‘wasted wind’)

This is a list of some of the most prominent:

I'm left with a conundrum. Do I trust you, or them?

Is that all there is to climate science - 'doing logarithms'? Do you not need any background understanding of what you're looking at? Or skills at modelling for example?

climate science = constantly fiddling the model or the data so the two match or ignoring 99.99% of the runs from the model if they don't give the expected result.

OK, fair enough, I'm sure you know enough about it to come to such a clear conclusion. I spent 40 years in my field and I'm still not sure . . . in fact less sure than I was 40 years' ago! But good for you, must be reassuring.

OoI, do you work as a climate scientist?

That's a very easy one. Neither. You don't trust anyone, you dig for data yourself and try to determine how trustworthy is each bit you find.

An example: around 2000, I read or at least read or skimmed Hansen's famous 1999 paper. It seemed that an awful lot of fiddling around with raw data was being done. Much, maybe most, was probably justified, so I decided to download the data and look at it myself.

No, no way. Google was reasonably good by then, so I should have found it or at least found why I couldn't have it. I found later that the problem was allegedly that some of it was proprietary and confidential. Yes, I can see that, it has to be kept secret from the public, it only concerns the end of the world, after all.

Later, in the Climategate emails, one of the prime movers at the UEA, I think Phil Jones, admitted he could no longer remember which data sets went into the assembly of HADCRUT4*. No. If you're doing research you believe to be important, you don't throw *anything* away. Every note, every theory even if later proved wrong, you keep it very carefully. Other bits of the Climategate email do not reflect well on the scientific integrity of the players, as I mentioned before. Oh yes, there's never once been any suggestion that the Climategate emails are not genuine.

You don't have to know the right answer to detect an obviously wrong one. Remember the hockey stick? 'Discredited' now, of course, when someone with access to the model showed you got a hockey stick whatever data you fed to it. That's a clear and obvious sign of a positive feedback factor built into the model. We know that isn't correct, or Earth would have been another Venus for the last few million years. Who built this positive feedback in, and why? I can't see a legitimate reason for it. I can't see any reason other than to produce hockey sticks.

Quite simply, nobody knows enough about what controls the climate to actually make a model which would be useful for making predictions. As far as I'm aware, there is no model which accurately predicts the past, so there's no point in extrapolation. There's no way to experiment, unless you have a lifetime measured in millions of years, there has been no clear repetitive cycles other than those caused by planetary orbits, which led to enormous climate changes. We don't know why the magnetic pole reverses, or what physical effects it has on the climate.

And so far, every single prediction about the climate has turned out to be not merely wrong, but ludicrously so. And we're expected to believe, solely on faith, that 'this time we've got it right'.

'You don't need to be a weatherman to see which way the wind blows'

Bob Dylan...

Johnny’s in the basement, Mixing up the medicine I’m on the pavement, Thinking about the government The man in the trench coat Badge out, laid off Says he’s got a bad cough Wants to get it paid off ... Look out kid It’s somethin’ you did God knows when But you’re doin’ it again You better duck down the alley way Lookin’ for a new friend The man in the coon-skin cap By the pig pen Wants eleven dollar bills... You only got ten

Maggie comes fleet foot Face full of black soot Talkin’ that the heat put Plants in the bed but The phone’s tapped anyway Maggie says that many say They must bust in early May Orders from the D.A.

Look out kid Don’t matter what you did Walk on your tiptoes Don’t try “No-Doz” Better stay away from those That carry around a fire hose Keep a clean nose Watch the plain clothes You don’t need a weatherman To know which way the wind blows

Get sick, get well Hang around a ink well Ring bell, hard to tell If anything is goin’ to sell Try hard, get barred Get back, write braille Get jailed, jump bail Join the army, if you fail

Look out kid You’re gonna get hit By users, cheaters Six-time losers Hang around the theaters Girl by the whirlpool Lookin’ for a new fool Don’t follow leaders Watch ypour parkin’ meters

Ah get born, keep warm Short pants, romance, learn to dance Get dressed, get blessed Try to be a success Please her, please him, buy gifts Don’t steal, don’t lift Twenty years of schoolin’ And they put you on the day shift

Look out kid They keep it all hid Better jump down a manhole Light yourself a candle Don’t wear sandals Try to avoid the scandals Don’t wanna be a bum You better chew gum The pump don’t work ’Cause the vandals took the handles

That’s true, I had a real job.

Don’t be silly. All the renewables claptrap came about because of the ‘global warming caused by CO2’ narrative, and the ‘need’ to ‘do something’ about it, started by a fake story about the issue.

Looks like I have to keep saying this: it’s the IPCC’s equations and data. I don’t have to understand it, I merely used it. If you want to know more, ask the IPCC.

OK. What makes you know that academics 'follow the money' sunshine?

The reason we have 'very expensive electricity' is because the UK relies on privatised energy generation, procurement and distribution.

Yes, but are you using them properly? And have you done any comparisons with other approaches?

OK, I suppose the only way we're going to get close to finding out whether you know what you're talking about is if you show your calculations. Not holding my breath.

You'd be suprised ;-)

And your point is that there is no need to understand the science behind climate to explain it?

Funding. Funding is critical to academic scientists. Research into ‘global warming’ doesn’t get funded, papers won’t be published, careers don’t advance.

The last figure I saw was that some wind farms are *subsidised* to the tune of £174 per MWh. That’s 17.4p per unit. Then on top of that there’s the price of the energy produced, which is the same price as paid to the highest cost generator for that 30-minute slot.

Al Capone couldn’t have dreamed of such a racket.

What’s wrong with paying cost + 6%?

Yes.

Why should I? They are the IPCC’s own work. If you want to know more, read their output - but not the claptrap meant for decision makers, rather the background papers.

It’s the IPCC’s work…ask them about it.

Apologies, that should have read “Research into ‘global warming’ that doesn’t support the narrative doesn’t get funded, papers won’t be published, careers don’t advance”.

So most of the climate science related money is tied up in the AGW thesis? Very little in fossil fuels, say? Sounds like nonsense to me, but if you've researched it, OK. Again (and as usual) you won't let on who told you that?

I take the general point that unfashionable approaches face an uphill struggle

- anything that mentioned 'Marxism' for example, in my time. But you could easily find ways round it. Or at least I did.

I came quite late to university work - the last 30 years. My experience is that very few academics are motivated by career or money. I certainly wasn't.

There was one exception. A research lead was accused of publishing findings to please the government of the day, and secure future contracts. IMVHO he did put a spin on the paper (it wasn't 'untrue'), it was very carefully written, and a meta-piece in any case. I think there was a lot of eye rolling in the 'community' but the most damning was within the department. One professor resigned. It was a long and painful inquiry and I don't think the academic's reputation recovered fully. So peer pressure is one thing that inhibits rogue reporting.

The exceptions include a minority of staff involved in business and construction departments. They seemed to have a lot of, er, outside interests. But that's just my experience as a lecturer and trade union rep.

There is a sense of clinging on to a job at the moment, but again, the academics I know wouldn't publish lies to save their skin. You obviously know otherwise. You could end the careers of many scientists if you actually spoke up outside this NG. And perhaps understandably, you're keeping your sources to yourself.

Ah, but to get your research funded, or at least avoid it being turfed out at the first sift, you need to add a phrase like “…and assess the effect of climate change on…” to your proposal. When published, that will count as yet another scientific paper supporting the climate change narrative.

The BBC today ( A small shift makes a big difference)

I decided to check this out and find out the mean temperature and standard deviation and do my own sumz and work out the probabilities for myself.

I found this paper.

-and-standard-deviations_fig2_393125384>

It says the mean summer temperature is 14C and the sd is 2C . On that basis even getting above 20C is remote. I'm guessing I've not spotted some sort of averaging that's reducing the fluctuation .

However ,reading the paper further , the author shows that CO2 is not affecting UK temperature, even though atmospheric CO2 is going up in line with temperature going up "if both sets of data are increasing with time, there is bound to be a strong correlation between them" - a bit like lack of pirates causing it .

What he does show is a correlation between the UK carbon emissions going down and the UK temperatures going up .

He goes on to say " the decrease in UK carbon emissions is presumably associated with the rise in offshore wind power.,,,

And the mean UK summer temperature is indeed strongly correlated with offshore wind generating capacity....

extracting large amounts of energy must lead to low pressure down wind of the turbines. Given prevailing westerly winds and largely offshore wind farms, this means the creation of a low-pressure region in the North Sea. Could it not be that this low-pressure region is sucking hot air from Africa, leading to an increase in the mean UK summer temperature"

Do you believe it?

Brian

It was shown long ago that weather is chaotic. How many Quantum Weather Butterflies equals one wind turbine?

I certainly believe that the climate is so complex almost anything can

But as the man who missed the president says 'it was a random breath of wind that deflected the bullet'

Anyone can concoct seemingly plausible narratives. But science, that aint.

I just love those carefully-constructed graphs that have no measurements on the axes. They can be used to prove anything. For example, I’m sure the AGW-propagandist BBC will say this is an example of how things are going to get worse, but of course it could also be an example of there being nothing worth spending £trillions on.

I’ve tried three different browsers, and get messages such as “Heavy traffic from your IP address” to “click on the box below to continue” but there isn’t a box…

But yes, 3sd above the mean is pushing things to the outer limits.

You’re probably aware of the fundamental limits of extracting energy from wind turbines, known as the Betz limit. This is due to the slower-moving air behind the turbine affecting the incoming air.

So, one could speculate that a mass of air building up behind a North Sea wind farm would lead to a high-pressure area. Air circulates round these in a clockwise direction, and so could drag warm air from Europe over the UK, leading to elevated temperatures here…;-)

Which has been my suggestion for oil and gas. We are going to rely on both for many years, so why not grant new licences, on the proviso that everything produced is offered to the UK on a cost plus basis and not world market prices.

Where we cannot process it (our oil needs to be mixed with other oils for processing and we don't have the diesel production facilities in the UK IIRC), then direct swaps should be arranged - again bypassing world market pricing.

It is crazy that we are importing oil and gas at WMPs, while exporting our own, at the same prices and making vast profits for companies, while industry and individuals pay inflated prices.

SD is a measure of variance, not units of temperature.

That paper's more of a thought piece. He's not saying it does, just that wind power is one variable that might be affecting climate. As he does in fairness point out, correlation does not necessarily mean cause.

It's a common tactic in research and might bump up his citation score.

IIUC (probably not) it's not so much a subsidy as a top up to meet the agreed contract price per unit of electricity.

If there 'subsidy' appears too high to you or others, that's the fault of the contract negotiators/government of the day.