Ping TNP re gridwatch

[Roger Chapman]

And if they agreed exactly you would be accusing them of collusion and/or fabricating data which is exactly the way the deniers operate.

But if the only alternative is your gut instinct and a generous helping of meaningless insults ...

All you really have is hot air.

You seem to be very much of the political persuasion insisting that the 'authorities' are purveyors of bullshit while offering nothing concrete in return.

It will be too late to do anything about it once methane becomes the dominant greenhouse gas.

I have no qualms about nuclear energy.

There is room for a modest amount of unreliable wind and for that matter solar but ISTR that you are dead set against things like the Severn barrage which would be a much more reliable source of energy. (Sod the wildlife).

I presume that Dennis was referring to the forcasting we are all familiar with. Some of the weather forecasts on line pretend to be very accurate but are often anything but. (Metcheck for instance which is far too prone to forecast rain on the hills). More discussion groups I can do without. I can't even find enough time to read the majority of the threads on .d-i-y.

[dennis]

Laki didn't put lots of dust into the high level atmosphere, it put SO2 there. This made lots of cloud cover and the resulting cold winters killed millions.

[dennis]

you didn't read it.

It does specifically talk about longer periods of solar variance in the last paragraph, something you were questioning earlier. So I guess you have found that for yourself now, if you have read it.

[dennis]

Any model that doesn't show the rise is automatically deemed to be wrong. You can't get any funding for a model that is wrong. Even if a model does show the required rise it doesn't mean its actually a good model as it may just have fudge factors in it. It doesn't help that the actual mechanisms and fudge factors and even the data used in the models are kept secret to avoid public scrutiny. It does make people wonder what is being hidden and why.

There have been models that showed different results, they were deemed to be wrong.

Well its never going to be clear as the data has been screwed with in unknown ways and the raw data has gone missing. Or at least that was the latest excuse for the data being unavailable for public scrutiny.

They are almost always wrong if you look more than a few days ahead. They are only correct about 50% of the time for the next day.

There are lots of other models, they all produce different results for much of the time. You only have to look at the different organisations producing forecasts to see that.

They didn't get it wrong. They just used the wrong data.

[dennis]

It doesn't actually matter. The UK needs to build nuclear power on a large scale as its all we have that would make us independent of others. It also reduces carbon if it actually matter later. the other thing we need is new houses with better insulation so we can cope with hot or cold as long as we have the nuclear power to run the AC/heating. The alternative is to invade Greenland and steal the geothermal.

[dennis]

Investing in renewable energy is a problem.. what happens when the climate does change? Is there going to be any wind for the turbines? Is it going to be more wet and cloudy for the PV? It doesn't sound like its a good idea if there is climate change happening. Maybe we should just cull 90% of the population and solve the problem?

[Roger Chapman]

Show me a model that fits the recent past and predicts falling temperature.

The deniers have big money behind them. If they could produce a model that mirrored their beliefs there would be overwhelming publicity.

One man's fudge factor is another man's weighted factor. If the factor is relevant it needs to be included. So name a few factors that should be considered and a few that are included but shouldn't be.

The data is freely available these days. It hasn't helped the deniers cause though, indeed it has rather damage it since they can't use it to promote their own theories.

Point me at a few.

Citation needed.

Well if you are going to argue that if they ar 5 minutes out in predicting when the rain is going to start falling on your house of course they are inaccurate but if you reduce the discrimination to say one hour you would probably be wrong even though they undoubtedly ere on the side of caution these days. Looking more than a few days ahead is more difficult as weather is a chaotic system in a way that climate is not.

With weather there is a broad consensus about how it works and all the models produce similar results.

I can't work out whether that is a poor attempt at irony or a factually inaccurate statement.

[Martin Brown]

There are and some of the renewables policies are obviously garbage. The best intelligent laymans introduction to these issues I can think of is David MacKays "Without the Hot Air" free online at:

should take particular note of what he says about Dominic Lawson on p8 and you will see why I dislike these vox pop AGW deniers for hire:

> There are also an arse load of procarbon lobbyists (eg oil companies). Who are generally better funded PR groups using various front organisations with "Motherhood and Apple Pie" sounding names. They are almost all extreme right wing "Think-tanks" if you look under the skin.

If in any doubt about their scientific credentials check back in the archives to see what they said about CFCs & ozone depletion, wearing seatbelts or smoking tobacco. That is an easy way to spot "deniers for hire" who will jump on bandwagons for the money.

You have to look at some of the evidence. The IPCC WG1 AR4 output is a fairly hefty tome to read my print copy is much older from 2001. You can access it online. There have been the odd mistake in it trumpeted to the rafters by "deniers for hire inc." but the majority is well written and accessible with references if you wish to read it.

Why are several countries pulling out of Kyoto - do they know something? They calculate that they will not meet their obligations and reckon that they can get away with it. And they are right.

So long as America refuses to play ball on AGW the whole thing is a lost cause. Only after the USA suffers serious damage unambiguously caused by climate change will they even begin to take it seriously.

A bit of both. Roughly speaking the forcing from CO2 (and other GHG) in the past 4 decades has surpassed the warming from solar variation over the last 150 years. You can even find scientific papers by sceptics that reach this conclusion for example Baliunas, Posmentier & Soon.

that satellite monitoring prevents deniers handwaving to magically make the sun brighter to explain the recent decades of warming.

The sun will gradually make the Earth warmer on geological timescales and we are pretty sure it can vary somewhat (eg Maunder minimum).

Regards, Martin Brown

[Roger Chapman]

If the Earth is importing more heat than it exports then the temperature will rise until equilibrium is reached. With all those satellites up there the data should be available to work out what the current situation is. Something the deniers should have latched onto years ago if they wanted conclusive proof that the warmists were wrong. So why haven't they?

[Roger Chapman]

same subject for more than 5 minutes at a time. ;-(

Glad to see someone with more clout than me has much the same opinion about Lawson. I have written to the Independent a time or two about the rubbish he spouts but they have declined to publish my comments.

[Martin Brown]

Because they know perfectly well that the satellites show a nearly constant flux with a small variation correlated with the sunspot cycle.

It is these same satellites that prevent all but the most bare faced liars from claiming that the sun has magically got brighter. IPCC WG1 document shows the early satellite with data warts and all.

flux calibration between instruments is difficult.

You do have to be a little bit careful too as it looks like some UV solar emissions recently measured for the first time do vary by more than was expected and may in part be responsible for recent cold winters. Only the abstract is free to view:

Brown

[Tim Watts]

I agree with that. Sadly it should have been done 20 years ago, but if they don't stop the current projects like Merkel did, that will be a step in the right direction.

That's the only thing I agree with that has been done with a reasonable degree of sanity (Part L, windows and Pilkington K being a possible exception).

Would any notice?

[Martin Brown]

You would be better off invading Iceland if you want geothermal power.

Invading Greenland will just get you loads of retreating glacier ice.

Regards, Martin Brown

[charles]

might help then forthcoming water shortage.

[Martin Brown]

Water is only short in the SE. Plenty of it here up north.

The whole of Kielder reservoir and various smaller ones built to cool the steel furnaces on Teesside are now full almost year round.

Who knows if they ever restart the furnaces they might use a trickle.

Regards, Martin Brown

[The Natural Philosopher]

They have and the data is tending to support their case.

The truth will out, eventually.

I am not afraid of the truth.

But are you?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Good god dennis, what meds are you on? You are almost correct (grammar is still borked)

No pint in stealing greenlands geothermal. No way to bring it back if we did.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Moving back to real power generation, there's some interesting things emerging,. We got the GREATEST wind power when the wind was 'just right': with gales sweeping across the whole country, the output is ragged and not much over 3GW in total,. which strongly suggests windmills or whole farms are being feathered through strong wind periods.

Needless to say this puts a high frequency high amplitude ripple on the grid which the poor old hydro is struggling to contain - frequency variation is much larger than normal. As is total hydro and pumped..must be cats and dogs in Scotland and N Wales. Plenty of water for the little hydro schemes.

Also it seems N European farms are finally spinning up, as we are now back to pulling power off them as well. That's pulled back the gas oupt to compensate. But I would imagine a lot of that is spinning reserve in case the wind power collapses either due to too much, or a net fall in wind.

And it looks like Torness is back up - nuclear has been creeping back to six and a bit gigs.

Coal is being flatlined at just under 22GW, it seems that they are determined to make the most of their 'allowed hours of use' So we are burning coal in preference to gas, thus increasing emissions. I love all this climate change legislation. All it does is increase emissions..

Overall demand is brutal - over 50GW at this evening's peak. Does NOT bode well if we get a cold snap and no wind...

Hard to tell whether the French interconnector is up to snuff..they haven't needed to saturate it today as presumably European windmills are finally actually generating something.

But it was clipping at 1.5GW last week. Its supposed to be 2GW....

Moyle is still down, and I cant see ocean going cable layers having much success in the Irish Sea right now.. Still they probably have enough wind right now to at least boil a kettle, if not the stew....

[Roger Chapman]

So where is it then.

Hopefully, but with bastards like Lawson preaching nonsense it may be a long time coming.

Perhaps you should be as your stance is likely to make you look anything but a NP.

Why should I be? I came off the fence with regard to AGW when it became obvious that the arguments the deniers were putting forward were full of holes while try as I might I couldn't find anything intrinsically wrong in the main themes of warmist theory. I will cheerfully climb back on the fence if the proponents of AGW ever have to resort to the same tactics that are the deniers stock-in-trade in order to maintain their position.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I am not a denier: You make the big mistake of believing that all people who challenge the IPCC do so from a position of dening ANY relevance to CO2, and denying any understanding of the AGW science.

That is absolutely symptomatic of the cult you are involved in. If they don't accept the IPCCs conclusions they must be DENYING the science and DENYING the reality of modelling as a way to go.

But that is not the position of most of the people who do challenge - only a few . Most people are deeply concerned about the validity of the assumptions that underpin the model and the accuracy of the data, not the issue of modelling in the first place, or of the potential effects of CO2 at all.

To then be called a denier, is not only deeply insulting, it's deeply suspicious: It reinforces the impression that the AGW camp's arguments are so weak that they have to ladle out ad hominems to maintain credibility.

If you want to be labelled as a cultist, carry on calling people deniers. If you are interested in what is really happening to the climate,. start researching the better argued and more relevant criticism than Lawson.

Your foaming at eh mouth stance does your cult no favours.