By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent, UK Telegraph
Britain’s wind farms have stopped working during the cold snap due to lack of wind, it has emerged, as scientists claimed half the world’s energy could soon be from renewables. The Met Office said there has been an unusually long period of high pressure across the UK for the last couple of weeks, causing the cold snap and very little wind.
Since Boxing Day much of the country has suffered sub-zero conditions with frozen rivers and lakes and even the sea in the south of England, at Sandbanks in Dorset. In the last few days temperatures in southern England plunged as low as 17.6F (-8C). However the weather is expected to warm up over the weekend, with wind speeds also picking up. But sources in the energy industry say that the lack of wind has caused the country’s wind farms to grind to a halt when more electricity than ever is needed for heating, forcing the grid to rely on back up from fossil fuels or other renewable energy sources.
In the long term, experts fear that the intermittent nature of wind will force the UK to rely on insecure energy supplies, for example gas from Russia, and are calling for a greater energy mix including controversial nuclear and coal-fired power stations. The continuing row between Russia and the Ukraine over gas supplies mean that Moscow cut supplies to the rest of Europe, sparking shortages that have hit 18 countries so far.
John Constable, research director at the Renewable Energy Foundation, said wind has been generating at a sixth of total capacity for much of the last couple of weeks, dropping to almost zero at times. “This shows that wind provides very little firm, reliable capacity,” he said. “At times of high demand in cold weather there is a tendency for there to be no wind.” Power generator E.On said wind energy supplies have dipped 60 per cent in the last couple of weeks, when compared to the last fortnight in December.
A spokesman said: “As a country we need to keep the lights on, reduce our environmental impact, and do that in the most affordable way for our customers. Sadly there is no single miracle cure to do that. “Renewables, such as wind, have a big part to play now and in the future but in order to guarantee a secure electricity supply it’s clear we need a mix of power stations including cleaner coal, new nuclear and gas.”
Europe has pledged to source 20 per cent of energy from renewable sources by 2020. Dr Constable said the current crisis in European gas supplies highlighted the danger of relying on an energy supply that needs to be backed up with other sources and called for a mix of alternatives. “At the moment it is not a problem because we have supplies of oil and gas from the North Sea but when we go 11 years down the line when we have 20 per cent from renewables and we have a similar weather pattern then we have a problem.” However advocates of renewables said the intermittent nature of wind will not be a problem in the long run because supplies could be shared worldwide, enabling a constant source of energy. Read more here.
Icecap Note: Last winter when a “blue norther” brought cold into Texas, which relies increasingly on high plains wind power for electricity, electric heat and furnaces kicked on for heat. As high pressure settled in and winds went calm, lights and furnaces went quiet. Wind and solar are not reliable and must always have a ready back-up or needs to be accepted as only a part of solution that uses multiple sources including nuclear, hydro, natural gas/oil/clean coal generation.
EPW Minority Blog Press Release
Senator Presents Groundbreaking Senate Minority Report of More Than 650 Scientists Dissenting from Climate Fears and Profiles Left of Center Scientists & Environmental Activists Who Are Now Skeptics.
U.S. Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, today delivered a global warming speech entitled: “Global Warming ‘Consensus’ in Freefall: More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims.” Inhofe presented his ground breaking new global warming report detailing the More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims to Congress on the Senate Floor.
Inhofe also detailed the growing number of left of center scientists and environmental activists who are speaking out to reject man-made climate fears.
Selected Highlights of Inhofe’s Speech:
Inhofe: Many politically left-of-center scientists and environmental activists are now realizing that the so-called “consensus” on man-made global warming is not holding up. The left-wing blog Huffington Post surprised many by featuring an article on January 3, 2008 by Harold Ambler, demanding an apology from Gore for promoting unfounded global warming fears. The Huffington Post article accused Gore of telling, “the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of humankind,” because he claimed the science was settled on global warming. The Huffington Post article entitled “Mr. Gore: Apology Accepted” adds, “It is Mr. Gore and his brethren who are flat-Earthers,” not skeptics. Again, it is not Jim Inhofe saying this about Gore, it is the left-wing blog Huffington Post saying these things. The Huffington Post article continues, “Let us neither cripple our own economy by mislabeling carbon dioxide a pollutant nor discourage development in the Third World, where suffering continues unabated, day after day.”
Another left-of-center atmospheric scientist who has dissented on man-made climate fears is the UK’s Richard Courtney. Courtney, a UN IPCC expert reviewer and a UK-based climate and atmospheric science consultant, is a self-described socialist who also happens to reject man-made climate fears. Joining Courtney are many other progressive environmentalist scientists:
Former Greenpeace member and Finnish Scientist Dr. Jarl R. Ahlbeck, a lecturer of environmental technology and a chemical engineer at Abo Akademi University in Finland who has authored 200 scientific publications, is also skeptical of man-made climate doom. Ahlbeck wrote in 2008, “Contrary to common belief, there has been no or little global warming since 1995 and this is shown by two completely independent datasets. But so far, real measurements give no ground for concern about a catastrophic future warming.”
Life-long liberal Democrat Dr. Martin Hertzberg, a retired Navy meteorologist with a PhD in physical chemistry, also declared his dissent of warming fears in 2008. “As a scientist and life-long liberal Democrat, I find the constant regurgitation of the anecdotal, fear mongering clap-trap about human-caused global warming to be a disservice to science,” Hertzberg wrote. Read Full Speech Section Here: Politically Left Scientists Now Rejecting Climate Fears.
By Robert L. Bradley, Houston Chronicle
The new century has cooled the case for climate alarmism. Global warming has stalled - not accelerated as expected. Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere have increased, but temperatures have been flat for the last eight years and have slightly fallen since 1998’s El Nino-driven temperature spike. If the cool-off continues until 2015, as could be the case according to a study published in Nature magazine, we will have had a see-saw of global warming (1900-45), global cooling (1945-75), global warming (1975-98), and flatness (1998-2015). Where does all of this leave us coming out of the Little Ice Age that ended in the mid-18th century — and after a century of greenhouse gas buildup in the atmosphere? Today’s temperature is about 1 degree Fahrenheit warmer, and in a naturally warmer climate cycle. Compare this to Al Gore’s scary talk about an 11-degree man-made temperature rise this century under business as usual. One decade does not end the debate. But it is yet another data point against treating carbon dioxide as a pollutant and stringently regulating today’s consumer-chosen energy economy. And it explains the desperation of those who accuse critics of climate catastrophism as being “deniers” (as in Holocaust deniers) and “flat earthers.”
Of course the climate is changing - always has and always will - and there may very well be a distinct human influence on climate. Carbon dioxide is a warming agent, as are the other greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere from human activities. But the good news is that so far the observed climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases is much less than what some climate models predict. And the news gets better. A moderately warmer and wetter world, natural or man-made, coupled with the carbon dioxide fertilization effect on plants and agriculture, has distinct benefits, not just costs. As a climate specialist at the U.S. Department of Interior has calculated, a 600-fold increase in carbon dioxide emissions in the last two centuries has accompanied an eight-fold increase in population, a 75-fold rise in manufacturing and a 60-fold increase in global economic output. This is why climate economists are much more optimistic than many climate scientists about the future of climate and the economy.
The retreating climate scare has direct policy implications for the new Congress and the Obama administration. The federal deficit should not be swelled by quixotic “green jobs” - public-works programs justified as a “climate policy.” Wind and solar power are the least efficient energies and translate into more cost and less reliability for energy users. Rationing carbon dioxide via a cap-and-trade program is all pain and no gain. And blocking increased access to public lands for oil and gas drilling as a climate policy throws away an economic stimulus that would actually raise revenue for the U.S. Treasury and would help consumers worldwide. The 20-year climate alarm has run into a much needed reality check. Real problems must be addressed instead of speculative ones. One hopes that President-elect Obama is not a puppet on the alarmists’ string, for economic recovery requires free-market energy, not inferior politically chosen energy.
Bradley is chairman and founder of the pro-free-market Institute for Energy Research in Houston, is author of “Climate Alarmism Reconsidered” and, most recently, “Capitalism at Work: Business, Government, and Energy.”