with a large moon, Vanth. It was discovered on February 17, 2004 by Michael Brown of Caltech, Chad Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory, and David Rabinowitz of Yale University. Precovery images as early as November 8, 1951 were later identified. It is probably a dwarf planet.

Orcus is a plutino, locked in a 2:3 resonance with Neptune, making two revolutions around the Sun to every three of Neptune’s. This is much like Pluto, except that it is constrained to always be in the opposite phase of its orbit from Pluto: Orcus is at aphelion when Pluto is at perihelion and vice versa.

NOAA: Record 117-Month U.S. Major Hurricane Drought Continues

Not a recent photo [credit: NOAA]

We have highlighted this before, but the period just keeps getting longer, much to the relief of many U.S. citizens no doubt.

CNSNews.com reports: It has been 117 months since a major hurricane, defined as a Category 3 or above, has made landfall in the continental United States, according to 2015 data from the Hurricane Research Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

This is the longest span of time in which no major hurricane has struck the mainland U.S. in NOAA hurricane records going back to 1851.

Electricity Blackouts Risk Up

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As Paul Homewood rightly says, this is as predictable as the day is long. Rely on unreliable renewables and end up having trouble generating enough power – who knew?

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

h/t Mark Hodgson

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33527967

From the No S**t Sherlock Dept!

The risk of blackouts this winter has increased compared with a year ago, according to National Grid.

It says the closure of some power stations will have left spare capacity on the system at just 1.2%, the worst for a decade.

It has secured extra supplies by paying tens of millions of pounds to have several plants on standby and by asking some industries to switch off power.

The move means overall spare capacity is now expected to be around 5%.

“It’s clear that electricity margins for that coldest, darkest half hour of winter are currently tighter than they have been, due to power stations closures”, says Cordi O’Hara, National Grid’s Director of Market Operations.

To ensure the lights stay on, for the second year running, National Grid will pay firms like Centrica and SSE to keep power plants in…

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Wind power plant to be built on ancient necropolis

A suitable site for wind turbines? [image credit: Hurriyet News]

The Archaeology News Network reports on a startling example of renewables madness:

Turkey’s Cultural and Natural Heritage Preservation Board has refused to declare a plot of land in Istanbul’s Silivri district as a first-degree archaeological site despite the discovery of artifacts from the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine eras. Now, the artefacts face an even greater threat as a wind-power company has indicated that it wants to cover the findings and continue constructing 21 wind turbines.

Historical artefacts were discovered during the construction of Silivri Energy A.Ş.’s wind power plant belonging to businessman Abdullah Tivnikli in the village last February.

Among the artefacts were many Hellenistic- and Roman-era tombs and one-meter walls.

Hello Pluto

After a nine year, three billion mile journey NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has reached Pluto

What happened to the sunspots?

Giant sunspot group AR1944 in January 2014. [Credit: NASA/SDO]

Communities Digital News explains:

On June 30, 2015 the globally recognized maximum for the current 11-year sunspot cycle was 81.9. On July 1, 2015 that number suddenly leaped all the way up to 116.4!

Stranger still, the current cycle (Cycle 24) fell from being the 7th weakest sunspot maximum since 1749 to being the 4th weakest sunspot maximum. Cycle 24’s sunspot number jumped by 30 percent, yet its ranking dropped by three places. How can that be?

Heathrow Airport climate change protest delays flights

Heathrow pantomime [image credit: BBC]

What effect will this have on public perceptions? Might help to consign climate change to the fringes of acceptability as an issue with any luck. The BBC reports:

Protesters disrupted flights at Heathrow Airport by cutting through a fence and chaining themselves together on a runway.

Direct action group Plane Stupid said 13 demonstrators opposed to the airport’s expansion plans got on to the northern runway at 03:30 BST.

The runway was closed for nearly three hours and 13 flights were cancelled.

Australian government bans wind farm subsidies, restricts solar

[image credit: BBC Scotland]

From ‘green bank’ to green blank:

Australia has slammed the door shut on any new government-funded investment in renewable energy schemes as Prime Minister Tony Abbott extends his “war on wind power”, reports Breitbart News.

In doing so Mr Abbott has sent a clear message to the mendicant green renewable energy sector that there will be no more cheap state-supplied financing for its projects.

Half time in Typhoon season

Who stole it?

” satellite pictures show half of this storm apparently missing. ”

Yes, pictures are apparent. Careful, it might be hiding with that globule warning stuff.

Rewind to 11th July 2015, yesterday….

China evacuates nearly a million as typhoon hits
About 960,000 residents flee coastal cities and transport disrupted as typhoon brings winds of up to 200kmph.
— http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/07/china-typhoon-chan-hom-150711043658185.html

Note the “200kmph”, knotty.

The collapse of Typhoon Chan-hom
Shanghai escapes significant typhoon damage as decline in strength seems to have happened in hours.
— http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/07/collapse-typhoon-chan-hom-150712101407513.html

Must be those Ameircan devils messing with the satellites.

Cloud cuckoo land in Silicon Valley

[image credit: latinoamericarenovable.com]

Are these people just mind-bogglingly naive, downright dangerous – or something else? You decide. And for the record we don’t support the ‘scientific consensus’ claim in this Mercury News report:

A team of elder Silicon Valley scientists is building an audacious device that might solve one of humanity’s most profound dilemmas — a “cloud whitener” designed to cool a warming planet.

The men — retired physicists, engineers, chemists and computer experts from some of Silicon Valley’s top tech companies — have been meeting four days a week for seven years in the Sunnyvale lab of the Marine Cloud Brightening Project to design a tool that creates perfectly suspended droplets of water resembling fog.

New solar model claims 97% predictive accuracy – cooler times ahead

[Image credit: NASA]

Another solar theory rolls off the production line – as ever, time will tell if it lives up to its own billing.

A new model of the Sun’s 11-year heartbeat suggests that solar activity will fall by 60 per cent during the 2030s, dropping to conditions last seen during the Maunder minimum, reports Ice Age Now.

Beginning in about 1645, the Maunder minimum corresponded with the severest portion of the last
“Little Ice Age.”

The temperature hiatus is back – or, it never went away

Pacific ocean [image credit: Wikipedia]

H/T GWPF
Let’s see if this new paper in the same journal as the ‘what hiatus?’ effort gets the same level of publicity as the other one, given that ‘Nieves et al…find substantially less warming in the top 100 m of the oceans in the current decade than in the previous one.’

If there is one topic that illustrates the state of climate science it is that of the so-called “pause” or hiatus – the observational fact that global surface annual average temperatures, as well as satellite data on the lower troposphere, hasn’t changed for a decade or more.

Coldest snap in five years to hit Australia says BoM

Something like this? [image credit: BBC]

Not quite what’s expected by most officially-sponsored channels that like to trumpet supposed relentless warming in our futures…

Temperatures will drop to freezing on much of Australia’s east coast this weekend in what could be the region’s bitterest cold snap in five years, the Daily Telegraph reports.

Strong cold winds, rain, snow and hail were expected to batter the nation’s south-east for days.
Sydneysiders could expect an average maximum temperature of 59F (15C) for four days – a two year record.

July frost

Wierding continues

Morning of 9th July 2015 the Katesbridge Met Office site reported a frost, flat lining air temperature close to 0.0C which arguably means frost was forming on the Stevenson screen. Whether this was an air frost, don’t know. Dew formation produces a less clear flat but is not usually clear in hourly data.

Notoriously cold still air site, convective cooling, no wind. Sun was up by 5AM but there are low hills thereabouts.

Why?

More notably temperatures were widely below 10C (50F) in Northern Ireland, England and Scotland. Where there was a wind, a good example St Bees Head where it was off sea, 11C, Arctic air, reaching right across, Bridlington where the screen is almost on the east coast foreshore was also cool.

Plenty of Arctic sea ice for polar bears this year

Arctic sea ice [image credit: BBC/Getty Images]

Polar Bear Science finds no problems with the Arctic polar bear environment this year:

There is still a lot of sea ice in Hudson Bay, Foxe Basin, Davis Strait and Baffin Bay this week – more than average for this date – with slightly less than average in the Beaufort Sea. Past behaviour of Western and Southern Hudson Bay polar bears suggests the mean date that bears come ashore for the summer this year will be later than average due to the plentiful ice available, regardless of when polar bear biologists decide that “breakup” has occurred.

Caravanning in Antarctica is no holiday

Mobile home [image credit: BAS]

The British Antarctic Survey has a new research station with a difference, reports the New Scientist:

CONSTANT darkness, bone-chilling temperatures and cut off from the rest of the world. Living in Antarctica isn’t for the faint-hearted – and I should know, I overwintered there a while back. But at least I lived in a base built on rock; it’s quite another matter when your home sits on top of a floating ice shelf. This is Halley VI, the Antarctic’s most futuristic construction so far.