Enviro Group Lawsuits, Cost Concerns, Climate Regulation Uncertainty Cited As Major Obstacles To Grid Improvements.  A new study released this week highlights what experts have been saying for years:  the U.S. faces significant risk of power brownouts and blackouts as early as next summer that may cost tens of billions of dollars and threaten lives. The study, “Lights Out In 2009?” warns that the U.S. “faces potentially crippling electricity brownouts and blackouts beginning in the summer of 2009, which may cost tens of billions of dollars and threaten lives.” “If particularly vulnerable regions, like the Western U.S., experience unusually hot temperatures for prolonged periods of time in 2009, the potential for local brownouts or blackouts is high, with significant risk that local disruptions could cascade into regional outages that could cost the economy tens of billions of dollars,” the report warned.

U.S. baseload generation capacity reserve margins “have declined precipitously to 17 percent in 2007, from 30-40 percent in the early 1990s,” according to the study.  A 12-15 percent capacity reserve margin is the minimum required to ensure reliability and stability of the nation’s electricity system.  Compounding this capacity deficiency, the projected U.S. demand in the next ten years is forecast to grow by 18 percent, far exceeding the projected eight percent growth in baseload generation capacity between now and 2016.

The study estimated that the U.S. will require about 120 gigawatts (GW) of new generation just to maintain a 15 percent reserve margin.  That will require at least $300 billion in generation and transmission facility investments by 2016.  “The facts presented in this study should stimulate a call for action by policymakers everywhere.  Our nation’s electricity system is clearly in trouble and we need to take rapid steps as soon as possible to remedy the situation,” said Bob Hanfling, Chairman of the non-profit NextGen Energy Council, which conducted the study.  “This isn’t the first study to come to these conclusions, and it won’t be the last.  We hope it illuminates current policy debates, from those on climate change to resource development to infrastructure build-out to national security. We also hope it will sound the alarm for every elected official, policymaker, business leader and citizen concerned about the future prosperity and security of our nation.”

The study also identified the primary barriers to getting new power plants and transmission lines built.  Chief among these is the “opposition of well-funded environmental groups that oppose and file lawsuits against virtually every new infrastructure project proposed.”

Other obstacles include opposition to natural gas production, which is needed to fuel the growing reliance on natural-gas fired power plants; challenges associated with putting more intermittent renewable power sources on the grid; regulatory uncertainty associated with climate change policy development; reluctance by state regulators to approve rate increases related to the imposition of new environmental or climate-related regulation; and the relatively shorter-term approach to resource planning and acquisition that industry has been forced to adopt because of all of the above factors. Among its other findings were these:

The U.S. will require more than 14,500 miles of new electricity transmission lines by 2016.  Regions represented by the Florida Reliability Coordination Council (FRCC) and the Northeast Power Coordinating Council (NPCC) may require less than 400 miles of new transmission lines, while the Southeast Reliability Council (SERC) may require nearly 2,300 miles.  The Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) may require nearly 7,000 miles.

Substantial increases in wind turbine orders, and new wind capacity, has been slowed by a worldwide turbine shortage and local opposition to wind projects. Since wind generation is expected to grow substantially throughout the U.S., the integration of intermittent resources into the bulk power system is becoming increasingly complex and difficult.

While renewable energy proponents, and some elected officials, are saying that the U.S. needs to only add renewable power facilities such as wind farms, the annual capacity factor of wind generators is typically about 25 - 35 percent. However, the probability that wind generators are available at their rated value during annual peak periods is only between 5 - 20 percent and varies greatly from year to year and region to region.  Wind cannot be considered a reliable baseload capacity resource.

Outsiders familiar with the proper workings of science have long known that modern Climate Science is dysfunctional. Now a prominent insider, MIT Meteorology Professor Richard S. Lindzen, confirms how Al Gore and his minions used Stalinist tactics to subvert, suborn and corrupt a whole branch of science, citing chapter and verse in his report entitled “Climate Science: Is it currently designed to answer questions?” His answer:  A resounding “NO!”

Detailing the corruption, he names a series of names.  Until reading this I did not know that: “For example, the primary spokesman for the American Meteorological Society in Washington is Anthony Socci who is neither an elected official of the AMS nor a contributor to climate science. Rather, he is a former staffer for Al Gore.” Page 5

Although a bit lengthy, this very important report is highly readable and revealing.  While some of the paragraphs are a bit technical, I encourage AT readers to wade through them because their purpose is to provide specific examples of how a radical cabal is forcing scientists to ignore or amend measurements that undermine the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming. Scientists are literally forced to include sentences in their papers that indicate their support of AGW, even if these sentences are non-sequiturs, or even if they conflict with the overall thrust of the paper. In this way, Al Gore’s uneducated political commissars are able to deliver the “consensus” he so craves.

How is this possible you might ask?  Prof. Lindzen gives considerable background history.

However, having been an undergraduate and graduate student in the hard sciences, and later a research collaborator with dozens of industrial scientists and university professors, perhaps I can shed some further light. Today’s scientists get to the top of their field by extreme dedication to their specialty involving inordinate focus and concentration that cannot tolerate distractions. The best scientists are constantly “at home” at their lab bench, with their instruments, analyzing data, teaching a few promising students and preparing publications.  Most scientists interact intensively only with other specialists in allied fields ("geeks"). 

Many scientists are naturalized citizens from Asia and Eastern Europe, unfamiliar and intimidated by American politics and government, to which they are dependent upon for visas and grant support.  Although all stereotypes are unfair to individuals, there is some truth to the one of the shy, retiring, absent-minded professor.  His or her absent-mindedness is most likely due to intense cogitation on a difficult scientific problem.  Their dealings with one another are only possible by maintaining extreme standards of honesty, integrity and open-mindedness to scholarly debate in search of the truth. The very qualities that make them good scientists and scholars thus leave them ill-equipped to deal with the raucous, underhanded, disrespectful, politically-motivated radicals unleashed upon them by Al Gore and his fifth column for a “hostile takeover” of their scientific institutions.

I naively thought that the National Academy of Sciences could impose some quality-control on an errant discipline.  Prof. Lindzen notes that event this august body has been penetrated by eco-activists by exploiting loopholes in its nominating procedures. Fortunately, in science “truth will out”.  The long term faith of the American public in science, a trust built up since WWI is at stake. Next it will be important to see whether a prominent scientific journal publishes this revelation.

Read more here and full paper here.

Before human-caused global warming2 can become an economic problem, it first has to be identified by scientific study as a dangerous hazard for the planet, distinct from natural climate change. This notwithstanding, a number of distinguished economists have recently written compendious papers or reports on the issue, for example Nicholas Stern (2006) and William Nordhaus (2007); in Australia, Ross Garnaut3 is currently undertaking a similar analysis. These persons, and many other public commentators and politicians as well, have indicated that they accept that there is a scientific consensus that dangerous, human-caused global warming is occurring, as set by the views and advice of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The IPCC is the United Nations body whose first chairman, John Houghton, wrote in 1994 that ‘unless we announce disasters, no one will listen’. From that point forward, it was obvious that IPCC pronouncements needed to be subjected to independent critical analysis; in fact, the opposite has happened, and increasingly the world’s press and politicians have come to treat IPCC utterances as if they were scribed in stone by Moses. This is a reflection, first, of superb marketing by the IPCC and its supporting cast of influential environmental and scientific organisations; second, of strong media bias towards alarmist news stories in general, and global warming political correctness in particular; and, third, of a lack of legislators and senior bureaucrats possessed of a sound knowledge of even elementary science, coupled with a similar lack of science appreciation throughout the wider electorate – our societies thereby becoming vulnerable to what can be termed ‘frisbee science’, i.e. spin.

Having decided around the turn of the 20th century that ‘the science was settled’, for the IPCC said so, politicians in industrialized societies and their economic advisors started to implement policies that they assured the public would ‘stop global warming’, notably measures to inhibit the emission of the mild greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. However, the acronym GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) that has long been applied to computer modelling endeavours applies also to economic studies that purport to give policy advice against the threat of future climate change. For the reality is that no-one can predict the specific way in which climate will change in the future, beyond the general statement that multi-decadal warming and cooling trends, and abrupt climatic changes, are all certain to continue to occur. It is also the case that the science advice of the IPCC is politically cast, and thereby fundamentally flawed to a degree that makes it unsuitable for use in detailed economic forecasting and policy creation.

This is why Stern’s work, for example, has been able to be so severely criticized on both scientific and economic grounds (Carter et al. 2007; Tol 2006).
Richard Lindzen of MIT famously remarked of global warming alarmism a few years ago that ‘The consensus was reached before the research had even begun’. Another distinguished natural scientist, the late Sir Charles Fleming from New Zealand, made a similarly prescient statement when he observed in 1986 that ‘Any body of scientists that adopts pressure group tactics is endangering its status as the guardian of principles of scientific philosophy that are
worth conserving’. These quotations are apposite, because pressure-group tactics in pursuit of a falsely claimed consensus have become the characteristic modus operandi of the IPCC-led global warming alarmism that now surrounds us at every turn. The paper can be downloaded from the site of the Journal of the Economic Society of Australia (Queensland) here. Click on Bob Carter’s paper.

Maybe there is some hope for SC24 ramping up this year yet. This appears to be the largest SC24 spot to date. Previous SC24 spots have faded quickly, we’ll see how long this one lasts.

Also, courtesy Basil, a new way to look at sunspot numbers. This is a Morlet wavelet transform of smoothed sunspot numbers (SSN).


Click for the full sized image here.

Time is read along the horizontal axis, and a time scale is drawn across the top of the image.  Frequency is read on the verticle axis.  The scale is 2**x months, where is is 1,2,3..9.  So 2**7 is 128 months.  I’ve drawn lines at approximately 11 yrs, 22 yrs, and 44 yrs.  Amplitude is indicated by color.  The basic 11 year Schwabe cycle is clearly indicated by the red ovals bisected by the line for 11 years.  I’ve noted the Dalton Minimum, which is clearly different in character than the other cycles - with weaker and longer solar cycles.  It is subtle, but you can see the weaker intensity of solar cycles 10-15 compared to solar cycles 16-23 in the weaker color of the earlier cycles.  There is clearly enhanced activity, and of longer duration, at the end of the 20th century.

There is also a weaker, but distinct, level of activity at 22 years, the double sunspot of Hale cycle.  The last three Hale cycles have been stronger than earlier Hale cycles.  There is some indication of a double Hale cycle (~44 years) and at the top of the graph, we’re in Gleissberg cycle territory.

Now, for an interesting observation and speculation, note that at present, which is at the right edge of the chart, from the 11 yr line to the top it is all blue.  There is only one other place on the entire chart where we can draw a vertical line from the 11 yr line to the top without it crossing some portion of color other than blue.  Can you find it?  (It is right at the beginning of Solar Cycle 5, i.e. the Dalton Minimum).  Are we watching the beginning of a new 200 year cycle like what began with the Dalton Minimum in the early 1800’s?  Obviously, no one knows.  But the current transition is certainly unusual, and invites comparison to past transitions. See more of Anthony’s post and the interesting comments here. See in this later post today that the sunspot cluster is already gone, consistent with the sunpots this minimum, small and very short-lived.

Could climate change dull the blazing palette of New England’s fall foliage? The answer could have serious implications for one of the region’s signature attractions, which draws thousands of “leaf peepers” every autumn. Biologists at the University of Vermont’s Proctor Maple Research Center will do some leaf peeping of their own to find out - studying how temperature affects the development of autumn colors and whether the warming climate could mute them, prolong the foliage viewing season or delay it.

Using a three-year, $45,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture grant, they’re planning to measure the color pigments in leaves exposed to varying temperatures in hopes of finding a pattern. The study starts next month, although some experiments are already under way. “It is getting warmer, and people want to know how that’s going to affect this big process that’s so important to us,” said research associate Abby van den Berg.

The three-week period of peak foliage color - usually from the end of September to mid-October - is among the busiest of the year for Vermont tourism, bringing in an estimated $364 million, according to state officials. It’s also an important time for tourism in the other New England states.

“It’s a critical season for us,” said Allison Truckle, owner of Tucker Hill Inn, in Waitsfield, which does about 40 percent of its business in autumn. Many variables go into triggering leaf color, but for now the research will focus on temperature. The experiment is starting with the researchers’ assumption that the brilliant colors are promoted by cold nights followed by warm, sunny days.

In previous years, the University of Vermont research center found a link between the amount of stress on sugar maples during the growing season - marked by a lower level of nitrogen in leaves - and the onset and amount of red in the leaves. “So trees that were experiencing a little more stress tended to start turning color a little earlier and making more red,” van den Berg said. Van den Berg says she’s noticed that in warmer autumns, brilliance is muted in some places. But she tries not to put too much stock in what she sees from place to place.

“It’s always great. It can be peak in different places at the same time so you just drive around and you hit all these different pockets of the landscape, so it’s always fabulous,” she said. Read more here.