RWE planning 2.5 GW gas power plant in the UK 

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Former Tilbury power station

If this goes ahead it’s likely to be finished years before the troubled Hinkley Point nuclear plant.

German utility RWE has commenced the planning process for the construction of a 2.5 GW gas-fired power plant in Essex, England, reports Power Engineering International.

If the development is to proceed it would be a big boost for the UK energy system, as old coal and nuclear plants are being taken out of the equation.

RWE is starting the planning process to build a 2.5 GW gas power plant in Tilbury, Essex on the site of a former biomass station in what could be a potential boost to the UK energy system.

RWE’s plans also include a possible 300 MW open cycle gas turbine and an energy storage facility at the same location as the proposed combined cycle gas turbine plant – or CCGT at Tilbury, Essex. Tilbury is the site of an old coal-fired power plant, closed since 2013.

Britain has struggled to attract investment to build large scale gas-fired power plants, despite strong rhetoric favouring this technology, as a means of balancing the growing renewable content on the system.

Full report: RWE planning 2.5 GW gas power plant in the UK – Power Engineering International

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July 21, 2017 at 09:24AM

Why The Greens Are Dying Down Under

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
http://www.thegwpf.com

The result:

A leaked internal analysis showing it is on track to lose three of its nine Senate seats, as it reels from the loss of two of its most popular [sic] senators.

Sounding the alarm over the party’s plight, the Greens analysis also concludes the party is “losing the younger vote” despite­ a “priority” Greens effort to increase the party’s support among the young…

Relying on Newspoll surveys reported in The Australian, the document finds the Greens’ prim­ary vote averaged 11.2 per cent in the year before the last election but fell to an average of 9.7 per cent in the year since.

Those at the greatest risk of defeat are Sarah Hanson-Young in SA and Mr Bartlett in Queensland, assuming he replaces Ms Waters.

To make things worse:

The Greens fear another blow to their standing after the furore as Senator Di Natale waits for confirmation he has renounced Italian citizenship.

Tasmanian colleague Nick McKim is yet to produce confirmation he has given up British citizenship.

Already gone this month for having dual nationality: deputy leaders Scott Ludlam and Lariss Waters.

The Greens face long-term decline:

THE global warming scare is receding, even if the vast warming bureaucracy ensures it does not yet die completely. The Greens look increasingly desperate as they warn of disasters that never come.

THE horric cost of the Greens’ obsessions are becoming onto too clear. Most critically, the massive rises in electricity prices are forcing voters to ask whether all this pain is worth the gain of the global warming faith preached by the Greens. For core Greens, this may not be a huge issue, but for Sunday Greens like the doctors’ wives it’s a pain.

Full post

see also: German Green Party Collapsing In ‘Existential Crisis’

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) http://www.thegwpf.com

July 21, 2017 at 08:39AM

Bill Nye Says Climate Sceptics Will Die Out. Instead Young Gullibles Grow Up And Become Old Sceptics

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
http://www.thegwpf.com

Poor Bill Nye. He thinks somehow most people are as religious about climate change as he is, and will keep their naively unscientific beliefs into their old age. Instead, skeptics are not dying out at all — there is a never ending source of skeptics, as young gullible believers grow up to be old and wise.

Here’s his Christmas fantasy:

LA Times, Pat Morrison  Bill Nye on the terrifying ascendancy of American ‘dingbatitude’

It just sounds like people are scared. It just sounds like people are afraid. And the people who are afraid in general — with due respect, and I am now one of them — are older. Climate change deniers, by way of example, are older. It’s generational. So we’re just going to have to wait for those people to “age out,” as they say. “Age out” is a euphemism for “die.” But it’ll happen, I guarantee you — that’ll happen.   — Bill Nye

Here’s that data. For starters, we know that Republican voters are older than Democrat voters. So consider what happened to “people identifying as “environmentalists”. If people carried their beliefs with them as they grew older, we would see the term appearing increasingly among Republican voters — converging towards the Democrats. Instead, over the last twenty five years, “environmentalist” became a dirty word for lots of people, but especially for Republican voters.

In terms of worries about Global Warming, spot the Republican transformation over the last 16 years as half a generation passed. Exactly.

The red line has flat-lined.

Gallup Poll: Partisan Gap widens on worries over Global Warming

The rise in belief as the “hottest ever El Nino year” hit the headlines came in Democrat and Independent voting groups, not in Republican voters who remain unmoved by the sensationalist repeats of yet more “records”. Older voters are more likely to recognize that it’s all been done before.

Except Bill Nye, that is.

Full post & comments

Reality Check:

Nearly Half of Young Americans Are Climate Sceptics

Harvard Political Review, 29 April 2015

The assumption that younger US adults are more liberal when it comes to global warming does not hold up; if anything, they are even more skeptical.

At the White House Correspondents Association Dinner last Saturday night, President Obama got angry. With the help of his anger translator, Luther (played by comedian Keegan-Michael Key), the president abandoned his usual reasonable tone to condemn those who deny climate change. “The science is clear,” he began. “Every serious scientist says we need to act. The Pentagon says it’s a national security risk.” As the president continued, it became clear that he no longer needed Luther to reveal his inner anger, and he drew laughs from the crowd after letting loose. “It is crazy! What about our kids? What kind of stupid, shortsighted, irresponsible… ”

While the president’s skit might have been the highlight of the night, do Americans really need this kind of angry reminder that climate change is a problem? Some seem to think we are living in a world where climate change is widely acknowledged as an irrefutable fact. Mary Robinson, the seventh president of Ireland and founder of the Mary Robinson Foundation for Climate Justice, has argued that the generation in power now is the first to fully know about climate change, and the last with the ability to prevent its projected effects. She and others are of the opinion that, at this point, all but a few outliers understand global warming, its causes, and its dire consequences.

New data from the Harvard Public Opinion Project tell a very different story. Only 55 percent of survey participants agreed with the statement, “Global warming is a proven fact and is mostly caused by emissions from cars and industrial facilities such as power plants.” Twenty percent held the belief that “Global warming is a proven fact, and is mostly caused by natural changes that have nothing to do with emissions from cars,” and the remaining 23 percent who answered the question believe that “Global warming is a theory that has not been proven yet.”

Full post

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) http://www.thegwpf.com

July 21, 2017 at 08:09AM

Study: Sea Level Rise Revised Downward

via Roy Spencer, PhD.
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If I had not looked past the headline of the press report on a new study, I would have just filed it under “It’s worse than we thought”. A new study in Nature reported on July 17 carried the following headlines:

“Satellite snafu masked true sea-level rise for decades”
“Revised tallies confirm that the rate of sea-level rise is accelerating as the Earth warms and ice sheets thaw.”

When I read that, I (like everyone else) assumed that corrections to the satellite sea level data since 1993 have now led to a revised trend toward more (not less) sea level rise. Right?

Wrong.

During the satellite era (since 1993), the trend in sea level rise was revised downward, by almost 10%, from 3.28 mm/year to about 3.0 mm/year. (For those concerned about Miami going underwater, these numbers equate to a little more than one inch every 10 years).

So, I’m calling “fake science news” on the Nature reporter who covered the story.

Now, the headline was technically correct…but misleading. (I can also make up technically correct headlines: “Scientists Agree: Sea Levels are Rising, We are All Going to Die”)

The researchers made a major adjustment to the first 1/4 of the satellite record, bringing those sea levels up. This results in adding curvature to the upward trend (an acceleration) by flattening out the early part of the curve. This new signature of “acceleration” was what made the news, even though the long term trend went down.

Should this New “Acceleration” be the News?

In a word, no.

Short-term undulations in the sea level rise curve should not be used as a predictive curve for the future. They are affected by a wide variety of natural phenomena.

Yes, the rate of sea level rise during the entire period since 1993 probably is a little more than, say, during the period since 1900 (sea level rise was occurring naturally, anyway). But the inferred acceleration is small.

My main point is that the Nature headline was extremely misleading. They clearly had to find something in the study that supported the alarmist view of sea level rise, and they figured few people would read past the headline.

A face-value reading of their study results in the conclusion that sea level rise since 1993 has been revised downward.

Shame on Nature for misleading the public.

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July 21, 2017 at 07:58AM