The Role of ‘Ocean Upwelling’ and ‘The Deep Ocean’ in the Glacial Cycles

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Guest Post by Wim Röst Abstract Glacial cycles show a gradual diminishing temperature during the slide into the glacial period, but a steep increase of temperature at the start of an interglacial period. As argued here, both ‘ocean upwelling’* and the temperature of the deep ocean might play an important role. Introduction The temperature profiles … Continue reading The Role of ‘Ocean Upwelling’ and ‘The Deep Ocean’ in the Glacial Cycles

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July 17, 2017 at 11:00AM

The Hiatus: One Message For Politicians, Another For Scientists

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Politicians are usually seen as fair game for criticism especially if they talk about the inconvenient details of climate change. If only they would stick to the simplicities and repeat the mantra that climate change is real and happening and we are entirely to blame. Woe betide any politician who delves into the detail. Usually we like our politicians to get down amongst the minutiae of government, but not when it comes to climate change.

This is what happened when the Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt discussed the surface temperature hiatus of the past 20 years. In written comments to the U.S. Senate about his confirmation hearing on the 18th of January he wrote, “over the past two decades satellite data indicates there has been a leveling off of warming.” Despite the vigorous debate about the hiatus in the peer-reviewed literature this was seen by some as such an incorrect statement that a response had to be made, and fast.

Ben Santer of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was quick off the mark putting together a paper for the journal Nature Scientific Reports. It looked at satellite measurements of the temperature of the atmosphere close to the ground from when such data first became available in 1979. It concluded: Satellite temperature measurements do not support the recent claim of a “leveling off of warming” over the past two decades. Tropospheric warming trends over recent 20-year periods, the authors concluded, are always significantly larger (at the 10% level or better) than model estimates of 20-year trends arising from natural internal variability.

Ben Santer on the Seth Myers Show.

The Nature Scientific Reports paper was submitted on 6th March, accepted on the 4th of April and published on the 24th May. But as that paper, with its simple message that Pruitt was wrong, was being written another paper on the same topic and also involving Santer was already in the works. It had been submitted three months before, on the 23rd of December the previous year.

It was eventually published in Nature Geoscience on 19th June having been accepted on the 22nd of May. It comes to an entirely different conclusion about the hiatus. “We find that in the last two decades of the twentieth century, differences between modelled and observed tropospheric temperature trends are broadly consistent with internal variability. Over most of the early twenty-first century, however, model tropospheric warming is substantially larger than observed; warming rate differences are generally outside the range of trends arising from internal variability…We conclude that model overestimation of tropospheric warming in the early twenty-first century is partly due to systematic deficiencies in some of the post-2000 external forcings used in the model simulations.”

In other words the climate models have failed They did not predict and they cannot explain the hiatus. To reach this conclusion the Nature Geoscience paper analysed trends in the satellite data over 10,12,14,16 and 18 years because the researchers said that they are typical record lengths used for the study of the ‘warming slowdown’ in the early 21st century. Note they did not analyse trends over 20 years directly. Thus the first Santer et al paper analysed the past 20 years and concluded there was no hiatus, while his second paper concluded there was a hiatus of up to 18 years, the maximum period that paper studied.

The authors realised the problem of the two papers seemingly conflicting results. To avoid any confusion they issued a helpful Q&A document saying the results were not contradictory but complimentary. It must be said that two methods they used are only very slightly different that one would expect them to give the same result. But that does not matter. If as the authors say the results are complimentary why was the result that disagreed with Pruitt used with no qualification or hint that a similar technique showed the opposite?

On the 22nd February Ben Santer on appeared on the Seth Meyers chat show saying these are strange and unusual times, something that with hindsight is laced with irony. He was introduced as being from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory but stated he was talking as a private citizen about research he had done and published on behalf of the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz on the Seth Myers Show.

Santer aimed his sights at a statement made by U.S. Senator Ted Cruz statement made on the same show a little earlier: “Many of the alarmists on global warming, they got a problem because the science doesn’t back them up. And in particular, satellite data demonstrates for the last 17 years, there’s been zero warming. None whatsoever. ”

Santer challenged Senator Cruz in direct contradiction of his in paper he had submitted but wasn’t published yet; “Listen to what he (Cruz) said. Satellite data. So satellite measurements of atmospheric temperature show no significant warming over the last 17 years, and we tested it. We looked at all of the satellite data in the world, from all groups, and wanted to see, was he right or not? And he was wrong. Even if you focus on a small segment of the now 38-year satellite temperature record – the last 17 years – was demonstrably wrong.”

Santer concluded; “So the bizarre thing is, Senator Cruz is a lawyer. He’s got to look at all of the evidence when he’s trying a case, when he’s involved in a case, not just one tiny segment of the evidence.”

Oh the irony.

Feedback: david.whitehouse@thegwpf.com

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July 17, 2017 at 10:04AM

Future Energy Scenarios

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By Paul Homewood

 

 

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The National Grid has published its annual Future Energy Scenarios (FES).

It works around four scenarios, but I’ll concentrate on the Two Degrees one.

 

 

In particular, this scenario assumes a rapid uptake of electric  cars, with 17% of all cars on the road in 2030 being pure electric (EV) and another 13% plug in hybrids (PHEV).

According to the FES, this could result in an an additional 8GW of demand at peak times by 2030, without what they call the highest consumer engagement, in other words charging cars at night. Even with this, peak demand is expected to rise by 4GW.

As we have already seen from another recent National Grid study, such hopes are little more than pie in the sky.

But let’s concentrate on the power scenarios. This is what the FES says about installed capacity:

Note how total capacity has to nearly double, to cater for inefficient and unreliable renewables.

We can break down the 2030 figures further:

 

GW

8.596

5.267

0.900

41.083

27.176

4.636

3.409

18.77

4.398

2.072

3.656

8.485

18.505

146.953

Installed Capacity 2030

Storage

Biomass

CCS

Wind

Solar

Other Ren

CHP

Gas

Other Thermal

Hydro

Marine

Nuclear

Interconnectors

Total

If we exclude unreliable wind/solar, and short term storage, we are left with just 70GW. But, according to the FES, peak demand will be 65GW in 2030, even under the highly optimistic Two Degree scenario. It could easily reach 66GW.

It can be seen that capacity could be extremely tight, but worse still no allowance is made for downtime. No generation can be available all of the time, and currently my understanding is that an assumption of 85% is used for available capacity.

This would mean that we can only rely on 60GW of capacity.

But when you look at the detail, the whole thing becomes ever more frightening.

For instance, we are relying on 18.5GW of interconnector capacity, nearly a third of peak demand. As has been stated before, this is simply a cop out, and we have no idea what the source of it will be. And when wind power is low across N Europe in winter, can we even rely on such surplus power being available at all? To rely so heavily on imported power is surely playing Russian roulette with the country’s energy security.

Then we have CCS! There is little sign that any economically viable technology will be available by 2030, so how do we replace this 0.9GW.

The assumption about marine, ie tidal, power is equally risky. We know that it is extremely expensive, and even if Swansea Bay gets the go-ahead, there is no guarantee larger schemes will follow.

Quite apart from this, neither tidal nor hydro power cannot operate continuously, but there is little in the way of spare capacity to offset this.

It is assumed we will have 8.5GW of nuclear capacity as well, yet all we can rely on at the moment is 1.2GW at Sizewell B, plus 3.2GW at Hinkley Point, if it actually gets built.

All in all, there is an awful lot of downside risk, and very little room for opportunity.

 

 

Footnote

The FES rather lets the cat out of the bag when it comes to electric cars.

If consumers do what they want, peak demand from EVs will soar by 18GW.

To make this more manageable, the Grid are relying on three things:

1) Mainly off peak charging

2) Smaller cars

3) Shared journeys

As they make clear:

And,

 

I wonder what they’ll do if drivers don’t agree?

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July 17, 2017 at 09:51AM

The Mother-of-all-Dead Zones: “Fossil site shows impact of early Jurassic’s low oxygen oceans”

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Guest post by David Middleton Science News Fossil site shows impact of early Jurassic’s low oxygen oceans Date: July 15, 2017 Source: University of Texas at Austin Summary: Using a combination of fossils and chemical markers, scientists have tracked how a period of globally low ocean-oxygen turned an Early Jurassic marine ecosystem into a stressed … Continue reading The Mother-of-all-Dead Zones: “Fossil site shows impact of early Jurassic’s low oxygen oceans”

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July 17, 2017 at 09:02AM