Steve McIntyre has uncovered a blunder on the part of Pachauri and the IPCC that is causing waves of doubt and calls for retooling on both sides of the debate. In a nutshell, the IPCC made yet another inflated claim that:
…80 percent of the world‘s energy supply could be met by renewables by mid-century…
Unfortunately, it has been revealed that this claim is similar to the Himalayan glacier melt by 2035 fiasco, with nothing independent to back it up. Worse, it isn’t the opinion of the IPCC per se, but rather that of Greenpeace. It gets worse.
Steve McIntyre discovered the issue and writes this conclusion:
It is totally unacceptable that IPCC should have had a Greenpeace employee as a Lead Author of the critical Chapter 10, that the Greenpeace employee, as an IPCC Lead Author, should (like Michael Mann and Keith Briffa in comparable situations) have been responsible for assessing his own work and that, with such inadequate and non-independent ‘due diligence’, IPCC should have featured the Greenpeace scenario in its press release on renewables.
Everyone in IPCC WG3 should be terminated and, if the institution is to continue, it should be re-structured from scratch.
Those are strong words from Steve. Read his entire report here.
Elsewhere, the other side of the debate is getting ticked off about this breach of ethics and protocol too. Mark Lynas , author of a popular pro-AGW book, Six Degrees, has written some strong words also: (h/t to Bishop Hill)
New IPCC error: renewables report conclusion was dictated by Greenpeace
Here’s what happened. The 80% by 2050 figure was based on a scenario, so Chapter 10 of the full report reveals, called ER-2010, which does indeed project renewables supplying 77% of the globe’s primary energy by 2050. The lead author of the ER-2010 scenario, however, is a Sven Teske, who should have been identified (but is not) as a climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace International. Even worse, Teske is a lead author of the IPCC report also – in effect meaning that this campaigner for Greenpeace was not only embedded in the IPCC itself, but was in effect allowed to review and promote his own campaigning work under the cover of the authoritative and trustworthy IPCC. A more scandalous conflict of interest can scarcely be imagined.
…
The IPCC must urgently review its policies for hiring lead authors – and I would have thought that not only should biased ‘grey literature’ be rejected, but campaigners from NGOs should not be allowed to join the lead author group and thereby review their own work. There is even a commercial conflict of interest here given that the renewables industry stands to be the main beneficiary of any change in government policies based on the IPCC report’s conclusions. Had it been an oil industry intervention which led the IPCC to a particular conclusion, Greenpeace et al would have course have been screaming blue murder.
And, Bishop Hill reports other rumblings in AGW land with a consensus that the IPCC is “dumb”.
What a mess. The IPCC and Pachauri may as well give it up. After a series of blunders, insults of “voodoo science” to people asking honest, germane, questions, Africagate, and now this, they have no place to go, they’ve hit rock bottom.
The credibility of the IPCC organization is shredded. Show these bozos the door.
A tipping point, one hopes. This Humpty Dumpty seems to be made out of rubber but this ought to demolish the IPCC’s credibility among all but the hardcore True Believers. The Rommspin should be hilarious.
I was initially too gobsmacked to leave a comment over at climate audit. I am no less astounded by the situation 1 day later. What on earth were they thinking in the IPCC? Heads should roll over this.
Hear, hear! Thank you for posting.
IPCC has very little credibility but this scandal is simply corruption. All members of UN should demand dismantling IPCC. Unfortunately this is not likely to happen
I read this earlier in a blog from Australia – http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com/2011/06/ipcc-and-greenpeace-partners-in.html
“The credibility of the IPCC organization is shredded. Show these bozos the door”
I’m afraid that the leaders of the IPCC and their following AGW-believers (including many politicians) are, like all true believers, never of the opinion that this kind of discussions will harm the credibility of the IPCC. Because not ignorance, but preconceived ideas are always the problem in science and politics.
When a brave journalist put up this story on the uk Independent, I wrote a comment praising him and thanking him politely for his work.
This and a dozen more comments in general agreement have been pulled off and a lukewarm batch of agree -ers have taken our places!
It’s quite a serious battle now going on inside the MSM…the new generation senses that the story is turning and want to be in on the action…the oldschool greenies are still in control…but skating on thin ice…if you pardon the pun.
If Pachauri’s past responses to criticism are any measure, we can count on his stodgy grip on the helm for some time to come. Which isn’t to deny that the IPCC’s crediblity is non-existent right now, but that they have become so enamoured of their own efficacy that they don’t notice the obvious. Their raison d’etre is promoting the “theory” of AGW, and that necessarily includes anything that supports their aim. So, when good science can’t foot the bill, any old claptrap’ll do.
Sure, 85% of the world’s energy could be met with renewable sources if you consider nuclear power with recycled fuel as renewable. Or maybe if you shut down every blast furnace on the planet. How many windmills does it take to reliably power an electric arc blast furnace 24 hrs / day?
yes it does get worse every time you look at it…so they had a biased report written by a campaigner together with industry interests, they hired that very same author, they spoke only about that report to all newsmedia and still it wasn’t enough: 77% became 80%…
Call me paranoid but I think
Pachauri chose his words carefully when he says.
“Close to 80 percent of the world‘s energy supply could be met by renewables by mid-century if backed by the right enabling public policies a new report shows.”
1. He refers to energy supply not energy needs.
2.. Note the chilling phrase abput the “right enabling public policies” My reading of this is that given the power we can make you do what we want.
No doubt the 20% of none renewable (and reliable) power would be rerserved for the supporters of the scheme.
How exactly is a corrupt organisation (such as the UN) supposed to police the actions of another corrupt organisation (IPCC) ?
Worse, the corruption at the heart of the IPCC comes from another corrupt organisation (greenpeace)
Long renowned for selling investments in animals to raise funds for plotting the extinction of other animals (Homo Sapiens)
Special interests manipulating the scientific and non-political IPCC process from within to promote their own agendas, likely for their own financial benefit? How astounding, and completely unexpected. Surely this is merely an aberration, that in no way affects the accurate reporting of the overwhelming consensus views of the settled science as presented.
Any additional dissent from those evil fossil fuel industry-funded disseminators of disinformation who want the world to die in flames must be quickly squelched. Otherwise wild conspiracy theories may erupt, perhaps one which notices how a UN report-writing program keeps yielding conclusions that lead to a UN-run program of global control with greatly expanded UN powers.
[reply] remember to add a /sarc tag next time please TB-mod
“Everyone in IPCC WG3 should be terminated and, if the institution is to continue, it should be re-structured from scratch.”
Not literally, Steve, surely? Having said that there are a few who ought to be as an example, metaphorically speaking that is! Who’s up for Terminator? The whole IPCC should be “terminated” IMHO, along with the UN. How many millions have died or otherwise suffer through UN arrogance & ignorance? They are a disgrace & have been infiltrated & infected by left-wing neo-socialist intellectuals, usually from privilaged middle-class well educated backgrounds, like the rest of the Jonathan Porrits of this world!
I have posted this on other sites, but it fits in well with the conflict of interest in the IPCC.
From Donna Laframboise’s blog, I saw the name Richard Moss, and his affiliation, the WWF.
http://nofrakkingconsensus.wordpress.com/2011/03/04/the-wwf-vice-president-the-new-ipcc-report/
Richard Moss is on the 15th chapter of the AR5, the section on Adaptation Planning and Implementation.
It’s interesting about his WWF connection, and the name just below his on the AR5, Walter Vergara, with the World Bank.
The WWF, with grant money from the World Bank, have purchased the rights to Amazonian forest, and hope to make 60 billion dollars from carbon credits, through REDD (reducing emissions from developing countries deforestation).
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/03/amazongate-part-ii-seeing-redd.html
Of course, Chapter 15, that Moss is part of, also deals with REDD.
I really suspect that the theme music to the IPCC is “Dueling Banjos”. And that they feel the hillbillies in “Deliverance” were just misunderstood.
Why would they let someone into the IPCC who is a representative of an organization with vested commercial interest in programs that he is reviewing? These are commercial interests totaling BILLIONS of dollars!
“Everyone in IPCC WG3 should be terminated and, if the institution is to continue, it should be re-structured from scratch.”
On the contrary, this kind of shark jumping and squirrel fishing from the IPCC is to be encouraged and publicised.
Nothing could make the entire edifice more untenable and more likely to collapse spectacularly.
If they can make up figrues, so can I.
The 2050 year plan:
80% of renewables supplying energy needs.
80% of bureaucrats with holiday houses at selected conference resorts
80% of climate scientists support the 2050 year plan ‘consensus’.
80% of the proles want 80% renewables.
80% of the statements from IPCC independently checked by Greenpeace.
80% Greenpeace objectives taken up by the IPCC.
Where are the proles when you need them?
I’m afraid we just have to expect more of this sort of thing. The IPCC is now the UN’s standard-bearer for implementation of Agenda 21 (and, ultimately, the world government it aspires to) and left-wing groups are well-known entryists, very difficult to oust once embedded in the target organisation.
Hats off to Steve McIntyre and all other sharp-eyed citizen scientists: this is the “price of liberty” indeed!
Just when you thought it couldn’t . . . . etc. etc.
Chaps let’s not overlook the fact that this is a UN report. The UN has become a corrupt thing from top to bottom. Getting a job at the UN is considered a great stroke of good fortune as there is a mountain of other people’s money to mine along with the opportunity for social experimentation and engineering with very little oversight.
This particular expose is nothing unusual really and the meister spinners there will swiftly get busy “contextualizing” this little bit of chicanery.
The world is going cold ( yes I know ) on the idea of global warming and the recent announcement of reduced solar activity will help that along and this denouement will help that . That is why the next battlefronts are already being developed, water and ocean acidification. Something as big and ugly and self sustaining as the UN will not stop it’s relentless struggle to carve out more power and control for itself. Starving the UN of money is the only real way to fight it. GW Bush did well to withhold funding as he did but every contributing nation needs to be pressurized to reduce the taxpayer’s cash it sends there.
We need to make the whole UN a real political issue, not just it’s ridiculous IPCC.
As I commented over at Bishop Hill and Climate Audit yesterday:
Sven Teske is an IPCC Lead Author and longtime Greenpeace activist and employee. He has been with Greenpeace since 1994, and a leading Greenpeace Campaigner in Germany since 1995.
Some conflict of interest! How about vested interest as well? Sven Teske founded Greenpeace Energy and was on the board from its inception in 1999, and is still on the supervisory board. Greenpeace Energy has a vested interest in ‘renewable’ power and turned over 79 million Euros in 2010, supplied 448 million kWh electricity (2010) and currently boasts over 100,000 customers.
But then, this is no surprise when Pachauri is at the helm of the IPCC, because he has similar conflicts of interest and vested interests.
The following non-peer-reviewed report is cited in AR4 WGIII
Greenpeace, 2006: Solar generation. K. McDonald (ed.), Greenpeace International, Amsterdam.
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/Global/international/planet-2/report/2006/10/solargen3.pdf
Credit for this (see back page) goes to Sven Teske. Teske also co-authored the Foreword with Dr Winfried Hoffmann, President of the European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA), which states:
“We have now reached a point where CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions have already induced excessive floods, droughts and intensified hurricanes and typhoons…Fortunately, we have technologies at hand – the portfolio of renewable energies – that could change this downward spiral and lead to a green and sustainable future.”
Oh yeah?
What? An industry body with vested interests in selling photovoltaics and an environmental campaigner with vested interests in photovoltaic power generation producing a non-peer-reviewed document that is cited in AR4?
Can you imagine the hullaballoo that Greenpeace would kick up if this was a report written and sponsored by the coal or oil industries and their advocacy groups?
The hypocrisy of Greenpeace is disgusting.
Greenpeace have posted Sven Leske’s CV here:
http://www.greenpeace.org/finland/Global/finland/p2/other/…/sven-teske-cv.pdf
He received a Diploma in Engineering in Wilhelmshaven (Germany) in 1994. He has no postgraduate training. He lists a bunch of “publications” since that time, but they all appear to be opinion pieces and reports. Nothing that has been peer reviewed in a scientific journal. He is the founder and Director of the Greenpeace Renewable Energy Campaign. This speaks volumes about the calibre and objectivity of IPCC science!
It’s wonderful that two very vocal, prominent and extreme Warmist journalists and enthusiastic advocates for CAGW, Lynas and Hitchens, have had the guts to acknowledge that Greenpeace and the IPCC have been exposed in employing corrupt practices. Considering the number of books, columns, etc that these two have written and published based on their acceptance of the IPCC’s research as gospel, this is a truly remarkable event.. I am not brave enough to hold my breath until the BBC reports this event fully and truthfully, however!
No doubt teh attack-dog for the Grantham Institute, will continue to with his wild allegations of smear and innacuracy.
As they say, bring popcorn and beer!
“charles nelson says:
June 16, 2011 at 12:44 am
When a brave journalist put up this story on the uk Independent, I wrote a comment praising him and thanking him politely for his work.
This and a dozen more comments in general agreement have been pulled off and a lukewarm batch of agree -ers have taken our places!
It’s quite a serious battle now going on inside the MSM…the new generation senses that the story is turning and want to be in on the action…the oldschool greenies are still in control…but skating on thin ice…if you pardon the pun.”
Totally agree Charles.
My take on this exactly – i too have wached as the comments section has been spun and “sanitised”.
R
Matt UK
Also check out this shameless May 9 press release on the “energyblueprint” web site (owned by Greenpeace and EREC), where Sven Teske is quoted as follows:
“Sven Teske, Renewable Energy Director from Greenpeace International, and one of the lead authors of the report said: ‘This is an invitation to governments to initiate a radical overhaul of their policies.'”
Read the whole thing, before it is “disappeared.”
http://www.energyblueprint.info/1327.0.html
As pointed out in the piece, there seems to be a degree of double standards here. How is it possible for an IPCC assessment to be disinterested if it has members from Greenpeace? The equivalent would be a member of the fossil fuel industry whose report rubbishes the entire concept of renewables leading a chapter… highlighting their own work.
That the alternative scenario feels impossible argues that the IPCC has genuine bias and is not interested any more in “the truth”.
They sit in judgement at their own trial.
There is a tension here: either have “experts” who are the main producers of papers in the field writing reports based on their own work – or have people with no obvious axe to grind, but cannot be considered “experts” writing it.
Is there anything in the UN not corrupt?
Just wondering.
Hear, hear!
(but not “Here, here!” as John Tofflemire said earlier…)
So our politicians have been told by a Gold Standard scientific review that it’s feasible to convert nearly 80% of our energy supply to renewables in a certain (short) time frame and, at least in the UK, seem to be running with that idea. Only, the Gold Standard scientific review was produced by Greenpeace.
That’s actually quite frightening.
From reading other ‘grapevines’, it seems that the UK’s renewable energy plans have problems already.
It involves the so-called Renewable Heat Initiative = the tax man is going to pay people to heat their houses using either solar thermal, heat-pumps or bio-mass boilers.
The first two are doomed because..
1. Only 15% of the UK’s solar energy arrives during the 5 months of winter, when its needed most.
2. the national grid is overloaded already on cold winter days before adding 10’s of GW of extra demand
3. In SW Scotland, right now, folks are offering money to do tree surgery. That’s right, paying you money to chop trees when before you paid them
IOW, the RHI scheme has not even officially started yet and we’ve run out of biomass to feed it. 12 months ago, wood pellets were costing 50% more (in energy terms of pence per kilowatt hour) than electricity did and that was before you’d spent thousands on a suitable (approved) boiler.
There just aren’t the words sometimes, sigh.
The evidence that Pachauri is in fact a mole inserted into the IPCC by Lord Monckton in
order to destroy its (the IPCCs) credibility is starting to get overwhelming.
For sure we can supply 80% of the energy needs by renewables!
Let’s just go back to the bronze age. At this time humanity lived 100% by renewables…
Or let’s commit mass suicide, with 10% left of the current population “we” (or the ones left) can live with 80% renewables.
The only thing the UN will take notice of, is a move to defund it, or at least the IPCC – An opportunity here for a new squeaky clean clean out before the pimple bursts into an ugly mess, though can’t get much worse or more ugly than this mess is right now…IMHO!
Scrap the UN. What good has it actually done since its inception? Without it we would have had wars so no difference there then. Malaria would be almost non existent, food would be more plentiful, fewer wind farms/solar/biofuel systems and we would be avoiding any AGW/Climate Indulgences because people like Pachauri would be oiling railway engines or trying to get their porno books published [and hopefully failing miserably] and the likes of Hansen, Mann, Jones on the dole queue……..
If you include fossil fuels as renewable, which they are over the tens of million year timescale, then they are correct. We can get over 80% of our energy from renewables, including FF’s.
Apart from this what planet does Pachauri inhabit? Not Earth!
Has much coverage of Donna Laframboise’s work at nofrakkingconcensus on this social network effect been discussed at WUWT? Her site is a great read and rings so true. I see these same problems with the critics of biofuels and industrial agriculture. Grey literature, sloganeering, fake experts, hiding the decline, cherry-picking data, insider clubs all show up in the anti-agriculture Green color revolution-types at CARB and the psuedo-agriculture schools like Cornell.
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/
[snip]
Bulls-eye, Tallbloke:
‘“Everyone in IPCC WG3 should be terminated and, if the institution is to continue, it should be re-structured from scratch.”
On the contrary, this kind of shark jumping and squirrel fishing from the IPCC is to be encouraged and publicised.
Nothing could make the entire edifice more untenable and more likely to collapse spectacularly.’
Hoisted by their own petard — in slo-mo…..
How much direct evidence will it take for our political leaders to notice the stink of the global warming deceit? Or have they noticed it but find it difficult to extract themselves? We should remind them of the best political inducement of all for changing their opinion: they will not be re-elected unless they extract themselves, for it’s our money they commit on the basis of these extraordinary, fraudulent, self-seeking, public dissimulations. As Mark Lynas indicates, no oil company could have got away with this level of blatant conflict of interest even for a day.
Big Green makes Big Oil look as inoffensive as a kitten.
A couple of comments that may particulalry interest WUWT from Mark Lynas’ blog. He hasn’t read a copy of the Hockey Stick Illusion, Yet!
But Professor Jonathon Jones is going to lend him his copy… (Jonathon in these links)
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2011/03/02/scientists-speak-out/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/25/currys-2000-comment-question-can-anyone-defend-%e2%80%9chide-the-decline%e2%80%9d/
Mark Lynas says:
15 June 2011 at 2:11 pm
Thanks Andy – I guess what we can all share is an interest in the scientific method being applied as rigorously as possible. And some ‘sceptics’ are doing great work in holding the IPCC and others to higher standards. Here’s another sceptic site, for instance, raising some equally valid issues:
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2011/03/14/peer-into-the-heart-of-the-ipcc-find-greenpeace/
Reply
■ Barry Woods says:
15 June 2011 at 2:35 pm
Donna has done a lot of good work, you are aware that many of the usual suspects consider her a ‘climate change denier’ and smear her at every opportunity?
Reply
■ Mark Lynas says:
15 June 2011 at 2:37 pm
No, I didn’t know that. Skimming through her site it looks very much like fair comment to me. I haven’t come across it before. But she’s unfortunately right that too many Greenpeace people wear the ‘scientist’ hat when it suits them.
■ Barry Woods says:
15 June 2011 at 2:51 pm
No offense, IF donna is new to you, may be you should step outside of the green bubble a bit more….. Take some time to read her blog, and Bishop Hill
May I ask
Have you read ‘The Hockey Stick Illusion’
Professor Judith Curry (climate heretic now) challenged some other climate scientists to read this book (Gavin of Realclimate, etc) their reasons and excuses not to read a book recommended by a fellow profesional were both amusing and profoundly depressing. She said that it seemed fair comment and at the very least explained where sceptics like Steve Mcintyre were coming from. They would not read it… if interested I find the link..
PLEASE tell me you are aware of Judith’s blog Climate Etc, if not you must consider yourself part of the green bubble.. go there read her views.
■ Mark Lynas says:
15 June 2011 at 2:53 pm
I haven’t read the Hockey Stick Illusion, but I will if you send me a free copy! ◦
Same with Judith Curry – I have seen her being vilified, but I haven’t gone deeply into it.
■ Jonathan Jones says:
15 June 2011 at 3:12 pm
Mark, where would you like your free copy of the Hockey Stick Illusion sent to? I work near OUCE so could easily leave you a copy there.
————————————————
Be nice and polite to Mark he appears genuine and has never deleted or blocked any comments of mine on his blog. I have been reading and commenting there since he started it.
He is also the Maldives Climate Change Advisor, and on the board of The Campaign Against Climate Chanhe, which has sceptic alerts and even a Deniers – Hall of Shame. I would hope to persuade him rationally and POLITELT that this is not really condusive to a debate. BE NICE, don’t live up to any pre-conceptions of nasty sceptics.
The problem is NOT the IPCC, this “organization” is doing precisely what the real problem wants them to do. For more on the real problem, click the internet link of none other than one each UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon –
http://www.un.org/sg/
One place that cannot be counted on to fix it is UNEP
UNEP, a $450 million U.N. organization, is also an administrative mess, which ignores its own financial rules, and sometimes doesn’t even reveal who is authorized to sign its checks, the study says.
UNEP apparently agrees. It has accepted all 17 recommendations contained in the internal study, and is currently attempting to enact them.
According to the study, that process is supposed to be completed by the end of this month.
In response to questions from Fox News, a UNEP spokesman declared that “The recommendations of the auditors are now being implemented by UNEP under a practical and agreed time-scale and via a Task Force and, as is standard practice, we report back to the [U.N. auditors] every six months”.
There are quite a few important things to fix. Among other failings, the study says that UNEP:
— doesn’t adequately check out the credentials of its partners, especially in the private sector;
— doesn’t even keep adequate records of who it is partnering with, or how well they do at the projects they promise to accomplish;
–has failed to keep track of millions of dollars raised by some partners, and passed on by UNEP to others outside the normal U.N. financial accounting system;
–frequently fails to include “essential” information on financial documents;
–lets officials who don’t have the proper authorization sign off on payouts;
–and has sometimes used high-minded partnership arrangements to cover purely commercial ventures.
Moreover, the global organization has sometimes failed to enforce its own rules for staff disclosure, leading to cases of apparent conflict of interest and potential self-dealing. And sometimes, UNEP departed from its normal legal paperwork entirely, as in the case of a licensing deal with the Thomson Reuters Foundation to use UNEP-generated news stories on a humanitarian website, AlertNet, apparently without going through proper channels.
The 25-page report by the U.N.’s internal watchdog Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) was published on Dec. 30 last year under the dry title “UNEP Project Delivery by Partnerships.””
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/06/10/un-internal-study-reveals-its-environment-program-is-administrative-mess/#ixzz1OtwojUR7
My self and a colleague tackled this very question of the economics and practicality of switching to renewables in this article, in which we also asked what temperature reduction coulfd be achieved through a severe carbon diet.
http://judithcurry.com/2011/05/26/the-futility-of-carbon-reduction/
As a follow up I asked a dozen of the worlds leading climate scientists for their confirmation that collectively our impact on reducing temperature would be very small. It is apparent that most have never done the calculations, and those few that had didn’t like the answer. When actually set beside those few indvidual countries willing to bankrupt themselves to achieve a significant reduction in carbon emissions the temperature reduction achieved was absurdly trivial. In the UK”s case it is 30 thousands of a degree after spending £30 billion a year for forty years.
tonyb
Mark Lynas responds to me in his comments and says:
“I did side with Mike Mann on the Hockey Stick thing, without personally having the expertise to really go in and check the argument about statistical methodology.
But I have to admit that McIntyre is right about this, and that I and others should have spotted the problem earlier.
There should be no campaigners or anyone else with a vested interest on the ‘lead author’ team for any IPCC publication – ever.”
Interesting times ahead…
I hope his fellow greens are not too nasty to him..
Senior environmentalists were calling Mark Lynas (and George Monbiot) Chernobyl Death Deniers recently… for being pro-nuclear BECAUSE of the Japanes tsunami and reactor problems….
As Mark Lynas writes here:
http://www.marklynas.org/2011/04/time-for-the-green-party-and-guardian-ditch-nuclear-quackery/
“Yesterday I was an environmentalist. Today, according to tweets from prominent greens, and an op-ed response piece in the Guardian, I’m a “Chernobyl death denier”. My crime has been to stick to the peer-reviewed consensus scientific reports on the health impacts of the Chernobyl disaster, rather than – as is apparently necessary to remain politically correct as a ‘green’ – cleaving instead to self-published reports from pseudo scientists who have spent a lifetime hyping the purported dangers of radiation…….. ”
Unfortuanetly Mark carries on to speak about Climate Change deniers, (do read the comments in that article) but in his latest article he happily recommended Donna Lafranboise, considered by many to be a Climate Change denier. He thought her words were fair comment, and that she was a new sceptical site to him..
Lost in the green media/NGO/political social netowrk is my explanation for Mark’s thinking….(narrow)
Sven Teske’s affiliation is not exactly hidden. Steve should’ve used Google, as it seems to produce lots of results that show the link. The blunder is that a leading expert says something about his expertise AND mentions his affiliation on an original report. Now, I have a lot of time for Steve, I think he is a great statistician, BUT I found out through extensive investigation that he used to be a mining consultant. Don’t fossil fuel companies use mining consultants a lot? Now, I’m not trying to say anything, BUT…
OK, but seriously, the best experts should be used by IPCC, but any conflict of interests should be investigated openly.
By the way, as for MY affiliation, so you don’t think I’m an anonymous troll…
http://mitigatingapathy.blogspot.com/
Heads should also roll over at the Nobel Peace Prize committee.
Rudolf Vyborny said: “IPCC has very little credibility but this scandal is simply corruption. All members of UN should demand dismantling IPCC. Unfortunately this is not likely to happen.”
Actually, the UN itself is the culprit for creating the no-oversight IPCC in the first place. But what can we expect from an organization filled with small-country functionaries whose job is no more than a political plum bestowed by a corrupt government?
What Sven Teske wrote in the Greenpeace report cited in AR4 (Greenpeace, 2006: Solar generation. K. McDonald (ed.), Greenpeace International, Amsterdam) is just plain daft:
“Solar power is a prime choice in developing an affordable and feasible global power source that can substitute fossil fuels in all the world’s climate zones…PV solar electricity can provide decentralised energy supply at the very place it is consumed.”
Bear in mind that this was a report jointly written by the European Photovoltaic Industry Association to promote their members’ interests. But it is plain wrong. There are many climate zones for which PV is neither affordable nor feasible, and which it is no proper substitute for electricity generation. Even the report itself has a coloured figure, fig 4.4, showing the electricity generation cost of PV in northern Europe to be in the range 30 cents/kWh, with some parts of Europe being around 40 cents/kWh. And that’s just generation cost: add in amortization of investment, distribution and profit and we’re talking 7 -10 times the cost of electricity from nuclear and fossil fuel plants.
Well, there are some hundreds of millions of people living in northern Europe, and don’t they live in one of ‘all the world’s climate zones’ ? And, there are tens of millions of people in Europe that don’t see the sun for weeks on end in winter, or at best for a few only a few hours a day, and then weakly. So PV isn’t going to be able to provide ‘decentralised energy supply at the very place it is consumed’ in northern Europe. Perhaps Greenpeace think we should close down all industry in northern Europe, and exterminate ourselves so that we don’t need lighting, heating or transportation.
If Teske had written “Solar power is a power source that can operate in all the world’s climate zones”, we would say, yes, technically, but by no means practically or economically. But to write that “Solar power is a prime choice in developing an affordable and feasible global power source that can substitute fossil fuels in all the world’s climate zones” is nothing but an atrocious lie. This shows that the document cited in AR4, which is self-serving for an industry body and an ‘environmentalist’ group, and for Teske as board member of a ‘renewables’ power generation company turning over tens of millions of dollars, is nothing but crude advocacy, ‘spin’ and propaganda. It is shameful that the IPCC are quoting such a biased report, and that Teske, the Greenpeace activist and employee, was appointed an IPCC Lead Author.
I thought it was common knowledge that IPCC (wrongfully) validates Greenpeace. Nice to know there’s an unavoidable proof of it now.
[snip]
[snip]
….”and now this, they have no place to go, they’ve hit rock bottom”.
What odds are you giving?
Leave ’em there. Best thing that could happen considering. No better group of fools could have been chosen to destroy the IPCC from within.
Welcome to the age of Scenario Science. Forget old fuddy duddy scientific methodology, Scenario Science is much more exciting!
@crosspatch says: June 16, 2011 at 12:57 am
Nuclear! Oh Goodness! Nein Danke! who needs nuclear when we can take the Khlima Rouge’s road back to a simpler, more bucolic, agrarian society?
http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2011-06-06/pedal-powered-farms-and-factories-forgotten-future-stationary-bicycle
Found as “editor’s pick” on an obviously lavishly funded “Zero Carbon Britain” promoting website.
Tell you what, Crosspatch. You take the cat o’ nine tails and I’ll beat the drum. OK? We can switch over after our muesli break.
[snip]
How can these climate charlatans be brought to account in a Court of Law? The IPCC, its assessment reports and summaries for policy makers, its cabal of alarmist scientists… they are party to the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on mankind. The governments of the western world will never hold the IPCC to account. Heck… they are up to their necks with the IPCC in this fraud. So, it can only be by way of some sort of major legal action that this anti-carbon juggernaut will ever be stopped dead in its tracks, once and for all. But how?
This is old…. I covered this back in May when it was released. My approach was different, but the results the same. It is not possible for the money to do what they claim. It is truly fantasy.
http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/2011/05/the-insanity-of-the-ipcc-energy-%E2%80%9Cbible%E2%80%9D/
The IPCC makes things up. This is news to anyone?
The power behind the IPCC knows full well that it’s going to have to break scientific protocol to get it’s pre-determined conclusions thru. So I don’t think it’s a blunder.
I wish Anthony and co would take some time out to immerse themselves in seminal works on money and power such as Bill Still’s ‘The money masters’ and Zarlenga’s ‘The lost science of money’.
Then he’d be more receptive to George Hunt’s 1987 expose that Rothschild and the world banking elite are the crooked power behind the IPCC and all the climate nonsense we have to endure these days
http://euro-med.dk/?p=13656
Otmar Edenhofer, Co-Chair of WG III, says climate policy has nothing to do with the environment and is instead about redistribution of wealth:
See http://www.thegwpf.org/the-climate-record/1877-ipcc-official-climate-policy-is-redistributing-the-worlds-wealth.html
ScientistForTruth’s gobsmacking observation that the IPCC Lead Author/Greenpeace Report Author Teske also has a senior position with Greenpeace Energy – in the business of selling renewable energy – is the topper of all the toppers. The redistribution is from us to them.
What’s this? Disgraceful! Corrupt! Oh, it’s just the IPCC going about its usual business again. Back to sleep. (More seriously, yes, I’m as sickened as any of us, but totally unsurprised.)
I fully agree with others commenting that the whole UN – and, come to that, all the other international organisations – needs to be made accountable to the world. The difficultiy is, of course, that since no general public was ever onsulted about bringing these organisations into existence, and since no general public ever gets any say in any of the appalling policies they emit, it’s hard to see how we can get any purchase on the problem – the entire degenerate system has been set up so as to be proof against anything external which might influence it. Our politicians may support these organisations, but in the absence of any public participation in any part of the international process, I’d argue that it has no true legitimacy to influence anything. No Carbon Taxation Without Representation!
I used to work as a glaciologist. Not one of my colleagues in glaciology had ever read the IPCC report, if they had they would have spotted the Himalayan glacier mistake straight off. Scientists just do not regard the IPCC. It is seen as outside science.
I complained about his involement at the Campaign Against Climate Change – Halls of Shame…..
Mark Lynas agreed: At Climate Etc)
http://judithcurry.com/2011/06/15/an-opening-mind/#comment-76091Mark Lynas | June 16, 2011 at 5:30 am |
“…..Barry, you are right that the ‘Sceptics Hall of Shame’ is itself shameful – I wonder if I can appear on it now whilst still being a board member of the Campaign Against Climate Change (in all honesty I’d forgotten that I was on the board – I never have anything to do with them!). ”
My reply….:
Many Thanks for that statement Mark….
But your mere inactive presence give them credibility, and supports the Hall of Shame.
I have also written (months ago) to the Green Party about Jean Lamberts’s (Green Party MEP) and Caroline Lucas’s (Green MP and Green Party Leader) involvment (VP and on the board) linking to a group that has Halls of Shame and Sceptic Alerts (activists astroturfing, imagine the complaints if the roles were reversed)
Halls of Shame go against ALL Green Party ethics and policies ( a relative is a press officer for the Greens and former editor of Greenworld and a parliamentary candidate, a very nice person that is truly green, this reflects on all the grass root activists who do have the best intentions)
Even if they are not active, (like yourself) their silence and mere presence endorses it.,
Just think of of it this way, any other elected MP’s and MEP’s associated with any type of Halls of Shame….aimed at individuals, not organisations.
I have asked them(Green Party) first to use their influence to change that policy, at the very least because it was VERY counterproductive for them. I suggested that they should step away if they cannot, as it fails green ethics. I did this privately(months ago), they are fully aware. they have not done so.
Have the GREENS learnt nothing, also George Monbiot (Honourary President) how am I supposed to feel about his involvement when he has the MSM at his disposal to call people deniers, and I do not the same means to defend myself
re-structured from scratch? It does not need to exist.
Why is anyone shocked by what the IPCC is? Is it because of their naive ideas of what the UN is?
Pachauri and others at the IPCC are incorrigible liars. They were born to deceive. It is in their blood. Nothing can be done but to follow McIntyre’s advice and fire everyone so that the IPCC can be rebuilt from scratch.
I am eager to hear that a chorus of climate scientists, including Schmidt, Hansen, Solomon, Trenberth, call for the IPCC to be rebuilt from scratch. I am especially eager to hear from Mann, Jones, and crew as they stand up for truth in climate science and “climate science communications.” Before the pro-AGW camp can create good communications with the public they must first remove from their ranks agenda driven liars who have bullhorns.
Anyone fancy buying energy from the outfit who employ Sven Teske?
http://www.greenpeace-energy.de/
Cui bono,IPCC?
The Independent
Unusually, the Indy which is as pro AGW as the Guardian, gives a relatively balanced view and name checks Climate Audit.
And a brilliant and self-exposing quote from John Sauven of Greenpeace UK ” Exxon, Chevron and EDF also contribute to the IPCC. so to paint this expert UN body as a wing of Greenpeace is preposterous”.
That’s the Exxxon, Chevron and EDF that all have a vested interest in tax farming from renewables. The IPCC is supposed to be an independent body and it should have no connections with any vested interests. In fact it should just cease to exist. Of course no danger that Call me Dave (our UK prime minister) will stop the UK economy destroying windfarm juggernaut.
Still, another chink in the armour
Friends:
This information concerning IPCC Working Group 3 (WG3) is not news. I published a paper about it in 2001.
That paper explains and assesses the IPCC SRES “scenarios” as they are described in Chapter 2 of WG3 in the IPCC Third Assessment Report (the TAR published in 2001): that chapter describes the origin and nature of the “scenarios”. The following are some of the points reported in my paper:
(ref. Courtney RS, ‘Crystal balls, virtual realities and ‘storylines’ ‘, Energy & Environment (2001) )
TAR WG3 Chapter 2 says a sub-committee of IPCC WG3 produced the scenarios with no input from the climate scientists (IPCC Working Group I) who were invited to comment on the TAR. It says most of the scenario authors involved are “economists” and “futurologists”, and many of those invited to comment on their work were “activists”.
The assertions in that Chapter are so extraordinary that in my Expert Peer Review for the IPCC I recommended;
“TAR WG3 Chapter 2 should not be published”
and I commended that
“the ‘Writing Teams’ of other TAR Chapters should object to publication TAR WG3 Chapter 2. In my opinion, their failure to object could risk damage to their reputations as a result of association with Chapter 2”
because it
“is the most disingenuous and dangerous document it has ever been my misfortune to read.”
But it was published, and the Vice Chairman of IPCC Working Group 2, Martin Manning, then spoke out to make clear that he also disagreed with it.
Richard
Its depressing that it is so blatant – they clearly don’t care if they’re found out – the gravy train will keep rolling,
And the IPCC is a stagger of plundering proportions. Harrumph harrumph.
How long before we all admit openly that the world is *worse* because of the existence of the UN, not better?
Abolish it. Let everyone figure out how to handle things on their own, without this ridiculously corrupt farce of an organization pretending to manage things.
The UN was a mistake, just like the League of Nations before it. If you doubt that, name the last time the UN did something worthwhile.
Pull out – cut the funding – tear down the building.
I have a feeling that many of the hard-core warmists are just beginning to have doubts. We have this larkin et al and for example Eli at Blackboard in what I would call a very “quiet state of commenting”. The only fanatics left within 2 years will be greenpeace hardcore and Joe Romm etc.
I disagree. Proclamations of hitting “rock-bottom” are impossible to make until things begin to improve. Economists were saying last year the economy hit rock-bottom and the recession was over. Well, this year the economy slipped even more and so last year’s proclamation was premature. Getting back to the IPCC, they are organization with no oversight made up people that answer to no one and who stand to gain money and power by their very actions. The IPCC can still get worse. I can picture several things they could do that is much worse. We won’t know the IPCC’s rock-bottom until the organization is overhauled. That ain’t going to happen so long as there is still money to be had for continuing the course.
“Show these bozos the door”
No, eliminate the entire IPCC organization.
I had been in the archives of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago when I discovered closely guarded original specimens of a number of species. It turns out that Steve Milloy had filed some specimens and that the IPCC, although not the orgiinal holotype, is an early paratype of that species commonly referrerd to as junkscience. It enjoys a parasitic relationship with homo sapiens exploiting their fear-based beliefs that are their waste by-products, is extremely hard to control, and impossible to eradicate.
A close examination from that time makes the initial junkscience identification crystal clear. These new revelations constitute the occasional reconfirmation of the painfully obvous.
Corrupt! There’s no other word for it! It’s time to stop asking for the IPCC to change – because we’ve already had that demand and there’s been not a jot of change. No it’s time to force change from outside by running a proper investigation.
But, who would do it? Under what legal powers would they force those involved to co-operate? Can the police investigate?
An utter complete mess …. and I bet that is why they just put two fingers up to the likes of us, because I doubt there’s anything anyone can do except stop the money and kick them off their soil.
The UN/IPCC hits rock bottom.
Hmm. After the glacier typo (it was supposed to be 2350) excitement, Donna Laframboise et al had a field day finding other WWF crap in AR4. The Greenpeace link is also prominent and covered in various of her posts in a big report in http://www.noconsensus.org/ipcc-audit/findings-main-page.php
On Greenpeace and Teske, http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2010/01/28/greenpeace-and-the-nobel-winning-climate-report/ says in part:
I guess color me as not surprised about Steve’s news, if I dug deeper, I might find another reference before Steve’s. Ya know, faced with a big pile of manure, it’s tough to find a special turd.
I totally agree with the stance that if this had been BP for instance there would have been blood on the carpet. If our politicians in the UK do not follow this up they are as dumb as we think they are.
The bandwaggon for Wind farms etc is still rolling fast in the UK and funding is still flowing. Times are hard, tighten your belts, we will look after your cash, this is the message from our UK Govt. whilst monay slides out of the back door to fund bad science.
In light of this latest scandal, I’m very happy that the U.S. House of Representatives has voted to defund the U.S. portion of the IPCC budget…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/19/house-votes-to-defund-ipcc/
I’m sure that Greenpeace can make up the shortfall…
In the long haul, coal, oil, gas, etc are all renewable too…………
In view of the August 2010 WUWT post: “IAC slams IPCC process, suggests removal of top officials” one can only conclude that they haven’t learned a thing, they do not care, continue their power play and get away with it. It is not about gathering knowledge but about making their (political) point.
This scenario analysis by itself is just more polemic crap: if we go back to stone-age wealth and decimate the population we can do without any new renewables and solar electrical power. It is straightforward criminal to put forward such bold statements as if it were meaningfull knowledge and the culprits should finally be brought to justice for corruption and fraud.
Elizabeth says: June 16, 2011 at 5:28 am
“I have a feeling that many of the hard-core warmists are just beginning to have doubts.”
It’s not just the hard-core warmists. I’m beginning to doubt.
I used to think it was: “people who probably had the best of intentions, but made a mistake”.
I’m beginning to wonder SERIOUSLY!!! whether we are really up against criminals who rely on the sceptics being a bit namby pamby and treating corruption as “human error” rather than deliberate intentional malice to defraud the public.
Huge money, gullible people, a closed, controlled group easy to manipulate. What crime syndicate would not want to control the means to create a massive money making scam like this? You only have to think of the billions on carbon trading and the dirty deals that go on in the normal city trading to realise that there is already crime just waiting for an opportunity like the IPCC.
The comments to the-
“A Plan to Power 100 Percent of the Planet with Renewables
Wind, water and solar technologies can provide 100 percent of the world’s energy, eliminating all fossil fuels. Here’s how
By Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark A. Delucchi ”
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-path-to-sustainable-energy-by-2030&page=2”
are an interesting read.
‘they’ve hit rock bottom’ – I wouldn’t put money on it.
I believe it is time to give up on thinking the processes for the IPCC will change. It won’t. They’ve been caught in so many misdeeds, that I can’t keep track of them all. The only recourse is to relegate the entire organization to the trash heap of history. And if it won’t go away, we simply need to ignore it. Show were their statements aren’t valid and insist upon another source of information. In other words, treat the IPCC as nothing more than a “National Enquirer” of climatology. Their statements aren’t valid, their process isn’t valid, and their science isn’t valid. That’s the message everyone should use when discussing the IPCC.
What’s new?
We already know the IPCC is corrupt & run by indviduals with huge conflicts of interest, who is really suprised that those individuals then get others with similar conflicts of interest writing & reviewing the made-up-science reports?
We know they don’t care anymore about the science, it is more a task of marketing!
They wouldn’t know a sunspot or solar flare if it burnt their @rse off…
Naturally none of this will make the lamestream media. They’ll go on promoting the whole sham. Only when economies crash and burn due to the stupidity of climate laws passed by ideologically driven leftists will the truth be told by them.
The global warming/climate change movement doesn’t give a damn about the truth. It’s a political movement designed to impose their will on everyone else. We are in a fight for our freedom, if we lose our civilization will be destroyed.
>>Is there anything in the UN not corrupt?<<
I'm afraid the answer is no. Everything the UN does is anymore is tainted.
The Straight Dope provides a sober and realistic overview of the energy needs in 2050:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3000/followup-why-dont-we-ditch-nukes-em-and-em-coal
Cecil’s conclusion: “If we squeeze out every available watt of alternative energy on the planet, and build nukes at an impossibly aggressive rate, we’ll barely keep up with the energy needed to support even a modest standard of living for the world’s people. [by 2050]”.
I am reading way too many “complaints” about corruption. It has taken a long time for someone to write the truth, but wws does at 5:25 am:
“How long before we all admit openly that the world is *worse* because of the existence of the UN, not better?
Abolish it. Let everyone figure out how to handle things on their own, without this ridiculously corrupt farce of an organization pretending to manage things.
The UN was a mistake…. If you doubt that, name the last time the UN did something worthwhile.
Pull out – cut the funding – tear down the building”.
This should be one of the “planks” of the Teaparty reform movement in the U.S. that includes Conservatives, Independents, Libertarians, and former Democrats (if one of those groups does not try to take it over, e.g.,, make if only a “Conservative” movement). At the core is responsible free enterprise. We know that corporate biggies want monopoly and power just like union, academic, financial, bureaucratic, NGO, etc. biggies do. That battle was fought at the beginning of the 20th C, We are in a second titanic battle against those (crony corporations and all the above) who want to use government privilege to line their pockets. Unfortunately, they produce no wealth along the way; only bringing slow destruction of already-created wealth. The core purpose of the Teaparty Movement is to restore free enterprise, which requires the rule of law, the scientific method, limited government, fiscal prudence, transparency, and accountability. Any organizations that do not fit should be abandoned.
The UN — every unaccountable bureaucracy connected to it, e.g., the IPCC — is an easy first targetl; it gets a fail on every measure. Defund. Defund. Defund. Let those economic centers that were using it, and the CO2 fraud, to line their pockets pay for their own corrupt organization and house it. UN out of the US.
Excellent news! The IPPC was formed at a time when AGW might have been a problem. Now it’s shown us it isn’t so they can pack up: job done. A triumph of models proving that things aren’t as bad as they thought they might be. The null hypothesis is preferred. Oh, and shown that science driven by an agenda is self-serving.
That WAS the point wasn’t it?
Joe Horner says:
June 16, 2011 at 2:20 am
So our politicians have been told by a Gold Standard scientific review that it’s feasible to convert nearly 80% of our energy supply to renewables in a certain (short) time frame and, at least in the UK, seem to be running with that idea. Only, the Gold Standard scientific review was produced by Greenpeace.
That’s actually quite frightening
Iron pyrite, Joe, it has become the “fools Gold” Standard.
The unfortunate part is, as Richard S. Courtney suggests, many excellent scientists worked on portions of the IPCC and they are now unfairly subject to “guilt by association.”
“authoritative and trustworthy IPCC.”
Which IPCC are they talking about? International Pancake Condiment Company?
A clueless bureaucracy, driven by people with a destructive agenda are taking over.
As just another example, Europe’s energy commissioner has announced today how he plans to force a 20% reduction of energy consumption by 2010. Threads, pressure, penalties. And mandatory investments into energy-efficient buildings. Completely prevent exchange of air between in and out. Means to hide the walls behing styropor … and wait for the mold to come. Or to install a costly exchange system.
However, if consumption can be reduced further to 50% by 2050, it’s possible to reach the 80% renewables.
Simply de-industrialize Europe and buy from China.
This is just a terrible surprise! That a UN organization could be so corrupt! I’m stunned!
…80 percent of the world‘s energy supply could be met by renewables by mid-century…
Of course it could if we are content to live the lifestyle of the 1.8 billion people on the planet that do not have electricity. Of course it would mean an end to all the major cities on earth and a return to the land for the survivors, similar to what happened in Cambodia under Pol Pot.
Like the IPCC and Greenpeace, Pol Pot was absolutely convinced that what he was doing was right, that it was for the good of the people. This made him supremely dangerous because he never stopped to question his beliefs. He knew that right was on his side, and if you had to break a few eggs to make an omelet, so be it.
Throughout history we see this pattern repeated time and time again, with large numbers of deaths of innocent people the end product. When someone in a position of power believes something that is not true, and then acts on this belief, man made disaster is the result.
The BP Gulf oil disaster spilled crude that was cleaned up by BP. When is IPCC going to clean up the stink spilled by the IPCC? Clearly, that gunk has been way more toxic than the oil spill.
Steve, what are you up to? There is something aperpindicular about this “revelation” and its timing. You wouldn’t have a big axe to grind would you? I feel sorry for anyone who gets caught under the wheels of McIntyre’s scrutiny because they will get slowly crushed. However, it is s a crushing that they deserve to get.
So what is up? Is there a UN pow wow up and coming wherein there is an opportunity to put some real scientists in charge of things. The article seems to lead to something….political.
Everyone reads this blog… so whats up?
Does this mean that we won’t be able to supply 80% of our energy needs from renewables by 2050? Bugger. What will we do now?
Seriously, though, what percentage of our energy needs will be supplied by renewables by then?
Unfortunately Obama and Lisa Jackson are believers in the IPCC. They want to drive the U.S. literally into the dark ages. There has been little doubt tat he IPCC is a corrupt organization, as bomb shell after bomb shell fall upon their “science”. That has still not even slowed skyrocket energy prices Obama and Lisa down. Where are the jobs, where is the energy? China.
Martin Brumby says:
June 16, 2011 at 4:16 am
http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2011-06-06/pedal-powered-farms-and-factories-forgotten-future-stationary-bicycle
Their Human Powered Flywheel Motor looks especially promising. Apparently it “can deliver much more power than the human who operates it.”. They even provide figures:
It only takes between 1 and 2 minutes to store the maximum possible energy in the flywheel, at a “comfortable” pedalling rate.
It can provide up to 6hp (about 4.5Kw) output which is, they say, 20 times what an average person can achieve in small bursts – although they’ve only managed 2hp (1500w) so far.
Unfortunately, of course conservation of energy means it can only provide that power for 1/20th of the time.
Now, bear in mind that the average kettle is around 1500w and takes (rough guess) 3 minutes to boil. That means that (ignoring the inevitable losses) you’ll have to pedal like crazy for a full hour to get your morning cuppa.
They haven’t really thought this “alternative human powered energy” through, have they?
This story is not at all surprising. Greenpeace and other advocacy groups are in bed with the IPCC and Pachauri.
March 14, 2011, No Frakking Consensus posted the following.
Peer into the Heart of the IPCC, Find Greenpeace
Here initial criticism of the May press release can be found here
15 June, 2011
IPCC: These People Haven’t Learned a Thing
November 24, 2010
Greenpeace’s 12th Century Technology [wind]
Pachauri, who set up a risidual oil extraction company called Glorioil, continues to be its scientific advisor.
Appears there’s a consensus here. What’s the action plan?
“…80 percent of the world‘s energy supply could be met by renewables by mid-century…”
This scandal is nothing but a distraction from the really big news: We’re there with solar (and other renewables, but solar in particular).
I think this is an excellent idea to aim for 80 percent renewables by 2050, and we should go all out to achieve it. There is almost no downside in us doing so. PV will be the cheapest per watt energy source within the next 6 – 7 years, and will be far more efficient within 1 – 2 decades . The Japanese PM said yesterday that the true cost of nuclear is about 10 times the stated costs (and that doesn’t include compensation payments). Even if you think climate change is not happening, this is beginning to make very strong economic sense. We just need to find better ways to store it and work out baseloads better.
Don S
Re action plan… exactly.
So? The Job is to, it seems, equate IPCC and the clown show of Green Peace.
IPCC=Green Peace
Green Peace = ZERO Credibility
IPCC = blunder ridden cadre of pseudo science activists.
Mock IPCC into making itself anew to the satisfaction of Watts, McIntyre, Monckton. Horner et al.
That may involve the shutting down of the IPCC but exorcizing the liars may be just as effective.
This is the platform for the restructuring.
So who is off and who is on the new IPCC?
Scottish Sceptic says: June 16, 2011 at 6:03 am
“I’m beginning to wonder SERIOUSLY!!! whether we are really up against criminals who rely on the sceptics being a bit namby pamby and treating corruption as “human error” rather than deliberate intentional malice to defraud the public.”
They also rely on genuine, honest but gullible folk who believe hook, line and sinker, what they are told by the politicians, mass media and pressure groups in the name of “the good and worthy to combat the dangers of AGW”.
It’s only a blunder if it was an accident.
Steve and Anthony!!
If you could design your own panel to advise the IPCC who would you ask to sit on it?
Consider also that this blog is defacto advising the UN already, and that may be enough, but let us say that an official role is available to real scientists. Who may they be?
What? I’m sure our energy supply could be met by renewables in mid-century. Actually I think it’ll happen much sooner. Biofuel production from genetically organisms is already here today. In another 10 years at most it’ll be ready for prime time. I’d say no later than 2030 and we won’t need to pump, mine, or frack for fuel anymore. We might still need it for chemical feedstocks for non-fuel products and it might still be more convenient for those nations who have plenty of fossil fuels but a barrel of oil won’t be saleable for over $15 because biofuel will be cheaper. Any oil producer who doesn’t know this and planning for it now has a fool for for a CEO.
Darn – typing too fast and not proof reading. Meant to say “genetically engineered organisms”.
duckster: I was hoping that your post was sarcasm, but, no.
We just need to find better ways to store it and work out baseloads better.
That’s all? Except, there is no way to store it now, nor none on the technological horizon. Baseloads can be handled now, with nuclear, coal and natural gas. But not with renewables.
Solar is not there now. In Ontario, it costs over 10 times the wholesale price of conventional power, for solar. It also does not work very well in northern winters.
The cost for converting to renewables? According to Sci Am, about 100 trillion dollars.
Not going to happen as long there is cheap fossil fuels.
Green Bots.
Green Cult.
Green Gone Wild.
New Green is Dirty Green.
@Duckster says:
June 16, 2011 at 7:48 am
“…80 percent of the world‘s energy supply could be met by renewables by mid-century…”
——
REPLY Thanks, Duckster! I agree, and I don’t understand the vitriol about this comment.
Renewables is a mix of many technologies, some of which work very well (industrial wastewater biomethanation), and others which are evolving.
One of my industrial clients meets most of their boiler natural gas needs from a wastewater biomethanation plant I designed for them 10 years ago. The system treats over 2 million gallons/day of potato processing effluent and produces treated water used for land irrigation.
It wouldn’t be EASY, but 2050 is a pretty long ways off yet. We could reach such a goal with concerted efforts. The algae guys are making some fantastic inroads in scale-up, and the airlines are already planning on using biofuels in their aircraft.
http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-market-news-story.aspx?storyid=201106101549dowjonesdjonline000511&title=us-aviation-biofuel-production-could-be-poised-to-take-flight
We should let the market decide. Wind power is turning out to be a big flop for a number of reasons, but next-generation biofuels are looking promising.
@Duckster
Photovoltaics are a distraction. Our transporation infrastructure isn’t set up for electricity and it won’t be anytime soon. Solar panels could be free and 100% efficient and that still wouldn’t solve most of the problems with replacing hydrocarbon fuels. Storage and distribution remain the major stumbling blocks for electricity. A lesser stumbling block is power density in any known kind of battery. Ever wonder why there are no passenger or freight electric aircraft? Except for toys and experimental solar powered gliders it’s just not practical to power an aircraft with motors. The power density of batteries and electric motors can’t come anywhere near that of combustion motors and hydrocarbon fuels.
.
Get rid of the IPCC already. Does anyone still pay ANY attention to ANY of their crap anymore? .. I mean really!
@Duckster says: June 16, 2011 at 7:48 am
“We’re there with solar (and other renewables, but solar in particular).”
Well, we’re there with hydro-electricity and have been for years.
Solar? You are having a laugh. Maybe in daylight hours in the middle of the Sahara (if you need electricity in the middle of the Sahara). Unless you mean “that’s our racket and we’re there it for all we’re worth”.
How come the enormous subsidies and feed-in-tariffs, otherwise?
The rest of the renewables?
Come back on here and tell us when there is one that works. At a cost less than burning dollar bills.
Les Johnson
SciAm is probably right with “$100 trillion” if they’re talking about replacing hydrocarbon fuels with electricity. Tally up the cost of converting or replacing everything that runs on natural gas, gasoline, diesel, and kerosene to electricity. Add to that the cost of the renewable gimcracks that generate electricity and the cost of distributing it to point of consumption. Then add in the cost of every fuel storage tank, pipeline, oil tanker ships, tanker trucks, and whatnot because they all suddenly have no more use.
The cost of changing over infrastructure from hydrocarbon fuels to electricity is so high it just won’t ever happen. The only practical solution is renewable sources of hydrocarbine fuels. Fortunately that’s looking better every day and won’t take much longer. Biofuel is already far cheaper than $100/bbl oil and it requires no substantial infrastructure changes.
Re: Pamela Gray says:
June 16, 2011 at 7:13 am
“The BP Gulf oil disaster spilled crude that was cleaned up by BP. When is IPCC going to clean up the stink spilled by the IPCC? Clearly, that gunk has been way more toxic than the oil spill”
Actually nature cleaned up most of the spill, BP just provided a dog and pony show, but that does suggest a good approach, we could just drop the IPCC and the UN into the Gulf of Mexico and let nature take its course.
It’s not just Greenpeace that’s the problem but lead authors whose jobs are “very much attached to renewable energy.”
They are listed and cross referenced on this page.
Aparently there is no mention of peer review or non-peer reviewed according to Hilary.
If anybody finds it can they let her know.
@Martin Brumby says:
June 16, 2011 at 8:36 am
The UN classifies wood and dung as renewables. One could imagine public policy approaches that result in 80% of our energy coming from dung and wood by 2050. Think of it as a sort of “return to the dark ages” initiative.
@Martin Brumby says:
June 16, 2011 at 8:36 am
@Duckster says: June 16, 2011 at 7:48 am
Come back on here and tell us when there is one that works. At a cost less than burning dollar bills.
REPLY I’ll give you a few:
1. Wastewater biomethanation (already mentioned) – the Brits & Germans & Dutch are ‘way out front on this one, but anaerobic treatment is pretty commonplace in the food processing industries worldwide. Since wastewater needs to be treated prior to discharge to protect surface waters, biomethanation provides for a very high level of stabilization with concomitant biofuel production. It’s a tricky process to work with, but well-proven over the past 30 years.
2. Geothermal – Of course, Al Gore taught us that the interior of the planet is “millions of degrees,” but practical geothermal systems like heat pumps are taking off like gangbusters in geographic areas where they make sense.
3. Wastewater ethanol production – One of my clients produces ethanol from waste cheese whey permeate as a wastewater treatment option. Very slick, works great and doesn’t use food as a source (unlike corn) since whey permeate is a mixture of lactose and salts once the lactoalbumin is removed.
4. Passive solar – a no-brainer, just build your house correctly. I have a friend who builds houses in Oklahoma using thick foam sheets for roofing sections (same as we use in food industrial cooling buildings), orients the houses according to annual sunlight, and incorporates heat pumps & other tricks. He tells me that, during a typical Oklahoma winter, the heat generated from incandescent lighting, clothes dryer and compressor from refrigerator usually supply all the heat for house.
Lots more, but these are some well-proven and obvious ones.
Corrupt people running a corrupt panel for a corrupt organization promoting corrupted science.
It is enough to make an optimist feel downright pessimistic. The human condition… I guess? GK
Quinn the Eskimo @ 4:42 and others writing about
“ . . . redistribution of wealth”
I remember sitting in church in the 1950s when a missionary would be invited to speak and ask for funds for some village in Africa, the Philippines, or some other exotic place. Our parents and other parishioners would dutifully add to the baskets and the money (we all assumed) went to help people less well off than us. Over the 60 years since I did not noticed much improvement in these places – and we are still being asked to redistribute our wealth.
I do see improvements where the type of government and society change to allow people to build their own wealth. I’m a fan of the idea that if you are willing to pay for something you soon see an increase in that something, be it good or bad. The Spaniard’s trick of lighting up solar panels at night with diesel generators comes to mind.
At any one time there is only so much wealth. Redistribute some of it and the folks that can produce more – will. It seems implausible that this process can be carried to the point where everyone is wealthy.
IPCC-Gate anyone?
*sigh*
Corruption of Staggering proportions by the EU
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2011/6/16/ideological-money-laundering.html
Greenpeacebuck$ is one of the most hypocritical, arrogant outfits ever. This should be spread far and wide.
I’m forwarding this to my favorite congresscritters..
I hope they have to actually sail the Rainbow warrior port to port because of no money for the fuel for the D-sail…
Duckster says:
June 16, 2011 at 7:48 am
“…80 percent of the world‘s energy supply could be met by renewables by mid-century…”
This scandal is nothing but a distraction from the really big news: We’re there with solar (and other renewables, but solar in particular).
I think this is an excellent idea to aim for 80 percent renewables by 2050, and we should go all out to achieve it. There is almost no downside in us doing so. PV will be the cheapest per watt energy source within the next 6 – 7 years, and will be far more efficient within 1 – 2 decades . The Japanese PM said yesterday that the true cost of nuclear is about 10 times the stated costs (and that doesn’t include compensation payments). Even if you think climate change is not happening, this is beginning to make very strong economic sense. We just need to find better ways to store it and work out baseloads better.
==================================================================
Where do people come up with this stuff? No, .that’s not correct. First of all, and repeat after me, we can’t store AC power. The conversion process (going from DC to AC) sucks up so much energy that its hardly worth it. If one was to find a way to store AC power, then that’s a win.
Secondly, where did you invent PV will be the cheapest per watt in the next 6-7 years? I’d like a source so I can go ridicule them. It is deplorable how some groups of people will intentionally mislead the public, and they need called on it.
Thirdly, while we can use PV without REE, the efficiency drops significantly. To provide energy worldwide, the world will have to either do without other things……. such as cell phones, computers, SMART GRID SOLID STATE METERS and the like or massively increase global mining of such elements. Currently, China is about the only one, and they are decreasing exports of such materials because their needs of REE(see the piss fight they recently had with Japan). How soon do you believe we can change our laws to allow us to re-open our mines to where it is cost effective? What of the rest of the world? How is it that you believe PV will become cheapest (lol compare to hydro) when the essential materials for production of such is in such high demand?
I’m guessing, and this is just a gut feeling, that once industry embraces the technology, people such as our friends from Green Peace, Earth First. Sierra Club and the like will move heaven and earth to prevent it. Just like they’re doing coal and oil today. Turns out, socialists in the tradition of Marx and Lenin don’t like successful industries regardless of the benefits provided to humanity.
Baseloads…… that’s fine. I guess we’re to just say screw the people that live above the 49th parallel during the winter. And, of course that would also apply inversely to the people in the Southern Hemisphere as well. Perhaps we can sell them on some whirlygigs and pinwheels. We should ask the people of N.B. how that’s working out for them. Or not, else we might not be able to sell them any more.
Duckster, PV will be viable…….. one day. To consider it anything more than an augment to our existing power structure within the next 50 years or so is a dangerous pollyanna outlook. I’m still waiting on the environmental impact study on all those cells put out in the desert of Cali.
My point is this, solar energy can and will be a useful augmentation to our various sources of energy. Once we refine the efficiency just a little more, it can start supplementing nat. gas use for peak demand. But, until we find a way to work around the laws of physics with AC power, that’s all its going to be. There has been some significant development towards use of DC power as a replacement of AC, but that too is a pipe-dream for several decades to come because of the existing infrastructure. (We’d have to re-fit the entire world from power source to homes.)
The world has an energy problem. Most of it is self inflicted. The sooner we get to dealing with reality, the soon we can fix the problems.
A blunder would suggest simple incompetence at play. I don’t think I would have been as charitable in my choice of words.
Tony Hansen says:
….”and now this, they have no place to go, they’ve hit rock bottom”.
What odds are you giving?
I want in on that bet – I’m betting we’re not at bottom yet.
Duckster,
The only problem with photo voltaics is that it takes more power to make a solar cell and the frame to hold it, than you can ever get from the cell over it’s usefull lifespan.
From the IPCC conflict of interest policy:
As I said above this is nothing new. The following relates to the reliance on Greepeace reports by the IPCC for its some of its claims.
This is why no one should trust IPCC reports as they are driven by advocacy. Looking for evidence that matches their beliefs.
Why does this Kampen fellow keep posting with only the word snip? very curious 😉
CRS,Dr.P.H. @ 9:02
“. . . a typical Oklahoma winter”
This is an example of the faulty thinking behind the sorts of solutions being presented. Oklahoma typically doesn’t have a winter in the same sense as many places. But, yes, these things work some times and some places, or as you say “in geographic areas where they make sense.” Boise, Idaho has used geothermal for years.
What does one do in the old cities of the world with millions of housing units close together and stacked one on top of another and up hillsides such that sunlight hardly ever (or never) reaches any of them? Shall we remove all these folks to the wide open plains of Oklahoma and have your friend build them a new tricked-up free standing house on a quarter-acre lot?
There is the concept of an urban area’s “hardening of arteries.” The term applies to the concrete and steel aspects and to the political and ownership rules — total infrastructure, if you like the term. In cities, this issue comes up after every major earthquake as they try to rebuild. Mid-century is just 39 years off. I’ll wager that major existing cities will look remarkably the same then as now, new ones scarce, and oil/gas/coal our major sources of energy.
Here is an example. In Seattle, the Alaskan Way Viaduct was damaged by the Nisqually Earthquake in 2001. Ten years later it is still standing, still dangerous, and still in need of a solution. They now think they might start a tunnel:
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Projects/Viaduct/
The current estimated completion date is 2016 at a cost of $3.1 Billion. If you believe either the time or the cost will hold you haven’t been paying attention to such projects: Boston’s Big “Dug” is explained here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig
The IPCC.
Fire. Them. All.
“they have no place to go, they’ve hit rock bottom”
Nonsense, Anthony.
They’ll call in a fleet of backhoes (on our dime, of course) and keep digging.
This may have been said already, but it’s certainly possible that target is hit. Shut down the coal and nuclear plants (except those near the elite’s locations) and have rolling blackouts everywhere else. The total production would be lowered so much, that 80% would be true. It’s kind of like the unemployment figures, where they just poof the number in the workforce down, so the rate is held steady.
Here’s the only “renewable” I know of that has the potential of meeting 80% of the world’s energy supply by mid-century:
http://www.cce-mt.org/Energy%20Alternatives/cold_fusion/cold_fusion.html
To be sure, calling it “renewable” is a misnomer, but since it could provide all the energy we need for the next million years or so without serious side effects is close enough. My concern is that the UN and the IPCC will embrace this technology as the big solution to our energy problems. It just might develop like the attitude of political parties in Greece to this–everybody is on board.
Mark Lynas: The IPCC must urgently review its policies for hiring lead authors….
Huh, the motive behind the ipcc’s actions has always been, in effect, to become a World Government. It’s “stakeholder” position doesn’t have any other “urgency”. Promoting and foisting upon us its Postnormal Science Propaganda Op. has always been its “method”, or at least by the time the TAR was being formulated.
It’s nice that Mark Lynas is calling for the ipcc to urgently do something different, but surely he must explain why he didn’t notice anything amiss prior to writing and selling his book.
CRS, Dr.P.H:
At June 16, 2011 at 7:48 am you respond to the reasonable statement from Duckster at June 16, 2011 at 9:02 am which was:
“Come back on here and tell us when there is one that works. At a cost less than burning dollar bills.”
Your response was to ignore his point about costs and to list:
1. Wastewater biomethanation (already mentioned) –
2. Geothermal –
3. Wastewater ethanol production –
4. Passive solar
I note that you did not put (sarc/) at the end of your response and, therefore, I am treating it as being a serious comment.
So, please tell me
(a) the cost
and
(b) the requirement
for the methods you list to supply the electricity for one, solitary, medium sized, aluminium smelting works.
I assume the answer to my question will be on your office shelf because I note that you say,
“One of my clients produces ethanol from waste cheese whey permeate as a wastewater treatment option.”
And I interpret this as being an inference that you provide “clients” with information on such matters.
Of course, I apologise if you cannot answer my question because my assumption is an error on my part.
Richard
I’d like to make a point to the greenies here who seem upset by some attitudes.
My personal belief is that eventually the biotech guys will crack the fuel nut and we will have renewables, but the present technology is simply not feasable for large scale transportation and industrial use – period. I understand that there are technologies that can achieve significant energy savings for residences and industry, but efficiency is not going to solve the long term problem. I am building a small house for myself at the time that will have ground effect air conditioning, solar hot water, and be as energy efficient as I can afford, so it’s not like I don’t appreciate these things, but you are delusional if you think these things will solve the long term problem.
A couple of weeks ago there was an announcement from out west where some biotechs had genetically engineered a bug to secrete lipids instead of storing them in its body (lab scale at this time). At present the big problem with lipids from algae or almost all biofuel is getting it out of the organism and processing it. These are the kinds of advances that it will take to eventually solve the problem and I personally think it will be solved.
Trying to cram things down people’s throats before the technology is ready does not make anybody any friends. Go save somebody else.
Friends:
Before the salesmen for renewables side-track this thread, I write to quote the conclusion of my paper published a decade ago which I referenced in my above post at June 16, 2011 at 5:20 am
I said in that post:
“That paper explains and assesses the IPCC SRES “scenarios” as they are described in Chapter 2 of WG3 in the IPCC Third Assessment Report (the TAR published in 2001): that chapter describes the origin and nature of the “scenarios”. The following are some of the points reported in my paper:
(ref. Courtney RS, ‘Crystal balls, virtual realities and ‘storylines’ ‘, Energy & Environment (2001) )”
I now write to quote the concludng paragraphs of that paper. They were:
“The Chapter is honest about one thing, though. It openly admits why it pretends such mumbo-jumbo is science. Its Introduction states that the Chapter considers “societal visions of the future” that “most share a common goal: to explore how to achieve a more desirable future state”. There are many differing opinions on what would be a “a more desirable future state” (c.f. those of Mussolini and Marx) but the Chapter does not overtly state its definition of “desirable”.
And the Chapter concludes: “Perhaps the most powerful conclusion emerging from both the post-SRES analyses and the review of the general futures literature is that it may be possible to very significantly reduce GHG emissions through integration of climate policies with general socio-economic policies, which are not customarily as climate policies at all.”
Simply, this conclusion of Chapter 2 of WG III TAR calls for changes to socio-economic policies that are not climate policies (at very least, this conclusion provides an excuse for such changes). And the Chapter’s Introduction states that these changes are intended to achieve “a more desirable future state” based on “societal visions of the future”.
This conclusion derived by the method that generated it for the purpose stated in the Chapter is an abuse of science. Indeed, it is not science to make predictions of how to change the future by use of selected scenarios when “no systematic analysis has published on the relationship between mitigation and baseline scenarios”: this is pseudo-science of precisely the same type as astrology.”
Richard
Steve is not an author at the IPCC. If he was then, and only then, might you have a point you have a point. Furthermore, I vaguely recollect that he does not describe himself as a man-made global warming sceptic.
By the way Pachauri who is head of the IPCC set up a residual oil extraction company and to this day is its scientific advisor. What do you think about that?
http://www.glorioil.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7&Itemid=10
80% of the world’s energy supplied by renewables by 2050? I don’t see it happening, but I suppose it would be possible. Ballpark estimate of cost: $100 trillion.
Richard S Courtney says:
June 16, 2011 at 10:44 am
Friends:
Before the salesmen for renewables side-track this thread, I write to quote the conclusion of my paper published a decade ago which I referenced in my above post at June 16, 2011 at 5:20 am
==============================================================
Richard, thanks for that. I wasn’t aware of your paper until I read your comment at CA. By the manner I read your comments, this confirms what we’ve known all along. The purpose isn’t much to do with climate, but more to do with changing the socio-economic structure of the world. Which, of course, parrots the people whose banner includes a hammer and a sickle.
Quick question. I don’t consider the IPCC to have any “authority” (but neither do I think that “authority” matters in science). My question is: what is so horrible about this, exactly? That the guy has a huge conflict of interest? Well that makes him partial as hell, sure, but not necessarily wrong. And I don’t see the IPCC breaking any laws or clear rules of scientific conduct. That I know of.
Would it be better for the IPCC’s credibility if they didn’t have authors with huge conflicts of interest? Sure, but it’s evidence and arguments that matter, not “credibility”.
In effect, I’m asking you to clarify the difference between the uproar over this conflict of interest and the many ad hominems we “deniers” are constantly exposed to.
I’m not saying there isn’t any, I’m just asking you to clarify it for me, because I’m not completely sure what it is 🙂
How can you believe something postulated by someone who stands to gain from what he is pushing? Has he offered others a cash benefit to not criticize what he is saying?
His future income depends on a large number of people buying into what he puts forward .
You think he may be right but if that’s the case why should he not be exposed to criticism and investigation? Why should he be allowed to put his point of view forward unquestioned? You would be better off wondering why he has had to have this unquestioning channel into the minds of a lot of people who will simply accept his story because lots of people are happy to have others do their thinking for them.
This is a scam. It is set up as a scam and it enjoys the collusion of the IPCC people. Don’t be misled by the title of this thread, it is not a blunder it’s a scam.
paul says:
June 16, 2011 at 3:41 am
BUT I found out through extensive investigation that he used to be a mining consultant. Don’t fossil fuel companies use mining consultants a lot? Now, I’m not trying to say anything, BUT…
=======================================================
Paul, first of all, you’re being coy……just come right out and say it!
Secondly……. lmao!!!! Great work seeing that you can get a picture of him during his mining days on his website. I hope your “extensive investigation” didn’t take up too much of your time. This has been known for several years.
Thirdly, you guys need to check reality. Do you honestly think oil companies give a rats azz if we plant whirlygigs in our yards? IDK about the rest of the world, but the U.S. electric generation uses oil in a very miniscule amount.
Additionally, one of the wealth redistribution schemes our socialist friends came up with was to use some strange government backed and approved CO2 market. You should ask yourself why oil companies were all for it. It probably has something to do with cornered markets with no chance of future competition by upstart companies……….laughable.
Lastly, last I remember, Steve Mc’s writings weren’t issued in the IPCC with Steve being the lead author of that chapter……… maybe you can show us how this Green Peace/IPCC (or is that IPCC/GP, or IPCC/IPCC, or GP/GP….it appears they are interchangeable, but most rational people knew that anyway)….fiasco parallels with Steve McIntyre being a mining consultant.
DonS says:
June 16, 2011 at 7:37 am
“Appears there’s a consensus here. What’s the action plan?”
YES! Enough talk about what these corrupt crooks! We’ve got it! We’re convinced!
How do we take them down????????? What legal, political, and economic baseball (or cricket!) bats can we swing, to hit them where it REALLY HURTS?
Let’s see a pilot project first.
Al Gored says:
June 16, 2011 at 12:25 am
A tipping point, one hopes. This Humpty Dumpty seems to be made out of rubber but this ought to demolish the IPCC’s credibility among all but the hardcore True Believers. The Rommspin should be hilarious.
No, no,no! Not rubber, but silly putty! lol
@ Richard S Courtney says:
June 16, 2011 at 10:27 am
CRS, Dr.P.H:
At June 16, 2011 at 7:48 am you respond to the reasonable statement from Duckster at June 16, 2011 at 9:02 am which was:
“Come back on here and tell us when there is one that works. At a cost less than burning dollar bills.”
Your response was to ignore his point about costs and to list:
1. Wastewater biomethanation (already mentioned) –
2. Geothermal –
3. Wastewater ethanol production –
4. Passive solar
I note that you did not put (sarc/) at the end of your response and, therefore, I am treating it as being a serious comment.
So, please tell me
(a) the cost
and
(b) the requirement
for the methods you list to supply the electricity for one, solitary, medium sized, aluminium smelting works.
REPLY *ahem* At no point did I say that renewables would, within 50 years, replace ALL forms of electrical generation. However, a goal of 40 to 50% renewables is not out of the question.
US energy needs will always require a mix of fossil, future and alternative fuels. For those of you pining for nuclear, fuggetaboutit. The folks who pay for these things (utilities and their investors) are now totally off of that energy source in the USA, no more new BWR will be built. No permanent waste repository (thanks, Sen. Reid), no appetite for new reactor siting by the public, and no interest by the funding community. Sad but true.
Shale natural gas is our best bridge fuel, the country is awash in cheap natural gas. It’s stunning how quickly this is developing. Yeah, fracking hurts the groundwater etc., big deal, there are easy technical fixes for that. FYI, I consult to the natural gas/oil drilling industry on produced water treatment and waste disposal.
Even lousy, intermittent energy sources such as wind power have a place. Their big problem, besides high capital and maintenance costs, remains the “energy storage” puzzle. How do we store excess electricity when it is produced? This impacts solar, wind and other such sources. Molten salt energy storage sounds very feasible to me for these intermittent energy sources.
There are solutions to every problem. Give the USA forty or fifty years, we’ll figure it out. We are the best, without a doubt. I just wish that DOE and other government agencies would get the frack out of the way.
The IPCC isn’t dumb. It’s corrupt.
Syrup of IPeCaC
No.
This is no “blunder.” It is not a “mistake,” “lapse of judgement,” “oversight” or “error.”
They know exactly what they are doing. They have a goal and a plan, and are effectively implementing it.
Billions of our population are more concerned with facebook and the latest app for their i-whatever. They do not care and do not pay attention to matters that require thought, for thought is hard work. They do just enough to earn just enough to get by, betting that our liberal political policies will take care of them in their gray years.
Of the remainder, probably 1 million or less hold the positions, in varying degrees, that mankind is bad, only more government control can effectively solve mankind’s problems, we are destroying the planet, “the people” are too uninformed to be trusted to do what’s necessary (in this they are correct), it’s up to us to “do something,” etc. Their judgement is tainted by their beliefs, so that only outcomes that support their pre-conceived ideas are given credence. All other thoughts are banished from their intellectually lazy minds. Because their beliefs are only reinforced, they are further convinced that they are right, and this evolves into “the end justifies the means” justification. Although not acting under the direction of any one individual or organization, they have through sheer numbers and in a coordinated fashion elevated themselves to positions of influence and power in all areas of national and world governing bodies. The collective has gained control.
Of the leftovers, there are only a few hundred thousand of us who are capable of holding two opposing thoughts in mind, evaluating facts and reaching conclusions. And even though we have evidence on our side, we are in such minority that our voices are drowned out and our position relegated to “noise.”
Only when the collective enacts legislation that directly impacts the daily lives of the population in general will they rise up and re-take control of the legislative bodies.
Hopefully this will happen before policies are in place that are irreversible (it takes time to re-build power plants) and/or threaten the existence of our civilization.
If not, then we are already lost. I weep for my children.
The creation of the IPCC was a blunder of staggering proportions.
They no doubt expected to get away with this – their arrogance and contempt for the rest of us who have to pay their bills is unbounded.
Technically, it says “could,” as in “it could happen.”
Lot’s of things “could” happen, after all, like the star ship Enterprise could land in my backyard tomorrow and take me back to the home planet.
Prove it can’t happen.
“We’re gearing up for the biggest struggle our party has faced since you entrusted me with the leadership. I’m talking about the “battle of Kyoto” — our campaign to block the job-killing, economy-destroying Kyoto Accord.
It would take more than one letter to explain what’s wrong with Kyoto, but here are a few facts about this so-called “Accord”:
o It’s based on tentative and contradictory scientific evidence about climate trends.
o It focuses on carbon dioxide, which is essential to life, rather than upon pollutants.
o Canada is the only country in the world required to make significant cuts in emissions. Third World countries are exempt, the Europeans get credit for shutting down inefficient Soviet-era industries, and no country in the Western hemisphere except Canada is signing.
o Implementing Kyoto will cripple the oil and gas industry, which is essential to the economies of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia.
o As the effects trickle through other industries, workers and consumers everywhere in Canada will lose. THERE ARE NO CANADIAN WINNERS UNDER THE KYOTO ACCORD.
o The only winners will be countries such as Russia, India, and China, from which Canada will have to buy “emissions credits.” Kyoto is essentially a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations.
o On top of all this, Kyoto will not even reduce greenhouse gases. By encouraging transfer of industrial production to Third World countries where emissions standards are more relaxed, it will almost certainly increase emissions on a global scale”
Current Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper – 2002.
I’m sure Mr. Harper is aware of, and reads, blogs such as this.
It’s true.. if the world’s population was liquidated by 80% by mid century…
Your readers may find the following conversation interesting and/or amusing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Climate_Change#IPCC_WG3_and_Greenpeace_report
It is interesting how the alarmists control an article like this.
On the contrary, 80% renewable sourced energy IS attainable IF the greens continue succeeding with the shutdown and prevention of new construction of all: fossil, nuclear, hydro plants; mining, drilling and just about every other industry in Western Civilization. By then, only the unfortunate few left here will be staring at the wind-generators waiting for that day’s ‘spin’.
Mark Wagner CPA said
Only when the collective enacts legislation that directly impacts the daily lives of the population in general will they rise up and re-take control of the legislative bodies.
No, the population in general will willingly, if not happily, accept it, as they have accepted it in the past.
musavi says:
June 16, 2011 at 11:54 am
“Quick question. I don’t consider the IPCC to have any “authority” (but neither do I think that “authority” matters in science). My question is: what is so horrible about this, exactly? That the guy has a huge conflict of interest? Well that makes him partial as hell, sure, but not necessarily wrong.”
The moral wrongness is in his willingness to beat the drum for ideas that are designed to deceive an uninformed public and to promote a political agenda using false claims under the good name of science. Did I miss anything?
Scottish Sceptic says:
June 16, 2011 at 6:03 am
“I’m beginning to wonder SERIOUSLY!!! whether we are really up against criminals who rely on the sceptics being a bit namby pamby and treating corruption as “human error” rather than deliberate intentional malice to defraud the public.”
You are on the right path. They are communists. Remember Obama’s Czar for Green Jobs Van Jones (now ex-czar), the self-avowed communist. I betcha Lisa Jackson is cut from the same cloth.
That they are called czars should be sufficient proof of thei purpose.
Mark
This is a good time for the IPCC to be DISBANDED!
Then science research can be more decentralized.Taking the pressure off the science research.
To me the IPCC as a political organization,is no longer worth looking for to their next souped up report.We KNOW it will be 50% garbage 25% irrelevant and just 25% of hard to find science.
Why bother reading their stuff anymore?
“Everyone in IPCC WG3 should be terminated ” was that with or without extreme prejudice?
Watt’s up with RRKampen? He keeps saying the same thing over and over: [snip], [snip], [snip]. Heh.
@richard S Courtney says:
June 16, 2011 at 10:27 am
CRS, Dr.P.H:
I assume the answer to my question will be on your office shelf because I note that you say,
“One of my clients produces ethanol from waste cheese whey permeate as a wastewater treatment option.”
And I interpret this as being an inference that you provide “clients” with information on such matters.
Of course, I apologise if you cannot answer my question because my assumption is an error on my part.
Richard
—-
REPLY Indeed, I do provide international clients with exactly the type of information you seek. I’ll offer you the same billing rate, US$250/hour, that I charge them. Hell, I’ll make it US$225/hour since I like you.
I apologize if I cannot answer your question because you refuse to pay my fee.
Dave Springer: “…but a barrel of oil won’t be saleable for over $15 because biofuel will be cheaper.”
Excellent. Then I presume you are in full support of the Senate canceling ethanol subsidies this week.
Let’s be thankful for Britain in particular and Australia as a close second, two nations who seem to be on the path of proving out, one way or another the feasability, of renewable energy and carbon taxes. They’re the proverbial “canary in the coal mine” as it were. The rest of the world can patiently wait and see what is proven by their adventures.
Does it appear to anyone besides myself that the warmists might actually be gaining ground? I can’t get over the fact that the MSM, perhaps even more so than ever are glued to the alarmist rhetoric. Allowing for the fact that that observation is subjective, I’m stunned that with all thats been revealed by the McIntyres of the world, this is still the case.
“…under the cover of the authoritative and trustworthy IPCC”
Methinks this would be called an oxymoron.
A new IPCC fiasco in the making. They have a bunch of geo-engineering advocates in charge of making proposals about… surprise… geo-engineering solutions.
http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/2011/06/if-one-bad-idea-doesnt-work-try-them-all-at-the-same-time/
Mark says:
June 16, 2011 at 6:08 am
The comments to the-
“A Plan to Power 100 Percent of the Planet with Renewables
Wind, water and solar technologies can provide 100 percent of the world’s energy, eliminating all fossil fuels. Here’s how
By Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark A. Delucchi ”
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-path-to-sustainable-energy-by-2030&page=2”
are an interesting read.
—
Ugh. No, it really isn’t. They make some very generous assumptions about the availability of wind, but the true flaw in their analysis is that they completely gloss over the rare earth requirements for their utopian scheme and simply point out that availability of some other materials(lithium, indium) may be a problem. Just doing some back of the envelope calculations and giving them the benefit of assuming that their 5MW turbines use the same amount of RE’s as a typical 3.5MW turbine and only replacing the US’ fleet of vehicles with electric powertrains we would need to triple global rare earth production for the next 20 years. Even with the modest production of hybrids and turbines today the world is already running a small deficit of RE production relative to consumption. The only bit of good news they could count on is that rolling out their plan would only use up about 5% of the estimated reserves of RE’s.
No, it’s truly a poorly thought out plan with some wildly optimistic assumptions.
Theo Goodwin says:
June 16, 2011 at 2:49 pm
“The moral wrongness is in his willingness to beat the drum for ideas that are designed to deceive an uninformed public and to promote a political agenda using false claims under the good name of science. Did I miss anything?”
I’d like to express Theo’s idea in a way that even a Warmist can understand. The Zeroth Rule of the Scientific Method: When you put on your scientists’ hat, tell the bloody truth, warts and all.
“The credibility of the IPCC organization is shredded. Show these bozos the door”
All the IPCC doors are apparently revolving ones. So it wouldn’t do any good.
@Martin Brumby
“Solar? You are having a laugh. Maybe in daylight hours in the middle of the Sahara (if you need electricity in the middle of the Sahara).”
I have friends in several countries who are making money by selling solar power into the grid, because they are generating quite a lot more than they need. There is the cost of installation, which they are paying back fast, and they should be in the clear somewhere between 6 and 10 years, depending on the country. Generally the solar they sell is peak rate power – generated when it is most needed, thus it doesn’t impact on baseload power generation, but what it does do is reduce the need for far more expensive and carbon producing capacity to sit idle during off peak periods. It really is win-win.
I am waiting until I renovate my house in a year or two before I sign up, but I am enjoying reading through my different options. And by the time I do install, the technology will be one stage further on. One of the better ideas is reusable frames, which will have drop in replaceable PV cells, so you can upgrade with minimal fuss and not worry too much about being left behind in the technology race.
The way to tackle man made climate change is for man to change the climate ??
I suppose that makes sense in their world.
It is getting interesting! See Mark’s Lynas’ latest response…… I think Jo Romm has got to him
http://www.marklynas.org/2011/06/questions-the-ipcc-must-now-urgently-answer/
Mark Lynas: That this was spotted at all is a tribute to the eagle eyes of Steve McIntyre. Yet I am told that he is a ‘denier’, that all his deeds are evil, and that I have been naively led astray by him.
Mark Lynas: Well, if the ‘deniers’ are the only ones standing up for the integrity of the scientific process, and the independence of the IPCC, then I too am a ‘denier’.
@Martin Brumby says:
June 16, 2011 at 8:36 am
REPLY I’ll give you a few:
4. Passive solar – a no-brainer, just build your house correctly. I have a friend who builds houses in Oklahoma using thick foam sheets for roofing sections (same as we use in food industrial cooling buildings), orients the houses according to annual sunlight, and incorporates heat pumps & other tricks. He tells me that, during a typical Oklahoma winter, the heat generated from incandescent lighting, clothes dryer and compressor from refrigerator usually supply all the heat for house.
Martin, while I’m completely in favour of renewables where appropriate (even though I don’t believe AGW is the problem it’s been painted as), giving examples of things that work technically does not mean those things are appropriate to the time scales we’re told we have to change on.
A house that only needs incandescent lighting (already banned over here btw), clothes driers (already too expensive to run over here) and a fridge to stay warm in winter is a fantastic piece of design and may well be a benefit for the future. But:
How fast are you intending to replace the entire housing stock of the planet to realise this benefit?
Who (the poor) will be left living in the old, cold, housing as the stock is replaced and with fuel bills rising to encourage people to change?
How exactly are you going to convince the Suburban Jones’, who currently fight tooth and nail to stop the Smiths next door from building a conservatory, that the Smiths should be allowed to rebuild their house and “align it with the sun”?
The point is, something being technically feasible in a given time scale is completely different to it being a real possibility for a host of practical, economic and sociological reasons. It isn’t a case of “just need the will to”, it’s a case of “need to create unimaginable hardship for a huge number of people to”.
I’m very socialist by nature and have an intense dislike for huge corporate cartels like the international oil industry. BUT, the idea of “those who have” all settling into their new, green, lifestyles while leaving the proles (who will never afford the new housing or the solar panels or even the replacement, more efficient boiler) to go cold, hungry, and without transport seems to me a far greater danger to the future of mankind than any degree or two of warming.
Paul: “BUT I found out through extensive investigation that he used to be a mining consultant. Don’t fossil fuel companies use mining consultants a lot? Now, I’m not trying to say anything, BUT…”
There is a big difference between a private company employing a leading expert, and the IPCC employing a political activist who reviewed and published his own work grey literature (non peer reviewed) which amounted to little more than an advert for his own industry and by doing so helped push the IPCC’s political agenda and fill his own bank balance, but also failed to provide any independent scientific evidence of a way forward.
The IPCC has been shown to be either completely inept, or corrupt, but in either case, utterly unfit for purpose.
“Tune into the blogosphere and drop out of the MSM. It’s there that you’ll find people like Steve McIntyre. Investigative journalism is alive and well; it’s just moved house.”
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2011/06/17/the-death-of-journalism-and-the-irresistible-rise-of-the-blogosphere/
Pointman
Those friends of yours may be able to pay off their investment in PV in 6 to 10 years. The problem is that thanks to govt subsidies, their investment is only about 10% of the true cost of PV.
@Mark Wilson
Costs for PV cells are declining 22% for every doubling of capacity, which is happening now every few years. Subsidies will no longer be necessary in about 6 years time for solar (same amount of time it takes to build a coal or gas-fired power station). But we’ll probably still be subsidizing fossil and nuclear at that point anyway, thanks to some idiots in Congress.
Sorry, I forgot what your argument was again…?
CRS, Dr.P.H. :
Sincere thanks for the laugh you gave me at June 16, 2011 at 5:45 pm in your answer to my question that was intended to demonstrate the complete inadequacy of your suggested ‘renewables’ as a method to power industrial activity.
Your answer says;
”REPLY Indeed, I do provide international clients with exactly the type of information you seek. I’ll offer you the same billing rate, US$250/hour, that I charge them. Hell, I’ll make it US$225/hour since I like you.
I apologize if I cannot answer your question because you refuse to pay my fee.”
OK, so I suppose you would charge a fee for selling me a bridge over the Thames in London, too.
Richard
Duckster says:
June 17, 2011 at 6:52 am
Costs for making the cells themselves are one of the smallest costs in the building of a panel.
The only subsidies that oil gets is the depreciation allowance, which is the same allowance that every other business in the country gets, even your PV manufacturers.
The only subsidy that nuclear gets is a govt guarantee on it’s liability insurance.
Now, do you even have an argument, or are you just going to keep spouting propaganda?
Tsk Tsk said on A blunder of staggering proportions by the IPCC
June 16, 2011 at 10:12 pm ” …….. They make some very generous assumptions about the availability of wind, but the true flaw in their analysis is that they completely gloss over the rare earth requirements for their utopian scheme and simply point out that availability of some other materials(lithium, indium) may be a problem……….”
Tsk, I concur with your assessment of the paper- which I classify as a marketing or sales presentation- vs an engineering or even economic analysis of what it would take to actually implement the plan. The other detail they leave out is how in the world can we stabilize the grid (energy storage, demand response, etc, etc,) in a cost effective manner if one were to follow the base outline of what in theory is technically feasible (with a few caveats).
As noted earlier in this post I completely agree with this statement- “The point is, something being technically feasible in a given time scale is completely different to it being a real possibility for a host of practical, economic and sociological reasons. It isn’t a case of “just need the will to”, it’s a case of “need to create unimaginable hardship for a huge number of people to”.
The Jacobson et al paper is a bit dangerous in that the assumptions that you pointed out get glossed over and the practical solutions to what is economically and socially possible get ignored as not meeting the ultimate goal of going completely fossil fuel free for our energy supplies…………………
MarK:
At June 17, 2011 at 9:58 am you say;
“The Jacobson et al paper is a bit dangerous in that …”
Yes, but it is only one of the IPCC SRES scenarios. And those scenarios are really, realy dangerous: please see my posts in this thread at June 16, 2011 at 5:20 am and June 16, 2011 at 10:44 am.
You question the viability of the Jacobson et al paper but viability and consideration of reality has no relevance to the selection of IPCC WG3 scenarios. To explain, I again quote from my paper that I referenced in my previos two posts on the SRES analyses. My paper explains the model procedure then says:
“The Chapter considers only one type of quantitative future-predictive climate model and “does not include quantitative scenarios produced using other methods; for example heuristic estimation such as Delphi”. The Chapter does not state why it chooses only to consider one type of quantitative model, but says that its ‘Writing Team’ listed 519 scenarios of the type they decided to accept, and that 150 of these “were mitigation (climate policy) scenarios”. Also, “Of the 150 mitigation scenarios, a total of 126 long-term scenarios that cover the next 50 to 100 years have been selected for this review”. So, from the 519 scenarios of the only type they were willing to consider, the Writing Team considered 126. The ‘Writing Team’ formulated “narrative storylines” for the future and selected four models – from their selection of 126 models – to describe their four “storylines”. The Chapter says the Writing Team used few “storylines” because they “wanted to avoid complicating the process by too many alternatives”. But they later increased the “storylines” from four to six to obtain the 5.8 deg. C projection in the Chapter’s final draft. The Writing Team formed “modelling groups” that each had “principal responsibility” to develop a “marker scenario” for one of the “storylines”. The Writing Team’s choice of the marker scenarios “was based on extensive discussion” that included “preference of some modelling teams”. An original total of 40 scenarios were generated from four storylines and this was increased to 60 scenarios generated from the six storylines in the Chapter’s final draft. The Chapter says, “the markers are not necessarily the median or mean of the scenario family, but are those scenarios considered by the SRES writing team as illustrative of a particular storyline”.
Simply, the Chapter explains that the six models selected as “markers” by the Writing Team are those that the Writing Team most liked, and these “markers” cannot be claimed to be typical of anything.
Put another way, the “storylines” are a selection made using personal preference of 6 untypical models from 126 models that were chosen from a list of 519 quantitative models of one particular type, and other types of quantitative model also exist. The Chapter does not state the simple truth that such selection permits almost any storylines that could generate almost any preferred projections of the future.”
Now, please remember that as you again read my two previous posts on the matter above.
Richard
Richard S Courtney says:
June 17, 2011 at 12:16 pm
I thank you for the great work you have done on this forum. It seems to me that the information that you provide is of vital importance to any assessment of the IPCC’s work. I will have it in mind when I post here and on other sites.
Richard S Courtney said at 2:15 pm 17 June ….
“Yes, but it is only one of the IPCC SRES scenarios. And those scenarios are really, realy dangerous: please see my posts in this thread at June 16, 2011 at 5:20 am and June 16, 2011 at 10:44 am…….
Richard,
Thanks for noting your earlier posts. I tried to get a copy of the paper you referenced for my edification, but alas it’s pay walled-
CRYSTAL BALLS, VIRTUAL REALITIES AND ‘STORYLINES’ Journal Energy & Environment
Publisher Multi Science Publishing
ISSN 0958-305X
Subject Environment, Climate Change, Energy Economics and Energy Policy
Issue Volume 12, Number 4 / July 2001
Category Research article
Pages 343-349
DOI 10.1260/0958305011500832
Online Date Wednesday, July 29, 2009
If I hadn’t just paid $1500.00 to replace the heat exchanger in my super doper energy efficient furnace (somehow a hole developed on the back plate of the heat exchanger……… acidic water from combustion or some X in my propane are the likely causes……… ). I would of considered purchasing a copy of the article otherwise.
It worse then I thought after having read your posts. I wonder what Mr. Putin, or the current Chinese government, would say about the process used to screen the scenario’s down and the conclusion/suggestions of the report. I am sure their governments would be more then happy to follow the approach laid out by the IPCC team/SAC. Maybe they would even be willing to pay for the group to go off and do another series of simulations or even better yet make them go out in the real world and do some experiments say in a few third world locations to see how their approach to fixing societies ills work out. Yes, I think a little field work would be a good for the authors. Ok maybe not only a third world country how about heading to a spot in the far north of Russia, and then to Sudan. Personally, I will recommend to my congressmen that we stop funding anything to do with a group that wastes resources with such shot ass processes. Alvin Toffler would be screaming what the hell were your (as in the IPCC) thinking.
Thank you and Martin Manning for having the courage to stand up for the scientific method a few years back AND now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mark
Unfortunately, the IPCC will continue on; the Church of Greenpeace will continue on. The tranzie jet-setters have too much invested, too lose to let this bother them. As long as the UN gets money with no accountability, this vileness will persist.
Some of Andrew Bolt’s readers suggested I post this here:
This appeared in yesterdays Tips section in the form of a link to Watts, but disappeared during the day.
I did not have to dig and dig to find the link to McIntyre as it was in Watts report. Watts has a habit of misrepresenting what is in the links, as he did last week with one to Clive Best which used the uncorrected rather than corrected graph and neglected to mention Best’s conclusion that the data was consistent with the IPCC projections because that was not the spin Watts was putting on it.
Note that McIntyre does not dispute the accuracy of the submission. And indeed given the state of science and technology now and in 40 years time, the remark about ”political will”, in other words the cost people are prepared to bear (an entirely legitimate point) does not sound like such a very big call.
McIntyre only complains about its “provenance”. Which is in fact a review article which does in fact include references to peer reviewed literature. and an article which is in fact peer. The paper by Teske et al which McIntyre also complains about is in a peer reviewed journal.
There have indeed been complaints about the IPCC’s handling of non refereed material, which are a small minority of material in the IPCC report. The IPCC has already acknowledged this and has tightened the rules for the next report.
Watts’ headline: A blunder of staggering proportions by the IPCC is another Watts beat up.
The following is posted in reponse to Jo Nova’s hysterical headline on her blog:
“Greenpeace-gate breaks and the IPCC is busted. The shock. (Could they really be this dumb?)”
Steve McIntyre has not “discovered” anything. The paper was in a peer reviewed journal, the “Greenpeace employee” (Sven Teske) was one of six authors of the paper, and he is one of eleven chapter authors in the IPCC report. The idea that chapter authors must not have published anything in the area which they are responsible for providing a knowledgeable overview of the science is ridiculous.
REPLY: Yeah sure whatever. So we get that you don’t like it, but it changes nothing. It’s still a blunder, it’s one of several major blunders, it’s still a conflict of interest, and it’s still wrong. See what Mark Lynas wrote about it regarding if the situation were reversed. – Anthony
Richard North nails it, as usual.
“Thus, as long as the IPCC satisfies its true clients, it can – like its clients – completely ignore the critics. They are valueless, unimportant and powerless. That is what it has learned – the classic “mind over matter” trick. It doesn’t mind and we don’t matter. That is the way modern government works, and the IPCC is part of it – as this brazen example shows.”
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2011/06/mind-over-matter.html
Hi guys – I had a chance to read the actual report tonight and I guess was expecting something pretty different based on the comments here specially right up front where the authors are listed;
Coordinating Lead Authors:
Manfred Fischedick (Germany) and Roberto Schaeffer (Brazil)
Lead Authors:
Akintayo Adedoyin (Botswana), Makoto Akai (Japan), Thomas Bruckner (Germany), Leon Clarke (USA),
Volker Krey (Austria/Germany), Ilkka Savolainen (Finland), Sven Teske (Germany), Diana Ürge‐Vorsatz
(Hungary), Raymond Wright (Jamaica)
Contributing Authors:
Gunnar Luderer (Germany)
Review Editors:
Erin Baker (USA) and Keywan Riahi (Austria)
Anyway there are actually four illustrative scenarios and 13 pages of references starting on page 93 here http://srren.ipcc-wg3.de/report/IPCC_SRREN_Ch10
Pretty interesting read.
Mark Wilson says@ June 17, 2011 at 9:38 am “The only subsidies that oil gets is the depreciation allowance, which is the same allowance that every other business in the country gets, even your PV manufacturers.’
Hi Mark – maybe I missed this qualification elsewhere in your posts today, but I’m not quite sure what you wrote above is completely accurate. Sorry if I missed the full explanation form you elsewhere, but in case anyone else cannot find it either here is a quick summary from the GAO from 2000.
“Over the years, the federal government has granted tax incentives, direct subsidies, and other
support to the petroleum industry, as well as some tax and other benefits to the ethanol
industry, in an effort to enhance U.S. energy supplies….
There is a table – which doesn’t format here properly – that has a number of items here.
Excess of percentage over cost depletion
Expensing of exploration and development costs
Alternative (nonconventional) fuel production credit
Oil and gas exception from passive loss limitation
Credit for enhanced oil recovery costs
Expensing of tertiary injectants
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/rc00301r.pdf
Now I will be the first to admit that this is somewhat dated, but I don’t believe all of these save one have gone away in the tax code. Have they?
Sorry – I am a dope. I missed including another one, which I am sure Mark Wilson covered somewhere that I just wasn’t able to find.
“Multiple studies completed as early as 1994 and as recently as June 2007 indicate that the U.S. government take in the Gulf of Mexico is lower than that of most other fiscal systems. For example, data GAO evaluated from a June 2007 industry consulting firm report indicated that the government take in the deep water U.S. Gulf of Mexico ranked 93rd lowest of 104 oil and gas fiscal systems evaluated.’
That kinda reads like a subsidy, but I may be misunderstanding the impact of charging low rates on a resource that is then processed and resold.
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08691.pdf
Moderate Republican:
At June 17, 2011 at 8:35 pm you say;
“Anyway there are actually four illustrative scenarios and 13 pages of references starting on page 93 here http://srren.ipcc-wg3.de/report/IPCC_SRREN_Ch10”
OK. Please read my above post at June 17, 2011 at 12:16 pm and then tell me why those ” illustrative scenarios” are – as you assert – a “Pretty interesting read”.
I have been waiting for a decade for anybody to explain to me why IPCC “illustrative scenarios” can be considered as being anything other than political propoganda generated by pseudoscientific trash.
Richard
Hi Richard – hope you are doing well.
Richard S Courtney says @ June 17, 2011 at 9:50 pm “OK. Please read my above post at June 17, 2011 at 12:16 pm and then tell me why those ” illustrative scenarios” are – as you assert – a “Pretty interesting read”.
I must be reading that wrong, but it almost looks like you are suggesting that you need to approve of what I find interesting.
In any case I find lots of things interesting, for example I found a site called CoalTrans International which has some interesting things too.
Thank you Mr Watts for your response to my earlier post. In fact one of Mr Bolt’s contributors drew my attention to Mark Lynas’ comment and I included it in my later posting on Bolt. My point is that it is impossible to avoid what you term a “conflict of interest” when forming such expert panels. It is not a conflict of interest at all. Both the peer reviewed articles and the summaries which the authors provide as an expert panel have the same function, to put a case which has passed the peer review process.
Part of my post on Bolt:
I have written before of my dislike for Greenpeace and that I close the door on them when they come calling. I don’t have any particular beef with Exxon-Mobil. I’m sure many Greenpeace supporters do.
What possible reason could there be for my personal like or dislike for an organisation to form the basis of a demand anyone should seriously entertain for exclusion or inclusion of qualified individuals from an expert review panel?
What expert on the face of the planet would be universally acceptable on that basis? But the “skeptics” think that their opinions are the only ones that should or would count in the culling process.
I repeat, not only is it ridiculous for persons on such a review panel not to have published in that area of expertise, having publications in that area is clearly the only way anyone could qualify as an expert worthy of inclusion on that panel, and the more publications the better.
The fact that the publications have been through the peer review process means they have already passed a rigorous independent examination of their worth. It is perfectly appropriate that a lead author’s work appear in the summary of the science prepared by the expert panel.
@Mark Wilson
“The only subsidies that oil gets is the depreciation allowance, which is the same allowance that every other business in the country gets, even your PV manufacturers.?”
Actually, this really depends on the country – we shouldn’t be assuming that everyone lives in the US. Right now there is a subsidy in many countries to reduce the overall cost per kw of solar power on large-scale generation projects. This certainly goes beyond depreciation. And there are subsidies to reduce installation costs, low interest loans and a whole bag of incentives for people to opt for solar power. However it is conceivable that subsidies won’t be needed in the medium term as solar falls well below the $1.00 per kw range that it is reaching now.
“The only problem with photo voltaics is that it takes more power to make a solar cell and the frame to hold it, than you can ever get from the cell over it’s usefull lifespan.”
I am actually interested in your source for this. Could you share it? And wouldn’t drop-in PV cells (thus renewable frames) be the way around this?
Covered in the Economist here:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/06/ipcc-and-greenpeace
Personally, I don’t particularly like some of their tone, but they do give a pretty fair analysis of why this is bad because it looks bad with a big caveat of “even though it isn’t really”.
They also have comments by our friend Pachauri towards the end, including this:
“I talk to industry groups all the time, I advise industry groups, I don’t think there’s any imbalance there whatsoever. And I think being chair of the IPCC it’s for me to reach out to every section of society and to encourage debate, to encourage discussion irrespective of where it takes place.”
I’m not quite sure how dismissing a (correct, as it turns out) assessment of glaciers as “Voodoo science” encourages debate but I guess, in classic Team style, “that was last week, move along please”.
It is totally unacceptable that IPCC should have had a Greenpeace employee as a Lead Author of the critical Chapter 10, that the Greenpeace employee, as an IPCC Lead Author, should (like Michael Mann and Keith Briffa in comparable situations) have been responsible for assessing his own work and that, with such inadequate and non-independent ‘due diligence’, IPCC should have featured the Greenpeace scenario in its press release on renewables.
Why not; it works for Big Pharma and the FDA!
The are two basic problems with this IPCC claim.
First, this claim is based on the usual IPCC mainstay of generating computer projections using woefully inadequate modelling, starting with dubious initial conditions. Facts and historical data to the contrary must be ignored.
Second, as usual with the alternative energy crowd, there is lots of hype about their visions and machines, but NEVER any Energy Returned On Energy Invested (EROEI) analysis proving that these alternative energies are sustainable (ie: >1.0). The only EROEI analysis I’ve uncovered on solar pv is at http://www.dieoff.org/pv. It shows a value of 0.48; totally unsustainable. My re-analysis (www.windpowerfraud.com) of the wind power EROEI of Livermore Pass, the only analysis I have been able to discover, is not the 14.87 claimed, but 0.29. Again. totally unsustainable.
Re “Philip Shehan” here and here:
I found that article on Andrew Bolt’s blog, tracked down the words you provided. Except there they are from “Brian S”, not “Philip Shehan.”
1. Are you claiming someone else’s words as your own?
2. Are you using two different nom de plumes for your disparaging remarks?
At least you posted this humorous bit in the second comment:
As was long suspected and shown in the Climategate emails, “rigorous independent examination” for a large chunk of (C)AGW-supporting work was a small clique of “climatologists” reviewing each other’s work, aka “pal review.” As shown repeatedly, with many examples on WUWT and elsewhere, some amazingly shoddy work has passed “peer review” and been published for no other notable reason than it supported (C)AGW, while work critical of (C)AGW has been subjected to extra scrutiny, demands in excess of that expected for (C)AGW-supporting work, and far from independent examination through the use of conflicted reviewers, including the selection of reviewers for whose work the particular paper under scrutiny is undermining and/or falsifying that work. And that’s when they just don’t cut to the chase and reject the work out-of-hand, as it is virtually inevitable it either will be eventually rejected or subjected to increasing demands, rising to absurdity, until the paper is withdrawn from consideration.
Peer review in climatology-related work has become corrupted, “rigorous independent examination” of (C)AGW-supporting work is a joke. That the publications you cite were determined acceptable for publication means practically nothing, save that they are far more likely to support the pre-determined views of the (C)AGW “consensus” than otherwise.
Moderate Republican:
You claimed the IPCC WG3 scenarios are “A pretty interesting read” and I asked you to explain that because I know they are junk.
You have responded at June 17, 2011 at 10:29 pm by saying you cannot explain it: you merely feel it.
However, you did add something that does interest me when you wrote;
“I found a site called CoalTrans International which has some interesting things too.”
I would be very grateful if you were to post a link to that web site because a decade ago I was Contributing Technical Editor of the journal and wrote all its articles on coal science and clean coal technology. So, I have a genuine interest in seeing what they are doing now but a ‘google’ has failed to find the web site of the journal..
Richard
From Richard S Courtney on June 18, 2011 at 12:58 pm:
Nah, that can’t be right. Haven’t you checked your SourceWatch listing? It’s noted as a neutral and unbiased resource by those of a Green/liberal/anti-capitalist bent.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Richard_S._Courtney
That’s one of your “Current Positions,” according to a reliable link that’s used for several of the numbered references that leads to a “404: Not Found” error. Heck, the very first line of the entire SourceWatch entry lists being said Technical Editor as your job, with the first paragraph making clear how you are a bought and paid for lapdog servant of Big Coal . They also carefully note the lack of note of you having any academic degree whatsoever, not even a high school diploma, although there are a tiny number of instances mentioned where, possibly mistakenly, “Dr.” and “PhD” are used in conjunction with your name. Likewise it is implied you are not a scientist due to the removal of your name from the re-done Leipzig Declaration.
For added fun, the entry says “…he claimed to be an IPCC “expert reviewer”…” while linking to a source that damn well lists you as a reviewer on the 3rd AR. Oh, and clicking on the “Discussion” tab reveals this charming summary, and this is all that is there, and it lacks any references to substantiate any of it:
The “History” tab shows that even William Connolley has weighed in, perhaps his Wikipedia duties were boring that day. Although the primary author of your entry is some anonymous coward “Bonzai.” Well, best of luck getting any corrections made.
It seems possible MR just looked at that listing and decided to yank your chain using your obvious Big Coal connection.
Oh, I found the CoalTrans International site.
http://www.coaltransinternational.com/
MR thinks there’s something interesting there. Maybe he thinks it’s dirt he can throw on you. I’m just finding coal. Need some heating fuel?
kadaka (KD Knoebel):
Thanks for the info. you provide at June 18, 2011 at 10:59 pm. Whoever that character is, he is not me. He sounds like an interesting guy, though.
Your post concludes saying; “I’m just finding coal. Need some heating fuel?” I think your posting that requires me to clarify my coal connection: it is very clear and is as follows.
I was the Senior Material Scientist at the UK’s Coal Research Establishment (CRE), my peers elected me to every elected office up to and including Vice President of the British Association of Colliery Management (BACM) despite my being a scientist and my not having worked in a colliery (except for emergency duties during NUM strikes). My connection with that industry ceased when UK government closed CRE in 1995.
I wrote the Section on coal in Kempes Engineers Yearbook.
I wrote articles on coal science and clean coal techgnology for CoalTrans International and they gave me the ‘title’ of Contributing Technical Editor. The journal was bought up in (I think it was 2001) and the new owners’revamped’ it by replacing all its staff including me. I have had no contact of any kind with that journal since.
But none of those facts affect the truth of my above posts.
Also, I am an Accredited Methodist Preacher so must now rush because writing this has delayed my leaving to conduct Worship this morning.
Richard
From Richard S Courtney on June 19, 2011 at 1:32 am:
Richard,
Beyond printed words and facts lies the character of a man. I believe I know yours, and choose to accept it over the man as a character. You have nothing to prove about that to me. Your clarification is required only for others.
God bless!
. just like ..with war against the greenhouse gases … like war against drugs,war in Afganistan,Irak,Vietnam etc the truth is the FIRST VICTIM…..
…in Australia the truth/about our climate/ and nothing just the truth is owned by someone named Garnaut …..apparently with some education about economy……
Jct: Biased writing isn’t half as bad as using Mann’s “trick to hide the decline.” That’s the joker of the discussion. How much of a decline did the trick hide?
It was a decline in the proxy tree ring graph when temps were rising after 1960. It invalidated the use of such proxies for past temps, and therefore had to be hidden to keep The Narrative™ intact.
So your question is a red herring, probably deliberately so.
“they have no place to go, they’ve hit rock bottom”
Don’t worry they have already started to dig! Our entertainment for years is assured.
Did you know that Planet earth is soaring through space in orbit around our sun at an incredible 66,000 miles per hour 24/7?
How much energy do you think we can we extract by hooking our windmills up to that?
Of course there is no wind in space, so there a are few technical details to put it all together.
Here’s a link to the “Four Elements of Free Energy revised.” Gives the technical details of to how to do it.
http://disc.yourwebapps.com/discussion.cgi?disc=149495;article=132281;
patrick;
When I first saw your comment, I was pretty convinced you were a loon. After reading through your linked paper, I’m relieved to report that my first impression was accurate.
Mr Watts
Are you aware that three other contributors came from Chevron (though one from its geothermal research wing), one from Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica, and one from a mining company. In fact, one of Teske’s co-authors on Chapter 10 of the report was Raymond Wright from Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica.
Please be more thorough with your research in future.
Unfortunately for this author, the IPCC did *NOT* blunder at all. Facts from Stanford University are here http://t.co/H0VjUVe