UPDATE: 9:50AM 2/28 Professor Kelly responds in comments. It seems the Times saw fit to remove an important portion of his first paragraph. I’ve highlighted the missing text in red. Gobsmacking that they couldn’t handle this one sentence but left the rest untouched – Anthony
M J Kelly Submitted on 2012/02/28 at 9:13 am
If I told you that the first sentence of my letter was edited, your readers might be mollified.
I wrote:
Andrew Motion (report, Feb 23) is correct to castigate climate change deniers, as the climate has always been changing, but he is profoundly mistaken in linking all those who oppose the current climate science orthodoxy into one group.
Michael Kelly
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This is a rather strong condemnation of the state of affairs in Climate Science. Professor Michael J. Kelly of the University of Cambridge Department of Engineering has written a scathing letter to The Times about rightfully criticizing “deniers” and lumping everyone else who questions climate science conclusions into that same meme. Most people I know of agree that CO2 has some impact, but the magnitude and feedbacks are the real issues of debate. Ben Pile has this to say in his summary of the Fakegate:
The myth of the climate change denier exists in the heads of environmentalists, and seems to prevent them entering into conversation with anyone that dares to criticise environmentalism. The crusade of ‘communicating’ climate change is not a project that involves an exchange of views. To criticise environmentalism is to ‘deny The Science’, no matter how incoherent the environmentalist’s grasp of science or how lacking his or her sense of proportion.
Kelly, in his letter to the times, says what we’ve been saying for a long time; the models and the effects have been grossly oversold, and real-world observations don’t match the sales brochure. He writes:
Sir, Andrew Motion (report, Feb 23) is correct to castigate climate change deniers, but he is profoundly mistaken in linking all those who oppose the current climate science orthodoxy into one group. The interpretation of the observational science has been consistently over-egged to produce alarm. All real-world data over the past 20 years has shown the climate models to be exaggerating the likely impacts — if the models cannot account for the near term, why should I trust them in the long term?
I am most worried by the billions of pounds being misinvested and lost as a consequence. Look out to sea at the end of 2015 and see how many windmills are not turning and you will get my point: there are already 14,000 abandoned windmills onshore in the US. Premature technology deployment is thoroughly bad engineering, and my taxes are subsidising it against my will and professional judgment.
Professor Michael Kelly
Prince Philip Professor of Technology, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge
Source An Englishman’s Castle via “The Times“, subscription required
major hat tip to Bishop Hill
Engineers vs Scientists — get your popcorn, this will be good.
Positive Feedbacks: I am a true believer in climate change positive feedbacks — not in the physical world but in the emotional and ideological world of the global warming alarmists. For those on the Left, the tipping point was probably ClimateGate and since then shrillness has truly become parabolic. It’s now out-of-control: e.g., FakeGate.
To paraphrase the writer P. J. O’Rourke who said, “Environmentalists will do anything to save the planet except study science.” For fun you should look at the college curricula for programs such as Environmental Studies. Very flimsy on real science and math.
As we’ll see more scientists and engineers express doubt about alarmism, we should not put too much weight on each of their words. Some may have to keep their face or may have still to learn about the variety of sceptics out there.
True science blogs, common sense and the fanatics like Peter Gleick are contributing to this process.
Professor Michael Kelly: Prince Philip Professor of Technology,
is echoing the sentiments of Prince Philip whom last November leaked that he won’t have wind turbines on “his land”, which I suspect is due to NIMBY. This denouncement by Kelly is only a political move in support of his monarch.
The 14,000 number is doubtful. Attribution is difficult to confirm. I call BS.
” The US experience with wind farms has left over 14,000 wind turbines abandoned and slowly decaying, in most instances the turbines are just left as symbols of a dying Climate Religion, nowhere have the Green Environmentalists appeared to clear up their mess or even complain about the abandoned wind farms.”
http://toryaardvark.com/2011/11/17/14000-abandoned-wind-turbines-in-the-usa/
Climate ‘scientists’ out; engineers in.
“Prof. Kelly claims that “All real-world data over the past 20 years has shown the climate models to be exaggerating the likely impacts…” This claim does not stand up to scrutiny.
In arriving at the definitions of climatological outcomes, time series are averaged over a specified period. Thus, for example, if an outcome is a magnitude for the global average surface air temperature, this temperature is averaged over the specified period.
The IPCC is mute on the magnitude of the averaging period. If the magnitude is taken to be the 30 years that is canonical in climatology then the real-world data of the past 20 years cannot have shown a climate model to be exaggerating the likely impacts, for the duration of an independent statistical event can be no less than the averaging period and thus an independent event of a duration that contains the past 20 years cannot yet have been observed.
Furthermore, none of the IPCC models make the predictions that they would be necessary to the falsification of them. They make “projections” but the concept that is referenced by this word is materially different from the concept that is referenced by the word “predictions.”
Infographic. For those who can only think using infographics, there needs to be an arrow at the bottom of the LHS pointing to a box titled “this infographic”.
The environmentalists simply cannot see beyond the denier label. The reason is this i not about global warming (oops, don’t use that, Mr Gleicks recoomendation you know), it’s about EVERYTHING. People who question global AGW are also questioning all environmental issues and are trashers of the planet.
That’s the way their tiny minds work.
Terry Oldberg says:
February 28, 2012 at 8:05 am
“Prof. Kelly claims that “All real-world data over the past 20 years has shown the climate models to be exaggerating the likely impacts…” This claim does not stand up to scrutiny.
In arriving at the definitions of climatological outcomes, time series are averaged over a specified period. Thus, for example, if an outcome is a magnitude for the global average surface air temperature, this temperature is averaged over the specified period.
The IPCC is mute on the magnitude of the averaging period. If the magnitude is taken to be the 30 years that is canonical in climatology then the real-world data of the past 20 years cannot have shown a climate model to be exaggerating the likely impacts, for the duration of an independent statistical event can be no less than the averaging period and thus an independent event of a duration that contains the past 20 years cannot yet have been observed.
Furthermore, none of the IPCC models make the predictions that they would be necessary to the falsification of them. They make “projections” but the concept that is referenced by this word is materially different from the concept that is referenced by the word “predictions.”
Statistics meet real-world.
Terry – try to think through what you are saying. The Earth system has a rate at which it will warm – take the ocean system (as then you won’t get confused between temperature and heat and atmospheric enthalpy). – the Sea Surface Temperatures are way below what the models said they would be as they have stayed almost flat for the 20 years. OK – so that is not 30 years. So now you should identify what could make the ocean system warm by 30 years worth of forecast/projected temperature rise but inside only a 10 years period? Have you any idea how much energy that would take? When it is 29 years 11 months real world data – will you still be using the same statistical period of measurement argument? Wait wait – its not 30 years yet?
Excerpted from: http://www.zimbio.com/member/StoryReports/articles/qmUuK2zben5/Abandoned+Rusted+Wind+Turbines+Reflect+Hoax
Hmmm … getting closer to the source of that 14,000 …
.
Better article formatting and some pictures accompanying:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/wind_energys_ghosts_1.html
Article also contains references to the past legislation which spawned past wind farm ‘investments’ by govt and private/public owned utils …
When professor Kelly writes “… is correct to castigate climate change deniers …” he loses my interest. The vast majority of those called “deniers”, myself included, in fact do not deny the earth’s climate is changing. We only deny man’s impact on the climate is significant. We only have to point to the retreat of the glaciers at the end of the last ice age to show the earth warms significantly with no help from man. And don’t forget, the alarmists first started with “anthropogenic global warming”. Their “global warming” morphed into the more nebulous “climate change” when the global temperature apparently stopped rising.
Although I generally applaud Professor Michael Kelly for writing this, I have to wonder about this part:
Sir, Andrew Motion (report, Feb 23) is correct to castigate climate change deniers, but he is profoundly mistaken in linking all those who oppose the current climate science orthodoxy into one group.
Who are these “climate change deniers” that need to be castigated? I’ve never heard of them. I suppose you can find some individuals somewhere who believe climate never changes but have they even risen to the level of becoming a group?
I’m not sure that the professor really understands the skeptical side of the issue.
Terry Oldberg says,
“The IPCC is mute on the magnitude of the averaging period. If the magnitude is taken to be the 30 years …”
Since the IPCC is mute on the magnitude of the averaging period, surely the first question to ask is – Why is it mute? The next question to ask is – Why is 30 years “canonical in climatology”? And, assuming satisfactory answers to those questions there is a third – How does the real world data over the last thirty years compare with the IPCC projection?
We cannot discard the last twenty years experience just because it does not fit in with the canonical 30 years. After all when their projections are proved wrong in ten years time, the climatologists might start to use an averaging period of 150 years (the supposed period since the industrial revolution) and their projections cannot then be falsiified in our lifetimes.
Getting to the bottom of this “14,000” number is going to take going back in history, or herstory (depending on your predilections and orientation … if you visited the Bloggie winning site ‘autostraddle’ this will make much more sense as they have a category titled: “Herstory”).
From an article originally written in 1999: http://www.wind-works.org/articles/99rush.html titled “The Great Wind Rush of 99” by Paul Gipe we have this:
The article is a good one, lots of reference to various wind farms and the subsidies in effect at the time that led to each ‘bubble’ of wind farms …
.
The question all sentient observers should ask is this: now one gravy train has been officially abandoned, it is extremely likely that the next one is up and running.
Perhaps this blog should invite readers to nominate the next sponging scandals across the entire spectrum of society?
Key components:
1. Difficulty to prove hypothesis one way or the other.
2. Strong ties to a febrile media.
3. Ability to dupe politicians to provide lots of funding.
4. Ability to use seniority to force dogma through.
5. Potential benefits to developing countries’ corrupt elites through ‘doing good’.
If I told you that the first sentence of my letter was edited, your readers might be mollified.
I wrote:
Andrew Motion (report, Feb 23) is correct to castigate climate change deniers, as the climate has always been changing, but he is profoundly mistaken in linking all those who oppose the current climate science orthodoxy into one group.
Michael Kelly
REPLY: Thank you, I’ll add this to the post to make it known. – Anthony
DirkH says:
February 28, 2012 at 6:48 am
“Higley, please take another look at the scales of the absorption spectrum graphs of N2 and O2. They have very narrow spikes or lines with an absorptivity a thousand times less than the ones of CO2 and H2O. They are irrelevant.”
Except that they are 3000 times as abundant.
Eric Dailey says:
February 28, 2012 at 7:55 am
“Professor Michael Kelly: Prince Philip Professor of Technology, is echoing the sentiments of Prince Philip whom last November leaked that he won’t have wind turbines on “his land”, which I suspect is due to NIMBY. This denouncement by Kelly is only a political move in support of his monarch.”
Haven’t you heard? Queen Elizabeth II has been the UK monarch for the last 60 years.
Terry Oldberg says:
February 28, 2012 at 8:05 am
Your quibbling over semantic niceties reminds me of a famous quote: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman”. The statement was true as long as you defined the words correctly.
No matter how you attempt to spin it, the models have no skill.
The link in my previous post should have been to: http://pong.tamu.edu/~rob/pubs/hetland_skill_ocemod.pdf
Terry Oldberg says:
February 28, 2012 at 8:05 am
“Furthermore, none of the IPCC models make the predictions that they would be necessary to the falsification of them. They make “projections” but the concept that is referenced by this word is materially different from the concept that is referenced by the word “predictions.””
The difference between a projection and a prediction is that a prediction can be validated. Period. That’s the difference.
So they don’t do predictions. Instead, they initialize the model randomly, and run it for a 100 years, and they do that say a 100 times. Now they say, let’s average the outcome and see what we have. Okay, so all the details are lost and were only pomp and circumstances for the paying public anyhow. So what do they get. They get ever increasing energy content. Why? Simple.
Energy goes into the system from the sun. That’s fixed.
Energy leaves the system to space. That’s what determines the outcome of the average of the single runs. That’s where they need to work on to get the desired outcome.
And they do that not via CO2; oh no. They do it by meddling with the aerosol forcing because that still counts as uncertain.
It’s a shell game. Control how much energy leaves the system and you control the outcome.
The earliest source I could find for 14,000 abandoned wind turbines is http://storyreportscomments.blogspot.com/2010/02/abandoned-rusted-wind-turbines-reflect.html
The above Feb 16, 2010 article appears to be the source for the many articles published in Nov 2011.
It appears that tax subsidies in California led to about 15,000 turbines being installed In the 1981-1986 period, and that virtually all of those are now inoperative.
I looked up the “big three” wind spots mentioned in the article, and looks to me as though there is a substantial amount of generation coming from those sites. The Kamaoa (37 turbines) is actually abandoned.I don’t think there are “thousands abandonded” – it looks to me as though there are some in disrepair and they are looking to replace the older obsolete technology with newer MW-level technology. I think that the 14,000 is an urban legend. If someone can show me an actual accounting, methodology, or something (ala Wikipedia’s list of wind farms in the US, or the link to a list of wind farms) please post it. Don’t misunderstand me – wind power IMO is 100% tax subsidy fueled and probably even carbon-inefficient since a lot of gas-fired plants have to be on stand-by in case the wind stops blowing. However, I just cannot add up 14000 units – unless we really are counting basically all the units from the 80s, in which case “planned obsolescence” is a better term because the technology has vastly improved (and those sites mentioned will be rebuilt with new technology thanks to tax subsidies!).
http://www.thewindpower.net/country-datasheet-windfarms-4-usa.php