A recent bit of news from Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) suggests that James Lovelock, the scientist behind the Gaia theory of Earth and its life systems, might have a point when he criticises most renewable energy sources as inefficient at best and foolish at worst.

In its latest interim management statement, issued this week, SSE reported that “weather conditions” during April, May and June contributed to a full 30 per cent drop in electricity output from its wind farms, hydroelectric facilities and Slough biomass heat and power plant. Output from those sources fell to 700 gigawatt-hours during that period, compared to the 1,000 gigawatt-hours generated during the last quarter of 2009.

While SSE didn’t elaborate on those “weather conditions,” one factor certainly had to be the fact that the first half of 2010 saw the “driest first six months of the year for 100 years,” according to the UK’s Met Office. And, as the climate continues changing, Britain can expect that type of situation to become more common, the agency warns. Icecap Note: Last two summers were cold and wet and last winter coldest since 1962/63 in Scotland, since 1977/78 in England. But that was all, we were told, weather not climate

If hydroelectric power sources are threatened by climate change, wind energy’s greatest shortcoming is its great variability, Lovelock warns in his latest book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia:

“Used sensibly, in locations where the fickle nature of wind is no drawback, it is a valuable local resource, but Europe’s massive use of wind as a supplement to baseload electricity will probably be remembered as one of the great follies of the twenty-first century...,” he writes.

Lovelock argues the only clean energy sources that make sense for society are nuclear and solar thermal energy. All the rest aren’t viable without heavy injections of government subsidies and green cheerleading, he says.

Lovelock acknowledges he sometimes takes a bit of hyperbolic licence to make his points - as when he warned that global warming will lead to a die-off of billions of humans this century, resulting in only a “few breeding pairs of people” left in the Arctic. But does he have a point here? Is the bit of news from SSE a warning sign that we’d be better off by aggressively developing nuclear and concentrating solar power (such as that proposed in the Desertec project), and forgetting more intermittent clean-energy sources?

It is still quite cold in the Arctic, with below normal air temperatures and sea surface temperatures surrounding the ice pack between around 2-4C. Much of that has to do with meltwater. I’ve added this image to our new WUWT Sea Ice Page tonight.

Source here.

But looking at another product from the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) there’s an indication of even colder temperatures, now hitting the freezing line in the middle of the Arctic summer.

While this most certainly could be a temporary blip, it seems the temperature in the arctic above 80N as calculated by DMI has steadily declined and hit 0C a bit early (just past midway) in the Arctic melt season.

See the graph below:

Source here.

Here’s the 3x magnified view of the top of the graph:

Much of the melt season so far has been below the green “normal climate” line. While it is just another data point (i.e. weather) , it is a curious and interesting development worth watching. The past few days melt has been accelerating, a bit, but with a dropping Arctic core temperature it would seem to suggest perhaps this is limited to some traditional melt zones for this time of year, such as near the Chukchi sea.

Look for more in WUWT Sea Ice News #15 this weekend.

See WUWT’s new sea ice page here. See Antarctic come close to 2007 record high below. Enlarged here.

With its frank ‘thumbs down’ to ‘whitewash’ inquiry into the Climategate scandal is international science magazine sensing a climate paradigm shift?

Popular international science magazine, New Scientist has appeared to give support to the claim that a recent official inquiry into the Climategate scandal may rightly be dismissed as a ‘whitewash.’ The change in tone from the usually emollient journal has some commentators foretelling a growing loss of faith in the science behind the global warming scandal.

Climategate caught media attention as it appeared to show damning revelations of alleged misconduct by a clique of researchers at the UK’s University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) indicated by leaked emails in November 2009.

The clique were accused of fudging international temperature data to make the late 20th century appear to be an era of dangerous human-induced global warming. Subsequently, three official British inquiries have each exonerated the CRU of any wrongdoing.

Under the heading, ‘Without candour, we can’t trust climate science,’ (July 14, 2010), the weekly science magazine that reports on science and technology news for an international English-speaking audience, rebukes the most recent of those three official Climategate inquiries, that of Sir Muir Russell.

Most pointedly, New Scientist (NS) accuses the Muir Russell Inquiry of failing to answer the question: “How can we know whether CRU researchers were properly exercising their judgment?”

‘Hardcore Doubt’ About Climategate Inquiry Outcome

The London-based publication accuses Sir Muir Russell of a “failure to investigate whether emails were deleted to prevent their release under freedom of information laws.” Such a failure, they argue “makes it harder to accept Russel’s conclusion that the “rigour and honesty” of the scientists concerned “are not in doubt."”

Aussie Skeptic Attacks Climate Data Fraud

Climate skeptic, Malcolm Roberts, mounts a lucid rebuttal of the man-made global warming theory in his publication, ‘Two Dead Elephants in Parliament.’ Quick to pick up on the significance of New Scientist’s apparent move away from a posture sympathetic to established views, climate science blog, WattsUpwithThat ( WUWT), publishes its own take (July 19, 2010) commenting, “...we have the New Scientist, shocking warmists and skeptics alike with some hardcore doubt about the outcome of the Muir-Russell and other Climategate inquiries.”

The London-based publication is regarded as the most widely read news journal for scientists with seperate U.S. and Australian editions as well as a British version that has weekly sales of 170,000.

In its anonymous editorial NS adds, “But what happened to intellectual candour - especially in conceding the shortcomings of these inquiries and discussing the way that science is done. Without candour, public trust in climate science cannot be restored, nor should it be.”

Russell Inquiry ‘Left Stones Unturned’

The editorial accuses Sir Muir Russell’s team of leaving “stones unturned.”

The inquiry is also scolded for deciding against any detailed analysis of all the 1,000+ emails leaked onto the blogosphere in November 2009. Indeed, NS points out the Russell Inquiry examined only “three instances of possible abuse of peer review, and just two cases when CRU researchers may have abused their roles as authors of IPCC reports.”

In pulling no punches the inquiry is condemned for not having studied any of the hundreds of thousands more unpublished emails not leaked from the CRU Internet servers. The NS laments, “Surely openness would require their release.”

New Scientist: the ‘Ideas Magazine’

When accused in 2006 by science fiction writer Greg Egan of possessing “a sensationalist bent and a lack of basic knowledge by its writers” the magazine’s then editor, Jeremy Webb, was quickly on the defensive describing NS as “an ideas magazine - that means writing about hypotheses as well as theories.”

As may be seen by the reaction to the editorial, some observers perceive a ‘first step’ towards a paradigm shift away the global warming theory by the staff of NS. The greenhouse gas theory has been the subject of several high profile refutations in recent months by self-proclaimed ‘denier,’ Alan Siddons and other eminent international climate researchers.

Aside from the commentary of former meterologist and climate analyst, Anthony Watts at WUWT, other climate skeptic blogs have given a curt reaction. Bishop Hill appending the following NS quote, “Without candour, public trust in climate science cannot be restored, nor should it be,” with a solitary: “Yup.”

While another respected climate analyst, Canadian professor, Ross McKitrick of the Department of Economics, University of Guelph, Ontario, in the National Post (July 17, 2010), points to the dubious claims that the Russell Inquiry panel was ‘independent.’

McKitrick cites the fact that of the five panellists, one had to resign after giving a radio interview exonerating the scientists before the investigation began. Another is the vice-president of BP, formerly in charge of Gulf of Mexico drilling, who could not possibly have devoted his attention to the CRU investigation and “The panellist who guided the inquiry was Geoffrey Boulton, who spent 18 years at the University in the department under investigation.”

With evident cynicism McKitrick also points out that the inquiry held no hearings, only interviewed the clique of accused scientists and declined to consult any critics.

References:

Bishop Hill.com ,’New Scientist on Russell,’ (July 18, 2010), accessed: July 20, 2010.

McKitrick, R., ‘Global warming skepticism well justified,’ (July 17, 2010), National Post, (accessed online: July 20, 2010).

New Scientist, ‘Without candour, we can’t trust climate science,’ (July 14, 2010), Magazine issue 2769, (accessed online July 20, 2010).

WattsUpWithThat.com, ‘Bonus Quote of the Week: The New Scientist rocks our world,’ ( July, 19, 2010), accessed: July 20, 2010.
Read more at Suite101: Does New Scientist foresee Paradigm Shift on Climate Theory?

From Alan at Appinsys, who emails that he was inspired by this story on WUWT: A spot check on NOAA’s “hottest so far” presser

“NOAA: June, April to June, and Year-to-Date Global Temperatures are Warmest on Record”

The following figure from NOAA shows the temperature anomaly of January - June 2010 compared to the 1971-2000 base period for 5x5 degree grids.

The problem with the above map: data quality and data manipulation.

The following sections provide some spot checks on the areas of the world exhibiting the most warming according to NOAA. The gridded historical data graphs shown in these sections are from the Hadley CRUTEM3 database for January - June. (CRUTEM3 uses a 1961-1990 base period whereas the NOAA data above is for a 1971-2000 base period. This simply shifts the anomalies on the vertical scale, but does not affect the relative trends.)

It is clear from the following sections that NOAA performs manipulations to create false impressions from the data, including assigning temperature increases were there is zero data.

Spot Check - Northern Africa

It is apparently much hotter than usual in the Sahara. But where is the data? Several of the 5x5 degree grids have zero stations (indicated by the black arrows). Many of the others have one station with very limited historical data. There seems to be an inverse correlation between the number of stations and warming - more stations in a 5x5 degree grid and less warming is observed.

The map figure above shows the location of stations in the NOAA GHCN database (blue G or green B icons) and the red 5x5 icon indicates whether data exists in the Hadley CRUTEM3 database - a 5x5 degree gridded database used by IPCC (plotted here).  The grid lines are 5×5 degree grids.

In many of the 5x5 degree grids showing 4 degrees warming according to the NOAA map, there are only one or two stations. The figure below shows some of the “hot-spots” in the NOAA map displaying January - June average temperature anomaly from the Hadley CRUTEM3 database for 1900 - 2009. In no cases is the warming close to what NOAA indicates.

There is a severe problem with lack of historical data in Africa as well as lack of coverage and gaps in the data. NOAA’s algorithms spread the low quality data across areas that have no data as well as showing warming that isn’t really there.

One must really question the NOAA data when even the areas with many stations seem misrepresented. The following figure shows the area of eastern Turkey which has many stations and shows no warming in Jan-Jun through 2009, but suddenly according to NOAA has 4 degrees in 2010.

Spot Check - Greenland

It is apparently much hotter than usual in Greenland. But where is the data? Most of the 5x5 degree grids have zero stations (only some of which are indicated by the black arrows). Most of the grids with data have one station. The two hottest spots on the NOAA Greenland area show 5 degrees warming and have no data.

Some of the Greenland stations have long-term data. The figure below shows some of the “hot-spots” (that actually have data) in the NOAA map displaying January - June average temperature anomaly from the Hadley CRUTEM3 database for 1900 - 2009.

Spot Check - Canada

It is apparently much hotter than usual in Greenland. But where is the data? Most of the 5x5 degree grids have zero stations (only some of which are indicated by the black arrows). Most of the grids with data

Read more and see full size images here.

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See Watts Up with that’s new sea ice tracking page here. See where the first part of July has seen the lowest ice melt of the last 8 years in the JAXA record here.

The scientific accuracy of the United Nations’ climate change reports are coming under fire again. In a scandal that dates back to January and was dubbed Amazongate at the time, it has been confirmed that claims of the Amazon burning up due to climate change were sexed-up and pulled from activist literature.

The 2007 UN report on climate change, the one that has helped guide government efforts to spend billions of dollars to combat global warming, claimed that “Up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation.” The real report, drawn from a website and paid for by pressure group the World Wildlife Fund, says something quite different.

While the UN reports are often described as scientific and peer-reviewed, this claim of the Amazon being at high risk originated on a website of a Brazilian advocacy group. The original claim read that “Probably 30 to 40% of the forests of the Brazilian Amazon are sensitive to small reductions in the amount of rainfall.”

The World Wildlife Fund says it cannot be held responsible for how the UN climate change group used its data.

So far no one seems to be able to say how a report that claimed parts of the Brazilian rainforest “probably” are “sensitive” was hyped to make things sound more dire.

Professor Ross McKintrick says no one should be surprised that such mistakes end up in these massive reports.

“The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) doesn’t have the internal rigour that one would expect of it,” said McKintrick from his office at the University of Guelph. “Nothing is in the process to prevent activist rhetoric from appearing.” McKintrick, who teaches environmental economics and has had his own battles with the accuracy of climate change reports, says the calculations used in the UN reports are often not checked for accuracy and even the much-vaunted peer-review process does not guarantee that the information used is correct.

Amazongate is not the only claim that relies on information from activist groups.

Toronto author Donna Lafamboise recently led a team of citizen auditors through the 2007 climate change report and found heavy use of reports from Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund. That report is published at noconsensus.org.

Laframboise says Greenpeace was cited at least eight times and the WWF at least nine times, despite both groups having clearly stated activist goals when it comes to climate change.

“This is shocking in a report that the public has been told relies solely on peer-reviewed research published in scientific journals,” said Laframboise.

The UN has appointed a team of academic experts to give advice on how to avoid these mistakes in the future, but McKintrick says the UN isn’t really serious about changing anything.

He points out that the authors for the next massive climate change report have already been chosen and many were part of the last error-riddled effort.

Work has also already begun on the follow-up to Copenhagen; climate experts will try to hash out a new climate deal in Cancun, Mexico, in November. Read more here.

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Carbon Cycle Data Casts Doubt On Climate Models
By Dr. David Whitehouse

Many factors and feedback mechanisms are involved in the climatic response to increasing carbon dioxide levels. The uncertainties in these effects, and our general ignorance, make it almost impossible to predict what will happen to the Earth’s ecosystems as temperature increases. This has not stopped some predicting on the basis of climate models that the world will get drier as the temperature increases and for example, as a consequence, the Amazon rain forest will die and be replaced by savannah or bare earth.

For years, there has been debate about the effect of air temperature on global respiration - or the accumulated metabolic processes of organisms that return carbon dioxide to the atmosphere from Earth’s surface. It’s vital to understand this process if we are to have any ability to predict what may happen if the global temperature rises in the future. But how does the global carbon cycle react to global warming?

Most studies suggest that ecosystem respiration around the world is highly sensitive to increasing temperatures, while the majority of computer climate models suggest otherwise. Studies just published may throw some light on this problem as they suggest that the temperature sensitivity of the natural exhalation of carbon dioxide from ecosystems has been overestimated and needs to be reevaluated.

Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry pooled large amounts of data from FLUXNET - an international initiative established more than 10 years ago to monitor exchanges of carbon dioxide between Earth’s ecosystems and the atmosphere - with remote sensing and climate data from around the world to investigate the spatial distribution of mean annual Earth’s Gross Primary Production (GPP) - which is the total amount of carbon dioxide that terrestrial plants produce each year via photosynthesis - between 1998 and 2006.

FLUXNET involves data from 250 sites around the world. Scientists have strung sensors on high towers above grasslands and forests to record water and carbon dioxide concentrations in the air as well as meteorological data. This enables them to calculate how much carbon dioxide is taken up and released by a certain ecosystem. Satellites provide data about how much light vegetated surfaces absorb. Until such data was available scientists had to use estimates.

The researchers found that the rate at which plants and microorganisms release carbon dioxide changes little with temperature variations. This is in contrast to earlier investigations that suggested a three or fourfold increase in carbon dioxide production at quite modest temperature changes. According to one of the researchers, Markus Reichstein, “Particularly alarmist scenarios for the feedback between global warming and ecosystem respiration thus prove to be unrealistic.”

The measurements also contradict another assumption used in climate models: that the respiration of the ecosystems in the tropics and temperate latitudes is not as temperature sensitive as higher latitudes. This does not seem to be borne out by these FLUXNET observations. “We were very surprised that different ecosystems react relatively uniformly to temperature variations.”

These findings will have implications for predicting the relationship between carbon dioxide balance and global warming. It is currently not possible to predict whether the response between these two factors. According to Reichstein, “The study shows very clearly that we do not yet have a good understanding of the global biogeochemical cycles and their importance for long-term developments.”

A parallel study by Christian Beer from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany, and colleagues looked at the GPP. They estimate that the world’s plant life inhales 123 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide every year.

The study showed that uptake of carbon dioxide is most pronounced in tropical forests, which are responsible for 34 percent of the inhalation of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Savannas account for 26 percent of the global uptake, although they occupy about twice as much surface area as tropical forests.

The study suggests that water is the most important factor that influences photosynthesis. Over 40 per cent of the Earth’s vegetated surface plants photosynthesise more when the supply of water increases. This is a potentially important finding as some climate models appear to overestimate the influence of rainfall on global carbon dioxide uptake.

A curious finding is that it is the temperate grasslands and shrublands that are most affected by water variation and not tropical rain forests. According to Reichstein, “Here too, we need to therefore critically scrutinize the forecasts of some climate models which predict the Amazon will die as the world gets drier.” See more here.
H/T Benny Peiser here.