By Dr. Benny Peiser of The GWPF
Organizers of the London 2012 Olympic Games dropped a plan to cut carbon emissions during the sporting showcase, abandoning a pledge made when it defeated eight other cities to host the event. Games administrators will “no longer pursue formal offsetting procedures” to mitigate Olympics-related emissions, documents posted on the London Olympics website said. —Sarah Halls, Bloomberg, 1 September 2011
Tim Hudak’s provincial Progressive Conservative party has pledged to kill the feed-in-tariff program, the Samsung energy deal and alter the Green Energy Act. —Norman de Bobo, London Free Press, 1 September 2011
Solyndra, a renewable energy firm that became the darling of the Obama Administration, shut the doors to its California headquarters today, raising fresh questions from the administration’s critics about political favoritism in the federal loan program. The government loan guarantee was supposed to spur 1,000 full-time jobs once Solyndra’s solar plant was fully operational. Instead, as the company announced Chapter 11 bankruptcy today, reports surfaced that 1,100 would lose their jobs. —ABC News & iWatch News, 31 August 2011
Germany’s accelerated exit from nuclear energy has considerably increased the risk of power blackouts, the country’s energy-network regulator said Wednesday, calling on the industry to invest in new energy infrastructure to ensure security of supply. —The Wall Street Journal, 1 September 2011
The basic problem with much of the media coverage of CERN’s CLOUD experiment is that they expected too much. As we have said this is first-stage stuff and not a yes or no judgement on the Cosmic Ray theory. Yet it was taken that way by many. Despite the fact that Cosmic Rays had been shown to have a significant effect on cluster formation (the first stage of cloud seeds) – although those clusters were too small – some took it as a refutation of the whole idea. In so doing they showed double standards in reporting the two aspects of the CERN experiments, the other being cloud formation in the absence of ionising radiation. –David Whitehouse, The Observatory, 1 September 2011
Yes we do need these green company’s to get in the black…it’ s called oil and coal.
BC has just turfed the HST and hopfully the Moronic Carbon Tax is next!
The days of throwing money at misgiuded guilt may be coming to an end.
There has been an annoying ‘Carbon free Olympic games’ advert by, I think, EDF energy on UK TV. If it comes on again I’l report them to the advertising standards authority. 😉
David Stubbs, the head of sustainability at the London Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympics Games, or LOCOG, said in an interview that going ahead with the plan would have shifted the focus away from Britain. Sure. Actually, they’re just trying to shift the focus away from the $4.4 million they’ll save. Because that would make them look like greedy planet-hating capitalist pigs.
Regarding Solyndra – perhaps we can finally come to admit that trying to create a domestic manufacturing base for products that can be built much more inexpensively elsewhere is not the same as creating the Transcontinental Railroad or the Internet?
When we built the Transcontinental Railroad, we didn’t try to violate the intrinsic laws of economics. (But we did outsource a lot of the labor to the Chinese, btw.) When we created the Internet, we weren’t trying to reward political allies and special interest groups such as environmental groups and labor interests.
All of this nonsense (in the UK) is predicated on the lunacy of the Climate Change Act.
PLEASE – all of you Brits – sign the petition to repeal the act, and distribute it as widely as possible:
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/2035
As luck would have it, part of the meeting to decide the fate of the Olympic wind turbine was captured on film:
Unfortunately, I think Tim Hudak may have just lost himself the Ontario election with this announcement. Too many people in Ontario have been been taken in by the solar scam and the election will come too soon for the crash in these companies to be noticed. This is a shame because what he proposes is absolutely correct – electricity prices in Ontario are already a drag on investment in the productive sectors of the local economy and if they increase any more, there will be a net loss of jobs even while the subsidized solar power jobs are still there!
And come on, solar power in Ontario? They can’t even connect most of the panels to the grid – you only have to drive around to see the installed panels just sitting there (they are supposed to follow the sun if actually generating).
To be carbon-free, next Olympics will get chlorophyll-covered mutants to compete. Expect finishing times to balloon.
Monroe says:
September 1, 2011 at 7:27 am
Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but people will never get over their guilt for something. It is almost a need by the human race to feel guilty. Look at many sects of the Christian religion and most of their actions are built around guilt (i.e. sins).
Anthony, I suggest that wattsupwiththat sponsor a petition here http://www.whitehouse.gov/wethepeople to at least require the DOE to look holistically and objectively at the data and science behind the skeptic position on AGW, and to review the rewrite of data, the sources of warming bias and the fudged models that are the only support for AGW.
Murray
The observational data of cloud distribution versus cosmic wind and solar wind is pretty convincing. The fact that some would favor claiming that the CERN results prove nothing, are inconclusive, or refute the connection does not at all cancel the observational data. It just means that the experimentation needs refining and/or adjustment.
Correlation does not mean causation, but it is clear that clouds do not drive the solar or cosmic wind, so that part is off the table. As a feature of outer space that impinges on our atmosphere, it is not a stretch to surmise that these winds would affect the atmosphere. It is ingenuous to discount anything because the clusters formed in the experiment were too small as it is realistic to believe that these clusters would persist and grow with time in the atmosphere. I do not know how long the experiment lasted and it is also unknown whether the experiment could have reproduced properly the conditions around small natural clusters after they form.
James Evans says:
September 1, 2011 at 8:14 am
“As luck would have it, part of the meeting to decide the fate of the Olympic wind turbine was captured on film:”
Very nice. Didn’t any one of them know that you can just have it spinning in a nice symbolical fashion all the time by using the generator as a motor?
Can’t even get their totems right.
Quite right too. All those sporting types running around exhaling unusually high quantities of CO2 … if they followed their silly beliefs to the logical conclusion they’d have to ban the whole thing. How much CO2 does that Olympic Flame give off, then? Bah!
Simple really, just replace the power with Prince (Up)Chuck running in a hamster wheel connected to an alternator. Oh, never mind, he would emit CO2 when he was running. Anyway, he has been picking mushrooms of late according to the Telegraph. With his behaviour, it’s always hard to tell if it’s him or the mushrooms. Glad they cleared that up for us.
Reply: Wrong given name with which to be making childish puns. ~ctm
Reply 2: I have received an email from ShrNfr apologizing for having offended me since he did not realize I was joking. I have a close friend who volunteers 20 hours a week working with the humor-impaired and I especially apologize to her and her clients for my lack of sensitivity. ~ctm
Maurizio Morabito says:
September 1, 2011 at 8:23 am
To be carbon-free, next Olympics will get chlorophyll-covered mutants to compete. Expect finishing times to balloon.
=================================================================
Nope, doesn’t qualify. Chlorophyll is a complex organic molecule – lots of carbon in there.
View from the Solent says:
September 1, 2011 at 11:32 am
To solve that problem they are looking at inorganics. They have hit upon Nothing. And they have a marketing slogan:
Nothing is better than this.
Since the cost has expanded somewhat they need to save as much as they can.
I’ve signed the petition. Anything to annoy Huhne.
If the formation of small clusters of nuclei from the CERN CLOUD experiment can be demonstrated to grow into large clusters, simple math (as I have done on WUWT previously) show that the CRT can account for (at its top end) more than the CO2 effect as proposed by the IPCC. A study of real-world ratios and development of cloud droplet nuclei is now needed to take the CERN study from an indication of significant cosmic ray influence on climate (through cloud development) to its actual influence.
Right now economics is killing the Green movement. Political power and personal freedoms are the longer-term concern we need to consider, with personal freedoms the most threatened as politicians will be able to legislate their way to maintaining their power while ceding to the Green World to dictate what the dirty-energy consumers – everyone else – can do and will do. But the CERN CLOUD study could, with a follow-up that demonstrates the ability of small nuclei to grow into large nuclei, the kill the settled science and certainty behind the mighty villain of CO2.
The CERN CLOUD study showed that small nuclei increase by 2 to 10X their former presence with cosmic ray involvement typical of what the Earth receives (as long as enough ammonia and sulphuric acid is also present, which I gather is not an issue). Should small nuclei grow into larger nuclei sufficient for cloud droplets, while other small nuclei disappear, the continued creation of small nuclei will raise the cloud droplets through time as long as the time to grow is less than the time to disipate and the cosmic ray bath continues. At the 2-10X rate, a 2% increase in CR has a big impact.
Economics, world government, individual rights and freedoms are the truly scary things for the life of a non-dirt-poor Westerner with ambitions of better things for himself or his children. But the basic science, and perhaps the CERN CLOUD experiment science, is the truly scary thing for the Warmist.
The validation of CERN CLOUD results for real-world climate controls is the key to shutting down the CO2, anti-fossil-fuel, anti-modern, anti-capitalist rhetoric and agenda. And, pleasantly as a side-effect, shutting up Al Gore, David Suzuki, Jim Hansen, Mann, Trenberth, Romm ……
I look forward to that day, though I wonder if there will be any money or organization willing to put the CERN CLOUD results to the test.
The answer to the question, “How many of the small nuclei end up as cloud droplets?” is “enough”.
>> “The basic problem with much of the media coverage of CERN’s CLOUD experiment is that they expected too much. ”
Some sanity on the subject. Until better evidence comes along, though, the default position to take is that cosmic rays likely have little to no effect on climate. There may be a possibility that these particles come together in the real atmosphere, but no way to know until folks do some cloud seeding experiments of some sort. Plus, there is evidence that the cosmic rays don’t correlate with climate all that well anyway. Nevertheless, there might be a secondary role played by cosmic rays, like the sunspot cycle variability is a second order effect.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/cosmic-rays-and-global-warming.htm
Doug Proctor says:
September 2, 2011 at 9:21 am
>> “The validation of CERN CLOUD results for real-world climate controls is the key to shutting down the CO2, anti-fossil-fuel, anti-modern, anti-capitalist rhetoric and agenda. And, pleasantly as a side-effect, shutting up Al Gore, David Suzuki, Jim Hansen, Mann, Trenberth, Romm …”
Primo example of skepticism right here. Look in the mirror to see who is more likely to have an agenda.
Should small nuclei grow into larger nuclei sufficient for cloud droplets, while other small nuclei disappear, the continued creation of small nuclei will raise the cloud droplets through time as long as the time to grow is less than the time to disipate and the cosmic ray bath continues. At the 2-10X rate, a 2% increase in CR has a big impact.
This is a simple question that can be dealt with by just inputting the small droplets into the climate models and let them tell us what happens.
The models are physics based, of excellent quality, nothing has been left out, and their results are unimpeachable. How hard can it be? How long could it possibly take given that the models are physics based? A few days or a week at most. At least for preliminary results.
I’m surprised that no modeler has suggested this.
And yeah. This is a thread jack. I hope you find it amusing.
Craig S:
Christian theology is not relevant to the subject of this thread. However, I notice that people keep trying to pretend Christian beliefs are pertinent to scientific investigation of AGW (e.g. see the several references to Roy Spencer being a Christian in all the WUWT threads pertaining to the recent Spencer & Braswell paper and the ensuing resignation of a journal editor).
My main purpose in providing this post is an attempt to stop such irrelevant carping at Christians and Christianity in WUWT threads. And, in that context, on this Sunday morning I write to refute your misrepresentation of Christian theology in your above post at September 1, 2011 at 8:25 am.
You say;
“Look at many sects of the Christian religion and most of their actions are built around guilt (i.e. sins).”
No!
That is a complete reversal of Christian theology which really is as follows.
Sin is missing the target of perfect love. Nobody meets that target all the time with respect to everybody including enemies and, therefore, everybody is a sinner.
Achieving the target of perfect love is an aspiration which all Christians have but fail to achieve. Guilt at the failure is assuaged by Redemption and is overcome by Salvation. Hence, a Christian’s sin remains but guilt for it has been overcome by Salvation.
However, individuals can feel guilt at their sin despite that guilt having been overcome by Salvation. The many “sects” of Christianity express their responses to Redemption and Salvation in different ways intended to help individuals and peoples remove their feelings of guilt.
That is NOT “most of their actions are built around guilt”. Indeed, most of their actions are built around rejoicing that their guilt has been removed.
I ask that we try to keep to the subject of AGW here. There would then be no need to refute misrepresentation of other matters.
Richard
reply to: otter17 says: September 3, 2011 at 10:59 am
No, actually the default position would be that we don’t yet know one way or the other, but several different research efforts strongly imply a significant effect. There is no basis for your position that I’m aware of. Nor is cloud seeding necessary to test the hypothesis.