Climate bill delayed and in “disarray”

31 08 2009

From the U.S. Senate Committe on Environment and Public Works

Democrats Delay Global Warming Bill – Again

EPW_logo

Obama Agenda In “Disarray”

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Environment & Public Works Committee, today said that he was not surprised to learn that Senate Democrats were forced once again to delay introduction of their global warming cap-and-trade bill. Throughout hearing after hearing in the EPW Committee this summer, it became apparent that Democrats were a long way off from reaching the votes necessary in the Senate to pass the largest tax increase in American history.

“The news today-that Sen. Boxer and Sen. Kerry will delay introduction of their cap-and-trade bill-came as no surprise. The delay is emblematic of the division and disarray in the Democratic Party over cap-and-trade and health care legislation-both of which are big government schemes for which the public has expressed overwhelming opposition. With the climate change debate on Capitol Hill, it’s safe to report that bipartisanship is nowhere in evidence. Cap-and-trade has pitted Democrat against Democrat, or, put another way, it centers on those in the party supporting the largest tax increase in American history against those in the party who oppose it. As to just who will win this intra-party squabble, I put money down on those representing the vast majority of the American people, who are clear that cap-and-trade should be rationed out of existence.”

In the last hearing before the EPW Committee before the August recess, Senator Inhofe spoke directly to the mounting concerns raised by Senate Democrats to cap-and-trade legislation:

Full opening statement provided below: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 118 Comments »

Categories : climate_change, politics

An odd day in solar science, it’s mostly a waiting game

31 08 2009
Catainia photosphere image August 31st, 2009 - click for larger image

Cueball: Catania photosphere image August 31st, 2009 - click for larger image

It has been a strange day. Fires have evacuated the Mt. Wilson Observatory in California, and SOHO images have not been updating all day. Power is down at the mountain and the webcam has gone offline. See status here. Mt. Wilson Observatory is now in the hands of nature and CDF. Let’s hope CDF wins.

Webcam view westward, 6:54 p.m. PDT Aug. 31

The only "observer" left at Mount Wilson on Monday afternoon was the automated webcam atop the solar tower. This was its smoky westward view at 6:54 p.m. Pacific time. Still no flames coming over the crests. UCLA Dept. of Physics and Astronomy

It  is about 4 hours now past ooGMT Sept1, 2009 I’ve checked all my sources. Besides the fate of Mt. Wilson, we’ve all been waiting to find out two things:

1- Will we have a spotless calendar month for the sun in August 2009?

2- Do I still have my solar mojo?

The Catania sunspot drawing shows nothing for the 31st. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 95 Comments »

Categories : Science, solar

Spencer: Always question your results

31 08 2009

Spurious SST Warming Revisited

Dr. Roy Spencer August 31st, 2009

My previous post described what I called “smoking gun” evidence of a spurious drift in the NOAA sea surface temperature (SST) product when compared to SSTs from the TRMM satellite Microwave Imager (TMI). The drift seemed to be mostly confined to 2001, almost a ’step’ jump. The moored buoy validation statistics of the TMI sea surface temperatures from Frank Wentz’s web site (SSMI.com) suggested that the TMI SSTs had good long-term stability.

But 2001 was also the year that the TRMM satellite was boosted into a higher orbit, which concerned me. I asked Frank about the effect of this event on the TMI SSTs (which also come from his web site). Frank couldn’t remember the details, but said he spent quite a bit of time correcting for the altitude change on the retrieved SSTs since the microwave emission of the sea surface depends upon the TMI instrument’s view angle with respect to the local vertical.

I know from our many years of work together on the AMSR-E Science Team that Frank is indeed a careful researcher, yet it seemed like more than a coincidence that the TMI and NOAA sea surface temperatures diverged during the same year as the orbit boost. So, I went back to see what might have caused the problem. I went back and thought about the different ways in which one can compute area averages from satellite data.

To make a long story short, because the orbit boost caused the TMI to be able to “see” to slightly higher latitudes, the way in which individual latitude bands are handled has a significant impact on the resulting temperature anomalies that are computed over time. The previous results I presented were for the 40N to 40S latitude band, which is nominally what the TMI instrument sees today. But before 2001, the latitudinal extent was slightly smaller than it was after 2001. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 59 Comments »

Categories : Uncategorized

Royal Society wants man-made volcanoes to fight climate change

31 08 2009

Here’s an interesting story from the Times. One wonders if the Royal Society is ready to deal with all the unintended and unmodeled consequences of such actions? The last man-made volcano didn’t go over so well. – Anthony

A familiar man-made volcano - The Mirage in Vegas - Image courtesy PDphoto.org

A familiar man-made volcano - The Mirage in Vegas - Image courtesy PDphoto.org

From The Sunday Times August 30, 2009

Man-made volcanoes may cool Earth

Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor

THE Royal Society is backing research into simulated volcanic eruptions, spraying millions of tons of dust into the air, in an attempt to stave off climate change.

The society will this week call for a global programme of studies into geo-engineering — the manipulation of the Earth’s climate to counteract global warming — as the world struggles to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

It will suggest in a report that pouring sulphur-based particles into the upper atmosphere could be one of the few options available to humanity to keep the world cool. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 135 Comments »

Categories : aerosols, climate_change, vulcanism

New Ice Core Project in Greenland looks at Eemian period

31 08 2009

From EurekAlert

International Greenland ice coring effort sets new drilling record in 2009

Ancient ice cores expected to help scientists assess risks of abrupt climate change in future

IMAGE: Atmospheric gases trapped in ancient ice recovered during the international North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling, or NEEM, project are expected to help scientists better assess the risks of abrupt climate…

Click here for more information.

A new international research effort on the Greenland ice sheet with the University of Colorado at Boulder as the lead U.S. institution set a record for single-season deep ice-core drilling this summer, recovering more than a mile of ice core that is expected to help scientists better assess the risks of abrupt climate change in the future.

The project, known as the North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling, or NEEM, is being undertaken by 14 nations and is led by the University of Copenhagen. The goal is to retrieve ice from the last interglacial episode known as the Eemian Period that ended about 120,000 years ago. The period was warmer than today, with less ice in Greenland and 15-foot higher sea levels than present — conditions similar to those Earth faces as it warms in the coming century and beyond, said CU-Boulder Professor Jim White, who is leading the U.S. research contingent.

While three previous Greenland ice cores drilled in the past 20 years covered the last ice age and the period of warming to the present, the deeper ice layers representing the warm Eemian and the period of transition to the ice age were compressed and folded, making them difficult to interpret, said White. Radar measurements taken through the ice sheet from above the NEEM site indicate the Eemian ice layers below are thicker, more intact and likely contain more accurate, specific information, he said.

“Every time we drill a new ice core, we learn a lot more about how Earth’s climate functions,” said White, “The Eemian period is the best analog we have for future warming on Earth.” Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 118 Comments »

Categories : Science

Slump shows up in USA CO2 output for 2008 and 2009 – economy driven?

31 08 2009

The Monthly Energy Review for August 2009 has been published by the US Energy Information Administration and it has some interesting CO2 production data which you can see here in tabular form.

I’ve graphed the data of interest in two separate graphs. First we have the annual plot of “Carbon Dioxide Emissions From Fossil Fuel Consumption by Source” with data to the end of 2008 for the USA:

Click for larger image

Click for larger image

Note that in 2008 a significant drop was seen in total CO2 produced. Corresponding to the drop is a drop in CO2 produced by petroleum, which seems to indicate that high gasoline prices last year which contributed to less miles driven, may have been the dominant factor.

The Department of Transportation notes in U.S. Traffic Volume Trends:

Cumulative Travel for 2008 changed by -3.6% (-107.9 billion vehicle miles). The Cumulative estimate for the year is 2,921.9 billion vehicle miles of travel.

Gas prices receded though in late 2008 and into 2009. But our economy continued its slide with layoffs, store closings, and less demand for durable goods during that same period. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 81 Comments »

Categories : Carbon dioxide, energy

Quote of the week #17

30 08 2009

Sometimes, seemingly innocuous posts can bring in some oddball commenters. Such is the case this week with a  post I did about a cloud (or lack thereof) spotted by former NWS Lead Forecaster for northern California, Jan Null.

qotw_cropped

That post brought out the chemtrailers, one of whom insisted that the “hole punch cloud” was not only a new phenonmenon (it isn’t) but made by (you guessed it) chemicals released from airplanes.

In the strictest sense, he’s right. It is caused by airplane exhaust:

This relatively rare occurenvce is the result of an aircraft flying through a  layer of high clouds that have precisely the right temperatre and moisture.  As the jet aircraft flies through the layer it contributes just enough additonal moisture and exhaust particles for the ice crystals in the cloud to grow large enough to fall out as ”fall streaks”.  This happens in a circular pattern around the path of the jet with a hole in the cloud layer being the result.

Jan Null
SF Weather Examiner

There’s nothing nefarious about it.

But when I didn’t allow the discussion of the ridiculous premise of chemtrails, that didn’t sit well. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 78 Comments »

Categories : Quote of the Week

A Hurricane in Los Angeles?

30 08 2009
Here is the current Pacific satellite image, note the lower right.

Click for a larger image

I might add that the likelihood of a hurricane strength storm striking Southern California is low. Since 1900, only four tropical cyclones have brought gale-force winds to the Southwestern United States. They are an unnamed tropical storm that made landfall near San Pedro in 1939, the remnants of Hurricane Joanne in 1972, the remnants of Hurricane Kathleen in 1976, and Hurricane Nora in 1997 which entered California as a tropical storm.

The storms that do make it close enough to be a threat are often weakened by two facts: cold sea surface temperatures and upper level steering winds that tend to take them away for SoCal. But it’s a fun exercise to discuss the possibility. – Anthony

Hurricanes in Los Angeles?

Guest post by Roger Sowell

A hurricane hitting Los Angeles. No, it hasn’t happened yet, but it could. I am using the same reasoning as the Carbon Is Going to Kill Us crowd, where it is deemed prudent and even mandatory that we take action now to prevent a future catastrophe. AGW believers insist that all mankind (well, except for developing countries, of course!) curtail or stop altogether emitting carbon dioxide, as that may cause ice caps to melt and oceans to rise and population disruption. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 69 Comments »

Categories : fun_stuff, hurricanes

Gavin Schmidt responds to criticism of his climate change picture book

30 08 2009
How has an image of a reservoir in a desert come to be the best, strongest, and most scientific indication of climate change?

How has an image of a reservoir in a desert come to be the best, strongest, and most scientific indication of climate change?

A few months back, I posted a critique titled: Gavin Schmidt’s new climate picture book: Anti-Science?

I found it ironic that Dr. Schmidt used photos to depict climate change, while at the same time promoting open criticism of my surfacestations.org project on realclimate.org.  That project also uses photography, combined with measurements and a NOAA sanctioned rating system, to gauge thermometer siting issues. Oddly, there seems to be no complaints from the usual suspects when Dr. Schmidt uses artistic composition photography to illustrate climate change issues.

It is only fair then that since Dr. Schmidt has responded to the original author of that critical piece, Harold Ambler, that I repost Dr. Schmidt’s response here. Harold has invited me to republish that piece here.

A note to readers, Harold is going through a rough patch financially while waiting for his new book, Don’t Sell Your Coat, is to be published in November 2009. Royalties from it won’t come in until mid-2010. So if anyone is so inclined, please visit his web page and give him a  boost in the tip jar. – Anthony

More About Anti-Science

Guest post by Harold Ambler

As most of my readers know, I posted a critique of Gavin Schmidt’s book, Climate Change: Picturing the Science, not quite three months ago. Dr. Schmidt has responded in the last few days:


The point of a photo is always the context in which it’s seen. Lake Powell is a long way below it’s 1990’s peak, and that is due to a combination of reductions in rainfall upstream and additional demands on it’s water downstream. The last two years have seen a small rise in water level, and as you state correctly, it is important not to read too much into a short term record.

However, the real point of the photo (and as we discuss in the chapter that uses it), is that climate change is really only an issue because of the impacts – whether on human society or ecosystems. Areas that are already under water stress, such as the American South West are very vulnerable to changes in rainfall regime. And in fact, there is some evidence that long-term trends in precipitation in this region are already being affected by ongoing changes.

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 83 Comments »

Categories : climate_change, media

Global dimming and brightening in the context of solar radiation

30 08 2009

From the abstract of the lead paper by Martin Wild: Recent evidence suggests that solar radiation reaching the Earth’s surface has not been constant over time but has undergone substantial variations on decadal timescales. The available observations suggest a widespread decrease in surface solar radiation between the 1950s and 1980s (popularly referred to as “global dimming”), with some more recent evidence for a partial recovery (“brightening”).

From ETH Zurich News

“Global dimming and brightening” – The role of solar radiation in climate change

A special volume of the “Journal of Geophysical Research” reviews the growing research field of “global dimming” and “global brightening” in over 20 articles. These phenomena, supposedly human-induced, control solar radiation incident at the Earth’s surface and thus influence climate.

Clouds and aerosols influence the solar radiation on the earth’s surface and therefore the climate. (Photo: flickr/Schrottie)

Clouds and aerosols influence the solar radiation on the earth’s surface and therefore the climate. (Photo: flickr/Schrottie)<!– (mehr Bilder) –>

Special instruments have been recording the solar radiation that reaches the Earth’s surface since 1923. However, it wasn’t until the International Geophysical Year in 1957/58 that a global measurement network began to take shape. The data thus obtained reveal that the energy provided by the sun at the Earth’s surface has undergone considerable variations over the past decades, with associated impacts on climate.

Research focus at ETH Zurich

Investigating which factors reduce or intensify solar radiation and thus cause “global dimming” or “global brightening” is still very much a nascent field of research in which especially scientists from ETH Zurich became renowned. The American Geophysical Union (AGU) has now published a special volume on the subject which presents the current state of knowledge in detail and makes a considerable contribution to climate science. “Only now, especially with the help of this volume, is research in this field really taking off”, stresses Martin Wild, senior scientist at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science of ETH Zurich, who is a specialist on the subject.

Decrease in solar radiation discovered Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 75 Comments »

Categories : Science, aerosols, climate_change, solar

Study: Glaciers defied hotter temperatures 9000 years ago

29 08 2009

BYU professor Summer Rupper doing field work with Switzerland's Gornergrat glacier. Her newest study details how a group of Himalayan glaciers grew despite a significant rise in temperatures.

From BYU News

Ice, when heated, is supposed to melt.

That’s why a collection of glaciers in the Southeast Himalayas stymies those who know what they did 9,000 years ago. While most other Central Asian glaciers retreated under hotter summer temperatures, this group of glaciers advanced from one to six kilometers.

A new study by BYU geologist Summer Rupper pieces together the chain of events surrounding the unexpected glacial growth.

“Stronger monsoons were thought to be responsible,” said Rupper, who reports her findings in the September issue of the journal Quaternary Research. “Our research indicates the extra snowfall from monsoonal effects can only take credit for up to 30 percent of the glacial advance.”

As Central Asia’s summer climate warmed as much as 6 degrees Celsius, shifting weather patterns brought more clouds to the Southeast Himalayas. The additional shade created a pocket of cooler temperatures.

Temperatures also dropped when higher winds spurred more evaporation in this typically humid area, the same process behind household swamp coolers.

The story of these seemingly anomalous glaciers underscores the important distinction between the terms “climate change” and “global warming.” Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 50 Comments »

Categories : Science, earth, glaciers, paleoclimatology

Testing my solar power

28 08 2009

Many commenters have mentioned “The Watts Effect”, whereby within a short period of time after I do a post about the sun on WUWT mentioning the lack of sunspots, one appears.

I figured it was time to settle the issue with a test, a big one. The sun is blank, here is my post. We are about to break the monthly calendar record (again) for a calendar month without sunspots. Ironically this last occurred in August 2008. Depending on whether you believe NOAA or SIDC in Belgium about whether a sunspeck noted by one observatory (Catainia in Italy) was a valid sunspot or not determines if August 2008 was a sunspotless calender month or not. Let’s hope neither Catainia, SIDC, or my nefarious and dubious spot producing solar powers spoil this run.

But wait, there’s more.

This was in Spaceweather.com today:

Inspect the image below. It is a photo of the sun taken by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). Can you guess what day it was taken? Scroll down for the answer.

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 262 Comments »

Categories : solar

Met Office supercomputer: A megawatt, here, a megawatt there, and pretty soon we’re talking real carbon pollution

28 08 2009

Weather supercomputer used to predict climate change is one of Britain’s worst polluters

Excerpts from the story by the Daily Mail See WUWT’s original story on this

The Met Office has caused a storm of controversy after it was revealed their £30million supercomputer designed to predict climate change is one of Britain’s worst polluters.

The massive machine – the UK’s most powerful computer with a whopping 15 million megabytes of memory – was installed in the Met Office’s headquarters in Exeter, Devon.

It is capable of 1,000 billion calculations every second to feed data to 400 scientists and uses 1.2 megawatts of energy to run – enough to power more than 1,000 homes.

computerThe computer used 1.2 megawatts to run – enough to power 1,000 homes

The machine was hailed as the ‘future of weather prediction’ with the ability to produce more accurate forecasts and produce climate change modelling.

However the Met Office’s HQ has now been named as one of the worst buildings in Britain for pollution – responsible for more than 12,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.

It says 75 per cent of its carbon footprint is produced by the super computer meaning the machine is officially one of the country’s least green machines.

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 160 Comments »

Categories : Technology, energy, forecasting

When airplanes attack

27 08 2009

My friend Jan Null from the Bay Area was lead forecaster for the NWS in Northern California for many years. He emailed me today with this interesting photo. – Anthony

=======

Looking west from the South Bay this afternoon it looked like something had punched a gigantic circular hole through the layer of clouds above the Coast Range.  What was being seen was what has indeed been labeled as a “hole punch cloud”.

This relatively rare occurenvce is the result of an aircraft flying through a  layer of high clouds that have precisely the right temperatre and moisture.  As the jet aircraft flies through the layer it contributes just enough additonal moisture and exhaust particles for the ice crystals in the cloud to grow large enough to fall out as ”fall streaks”.  This happens in a circular pattern around the path of the jet with a hole in the cloud layer being the result.

Jan Null
SF Weather Examiner

Circular cloud patterns can also look tubular…here is another amazing photo.

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 73 Comments »

Categories : weather

Spencer: NOAA’s official sea surface temperature product ERSST has spurious warming error, July 2009 SST likely not a record after all.

27 08 2009

We should all thank AP’s Seth Borenstein for this, IMHO. Without his article on July SST’s being the hottest ever and it not making much sense, people such as Dr. Spencer may not have been immediately motivated to figure out what was going on with the SST’s. – Anthony
—
Spurious Warming in New NOAA Ocean Temperature Product: The Smoking Gun

Dr. Roy Spencer August 27th, 2009

After crunching data this week from two of our satellite-based microwave sensors, and from NOAA’s official sea surface temperature (SST) product ERSST v3b, I think the evidence is pretty clear:

The ERSST v3b product has a spurious warming since 1998 of about 0.2 deg. C, most of which occurred as a jump in 2001.

The following three panels tell the story. In the first panel I’ve plotted the TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI) SST anomalies (blue) for the latitude band 40N to 40S. I’ve also plotted SST anomalies from the more recently launched AMSR-E instrument (red), computed over the same latitude band, to show that they are nearly identical. (These SST retrievals do not have any time-dependent adjustments based upon buoy data). The orange curve is anomalies for the entire global (ice-free) oceans, which shows there is little difference with the more restricted latitude band.

TMI-AMSRE-ERSSTv3b-comparisons-1998-2009

In the second panel above I’ve added the NOAA ERSST v3b SST anomalies (magenta), calculated over the same latitude band (40N to 40S) and time period as is available from TRMM.

The third panel above shows the difference [ERSST minus TMI], which reveals an abrupt shift in 2001. The reason why I trust the microwave SST is shown in the following plot, where validation statistics are displayed for match-ups between satellite measurements and moored buoy SST measurements. The horizontal green line is a regression fit to the data. (An average seasonal cycle, and 0.15 deg. C cool skin bias have been removed from these data…neither affects the trend, however.) Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 186 Comments »

Categories : Sea Surface Temperature

NCAR spots the “transistor effect” – Small solar activity fluctuations amplify to larger climate influences

27 08 2009

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/images/blankyear/midi512_blank_2001.gifhttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c2/Transistor_npn.svg/581px-Transistor_npn.svg.pnghttp://rst.gsfc.nasa.gov/Sect16/full-20earth2.jpg

Some months back, I mentioned that I felt the sun-earth connection was much like a transistor. This new NCAR study suggests this may be the case where small solar variances are amplified in the earth atmosphere-ocean system.

From EurekAlert

Small fluctuations in solar activity, large influence on the climate

Sun spot frequency has an unexpectedly strong influence on cloud formation and precipitation

Our sun does not radiate evenly. The best known example of radiation fluctuations is the famous 11-year cycle of sun spots. Nobody denies its influence on the natural climate variability, but climate models have, to-date, not been able to satisfactorily reconstruct its impact on climate activity.

Researchers from the USA and from Germany have now, for the first time, successfully simulated, in detail, the complex interaction between solar radiation, atmosphere, and the ocean. As the scientific journal Science reports in its latest issue, Gerald Meehl of the US-National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and his team have been able to calculate how the extremely small variations in radiation brings about a comparatively significant change in the System “Atmosphere-Ocean”. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 186 Comments »

Categories : Science, earth, solar

Why the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets are Not Collapsing

27 08 2009
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003400/a003455/fullGreenlandElevChg.8188_web.png

Image: NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center SVS

Cliff Ollier
School of Earth and Geographical Sciences, The University of
Western Australia, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia.

Colin Pain
Canberra City ACT 2601, Australia.

Global warming alarmists have suggested that the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica may collapse, causing disastrous sea level rise. This idea is based on the concept of an ice sheet sliding down an inclined plane on a base lubricated by meltwater, which is itself increasing because of global warming.

In reality the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets occupy deep basins, and cannot slide down a plane. Furthermore glacial flow depends on stress (including the important yield stress) as well as temperature, and much of the ice sheets are well below melting point.

The accumulation of kilometres of undisturbed ice in cores in Greenland and Antarctica (the same ones that are sometimes used to fuel ideas of global warming) show hundreds of thousands of years of accumulation with no melting or flow. Except around the edges, ice sheets flow at the base, and depend on geothermal heat, not the climate at the surface. It is impossible for the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets to ‘collapse’. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 103 Comments »

Categories : Antarctic, Arctic, earth, sea level

Atlantic Tropical Update – TS Danny looks to follow in Bill’s “cold track” footsteps

27 08 2009

Updated 8AM PST Thursday 8/27

Danny continues.  It now has 60 mph sustained winds.

TS Danny is visible in the center of the image below. This satellite image will update every 30 minutes.

Animate this image: >>> OR Switch to Hurricane Sector View

Click for larger image

NOTE: Commenter “nogw” tips us to this unique sea surface temperature image that appears to show the “cold track” left by hurricane Bill (last week off the east coast turning toward Nova Scotia) as it transported energy from the ocean to the atmosphere. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 43 Comments »

Categories : hurricanes, weather

Opportunity knocks

27 08 2009

As many WUWT readers may have noticed, there’s a small advertising box on the sidebar for the journal “Energy & Environment”. This represents a first for WUWT, in that I’ve decided to accept a dedicated advertisement for a journal on a trial basis. It is also a first for E&E.

ee-advert

I did this for three reasons:

1) E&E published Steve McIntyre’s and Ross McKittrick’s groundbreaking paper, Corrections to the Mann et al. (1998) proxy data base and northern hemispheric average temperature series., after they were rejected by numerous other journals. Those rejections seemed to be political in nature since M&M’s work has withstood many criticisms, and the effect has been seen in the IPCC’s distancing their most recent report from Michael Mann’s “hockey stick”. For an excellent summary on the entire affair, please read Bishop Hill’s Caspar and the Jesus Paper. E&E has taken a lot of criticism for publishing M&M and it seems to me that the journal should be rewarded for having the courage to do so in the face of “consensus” at the time.

2) In addition to publishing on climate related issues, E&E also publishes extensively on alternate energy research. I’m a fan of both research and applications of viable alternate energy solutions (see my about page ) as are many WUWT readers, so from my perspective E&E is a twofer.

3) I think some WUWT contributors might find E&E a place to publish some of the works they have put forward here, in the harshest peer review environment of all; the online scrutiny of thousands. Introducing E&E here is a first step. Here is some recent content you can browse.

Bill Hughes, the publisher of E&E, has a short message below in which he outlines an exceptional offer being made to readers of WUWT. Please take a moment to have a look. – Anthony

Message from the Publisher Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 55 Comments »

Categories : Announcements

The Great Windfarm -vs- Lesser Prairie Chicken Fight

26 08 2009

Just when the green energy movement thinks they have it all worked out, along comes a snail-darteresque moment that throws a monkey wrench in green plans. These are the big fanboys in the panhandle, which I snapped a photo of near the Oklahoma- Texas border when I was doing USHCN site surveys in December. – Anthony

windmills_TX-OK-panhandle-1024

Windfarm in the Texas panhandle - prime chicken habitat - photo by Anthony Watts

(From Bloomberg) — Iberdrola SA and E.ON AG’s turbine dreams for the windswept Texas Panhandle may be stymied by the mating rituals of the Lesser Prairie Chicken, a bird whose future could slow the pace of U.S. renewable energy growth.

Developers are scouring the sagebrush and grasslands of potential turbine sites for the ground-dwelling chickens, E.ON chief development officer Patrick Woodson said. Once plentiful in the southern high plains, the bird now has a high priority for listing under the Endangered Species Act, a move that will affect where as much as $11 billion in turbines can be built.

Federal protection for the chickens will hamper Texas’s plan to add 5,500 megawatts of wind power in the region by 2013, a 60 percent increase for the state. President Barack Obama wants to double all U.S. energy from renewable sources such as the wind and sun in three years to reduce dependence on imported oil and the greenhouse-gas emissions blamed for global warming.

“The windiest parts of some of these states seem to be the areas that still have bigger concentrations of prairie chickens,” Woodson said in an Aug. 13 interview. “We need to plan for a worst-case scenario, which would be a listing.” Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 132 Comments »

Categories : Technology, energy

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