Alan Lammey, Texas Energy Analyst, Houston
Four scientists, four scenarios, four more or less similar conclusions without actually saying it outright — the global warming trend is done, and a cooling trend is about to kick in. The implication: Future energy price response is likely to be significant.
Late last month, some leading climatologists and meteorologists met in New York at the Energy Business Watch Climate and Hurricane Forum. The theme of the forum strongly suggested that a period of global cooling is about emerge, though possible concerns for a political backlash kept it from being spelled out.
However, the message was loud and clear, a cyclical global warming trend may be coming to an end for a variety of reasons, and a new cooling cycle could impact the energy markets in a big way.
Words like “highly possible,” “likely” or “reasonably convincing” about what may soon occur were used frequently. Then there were other words like “mass pattern shift” and “wholesale change in anomalies” and “changes in global circulation.”
Noted presenters, such as William Gray, Harry van Loon, Rol Madden and Dave Melita, signaled in the strongest terms that huge climate changes are afoot. Each weather guru, from a different angle, suggested that global warming is part of a cycle that is nearing an end. All agreed the earth is in a warm cycle right now, and has been for a while, but that is about to change significantly.
However, amid all of the highly suggestive rhetoric, none of the weather and climate pundits said outright that a global cooling trend is about to replace the global warming trend in a shift that could begin as early as next year.
Van Loon spoke about his theories of solar storms and how, combined with, or because of these storms, the Earth has been on a relative roller coaster of climate cycles. For the past 250 years, he said, global climate highs and lows have followed the broad pattern of low and high solar activity. And shorter 11-year sunspot cycles are even more easily correlated to global temperatures.
It was cooler from 1883 to 1928 when there was low solar activity, he said, and it has been warmer since 1947 with increased solar activity.
“We are on our way out of the latest (warming) cycle, and are headed for a new cycle of low (solar) activity,” van Loon said. “There is a change coming. We may see 180-degree changes in anomalies during high and low sunspot periods. There were three global climate changes in the last century, there is a change coming now.”
Meanwhile, Madden noted that while temperature forecasts longer than one to two weeks out has improved, “what has really gotten much better is climate forecasting … predicting the change in the mean,” he said.
And the drivers impacting climate suggest a shift to cooler sea surface temperatures, he said.
Perhaps the best known speaker was Colorado State University’s Gray, founder of the school’s famed hurricane research team. Gray spoke about multi-decade periods of warming and cooling and how global climate flux has been the norm for as long as there have been records.
Gray has taken quite a bit of political heat for insistence that global warming is not a man-made condition. Man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) is negligible, he said, compared to the amount of CO2 Mother Nature makes and disposes of each day or century.
“We’ve reached the top of the heat cycle,” he said. “The next 10 years will be hardly any warmer than the last 10 years.”
Finally, climate scientist Melita spoke of a new phase in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.
“I’m looking at a new, cold-negative phase, though it won’t effect this summer, fall or winter ’08,” he said.
Conference host, analyst and forecaster Andy Weissman closed the conference by addressing how natural gas prices and policy debates would be impacted by a possible climate shift that could leave the market short gas.
This would be especially problematic if gas use for power generation were substantially increased at the expense of better alternatives.
“If we’re about to shift into another natural climate cycle, we can’t do it without coal-fired generation. So the policy debate has to change,” he said. “Coal has to be back on the table if we’re ever going to meet our energy needs.”
As for natural gas: “Next year, may see a bit of price softening,” Weissman said. “After that, fogetaboutit!”.
Thanks for the insight on Pickens. Whatever his motivation, he seems to be the only one really talking important issues in the election year political arena.
I don’t think the high wind percentage problem is as bad as the naysayers predict. From hearing some preliminary results on process optimization and real-time forecasting using intelligent systems and data-mining, the systems that are being used to run the current wind generating system aren’t quite to snuff and improvements could easily be made.
I love that there is so much enthusiasm for renewable energy. True story, I was on a flight last year to Singapore from London and got talking to a guy on the plane called Professor David Infield, a very personable chap. He is a Professor of Renewable Energy Technologies and the University of Strathclyde. I still have his business card in my collection.
We were casually talking about AGW theory and the impact of renewable sources would have. He stated that, for example, domestic solar panels are built to last for around 20 years, however, the energy expended to create them at present outways the benefit of the energy they save. He also pointed out that a wind turbine was not the most efficient way either. He said that after you have taken maintenace, construction, calibrating (which has to be done regularly) the beneficial energy they produce was minimal and one of the most least efficient was of generating power.
His thoughts were that we have no real viable technology now to make the switch from fossel fuels to. Nuclear is an obvious choice and very safe choice, but the issue is how to deal with the waste in an evironmentaly friendly manor.
Now, I just want to be very clear, I am reciting this from memory so if I have made an error in quoting David, then please forgive me.
Philip B wrote: ” One feedback mechanism which I have not seen discussed here is the one in which ocean warming causes the release of methane from methyl hydrate which would then cause even more warming. How does one refute this argument?”
Methyl Hydrates, as described by NOAA are “an ice-like crystalline mineral in which hydrocarbon gases and non-hydrocarbon gases are held within rigid cages of water molecules” (http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/
deepeast01/background/fire/fire.html). Having said that, the oceans would have to warm up substantially to release anything, much less an abundance of methane. Additionally, the oceans have been found to be cooling, not warming.
Jack Koenig, Editor
The Mysterious Climate Project
http://www.climateclinic.com
Going back for a 2nd and 3rd reading of the TEA article, the scariest prediction is by David Melita…
> Finally, climate scientist Melita spoke of a
> new phase in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.
> “I’m looking at a new, cold-negative phase, though it
> won’t effect this summer, fall or winter ’08,” he said.
What he’s saying is that even though global mean temperatures have been falling off a cliff for the last 6 to 9 months ( http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/mean:12/from:1980/plot/uah/mean:12/from:1980/plot/hadcrut3gl/mean:12/from:1980/plot/gistemp/mean:12/from:1980 ) *THE COOLING FROM THE NEGATIVE PDO HASN’T EVEN BEGUN TO KICK IN YET !!!* Think about it for a minute.
Pickens is self-serving? So what? I hope his plan works and he makes a few billion more.
So do I. I don’t mid a bit that he’s self-serving. But he’s thin. And he is talking nonsense when he says, “We can’t drill our way out of this crisis”.
Are we going back to the 1970s? Cooling or warming?
Smokey,
Thanks for your reply too. I look forward to the day when that huge source of methane can be mined assuming we don’t get fusion reactors first.
I hope “Watts Up With That” readers will forgive me for two sins; first for posting off topic,
Horrors. I would never do that. Never, ever, ever ever. Heaven forfend.
The problem with wind is that its not a primary load system. And in financial terms, the utilization/kwh-capacity is < 20% of that of nuclear. Its just cannot compete in the long term. If you have a $ to put in wind or nukes, you will lose your shirt if you put it in wind.
BTW, we were out in West Texas last week and few of the turbines were turning.
When people get their heating bills this fall in the NE it will cause a political firestorm. People will go from $1000 per home to heat to $3000 or more. Expect the cost of Diesel to spike about Sept and the public to erupt in October when they go to fill their heaters.
Aerosols !!!!
I just went back and re-read the 2007, Working Group 1, Chapter 2, section of the IPCC report on aerosols. No data pre-1978 is used. Therefore, the net negative forcing was assumed (and I mean to use the word assumed) so that the cooling between 1940 to 1975 could be forced in the Global Climate Models. This was to make the GCMs simulate the temperature record. The Clean Air Act of 1972 did not all of a sudden reduce the amount of aerosols in the atmosphere.
We are left with comparing post-1978 sattelite aerosol measurements with pre-1978 guesses of aerosol content. I am reminded of the Hockey Stick where a proxy is used up to one point in time and temperature measurements are used after that.
The world has been much hotter and with higher CO2 and and things thrived. Plants love C02. The Medieval Warm was when all the great Cathedral of Europe were built, Greenland was settled, and grapes grew in England. On the other hand we have history of the Little Ice Age when famine occurred. Cooling means that food production is more difficult and northern and southern hemisphere crop growing areas decrease. We already have a food shortage in the world, so let’s pray that warming keeps on rather than slipping into a cool period – as seems to be happening.
I forgot to mention that the last winter in Mongolia has wiped out the nomadic people’s livelihood of stock grazing – they all froze to death. A similar result occurred across the whole of the ‘stan countries. People and livestock froze – Kurdistan, Uzbekhistan, Afghanistan etc.
From what I understand there is enough methane in methane hydrate on the ocean floors to meet our natural gas needs for centuries. Why can’t we harvest it and use it before it melts and releases methane into the atmosphere?
David Segesta,
The reason is that it is down too deep and when you release the pressure it comes out of the hydrate state. So you have to harvest and contain at very deep levels to extract it.
Can anyone tell me if any of the global climate models reproduce the El Nino phenomenon? It would seem that any model would be suspect if it does not reproduce such a robust climate oscillation. Thanks for any help.
The Japanese are researching mining ocean floor clathrates, but we are probably years away from commercial viability.
A one year increase in methane doesn’t make a new trend and the article uses a 4 year graph to make the increase more dramatic. On a longer timeframe the rise is much less impressive. Here is a graph that shows a longer timescale. Note, this ends in 2005/2006, so the year referred to above is not included. On the lower graph you can see rate increase in methane emissions has been declining since 1984.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Methane-global-average-2006.jpg
No one really knows why methane levels stopped rising 10 years ago, but programs to capture methane previously released to the atmosphere probably played a role.
Drew Latta (18:46:59) :
The biggest problem with wind is its reliability for a primary system. Until some sort of storage capacity (flywheels, giant capacitors?) is developed, dramatic dropoffs in wind when it’s expected to be blowing can be very influential in the grid. As was mentioned upthread, or in another, we had a major cut to customers this winter when the normally good winds fell to almost zero for several days.
Austin, the turbines normally run pretty well out here (Southern Plains), but yeah, the last week or so, it’s been milder. Every time I go out for a Sunday ride, any direction, there are lots of turbines, and usually going gangbusters. Again, it’s just not reliable yet for a primary system, more like an addition to the coal fired.
Not entirely OT, Xcel Energy announced last week that they are going together with a few other suppliers and are building a medium sized solar plant in Eastern NM. Of the mirror variety, not the photoelectric cell type. The big wigs announcing it mentioned that it and wind are supplimental, not primary, so at least someone has their heads on straight.
The comment above from Mr Paul (timed at 18.50.28) raises a point I have been concerned about for a long time which is the concentration of our Greenie friends on single aspects of the argument rather than the whole picture.
For example, let us ask how much CO2 is produced by a coal-fired power station. Mr Greenie will have the figures readily to hand and will tell you it is so-many tonnes of CO2 for every so-many mega-watts of electricity. He is quite wrong because he is looking only at the time the power station is generating electricity.
To get the full picture we need to look at every stage of the power station’s life. How much CO2 results from building the building? How much results from manufacturing and fitting the working parts? How much results from repairs, maintenance, tests and upgrades? How much results from decommissioning the station at the end of its working life?
These sums are like a company’s fixed costs. On Day 1 of operation each mega-watt of electricity is produced at the “cost” of an absolutely enormous amount of CO2 per unit because all the emissions during manufacture of the plant have been incurred in order to produce the first mega-watt. The second mega-watt produces some CO2 of its own but the average is just about halved because the fixed costs of manufacture are now split between 2 units of electricity not 1. Similarly, the expected emissions from decommissioning will happen come what may, so they all fall on the first mega-watt, half of them fall on the first and half on the second, a third-each when the third arrives and so on. The longer the plant operates the thinner the burden of manufacture and decommissioning are spread and the lower the average becomes. Eventually the plant has to be decommissioned because it can no longer work efficiently or safely. However, as a general proposition, the longer that is delayed the better for the overall CO2 emissions average per mega-watt of electricity.
Equally, it is misleading to say “wind is better because wind-turbines produce no CO2”. We have to ask what happens when the wind-turbine is manufactured, how much maintenance it requires, what new infrastructure is needed to carry the electricity to the user, for how long can it operate, what happens when it is decommissioned, and so on. Only then can we measure the average CO2 per mega-watt and compare on a like-to-like basis with a coal fired station.
Scrapping established power stations prematurely and replacing them with wind-turbines causes both the CO2 emissions from decommissioning the power station and those caused by manufacturing the wind-turbine to be incurred earlier than would otherwise be the case. I am not qualified to say what difference it would make, but Mr Greenie really ought to tell us if he wants to be seen as an honest advocate.
I undertook a very rough-and-ready examination of the difference it would make if I took the bus or train rather than my car on my rare travels from FatBigot Towers here in North London, and was surprised by what I found. This includes my (very rough-and-ready) study:
http://thefatbigot.blogspot.com/2008/06/chicken-licken-and-motorist.html
DS:
The short answer is that if there weren’t cheaper ways we would. Same goes for the more difficult-to-get-at-oil.
Here is a longer answer:
If we ran out of conventional sources of copper TOMORROW MORNING, we could get the stuff out of sediments and seawater–in completely unlimited quantities–for around four times what we’re paying for it now (and the cost would go down over time as unfamiliar methods were improved).
What the methyl hydrate thing means, in effect, is that we will never, ever run out of fossil fuels. It is a virtually unlimited resource. We may never have to go get it. We may “pass beyond” most fossil fuels before we get anywhere near running out of cheaper conventional sources. But if we don’t, well, there it is, provided we are willing to pay for it.
The same basic principle applies to nearly every “non-renewable” mineral resource on earth.
The folks who talk about “running out” of whatever the hell it is they say we’re running out of, simply have no notion whatever of what is going on. As this amounts to 90% of all people, who the schools go to huge expense and effort to miseducate the public on the subject, it is on the remaining 10% of us to spread the reality.
As for the 90%, don’t blame yourselves; it’s not your fault: you have been misinformed. And it’s not a matter of public vs. private education. The private schools are every bit as guilty as the rest.
Furthermore, the intellectual “elite” are even more likely to be thoroughly wrong on this point than the general public. It is the exact same disastrous error that made complete fools of the Club of Rome. Why the world education system didn’t get a clue on this two decades ago is a tale for another day (and partially beyond my ability willingly to comprehend, anyway). It’s not a liberal Vs conservative thing. It is sublimely empirical,
and has been demonstrated thoroughly, comprehensively, and repeatedly.
Well, now you have been informed. So go ye and brood no more. #B^1
Are we going back to the 1970s? Cooling or warming?
Both the ocean-atmospheric cycles and the sun indicate a probability of cooling. There is undoubtedly more to it, but climatology is still in its relative infancy.
But these things go in cycles. There are underlying trend issues which are either not well understood or just plain not even known yet. (Heck, the ocean-atmospheric multidecadal fluctuations hadn’t even been discovered when Hansen made his speech back in ’88. Now we toss around the acronyms like old pals.)
Anthony,
This is off topic but here I go. Before I say anything else I want to mention that I really enjoy this blog as it is a great source of information. I also appreciate it greatly as it provides a counterbalance to the overwhelming number of articles found in the mainstream media supporting AGW or should I say ACC as I am sure it is soon going to be called. However I was a bit disappointed with your comment which I have pasted in below.
“Let’s leave the word “deniers” off this website, no matter who we are speaking of. The term was coined referring to “holocaust deniers”. In science, there is no room for such labels, no matter what side of the debate you are on. “Skeptic” is the better word.”
I appreciate what you are try to do. However as many commenters on this blog will understand it is misinformation spread by the likes of Al Gore, James Hasen, David Suzuki and Tim Flannery that may lead to the sacrificing of our western economies on the alter of AGW/ACC at the First Church of Radical Environmentalism.
Having checked Wikidictionary, the Macquarie Dictionary, and the online versions of both the Oxford and Websters dictionaries I have found two definitions and two etymologies for the word d***er. The first definition which is irrelevant to your comment states that a d***er is a unit by which the fineness of yarn is measured and originally denotes a French small coin coming from the Latin denarius. (You learn something new everyday!)
http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/denier?view=uk
The second which is applicable to your comment is d***er, one who denies. Webster’s online dictionary states that the the term was first used in English literature prior to 1593.
http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/denier
As anyone knows, who has looked into the topic of Antisemitism can tell you its presence in Europe predates 1593. However the genocide of European Jews by the Nazis, which is commonly called the Holocaust, did not occur until well over 300 years after 1593 and thus is clearly not the source from which the term d***er was coined.
I realise that you are using the term d***er in a very specific sense as it relates to the AGW/ACC debate. But please lets not sacrifice the English Language on the altar of Political Correctness at the First Church of Irrational Liberal Idealism. After all d***er is a good word to describe anyone who denies something.
By the way Anthony I hope you and yours are safe from those wildfires which continue to burn in California. Oh and keep up the good work with the website and weather station review.
David Segesta,
“From what I understand there is enough methane in methane hydrate on the ocean floors to meet our natural gas needs for centuries. Why can’t we harvest it and use it before it melts and releases methane into the atmosphere?”
Actually David it is already starting to happen but as usual the environmentalists are saying it will lead to an environmental night mare. Check out these links if you want to know more:
http://newenergyandfuel.com/http:/newenergyandfuel/com/2008/04/23/a-breakthrough-in-fuel-supplying-from-methane-hydrates/
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3740036.ece
http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/health/methane-hydrate-extraction-in-japan-could-damage-marine-ecosystems_10037775.html
@Bruce Cobb
I tend to agree with you. Climate has shown quite good correlation with solar activity. But still I would modify your statement from:
“…significant cooling looks very likely…
to:
“…significant cooling looks likely…”
Others in this forum say you can’t predict beyond a week, yet fret about “dead” suns and lack of sunspots.
Personally I wouldn’t rule out both sides of the climate debate being right. AGW may be real, and superimposed on solar trends. AGW probably will simply shift the solar driven trends a half a degree Celsius upwards. I view this as benefit, and not a calamity.
We are already facing huge price rises in energy, up to 40% in a recent BBC report
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7461635.stm
If it is true that negative PDO hasn’t yet kicked in, then I’m dreading the price rises when it does!
FatBigot – I love the new coined phrase “Chicken Licken Gases”! Awesome stuff.