Emily’s Not So Smart Energy

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By Paul Homewood

h/t 1saveenergy

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Emily Gosden writes in The Times about the wonderful new world of smart meters:

Irene Farrell gestures towards the electric fire on the wall of her living room. “I never put that on now.” The 86-year-old used to rely on the fire and a plug-in halogen heater to keep warm, because the old electric storage heaters that were supposed to heat her tenth-floor flat in Newcastle were so useless. “It was dreadful. Freezing cold all the time. My husband was an invalid and the cold affected him terribly.”

Last winter, for the first time in her 13 years here, things were different. Smart control boxes wired into the storage heaters have transformed the way they work, keeping the flat warm throughout the day and putting the octogenarian in the unlikely vanguard of a transformation in the way that Britain uses electricity.

The nation’s energy system has been built around the principle that power stations will supply enough electricity to meet demand. Now, with the expansion of intermittent wind and solar farms, the industry is looking at ways of reversing that relationship, adjusting demand to match available supply.

Last year the National Infrastructure Commission identified flexible demand as one of three innovations, alongside interconnectors and batteries, that could help to reduce the costs of Britain’s drive for green energy by up to £8 billion a year by 2030.

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The rest is the usual hogswash, that we have seen many times in the past.

But what is really interesting are the comments, all of which are highly critical:

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April 20, 2017 at 09:36PM

NEW RESEARCH SAYS MEDIEVAL WARM PERIOD WAS AS WARM AS THE PRESENT

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April 20, 2017 at 09:08PM

Steven Koonin: A ‘Red Team’ exercise would strengthen climate science 

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H/T GWPF

Put the ‘consensus’ to a test, and improve public understanding, through an open, adversarial process, says Steven Koonin in the Wall Street Journal.

Tomorrow’s March for Science will draw many thousands in support of evidence-based policy making and against the politicization of science.

A concrete step toward those worthy goals would be to convene a “Red Team/Blue Team” process for climate science, one of the most important and contentious issues of our age.

The national-security community pioneered the “Red Team” methodology to test assumptions and analyses, identify risks, and reduce—or at least understand—uncertainties.

The process is now considered a best practice in high-consequence situations such as intelligence assessments, spacecraft design and major industrial operations. It is very different and more rigorous than traditional peer review, which is usually confidential and always adjudicated, rather than public and moderated.

The public is largely unaware of the intense debates within climate science. At a recent national laboratory meeting, I observed more than 100 active government and university researchers challenge one another as they strove to separate human impacts from the climate’s natural variability.

At issue were not nuances but fundamental aspects of our understanding, such as the apparent—and unexpected—slowing of global sea-level rise over the past two decades. Summaries of scientific assessments meant to inform decision makers, such as the United Nations’ Summary for Policymakers, largely fail to capture this vibrant and developing science.

Consensus statements necessarily conceal judgment calls and debates and so feed the “settled,” “hoax” and “don’t know” memes that plague the political dialogue around climate change.

We scientists must better portray not only our certainties but also our uncertainties, and even things we may never know. Not doing so is an advisory malpractice that usurps society’s right to make choices fully informed by risk, economics and values.

Moving from oracular consensus statements to an open adversarial process would shine much-needed light on the scientific debates.

Comtinued here.

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April 20, 2017 at 08:12PM

People Power-Up: Kenyan Government Shuts Down Wind Power Outfit’s Illegal Land Grab

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Stealing land is, apparently, seen as good business practice by the wind industry; wherever it goes, Africa no exception. In Africa it’s able to profit from long-held animosity between tribes and racial groups, exploiting old rivalries in its quest to wrest control over the land its needs to spear these things all over African soil.  […]

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April 20, 2017 at 07:30PM