Bishop Hill On advice to government
Oct 15, 2013 Bureaucrats Climate: IPCC Climate: Parliament ;)
In the email this morning I find a copy of the presentation Sir Mark Walport will give to the cabinet today, purportedly on the subject of the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report. It's a pretty interesting read (see bottom of post for link), although in fact when you get into it there is very little about what the IPCC had to say.
It starts unexceptionably enough, with a slide about surface temperature warming, including not only the IPCC's "Let's hide the pause behind decadal averages" graph, but also the annual averages.
Then there's a rather strange graph showing the emissions scenarios, which invites the reader to understand that temperature rises will be driven by carbon dioxide and carbon dioxide alone. Such confident statements are a bit surprising given the failures of the models.
After that it goes completely off the rails. Slide 3 is a major blooper, which discusses the UK Climate Change Risk Assessment. Unfortunately the UKCCRA is based on the UKCP09 climate predictions, which the Met Office has acknowledged contain a major flaw. Reasonable people might wonder why the Government Chief Scientific Adviser is basing his briefing of the Cabinet on data that is known to be erroneous.
The specific points Walport makes about weather extremes are fairly predictable:
- Peter Stott's claim that the risk of flooding has doubled due to climate change (despite there being no apparent trend in rainfall statistics)
- The "35,000 deaths from European heatwave" story (the Europe-wide mortality from cold far exceeds this figure every year)
If anything it then gets even worse, when Walport outlines possible scenarios for energy futures. We have a high nuclear scenario, with 75GW of atom-splitters, which is surely complete fantasy given the struggle to get even a single such plant built in the UK. Or we have the high renewables scenario, in which we get 82GW of wind, 13GW of CCS, 14GW of solar and 10GW of "marine". Given that CCS and marine power are still in the realms of fairytale this is bad enough, but consider this: David Mackay estimates that if we used the whole of the UK's offshore shelf for windfarms - some 40,000 square kilometers - we would get an average of 120GW. 82GW of wind would therefore require over 27,000 sqkm. (I think the figures Walport gives are average outputs rather than nameplate capacities, otherwise I can't see how he gets to his TWh figure. On the other hand I can't see how you can back up 82GW of wind with such small quantities of dispatchable energy. Can anyone throw any light on this?)
The briefing is, I'm sure readers will agree, woeful. It's a damning indictment of the advice that the government is getting from the scientific establishment. Nevertheless, we should be grateful that it has seen the light of day. People need to see the standards that pertain in Whitehall. Then at least they might understand how we have reached the point at which we wonder if the lights are going to stay on this winter.
Bishop Hill
Paul Homewood in the comments points out that this 82GW of wind is capacity, not output. This means we only need 7000 square kilometers of space for the turbines.
Bishop Hill
The Met Office have acknowledged Nic's points about the flaw in the UKCP09 predictions but ask me to make it clear that they deny that they have acknowledged a flaw. I don't know what they mean either.
Reader Comments (114)
My own work in renewable energy continues to show that you need one watt of conventional electrical generation (Nuclear, Coal, Gas Hydro) for every watt of renewables -- at least here in Ontario Canada.
Several hundred times a year the power output of renewables drops to near zero output -- 5% or less of faceplate.
Powering a Country -- let alone one province of Canada via renewables is, was and will be a fantasy for many decades to come. I will go so far as to say with any technology -- real or on the drawing board -- it's simply not possible.
Oct 15, 2013 at 11:06 AM | Unregistered CommenterMikeB
Interesting data. There are a few studies that suggest that heat related deaths tend to affect those prone to imminent death anyway so tend to not skew the death rates whereas cold related deaths do. This summarises one such study plus more at the link. Deschenes and Moretti (2009)
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"In another impressive study, Deschenes and Moretti (2009) analyzed the relationship between weather and mortality, based on data that included the universe of deaths in the United States over the period 1972–1988, wherein they matched each death to weather conditions on the day of death and in the county of occurrence. These high-frequency data and the fine geographical detail allowed them to estimate with precision the effect of cold and hot temperature shocks on mortality, as well as the dynamics of such effects—most notably, the existence or absence of a "harvesting effect" whereby the temperature-induced deaths either are or are not subsequently followed by a drop in the normal death rate that could either partially or fully compensate for the prior extreme temperature-induced deaths.
The two researchers state their results "point to widely different impacts of cold and hot temperatures on mortality." In the latter case, they discovered "hot temperature shocks are indeed associated with a large and immediate spike in mortality in the days of the heat wave," but "almost all of this excess mortality is explained by near-term displacement," so that "in the weeks that follow a heat wave, we find a marked decline in mortality hazard, which completely offsets the increase during the days of the heat wave," such that "there is virtually no lasting impact of heat waves on mortality."
In the case of cold temperature days, they also found "an immediate spike in mortality in the days of the cold wave," but "there is no offsetting decline in the weeks that follow," so "the cumulative effect of one day of extreme cold temperature during a thirty-day window is an increase in daily mortality by as much as 10%." In addition, they write, "this impact of cold weather on mortality is significantly larger for females than for males," but "for both genders, the effect is mostly attributable to increased mortality due to cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.""
http://www.climatewiki.org/index.php/Human_health_effects
In the real UK, we have a maximum of 10GW of nuclear, with 7.7GW at this moment in time. Coal is roasting along at 16.8GW, CCGT at 12.58GW, and wind at 1.33GW. Take coal out of the mix and we're toast. Tell people their energy cost is going through the roof because we stopped coal generation because of CO2 and we're running on diesel instead, and parliament will probably be toast[ed] soon after. Insanity lives on in government.
I think the problem is that there are 46 million people registered to vote and 45,999,000 don't give a tinkers cuss what happens in parliament.
I'm somewhat surprised that BH commenters are so surprised at the quality of this advice.
Sir Mark Walport is required to present to the cabinet, and of course he will source his advice from recognised expert sources.
Do you think it more likely that he would ask BH commenters or the lead scientist at the Met Office for climate advice?
And are any of you really surprised that two of the six slides are directly from Slingo? Where else would he get them from?
What really surprised me was that the presentation was so extraordinarily short. Six slides? Does this reflect on the attention span of the average minister?
The 82GW quoted for wind is capacity, not output. Assuming, say, 20GW actual and knocking solar down a bit, this would give about 80 GW for all power sources.
Multiply by 8760 hours, and you get about 700TWh potential p.a.
(The annual usage is 530 TWh under this scenario, about 40% higher than now, because of extra demand from decarbonisation of domestic heating and transport. There will of course be periods of high demand in winter etc..)
The interesting thing is that only 24GW of back up gas is assumed. To all intents and purposes, you need 1GW of back up for every 1GW of wind.
... with 75GW of atom-splitters, which is surely complete fantasy given the struggle to get even a single such plant built in the UK.
I'm surprised that no one has pointed out one of the most reasonable explanations for this suicidal dash towards wind.
Come the inevitable collapse of the Grid, it is unlikely that there will thereafter be any opposition to an extensive plan of Nuclear builds...
I have just listened to an edition of the BBC's "Costing the Earth" - an experience akin to listening to an edition of "Alice in Wonderland" - except that the hole that we find ourselves in at the end is not a rabbit hole and it will cost us some £110 billion or more to clamber out.
It really is astonishing that we should be asked to spend so much money on the basis of such bad science. The problems with the models, it would appear, arise because the Kevin Trenberth and a number of his associated Climategate scientists do not properly understand how the Stefan Boltzmann Law applies to the Earth and hence how the earth's climate actually works.
A tiny fraction of £110 billion could surely be used to purchase the services of some genuinely gifted mathematicians, physicists, astronomers statisticians etc. and to task them to find this out.
Paul
Thanks - I'll update the main post accordingly
I'm afraid that we will have to suffer major blackouts (remember the 3 day week?) and have electricity prices at least double before our politicians will be forced to see sense.
What has happened to us as a major industrialised country? Government by PPE graduates.
If they 'decarbonise' domestic heating, that presumably means using electricity rather than gas. Gas is currently around 5 times cheaper per kWh than electricity. Electricity is due to become even more expensive, especially if the demand is increased to provide transport and domestic heating at a time when the supply is already marginal.
So, how much more is it going to cost to heat our homes?
@Dave: the correct radiative physics has been developed by me and others, e.g. Claes Johnson. The climate models exaggerate IR warming of the lower atmosphere 6.85x then offset it by exaggerated low level cloud albedo. They are perpetual motion machines.
Cumbrian lad
Good point.
Remember as well electric cars. Even though their running costs appear lower than petrol, about 60% of the petrol price goes back to the govt in duty, meaning the real costs are probably about the same.
Add on a 30% rise in electricity costs, and they look even less attractive.
The Treasury told me that by 2030 the "black hole" in lost fuel duty would be about 1% of GDP, say £14 bn.
Mike Haseler,
Your comments resonate for me very similar experiences and frustrations. They also remind me of an intensive 3 week senior management training programme I attended at McGill University Management school in the late 80's. In the first week we had a series of lectures on accounting principles and how to correctly read a balance sheet, the second week the same lecturer gave a series of talks on macro and micro economics.
In the third week the same individual taught us what he called operations management, he opened with the following statement that I have never forgotten,
"In the first week I gave you everything you'll ever need to know about accounting, last week you learned all you need to know about economics, this week I'm going to tell you some of the things you'll need to consider as a senior operations manager, lesson one is never, ever, ever let an accountant or an economist run your business, listen to their advice but do not give them the reins"
Mick J wrote: "In addition, they write, "this impact of cold weather on mortality is significantly larger for females than for males," but "for both genders, the effect is mostly attributable to increased mortality due to cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.""
Interesting study. The conclusions are indeed profound as to the effect of extreme cold spells opposed to warm ones. If the conclusions are correct, a proven benefit of warmer weather eg reduction in respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, which the study claims can reduce lifespan by as much as 10 years (compared to heat waves, which it claims reduce lifespan mainly by a few weeks) is a strong counterpoint to hypothesized claims of warming increasing the spread of diseases such as malaria. I wonder how this point was dealt with by the IPCC?
Curiously, I have had 2 power-cuts while attempting to read this thread (Milton Keynes area). Both only about a second, but sufficient to put out the lights and reset my computer. Maybe a sign of things to come!
What is critical in contemplating the rise of the likes of Walport – his lofty disposition, wisdom, certainty, smugness – is the heady impact of being elevated to a position, within government, whereby your every pronouncement is treated as a kind of holy writ.
His scientific qualifications can be guaranteed to melt when confronted with the seductive delights of power: of your own personal office, of your own flunkeys, of your guaranteed pension, of your startling status.
It would turn anyone's head.
It has certainly turned his.
Much more to the point is how such evident time-servers can be shown up as the fraudulent imposters they so obviously are.
How can Walport be properly challenged?
On which subject, anyone know what is happening with Lawson's challenge for a proper debate with Sir Paul Nurse's panel of experts?
Where does slide 5 come from - Planet Xenon ?
Higher Renewables ..... Higher nuclear
82 GW wind ..... 20 GW wind
16 GW nuclear ..... 75 GW nuclear
181 TWh Bio ..... 461 TWh Bio !
Today we have 10GW wind installed capacity which is of course actually randomly intermittent. I monitor daily how much of peak power demand is met by wind. It averages <5% or about 2 GW. However, on Dec 12th last winter with peak demand at 58GW wind power output was zero. Such becalmed days occur at least once a month, and even with 82 GW of wind installed the power output on such days will remain essentially zero. How could you possibly write Higher Renewables - More Efficient ! Higher Nuclear - less efficient. Nuclear plant is ultra-reliable. It gives constant reliable power output.
Biofuel is the most absurd of all the green technologies. Growing crops or wood for fuel relies on fertilizers made from fossil fuels and mechanized farming (diesel fuel). If you work out the energy return on investment (the ratio of energy out to energy in) you get a gain of 1.3 which is less than that of ancient Rome. It is more efficient to feed horses for transport !
We are really in trouble if these are the only scenarios our political leaders are being presented with. I despair that our top scientist could present such drivel.
Clive Best - you have the UK 2050 pathways to thank for that. See e.g. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-carbon-plan-reducing-greenhouse-gas-emissions--2 "Delivering your low carbon future" - it doesn't have the figure (that's around in some other presentations - which I don't have the links for at the moment) but describes the pathways in one of the chapters towards the end.
Further to James P. The Peter Principle is the theorem of a Canadian, Laurence J. Peter.
See http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/890728.The_Peter_Principle
More details at Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_J._Peter
Another good quote from Prof. Peter is "noblest of all dogs is the hot-dog; it feeds the hand that bites it."
The models, we are told, produce what is called "model-based evidence". Ille est - not evidence. but projections. When you abuse language, anything is permissible. There is no such thing as "model-based evidence".
@Oct 15, 2013 at 6:37 PM | DaveJR
Malaria is a disease of poverty - not climate related. Always was. Always has been. The worst recorded outbreak was in Siberia.
Walport's 'pathways' figure also appears at the very end of a presentation in 2012 (2.6 Mb ppt) by Robert Watson (Chief Scientific Advisor to Defra - and of course, former chair of the IPCC).
What a useless P******,
He should be advising the Cabinet that the models have never been validated and that it is a concern to him that the Met Office continue with their propaganda and recommendations when their model outputs bear no relation to reality. This conclusion becomes more pertinent after SEVENTEEN YEARS of deviation.
That would be an honest assessment.
Reasonable people might wonder why the Government Chief Scientific Adviser is basing his briefing of the Cabinet on data that is known to be erroneous.
Actually, reasonable people wouldn't wonder at all.
JESUS!
I honestly would expect a better presentation from my final year students.
Earlier this year I did a calculation based on the installed base, the claimed capacity, and the actual generation data for wind in the UK. The data I used was for the first two weeks of March this year, taken from gridwatch at http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ which has generation data at 5-minute intervals.
I estimated the claimed energy density (based on several newspaper reports which reported area v total generation). This wasn't perfect but it was all I had to work with: I found that getting hold of more accurate information was difficult, although it might be I was looking in the wrong places.
Over the period examined generation never reached 50% of claimed capacity, most of the time was below 25%, and was at times less than 5% of the claimed capacity. A back of the envelope calculation showed that to guarantee the average 60Gw consumption levels at that time, all of the time, would require a land area of around 950 square km, or rather less than four times the land area of the UK.
Hence I don't think it's too far out of the way to say that I think 27000 square km to generate 82Gw by Wind is a gross under-estimate, and I would expect the real figure to be somewhere around 1 million square km.
Think you mean 950,000 sq km?
Re: Derek Sorenson
The Digest of United Kingdom Energy Statistics 2013 claims that onshore wind load factor was 27.3% for 2012 and offshore was 36.8% (see page 189). Personally, I think it is a lot less. Current capacity is a little over 10GW (6.5GW onshore, 3.6GW offshore) so to achieve these levels wind needs to generate 3GW on average and you rarely see it over 2GW.
That's a mighty scary turbine blade on slide 6!!!
Ruth
that is a useful piece of evidence - so the new advisor simply uses the nearest available source rather than getting his copious support staff to put down their tea-cups for a moment
Steveta, speaking only for myself, it's because on Apr 18, 2013 at 9:51 PM, I wrote on this site
I don't like to be cynical all the time, and I had just listened to Walport's interview on the BBC.
I was of the opinion that maybe he was just choosing his words carefully, but fully understood just how pernicious the green's "carbon" agenda really is. When he said "Our industrial capacity depends on having affordable energy," I optimistically assumed that he had managed to convince the dimwits higher up that a policy to wilfully make energy unaffordable, is actually a policy to reverse the industrial revolution. I further assumed that he knew, or had been told, that the pill had to be sugared for the perceived green-vote.
I now think I may have been wrong.
If Walport genuinely thinks otherwise, I think he should make haste to reaffirm his scientific credentials. The paintings of John Constable are very nice, but neither of us would want to live in one.
The GWPF might be interested in preparing a modification of this document to with today's energy mix and the late 1990's energy mix - showing how much "progress" has been made after a decade and a half following Kyoto. It would also be interesting to see estimates of how much energy will cost in constant $ under these scenarios. Since they have a "cost optimized" energy mix, the people who prepared the document must have cost information (which they did not disclose to the cabinet).
If you look at the decadal average temperatures on page 2 (the first after the title page), you'll see roughly equal amount of warming between each decade. If you look at the graph on the following page, the amount of warming (vertical rise) between 2001-2010 is at least twice as big as between the other decadal data points. Something appears to be wrong with the data.
Oct 15, 2013 at 11:35 AM | Registered CommenterMikeHaseler
Thank you for that process description, which rings many bells.
It is in severe contrast to a distant view of the skills of England. We in the antipodes can relate to the pursuit of engineering excellence as shown for example by Rolls Royce engines over many decades.
It is hard to relate to the non-use, misuse or neglect of such skills on a national basis.
Can't you get RR to side with you?
On the "35,000 deaths from European heatwave" story: the official French government report (most of the deaths happened in France) clearly laid the blame on government incompetence. With Paris closed down for the month of August, there was no-one on hand to give out official warnings, or sign a cheque for a TV ad campaign. The problem has been fixed, as problems usually are, or used to be, in the days before Fear of Warming replaced rational thought.
MikeB, Mick J
Sorry, I missed your comments on deaths from heatwaves.
IPCC AR4 had a couple of pages on the European heatwave. All substantive references were to papers in English. The different governments involved presumably all produced official reports in their own languages, but you couldn’t expect a UN body like the IPCC to go hunting them out and translating them.
Wikipaedia is interesting on the subject, since figures vary wildly depending on which language you choose.
We don’t need more science; we need a politician or a journalist brave enough to say: “Frail old people die when the weather’s bad; get over it.”
@Pharos: yes, I did indeed mean 950,000 sq km; thanks.
@TerryS: Thanks for the link to the digest, very useful. I actually got the installed figure from renewable UK's database, which was a pain as it was necessary to compute it by scraping their pages. I was working on approx 9Gb, but the digest appears to say 10Gb, so it turns out that things were far "worse than I thought"!
Re: Derek
I got the up to date installed figure from this page at renewable UK. It has the total installed on and off shore capacity, no need to scrape.
He is giving a talk tomorrow at 5.30 in Cambridge on "The Science and Policy of Climate Change". There's a live stream.
Questions can be asked during the lecture on twitter, with the tag #Walport
"There will be plenty of time for questions and we are looking forward to a lively evening."
Looking up the twitter tag #walport leads to a number of tweets dating from May calling for his resignation.
These seem to have been inspired by an article in the Guardian by our good friend George Monbiot, who writes that science advisers "soon begin to sound less like scientists than industrial lobbyists"
"He then deployed the kind of groundless moral blackmail..."
"Sir Mark Walport has misinformed the public about the scientific method, risk and uncertainty. He has made groundless, unscientific and emotionally manipulative claims. He has indulged in scaremongering and wild exaggeration in support of the government's position."
I don't do twitter, but please can someone ask him why there has been a global temperature standstill for 17 years, in which time CO2 has risen by 8%? (the last figure from memory, and needs checking).
Mike Singleton (Oct 15, 2013 at 5:46 PM): “…never, ever, ever let an accountant or an economist run your business…” Which is, basically, where everything has gone wrong with modern business; it started in the 1980s, and continues today, with accountants now at the reins. Accountancy and business are two completely different mind-sets, and can never combine – a businessman sees opportunity, and takes a risk; an accountant only sees risk, and all risk has to be avoided. A businessman sees stock and spares as essential buffers for the vagaries of life; an accountant merely sees “dead money”. Two cases in point, from my own experience: saving 75 pence (£0.75) in spares cost the company I was with at the time cost several hundred thousand dollars, as the needed part was not in stock, in another company, $30,000 was “saved” by reducing the spec of a $500m plant (a saving of 0.006%); within 2 years, over one million dollars was needed to improve the spec to the original plan. D’oh! (Oddly enough, in neither case was the accountancy department responsible censured, though everyone else was.)
The same is true for other European countries, no noticeable ‘blip’ around 2003. So where does the Chief Scientists get his figures from?
Oct 15, 2013 at 11:06 AM | MikeB
I would guess from Myles Allen, http://loe.flyingsound.net/images/content/101217/EURO%20HEAT%20.pdf
Wiki: "In 2010, Allen was awarded the Appleton Medal and Prize by the Institute of Physics for "his important contributions to the detection and attribution of human influence on climate and quantifying uncertainty in climate predictions"
A search for "European Heat Wave Deaths Myles Allen" produces 3,130,000 results, take your pick!
@TerryS, thanks again, once again very useful.
I now recall the reason for scraping: the initial idea was to run the exercise using data over a period of years, and I wanted to work out changes in the installed base over that time. By scraping I was then able to sort by date and have a running total of installed capacity. However in the end the snapshot of that 2-week period was sufficient.
AlecM,
Thanks.
I am on the lookout for hard evidence of this.
I thought John Kehr - "The Inconvenient Sceptic" - covered the whole issue well in his book and came down very hard on Trenberth. I have been looking since then for others to vindicate and cast more light on his analysis..
Which of the 6 pages refers to the findings of the IPCC?
@dave: it's very easy to prove. Arrhenius' idea that the Earth emits IR as if an isolated black body in a vacuum is total bunkum as any professional scientist or engineer should know. This first reappeared in 1972 and Ramanathan's idea of the 'Clear Sky Greenhouse Factor' G as the difference between the black body emission and OLR is also total bunkum.
The 6.85 factor is the ratio of G/real IR absorbed (23 W/m^2). They justify it by wrongly applying Kirchhoff's Law of Radiation at ToA thus pretending that the IR emitted from the surface and cloud tops in the 'atmospheric window', also water vapour IR, comes from ToA; again only the unprofessional should accept this as true.
So the problem comes down to the failure of this who accept this 'fraud'** to check every last bit of the science before supporting it.
**I exclude Meteorologists and those in the pseudo-sciences taught incorrect radiative physics. These courses and texts need to be altered to use standard physics.
Present day peak UK power demand from the grid is around 60 GW (http://www.nationalgrid.com/uk/Electricity/MajorProjects/EnergyChallenge.htm)
and in 2012 UK consumed around 354 TWh. (average 40 GW instantaneous demand) (https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/244725/electricity.pdf)
I imagine that the drive will be for the 'high renewables, more efficient solution' shown in presentation table.
530 TWh of 'demand' is assumed to be the estimated future total electrical energy consumed from the grid in a year. It implies an average of 60.5 GW and a peak demand (instantaneous) of say 50% above - 90 GW.
Given that wind, solar and marine are not reliable for every moment of 24 hours there will be a possibility of only nuclear, 'clean' coal and gas being available on, say, a very cold windless morning in January as the tide turns and the sky is deep lead cloud dropping snow. This is the time every voter in the land will be trying to keep warm, make a cup of tea, cook breakfast, those going to work will be sitting in electric trains and those already at work will be pressing the start buttons on the engines of industry. There may be only 53 GW of reliable generation to satisfy this (some, around 3GW, may be imported and half the marine may work) and thus the gap is 29 GW. This is around half our present peak demand.
I don't think the voters will understand as half the country comes to a cold and dark stop.
The size of the wind farms needed to provide 82 GW capacity is around 2,000 square miles - about three times the area enclosed by the M25. With so many, nearly every voter will be able to draw the curtains, look out of the stationary train or gaze from his factory and see the giant towers standing inert. Each still tower being a monument to the collective wisdom of a series of poorly educated, innumerate but emotional governments.
I decided to analyse the basic data behind slide 3 in detail. This slide originates from Figure 10 in the Summary for Policy Makers. My conclusion is that this SPM plot is not scientifically robust. The dependence on emissions should be logarithmic. Instead the plot shows it being linear and hides large model uncertainties.
See the details here http://clivebest.com/blog/?p=5300