Cooling Climate

Slowly the Penny Drops

2012-01-21T01:30:00.000-08:00

Institute for the Study of Civil Society

6 January 2011

Media Information:
EMBARGO: 00.01 hrs, Monday 9 January 2012

Wind-power: inordinately expensive and ineffective at cutting CO2 emissions

Energy experts warn that unwarranted support for wind-power is
hindering genuinely cleaner energy

The focus on wind-power, driven by the renewables targets, is preventing Britain

from effectively reducing CO2 emissions, while crippling energy users with additional

costs, according to a new Civitas report. The report finds that wind-power is unreliable

and requires back-up power stations to be available in order to maintain a consistent

electricity supply to households and businesses. This means that energy users pay twice:

once for the window-dressing of renewables, and again for the fossil fuels that the energy

sector continues to rely on. Contrary to the implied message of the Government's approach,

the analysis shows that wind-power is not a low-cost way of reducing emissions.

Electricity Costs: the folly of wind-power, by economist Ruth Lea, uses

Government-commissioned estimates of the costs of electricity generation

in the UK to calculate the most cost-effective technologies. When all costs

are included, gas-fired power is the most cost-efficient method of generating

electricity in the short-term, while nuclear power stations become the most

cost-efficient in the medium-term.

All that wind takes a lot of gas

Wind-power is acknowledged to cost more than traditional fossil fuel power stations

. But estimates from Government-commissioned reports suggest that, when the cost

of CO2 emissions is included, onshore wind-power becomes one of the more

cost-effective means of generating electricity. Offshore wind does not however.

[See p. 12 - p. 23] Unfortunately, these estimates fail to factor in all the costs

of wind-power. These costs are due to the fact that energy output from wind

is unpredictable and rarely occurs in areas of most demand:

... wind-power is unreliable and requires conventional back-up generating

capacity when wind speeds are, for example, very low or rapidly varying... [p. 14]

This means that wind farms need to be supported by conventional capacity

including gas-fired power stations that can be switched on whenever the

available wind fails to match demand for electricity. Lea cites research by

Colin Gibson, former Power Network Director at the National Grid Group,

who has produced some of the most comprehensive estimates for these 'add-on costs'.

When these add-on costs are included, the resultant levelised generating costs

(£ per megawatt hour) for the main electricity generating technologies are, for medium-term projects:

Nuclear pressurised water reactors (PWR): £67.8 per MWh.
Gas-fired combined-cycle gas turbines (CCGT): £96.5 per MWh.
Gas CCGT with carbon capture and storage (CCS): £102.6 per MWh.
Coal (ASC) with CCS: £111.9 per MWh.
Advanced supercritical (ASC) coal-fired power plants: £133.2 per MWh.
Onshore wind: £146.3 per MWh (including 'add-on costs' of £60 per MWh).
Offshore wind: £179.4 per MWh (including 'add-on costs' of £67 per MWh).

(Note: one megawatt hour can run approximately 1000 desktop computers for 8 hours)

The most cost-effective technologies are nuclear and gas-fired. Onshore, and especially

offshore, wind technologies are inordinately expensive.

Pumping out more CO2

Besides the prohibitive costs, the report shows that wind-power, backed by

conventional gas-fired generation, can emit more CO2 than the most efficient gas
turbines running alone:

In a comprehensive quantitative analysis of CO2 emissions and wind-power,

Dutch physicist C. le Pair has recently shown that deploying wind turbines on

"normal windy days" in the Netherlands actually increased fuel (gas) consumption,

rather than saving it, when compared to electricity generation with modern high-

efficiency gas turbines. Ironically and paradoxically the use of wind farms therefore

actually increased CO2 emissions, compared with using efficient gas-fired combined

cycle gas turbines (CCGTs) at full power. [p. 30]

This means that the cost of having wind is not just carried by consumers but by the

environment as well.

Caught in a cross-wind

The report explains how two competing environmental policies have generated a

perverse set of priorities. The renewables targets have forced the energy sector to

focus on more expensive, less reliable power sources, rather than those most likely

to reduce emissions while keeping costs to the rest of economy competitive:

The Climate Change Act 2008 requires that Britain's greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions be cut by 80 per cent by 2050 compared with the 1990 level and
by 34% by around 2020.
The EU's Renewables Directive (2009) commits the UK to sourcing 15% of
final energy consumption (FEC) from renewables by 2020. Renewable energy
sources include wind, hydro and biomass, but not nuclear power. [pp. 4-5]

This means that UK legislation separately specifies an outcome (reduced CO2 emissions)

and a process, more renewable energy.

The outcome itself is substantial and threatens many Britons' standard of life and

employment prospects if not achieved efficiently:

... consultants Redpoint Energy point out "…meeting these targets will mean a

radical change in the way the UK produces and consumes energy over the coming decades." [p. 4]

Unfortunately, the legislated process is ineffective at reaching its supposed outcome.

The result of forcing unreliable renewables on the energy sector is higher costs to

consumers as well as more CO2 emissions than are necessary for maintaining the

electricity grid.

One outcome of this micro-managed approach is that commercial and public sector

energy users are, paradoxically, charged under the Climate Change Levy for their

use of electricity generated by nuclear power stations (nuclear plants emit no CO2

after construction). The CCL is designed to encourage greater use of renewable

energy sources even though wind-power can result in higher CO2 emissions than

efficient gas turbines. [pp. 6-7]

The report concludes:

[Wind-power] is expensive and yet it is not effective in cutting CO2 emissions.

If it were not for the renewables targets set by the Renewables Directive,

wind-power would not even be entertained as a cost-effective way of generating

electricity or cutting emissions. The renewables targets should be renegotiated
with the EU. [p. 30]

For more information contact:

Ruth Lea, Director of the Manufacturing Renewal Project, 07800 608 674

Civitas on 0207 799 6677

Notes for Editors

i. Ruth Lea is Director of the Manufacturing Renewal Project at Civitas
and an economic adviser to the Arbuthnot Banking Group.

ii. Electricity Costs: The folly of wind-power is available to download here.

iii. Civitas is an independent social policy think tank. It has no links to any
political party and its research programme receives no state funding.

2011-12-14T00:59:00.001-08:00

Marine Conservation Zones

2011-11-04T14:56:00.001-07:00

NaturalEngland Reference Areas. ( MCZs)

Atthe recent meeting organised by Blakeney Parish Council a partnership approachto resolving the MCZ difficulty was agreed, and Blakeney PC should becongratulated for that result which may lead us out of the Cul-de-sac Natural England have led us into. However,for the reasons why this should not have been necessary in the first place readon.

Amajor frustration I have had over many years working with NaturalEngland and other conservation organisations, has been their failure, refusal onoccasion, to recognise man as a part of North Norfolk’s intertidal area. For them it is as if he were an alien invaderfrom outer space. Humans were in thevanguard of species to re-colonise Britain after the last glaciation retreated,they are indigenous to this environment.

It wasn’tuntil the industrial revolution and it’s subsequent mechanizations that man beganto become a problem in the natural world and has now arguably reached the pointwhere he is throwing the last of his furniture on the fire to keep warm. However, the over-exploitation of the naturalenvironment that is causing so many problems worldwide today didn’t happen onthe north Norfolk coast; outboard motors may have replaced sails and redcutters do now use mechanical cutting machines but otherwise the practices ofthe longshoreman have remained unchanged and in harmony with their environmentfor tens of centuries. People gather samphire today by bending down to pick it, andputting it in a bag, just as our hunter gatherer forbears did when this coastline wasfifty miles or more to the north. The people who work in the intertidal zones areas much a part of it as the seals and the geese. To seek to remove them makesno more sense than attempting to remove those species.

Duringthe very long consultation process undertaken to enable the Wash & NorthNorfolk coast to become a ‘Special Area of Conservation’ (SAC). Natural England werevery reluctant to accept that the people whose livelihoods were made in theintertidal zones did not damage it. The concept of man as the wrecker of the world is deeply embedded intheir thinking. Presumably they would accept that other native peoples, theInuit for example live harmoniously and sustainably with their environments, butcould not accept it on their own doorstep. It wasn’t until the localsthreatened a vote of no confidence in the process, and other pressures wereexerted from above, did they reluctantly allow this self evident statement offact to be included in Regulation 33 (Thestatutory documentation of the SAC).

Reed bedsare a particularly easy to understand example of this obvious truth. A healthyreed bed provides excellent habitat for many species, the Bittern not leastamong them. But if they are not regularly cut they become quickly overgrownwith willow, bramble, and other invasive plants. Mussel beds also createwonderful habitat for birds and marine invertebrates in places which wouldotherwise be almost barren. Clearly without people to create and maintain thesehabitats they would disappear, and the intertidal environment would beimpoverished. So to want to remove them seems perverse.

ThroughoutNatural England’s presentations regarding the currently proposed MCZ’s, theword impact appears on every slide, interference also crops up,but neither ofthese things are happening in the way they imagine. The activities of thelongshore economy benefit the environment on every level, and man’s presencewithin it is as natural as that for every other species. Apart that is fromSpartina Grass which I am just about to come to.

If Natural England wanted toaccount human impacts along this coast they hardly need go out of their owndoor. Years ago one of their precursors in the ‘scientific interferencebusiness’ thought it might be an interesting experiment to introduce SpartinaGrass here. Known now for its capacity to act as anenvironmental engineerit has, since its introduction, completely destroyed the natural evolution ofthe entire saltmarsh coast.

CurrentlyWarham Marsh, the largest tract of un-visited saltmarsh we have here, has just oneaccess point and what do we find there? A large and conspicuous sign erected byNatural England saying ‘WELCOME TO WARHAM MARSH’. A more blatant invitation toinnocent ramblers to wander off and get drowned would be difficult to find.

What this underlines, and why Imention it, is that it illustrates how little Natural England understands, atthe macro level, of the way in which this coast functions. They are excellentat identifying and understanding the detail; the plants, invertebrates and fish fry living inthe tidal pools. But it isthe locals who have historically worked these sites who understand the biggerpicture. That is a why a partnership between them is so important. The biggerpicture involves more than just living things, it also involves thegeomorphology, the history, and the way the landscape responds to the tides andthe weather. It is within the indigenous population that this compositeknowledge resides.

I very much doubt whether NE would put up asign inviting people to enjoy a dangerous place if they knew it wasn’t safe. Theyput the sign up because they didn’t know. If they understood how intricatelythe activities of the longshoremen are bound up within the natural functioning ofthis environment they would not seek to remove them. Because they would knowwhat a vital and fundamental role they play.

Conclusion:

If Net Gain had approached those affected right at the very beginning, perhaps through the SAC Advisory and explained that they were looking for an area of marsh that has little or no human impacts, and would like to have a voluntary agreement with those who work in the surrounding areas, to try and keep it that way for study purposes, they would probably have got it. Those who have always lived and worked these marshes are very possessive of them, and are much more flexible if they feel involved in the how and when of what happens. It may still be possible to achieve this but is now altogether more difficult than it need have been.

Madness on sea:

2011-06-19T02:21:00.000-07:00

At last the damage to our coast is being noticed! DAILY MAIL 18/06/2011

Madness on sea: A massive windfarm is being built off one of our most glorious coastlines and threatens an ecological disaster

By Richard Pendlebury

Last updated at 12:41 AM on 18th June 2011

A typical North Sea summer evening of alternate rain and sun and I am surging across the waves aboard a powerful launch, in the company of five Norwegians.
Three of them are teenage geography students from a high school outside Bergen. They are chaperoned by their teacher Jan; all here to witness their country's latest maritime engineering feat.
In the distance, long lines of yellow stumps emerge from the sea, giving the illusion that the earth really is flat and we are approaching a fence at the end of the world.

Vision of the future: Scroby Sands offshore wind farm in Norfolk, like the one planned for Sheringham Shoal

Up close, the stumps are revealed to be steel towers which loom more than 20 metres above our little craft, like the smoke stacks of so many sinking Titanics. Save, that is, for two of the towers which bear the globular, metallic, electricity substations on top of them weighing 1,000 tonnes each.
In the middle of this futuristic seascape sits a leviathan mother ship, the 14,000-tonne heavy crane vessel Oleg Strashnov, her boom raised more than 100 metres over the swell.
Our guide today is Einar Stromsvag, an affable beanpole of an engineer from a fishing town in the fjords of north-western Norway. Einar is the general manager of Scira Offshore Energy, a joint venture company formed by the global energy giants Statoil and Statkraft, both of which are majority-owned by the Norwegian Government.

What we are inspecting this evening is Einar's baby; Scira's £1 billion flagship project. Covering 14 square miles on completion, it will be the world's second-largest offshore windfarm.
Hundreds of men, mostly Scandinavian but also Dutch and Belgian, are working aboard the couple of dozen boats and ships of the windfarm's fleet. Some live on a converted Danish ferry, at anchor a mile from the construction site. It frees up the holiday season accommodation ashore 'and keeps the men out of the pubs there', remarks Einar.
Not everyone in the project has to live so monastically, however. Einar, for example, is living in a cottage in one of the prettiest coastal villages. And the previous night I had stayed in a nearby hotel, in which the rest of the windfarm management occupy a whole wing.
A member of staff told me that the hotel, the largest in this popular holiday town, is sometimes more than half full of Norse maritime engineers. Yet we are not off Bergen, Stavanger or Tromso. Nor even Northern Scotland. This is the Sheringham Shoal, and some 10 miles to the south, the coast of North Norfolk — granted heritage status — can be seen quite clearly.

Outstanding natural beauty: Sunrise on a misty morning at Holkham Bay on the North Norfolk Coast

What a transformation! This was the empty seascape of my childhood holidays, themselves a legacy of my grandfather's wartime service in RAF Coastal Command. Four generations of the family have fallen in love with this Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty: it is utterly English, wonderfully austere.
And for the moment it remains a precious environment; its many nature reserves are home to rare migrational sea birds and seals, as well as myriad flora along the sand dunes, pine woods and salt marshes.
But now, where the sea meets the sky there is no longer the seamless grey of old. Gargantuan machines are driving piles 30 metres into the seabed as 90 towers rise just below the horizon, as seen from the shore.
The turbines atop them — the first is due to be installed this week and will measure 130 metres high from the sea surface to the tip of one of its three 52-metre blades — will supposedly power our toasters, washing machines and other gadgets for decades to come.
Scira says the farm will power the equivalent of 220,000 average households and save almost 500,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions annually. The first power will be produced later this summer, running through some 40 km of offshore and onshore cable to a sub-station in rural Norfolk. From there, it will enter the National Grid.
It will form part of the Coalition Government's forceful championing of renewable energy — David Cameron has committed the UK to producing 20 per cent of our energy from renewable resources by 2020. The electricity companies are obliged by law to work towards this goal — only we do not appear to have the technological know-how to do it for ourselves.
So the gusts that blow with such vigour off the Norfolk coast are now being harnessed by Norwegians, using German, Dutch and Danish machinery, then sold on to French electricity distribution giant EDF before finally being bought by the British consumer — at considerable mark-up, of course.
Scira has the lease on the seabed beneath or around here for the next 50 years and is looking to build an even bigger turbine field some miles to the north of Sheringham, along the Dogger Bank. The size of North Yorkshire, if approved, it is said. Several other companies or conglomerates are vying to build more windfarms round here. The Crown Estate, which owns the seabed off the UK coast, is considering leases for fields which would dwarf the one at Sheringham Shoal.

New Viking invasion: Villages in Norfolk - Cley Next the Sea, Blakeney and Holt are particularly pretty and popular

No wonder it is being described as the New Klondike. But the question is: should it be there at all?
The journey to the heart of New Klondike takes you from the seaside town of Sheringham, with its famous steam railway and 'afternoon tea dances', along one of the most exquisite coastal roads in England.
You pass by the picturesque but obsolete wooden windmill at Weybourne, below which the windfarm cable comes ashore, through Stiffkey on the creek-ridden salt marshes and into the town of Wells-next-the-Sea. Horatio Nelson's birthplace, the village of Burnham Thorpe, is a few miles beyond.
In my childhood, Wells was the charming, if ever-so-slightly-shabby, town in a genteel coast dotted with flint cottages and stately homes. Wells lifeboat station sits at the end of the narrow channel which winds through sand bars from the open sea to the town's small inner harbour. I remember during my childhood trudging past it lugging windbreakers for family picnics on the beach.
Recently the landscape has been radically altered. Scira has dredged a new 'Outer Harbour' by the lifeboat station. Its fleet of 12 staff transfer vessels, supply and survey boats are moored alongside new pontoons.
The centre of operations for this activity is to be found in a former school house in the centre of Wells.
On a large electronic wall screen in the control room, 29 vessels and 535 Scira workers are being plotted by a Viking-haired man called Bjorn.
His computer mouse flicks on to a shape that represents one Scira boat. Immediately it shows there are three people on board. Another click gives their names, blood groups, next of kin etc. Very impressive.
Bjorn is a maritime engineer. He would like to drive 'a bloody great dredger' through the notorious sandbar at the end of Wells harbour, but that wouldn't be very popular — Scira is careful to keep in with the locals.
Hundreds of thousands of pounds is being thrown at various community projects along the Heritage Coast; the latest tranche of largesse is some £7,000 to be divided among a community centre in the pretty Georgian town of Holt, near to which the onshore cable trench is being dug, a nursery in Sheringham and a National Coastwatch Station at Mundesley.
Forty local jobs will also, eventually, be created by the Norwegian project. But much of the work is being done elsewhere.
The German engineering giant Siemens not only built the turbines, blades and towers at its facilities in Denmark, but also has the contract for their maintenance. The offshore cables are Norwegian manufactured. The piles for the towers come from Germany, Holland and Belgium. At least the two 1,000-tonne offshore substations were manufactured in Hartlepool.
What we do have to offer in Britain, as an island in the North Atlantic, is a lot of wind and sea.
Scira says the UK coastal waters have around 40 per cent of Europe's entire wind resources. Indeed, we apparently possess the largest shallow-water offshore wind resource in the world. The seabed is easy to drill off Norfolk. The waters are so shallow that even even 10 miles offshore the water is only 20 metres deep.
'If you went that far off Stavanger in Norway, you would find yourself at a depth of 300 metres,' says Einar. 'Then you would be looking at much more complex platforms like oil rigs and not monopiles that we can use here. It would be just too expensive.'
In other words, the windfarms are springing up close to the nature reserves of the east coast because it is the cheapest place to put them.
The higher cost of wind-power electricity compared to that from conventional energy sources is one of the main reservations of those who oppose the New Klondike.

Ecological risks: Seals at Blakeney Point nature reserve on the North Norfolk coast. Some have washed ashore dead since work on the windfarm started

This point is argued by Heritage Coast resident Peter Comins, author of a local newsletter. 'The public is now beginning to realise the considerable amount of infrastructure that is required on land,' he recently wrote. 'All this capital investment has to be paid for. The higher cost is passed to the consumers ... and will become increasingly onerous as we move closer to the 20 per cent target set for 2020.'
In the study of his home, a few miles from where the cables come ashore at Weybourne Hope, he puts it more bluntly: 'The economics don't make sense.' Yet the biggest fear along the coast is the effect the wind turbines' construction and operation will have on its delicate ecosystem.
Scira is treading very carefully. Under the terms of its lease, it is obliged to monitor marine and bird life around the shoal. While many conservation groups support renewable energy, it is a different matter when it is placed in areas like this.
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds initially objected to Sheringham Shoal, claiming that it would have a devastating effect on the internationally important nesting colonies at nearby Blakeney Point and Scolt Head. It withdrew its opposition having received assurances from Scira, but is now facing a proliferation of windfarms nearby.
Toby Gethin, an RSPB casework officer, said: 'We support renewable energy and windfarms. However, they must not be sited in areas where they have an adverse impact on threatened species.

'We support renewable energy and windfarms. However, they must not be sited in areas where they have an adverse impact on threatened species'

RSPB casework officer Toby Gethin

'We have outstanding objections and concerns regarding four further offshore windfarm proposals planned for the Greater Wash because cumulatively they could result in an adverse impact on wildlife.'
Seals have been found dead, perhaps killed by construction boats but no one knows.
Local fishermen, who worked the Sheringham Shoal and are paid 'disruption compensation' during construction, are similarly wary. The National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations said: 'We have not got much choice but to live with the fact the Government has decided to issue licences to build such windfarms and instead try to focus on mitigating the impact of them.
'Only time will tell and that is very worrying.'
Who really knows? Norwegians like Einar can offer experience in oil and gas. But they are windfarm pioneers. They cannot say what impact their turbines will have on the ecosystem, or indeed on our power supplies.
Only this week, it was revealed that windfarms may have to be shut down for 38 days of the year when it gets too windy, because the National Grid cannot cope with a surge in power. And if the wind drops too far, they do not work at all.
But why should the Norwegians who are building the Sheringham Shoal windfarm care about that? Or indeed French giant EDF that will sell the electricity it produces? After all, they're not the ones who live here.

The Answer Isn't Blowing in the Wind

2011-05-07T02:53:00.001-07:00

Because of itsenthusiasm to sign up to poorly thought out climate change policies Britain is nowon course to have the most expensive electricity in the developed world. By 2020 one third of our electricitybills will be made up of green tariffs, (money taken from us and given almostentirely to wind farm constructors). Industry and commerce will pay an evenhigher price.

These costs, as youmay have noticed from your recent electricity bills, have already begun. Between 2002 and 2010 the UKelectricity consumer paid a premium of £5bn over and above the wholesale priceof electricity, almost all of that went to wind farm developers. According to calculations made by theRenewable Energy Foundation the subsidy will grow to a still increasing 6bnby 2020 if the policies we have at the moment are not changed. Most of this will go to offshore andon-shore wind energy companies.

A wind farm enthusiastrecently told me that we have no right to inflict the legacy of nuclear wasteon our grandchildren, but I guess its OK to bankrupt them and sabotage theireconomic competitiveness.

The REF calculatethat, from 2002 to 2020 the scheme will cost around £35bn and that even ifthese policies were cancelled in 2020, the legal obligation for continuedsupport for the wind farms already built would add a further £65bn in thefollowing decade. All of that will be taken from us.

These costs are notobvious like VAT or income tax because the are hidden in our electricity bills,these charges are levied on private households regardless of income whichsuggests to me that they will present a disproportionately large burden for theless well off in our society. Italso of course adds hugely to the cost of everything else that is manufacturedor transported.

These costs wereimposed on us by the last government in its eagerness to conform to the EU’sRenewable Electricity Directive, which was to obtain 10% of electricity fromrenewable sources by 2010. Despite the £5bn subsidy we have significantlyfailed to do this, managing just 6.5% in 2010, which suggests that the 2020targets are wildly optimistic.

Wind farm developers and their supporterscontinually blame what they call ‘Nimbys’ for creating delays through theplanning system, but when you are operating in a world that is insulated from the normal constraints of finance and competition I guessdemocracy might also seem like something you can circumvent; there is however, much more to itthan that. With such vastquantities of easy money available to throw at these schemes and the eagerness of thesepeople to get their hands on as much of it as possible, they are not beingthoroughly thought through. Take Sheringham Shoal for example, at the beginningof 2010 after the initial explorations were complete they arrived to beginconstruction with the Svanen, a floating crane used to construct the Øresund bridge that links Sweden to Copenhagen.

Apart from possibly being the mainculprit in the deaths of many grey and common seals it was also the wrong pieceof equipment for the job, as it was only able to operate in seas with a waveheight of a 1mtr or less. Whichmeant that it spent considerably more time in Yarmouth then it did offSheringham killing seals. I guessit’s an ill wind that blows no good at all.

Decades of oilexploration in the North Sea mean that more research has been carried out herein respect of wave height and wave/tide effect than on any other body of wateron earth, yet still they got it wrong. The upshot of this was that they had to cease operations lastautumn, take the Svanen away and begin construction of a completely new liftplatform in Norway to complete the job. As yet this hasn't appeared and another larger floating crane has arrived on site. Look out for more seal carcasses.

Grid connectionproblems also cause wind farm delays as I guess does the reluctance of bankersto invest money in schemes that are only sustainable through subsidy. Low windconditions, particularly through the very cold weather periods we have hadduring recent winters also contributed to their failing toachieve the required 10% reductions.

Work done by the RenewableEnergy Foundation shows that the 2010 targets would have been missed even ifwind speeds had exceeded the highest annual average over the last ten years.The optimism that thought them attainable in the first place seems to be prettymuch of the kind we get with most wind farm generation predictions.

Wind farmpropagandists make much of the job creation that comes with wind farmdevelopment; apparently the wind farms off north Norfolk have so far created 65new jobs. However, an EUCommission paper released in 2009 showed that the wider economic effects ofthese targets entailed net job losses for the UK. Not difficult to understand, when all the wind farms arecompleted off the north Norfolk coast I believe the job losses in the tourismindustry here will far outweigh anything that wind farms might temporarilycreate.

I have not inventedthis scenario, the facts are out there, they are neither difficult to find orto understand, yet their significance is completely lost (the REF excepted) onthe Green lobby and wind energy supporters. Such facts are obviously unpalatable to the government, whocannot be seen to be making U turns.Somehow the truth of all this must become more widely known. I believe that there is an increasing resistance to wind energy as asolution to reducing our reliance on finite resources, but I seriously doubt itwill gain enough momentum to so slow this money-making gravy train unless there is a sudden and dramatic sea change in public opinion..

Our future like ourlandscape is being sacrificed. I sometimes think that the greater the value of what is beingsacrificed the more heroic these fanatics believethey are!

Not the Only ones

2011-05-05T08:16:00.000-07:00

Scira Offshore Energy Limited have been set back many months as a consequence of selecting the wrong equipment for the construction of Sheringham Shoal wind farm, what their losses are is anybody's guess. It would seem however, that they are not the only ones to catch a cold in this mad rush for easy money.

Fluor

Learns costly EPC lessons

from Greater Gabbard

Long delays and heavy costoverruns at the 504MW Greater Gabbard offshore wind project have taught an“expensive lesson” to engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) giantFluor, and developers Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) and RWE NpowerRenewables.

US engineeringgiant Fluor Corporation says third quarter results will take a hit of $163m, or$0.90 a share, because of estimated cost increases on the Greater GabbardOffshore Wind Project in the UK.

In a statement,Fluor says its full-year earnings will now be between $2.20 and $2.50 a share,versus an earlier estimate of $2.90 to $3.20 a share. It expects to release Q3results by 4 November.

“During thethird quarter, the project experienced a variety of execution challenges,including material and equipment delivery issues, primarily relating to theinstallation of wind turbine generators and subsea cabling,” the company saysin a statement.

Fluor says it revised estimates to includesubstantial costs for additional marine vessels and other subcontractor costsassociated with equipment installation, equipment repairs and the estimatedschedule impact which has been exacerbated by weather-related delays.

“The companyhas taken a number of remedial actions to mitigate further cost escalation anddelays to the schedule,” it adds.

Fluor is themain contractor for the 504MW Greater Gabbard scheme located 23km off theSuffolk coast. Developer Scottish and Southern Energy is thedeveloper in the 50-50 joint venture with RWE.

In 2008, Fluorwas awarded a $1.8bn fixed price contract to construct the wind farm. To date,all 140 monopiles and tower transition pieces have been installed and 53 of 140wind turbine generators are in place.

Installationand commissioning of the remaining wind turbine generators, subsea inter-arraycabling and grid substations are expected to continue through the latter partof 2011. The overall project is expected to be completed in early 2012,according to Fluor.

The project hasexperienced a number of challenges since construction began in late 2008.Through the second quarter of 2010, the company had recorded $202m in claimrevenue relating to costs incurred on a dispute with the joint ventureregarding specifications for monopiles and transition pieces required under thecontract, says Fluor.

Additionalcosts arising from this dispute are expected to be incurred in future quarters.Fluor continues to pursue claims for costs recoverable under the contract, itsays.

Richard A. Kessler (richard.kessler@rechargenews.com)

BBC Bias

2011-02-03T11:10:00.000-08:00

Why is it that the BBC can give extensive and exaggerated coverage of extreme weather events that 'might' be considered to be the result of climate change i.e. the floods and cyclone in Australia whilst totally ignoring this.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41365053/ns/weather/

The BBC is supposed give us unbiased and accurate news, thats what we pay them to do. Instead all we get for our money is sensationalism and propaganda!

This picture shows the Northern Hemisphere as it is at the moment. Click to enlarge

At first glance this image looks like a graphic from a Discovery Channel programme about a distant ice age. But this astonishing picture shows the world as it is today - with half the Northern Hemisphere covered with snow and ice.The image was released by the National Oceanic And Atmospheric Association (NOAA) on the day half of North America was in the grip of a severe winter storm.The map was created using multiple satellites from government agencies and the US Air Force.That Antarctica, the Arctic, Greenland and the frozen wastes of Siberia are covered in white comes as no surprise. But it is the extent to which the line dips down over the Northern Hemisphere that is so remarkable about the image.Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1353073/Winter-storm-Map-shows-Northern-Hemisphere-covered-snow-ice.html#ixzz1CvSav0JD

The Stitch Up

2010-12-16T08:22:00.000-08:00

An investigative journalist with a reputation for uncovering and disseminating the truths and deceits that lie behind western governance has had the good fortune to be handed, what can only be described as a scoop. As any good journalist would he has put it into the public arena, in this case with the collusion of the Guardian, Der Spiegel and The New York Times. While it is questionable whether or not his source Mr. Manning has committed a crime it is fairly clear that he has not.

Had these revelations been about the inner workings of the new coalition and had been leaked to the opposition, they would, as all political parties do, have pounced on them with glee? There are undoubtedly quite legitimate questions as to where the line should be drawn in respect of national security but Mr. Julian Assange, be he the hero or the villain of this piece is being made to pay a heavy price for thinking that Western countries really mean it when they claim that they are committed to press freedom.

All he has done is publish information that the United States of America does not like. Yet we are constantly led to believe that the US is the embodiment of all the fundamental human rights in the UN Charter, including freedom of the press.

Any reasonable person must think that the coincidence of the rape charges and the leaks is suspicious; entrapment is used by many governments to control or smear those they don’t like or want to discredit. Both of the women who Assange is alleged to have raped, publically rejoiced in their relationships with him after the alleged rapes occurred but have subsequently tried to remove those statements from the internet, why?

Both encounters began with their consent and both women claimed that only included the use of condoms because they were worried about the possibility of sexually transmitted disease. Therefore, if they have not been infected and I am sure they will have checked, then they do not have much of a case to bring. Although a high enough financial inducement might persuade them that a small dose of the clap could be a good investment.

It might also occur to some that there is a high probability that intelligence officers (Swedish perhaps, in conjunction with the CIA) might have identified and perhaps approached these women after their encounters and before they made the complaints against Assange.

That the US could do all this is underlined by statements made by some of their leading political figures, Sarah Palin, has called for Mr. Assange to “be hunted down like al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders”. US Senator Joseph I. Lieberman has called for him to be arrested for treason. Bill O'Reilly, a US political commentator has called for him to be executed. When last week, Mr. Assange was arrested in London to face extradition charges, the US Secretary of Defence, Mr. Robert Gates, called it “good news”.

None of us are likely to be much concerned by anything Sarah Palin says, because its for sure she wouldn’t be able to find Julian Assange if he were painted fluorescent pink and blown up to ten times his size, he’s outside Alaska, after all. Mr. Gates however, is another matter, as he is one of the US’s two top defence officials.

What really concerns me however, is how blatantly obvious all of this is, anyone with an IQ above 26 can see what the US are doing and even while they themselves are clearly aware that this is the case they are not being deterred. Up until now most western democracies have, when acting underhandedly, made strenuous efforts to cover their tracks, that the US are not doing so now I find very frightening, its as if they know that the illusion of clean governance is shattered but also realise that it doesn’t matter because there is nothing any of us (except perhaps Julian Assange) can do about it.

Just imagine if anything remotely similar had happened in Iran or China, or Zimbabwe: the US and Europe would have awarded the leaker the Nobel Prize. Just last week, the nations who are chasing Mr. Assange were awarding the Nobel Price to the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, who has been imprisoned in China for inciting subversion. Only when it comes to nuclear weapons are double standards and hypocrisy as blatant as this.

Every nation that subscribes to justice and open democracy will inevitably be judged on their own track record, the USA’s suffered quite a knock with Guantanamo Bay, but this has the potential to be very much worse.

It seems very simple to me (although I have to admit that my IQ is only 38) either we support human rights or we don't; there is no middle way! Such double standards should not go un-challenged.
.

WikiLeaks Intimidation

2010-12-09T01:08:00.001-08:00

Dear friends,

The chilling intimidation campaign against WikiLeaks (when they have broken no laws) is an attack on freedom of the press and democracy. We urgently need a massive public outcry to stop the crackdown -- let's get to 1 million voices and take out full page ads in US newspapers this week!

The massive campaign of intimidation against WikiLeaks is sending a chill through free press advocates everywhere.

Legal experts say WikiLeaks has likely broken no laws. Yet top US politicians have called it a terrorist group and commentators have urged assassination of its staff. The organization has come under massive government and corporate attack, but WikiLeaks is only publishing information provided by a whistleblower. And it has partnered with the world's leading newspapers (NYT, Guardian, Spiegel etc) to carefully vet the information it publishes.

The massive extra-judicial intimidation of WikiLeaks is an attack on democracy. We urgently need a public outcry for freedom of the press and expression. Sign the petition to stop the crackdown and forward this email to everyone -- let's get to 1 million voices and take out full page ads in US newspapers this week!

To access these URL s copy and paste into your browser.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/wikileaks_petition/?vl

WikiLeaks isn't acting alone -- it's partnered with the top newspapers in the world (New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, etc) to carefully review 250,000 US diplomatic cables and remove any information that it is irresponsible to publish. Only 800 cables have been published so far. Past WikiLeaks publications have exposed government-backed torture, the murder of innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, and corporate corruption.

The US government is currently pursuing all legal avenues to stop WikiLeaks from publishing more cables, but the laws of democracies protect freedom of the press. The US and other governments may not like the laws that protect our freedom of expression, but that's exactly why it's so important that we have them, and why only a democratic process can change them.

Reasonable people can disagree on whether WikiLeaks and the leading newspapers it's partnered with are releasing more information than the public should see. Whether the releases undermine diplomatic confidentiality and whether that's a good thing. Whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has the personal character of a hero or a villain. But none of this justifies a vicious campaign of intimidation to silence a legal media outlet by governments and corporations. Click below to join the call to stop the crackdown:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/wikileaks_petition/?vl

Ever wonder why the media so rarely gives the full story of what happens behind the scenes? This is why - because when they do, governments can be vicious in their response. And when that happens, it's up to the public to stand up for our democratic rights to a free press and freedom of expression. Never has there been a more vital time for us to do so.

SOURCES:

Law experts say WikiLeaks in the clear (ABC)
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2010/s3086781.htm

WikiLeaks are a bunch of terrorists, says leading U.S. congressman (Mail Online)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1333879/WikiLeaks-terrorists-says-leading-US-congressman-Peter-King.html

Cyber guerrillas can help US (Financial Times)
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d3dd7c40-ff15-11df-956b-00144feab49a.html#axzz17QvQ4Ht5

Amazon drops WikiLeaks under political pressure (Yahoo)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101201/tc_afp/usdiplomacyinternetwikileakscongressamazon

"WikiLeaks avenged by hacktivists" (PC World):
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/212701/operation_payback_wikileaks_avenged_by_hacktivists.html

US Gov shows true control over Internet with WikiLeaks containment (Tippett.org)
http://www.tippett.org/2010/12/us-gov-shows-true-control-over-internet-with-wikileaks-containment/

US embassy cables culprit should be executed, says Mike Huckabee (The Guardian)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/01/us-embassy-cables-executed-mike-huckabee

WikiLeaks ditched by MasterCard, Visa. Who's next? (The Christian Science Monitor)
http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Horizons/2010/1207/WikiLeaks-ditched-by-MasterCard-Visa.-Who-s-next

Assange's Interpol Warrant Is for Having Sex Without a Condom (The Slatest)
http://slatest.slate.com/id/2276690/

SABLE ISLAND

2010-10-12T00:46:00.000-07:00

More on the Greenland Sharks Story.

BBC Wildlife Magazine Article

Mysterious seal deaths

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There was a big reaction from BBC Wildlife readers following the publication of a story in the October issue on the mysterious, fatal ‘corkscrew’ injuries that have been inflicted on British seals in the past two years.

This was followed by the transmission of a programme on Channel 5 about grey seals off Sable Island (a 44km sandbar about 150km off the coast of mainland Novia Scotia) that were also dying from mysterious ‘corkscrew’ wounds.

The programme, eventually, fingered the Greenland shark, better known as a cold-water Arctic scavenger than a hot-blooded predator.

Were the two cases related? Could Greenland sharks be taking out British seals?

Well, a bit of digging has revealed some interesting facts. First of all, British scientists do not consider the Greenland shark to be a credible answer to the mystery of our seal deaths.

They are only largely found under the polar ice cap, so a migration to the North Sea would take one well out of its usual range.

Second, not everyone agrees that Greenland sharks are behind the Sable Island seal deaths. BBC Wildlife has contacted two scientists who appeared in the Channel 5 film and who are two of the world’s experts on Greenland sharks.

In brief, they don’t believe that Greenland sharks are found around Sable Island, and they don’t see why they should attack and mutilate the seals without then eating them.

But according to Zoe Lucas, a naturalist who lives on Sable Island and the person who has done more than anyone to investigate this issue, Greenland sharks are still top of her agenda, and she and other scientists working on the issue have eliminated ships’ propellers as a possible cause.

You would have thought that it would be easy to determine how such extraordinary wounds are inflicted, but it appears not. In the meantime, BBC Wildlife will keep you up-to-date with any developments.

2. Zoe Lucas

Claims to be a biologist and went to Sable Island to study the horses that live there. In an interview on her work by CBC Television she was asked what she did for a living ( how she sustained herself in such a remote place) clearly she was not funded by a grant from any research establishment. Her reply was as follows.

‘I work as a biologist conducting research and monitoring programs. If by "living" you mean what do I do for income, I conduct environmental monitoring programs for the offshore energy industry’

The offshore industry in question is as follows.

ExxonMobil.

Shell Canada Ltd.

Esso Imperial Oil.

Pengrowth Energy Trust.

Mosbacher Operating Ltd.

These companies form a consortium that operate several gas platforms just offshore from Sable Island ( I didn’t see them in the channel 5 Program did you?) Here is an extract from their web site.

‘The Sable Project is the largest construction project ever undertaken in Nova Scotia. We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished. We’ve established an infrastructure that will be the basis of our production efforts for the future. Those efforts are changing the face of the Nova Scotia economy, and providing an alternative energy resource to consumers throughout the Maritimes and the Eastern United States.

‘The Sable Offshore Energy Project is divided into two 'tiers' of offshore development. The first tier was completed in December 1999 and involved the development of the The baud, North Triumph, and Venture fields, as well as the construction of three offshore platforms, an onshore gas plant and an onshore fractionation plant. Gas production commenced on December 31, 1999. Alma, the first Tier II platform came on stream in late 2003 while production from South Venture, the second field began late in 2004.’

3. Finally an extract from this web site.

These scientists were involved in and clearly misrepresented by the Channel 5 program.

The actual cause of the corkscrew wound is probably mechanical. If this is the case, the culprits are almost certainly dynamic positioning thrusters used by vessels associated with offshore drilling or construction. Such operations are present off all sites reporting corkscrew wounds. Seals are curious creatures often seen diving near shipwrecks and other man-made objects. The powerful suction effect produced by a thruster would easily overpower a seal that got too close. Unlike regular ship propellers that run continuously while a ship is at sea, thrusters operate on a need-only basis and thus turn on and off sporadically.

A curious seal inspecting the intake side of this odd tunnel-like object would have no chance if the power were suddenly turned on. Being sucked into the blades would either slice the hapless seal to death or produce the horrific wounds witnessed at Sable Island and in the UK. Some of the butchered seals may even survive and swim back to the beach to die.

The Greenland shark does leave a trademark wound on its victims but this most certainly isn't it. We therefore believe that corkscrew fatalities at Sable Island and in the UK are in fact unrelated to the Greenland shark.

Human activity is yet again the likely cause for these needless deaths. Who knows how many lifeless bodies didn’t actually make it to shore? Life is dangerous enough for seals without having to deal with giant underwater food processors. If I were a seal, I'd choose the shark. I would at least have a fighting chance to survive, and if I were defeated, my death would serve to sustain a fellow creature of the sea.

Seal Deaths Explained

2010-10-05T13:27:00.000-07:00

After watching the recent Channel 5 program that looked at the seal deaths around Sable Island off the coast of Nova Scotia, I thought that I might respond with a blog. Then because the program’s conclusions were so obviously predetermined and the evidence for the case they were trying to make so flimsy and circumstantial, I decided not to bother.

However, since then a number of people have contacted me who actually seem to have been convinced by it and believe that the seal deaths and mutilations, both there and here on the North Norfolk coast could be caused by Greenland sharks- not North Sea sharks-Greenland sharks. This along with the story appearing on the BBC's Look East News this evening have changed my mind.

I do not think this shark explanation worthy of a lengthy debate, so a short analogy followed by a few facts that have to be reconciled if Greenland sharks are to be held responsible.

I must emphasise this analogy is purely hypothetical; I do not want to upset my farmer friends.

‘New and extremely large combine harvesters are now being used on the wide prairie fields of East Anglia, coincident with their arrival large numbers of mutilated hares start to be found in these same fields, all with very distinctive injuries. The makers of the combine harvesters deny that their machines are responsible, expert investigators think the mutilations may be caused by other machines, like tractors or farm workers bicycles, in fact anything but the newly arrived harvesters.

The injuries that are inflicted are identical with those found in the far north where arctic hares and polar bears coexist. The injuries to the hares there are thought to have been inflicted by Polar bears. Therefore, we can safely assume that the injuries being inflicted to the hares in East Anglia’s fields are also attributable to polar bears’.

This is only slightly more ridiculous than the idea that Greenland sharks are responsible for the recent seal deaths on the North Norfolk coast of England.

Facts that need to be reconciled if the theory that Grenland sharks are responsible is to stand up.
1.
The figures for seal mutilations along the coast of Sable Island over several years amounted to some 5000 in total, if the injuries there are identical to those found here and from what was shown on the program that certainly seemed to be the case, then apart from the spiral cut from nose to tail all the meat on the animals remained intact. Why would hungry sharks attack so many seals and then not consume them?

2.
The injuries on the North Norfolk coast began on a specific date and coincidentally and significantly ceased on another, the day the publicity surrounding the deaths broke. So, a large pod of frenzied Greenland sharks traveled hundreds of miles from their natural habitat to come on a killing spree, then despite having used up large amounts of energy getting here returned without seeking to replenish their reserves on the seal meat their killings had provided?

3.
Greenland sharks like the Great White have never been reported in the southern North Sea, they are slow moving cold-water scavengers and opportunist feeders, the seal deaths around Sable Island are difficult to explain but Greenland sharks are probably the least likely culprits. The injuries there as here are clearly commensurate with some kind of large ducted propeller. The owners of vessels that have these things are usually large multi-national organisations that are too just big to be brought to book (BP excepted). So instead of a just and sensible result 'that just might' ensure that no more seals are killed in this terrible way we get a load of pseudo-scientific nonsense and more worryingly, a willingness by some to accept it.

4. Those who believe in Global Warming (I suspect they are also likely to believe this fairy tale) will tell you that the North Sea is getting warmer, conditions hardly likely to induce a cold water species like the Greenland shark to venture south.

What is needed here is a conclusive explanation and today it was given to me.

While enjoying my morning swim in the sea today I was startled by an enormous submarine surfacing just offshore. A heavily braided officer appeared on deck and hailed me. I swam out to him and he asked me if any dead and mutilated seals had been washed up in the area. I confirmed that there had been.

He then confessed that his submarine was fitted with a kort nozzle propulsion system, and that his vessel was undoubtedly responsible. He said he was terribly sorry about it but that he had now put grills over his drives and so could promise (unless he had to take them off again for some reason) that no more seals would be killed.

As he left to go below, I called out ‘What is the name of your vessel’?
‘ Nautilus’ he called back, I’m Captain Nemo

If you believe this then you will probably also believe the North Sea to be infested with Greenland sharks.

A Deadly Sea

2010-08-10T06:50:00.000-07:00

Part 1
The North Sea off the north Norfolk coast has suddenly become a very dangerous place; if you are a fish or a sea mammal that is. Over the last few months up to 40 dead and mutilated seals have been washed ashore here, almost all of them on Blakeney Point. Nation Trust wardens have been patrolling every day to collect the carcasses (14 in one 12 day) period. While around 40 have been washed ashore many more are likely to have been swept away to sea where they would have been eaten by birds and fish and crabs. All are mutilated and the injuries are identical in all cases; with a spiral cut from nose to tail, whatever killed the first one killed all the others. The injuries look consistent with something like an Archimedes Screw. While the cause remains a mystery what is certain is that these deaths are not from any natural causes, it has to be a machine of some kind that is doing it.

These fatalities are roughly coincident with the arrival of MV Svanen a 9000 ton self propelled and self maneuvering heavy-duty floating crane which is there to lift and position the monopiles for the 88 turbines being erected for the Sheringham Shoal windfarm. With no other obvious explanation for these deaths all local eyes are now on the vessels and machinery being used.

Norfolk Police are investigating and also the SMRU (Sea Mammal Research Unit) are now involved. The police investigations are ongoing but from their first inspection on site nothing out there seemed to account for the deaths and injuries. However, any inspection carried on the surface must have very limited value. To really get to understand what is going on an organisation with an underwater capability and with engineers that have the knowledge to understand how these injuries might have been inflicted need to be looking at this. Tests need to be carried out, like for example radio tagging dead seals and taking them to the area where the work is being carried out and over a period of several days being put in and left to drift, where they go and where they wash up would be very significant. If they turn up in the same place as the others then the Svenan or its associated vessels are more likely to be involved, if that does not happen the area of investigation will have to widen. Perhaps to take onboard information from other sites in UK waters (off Scotland & N Ireland) where the similar injuries are occurring.

Before such a massive project like Sheringham Shoal Windfarm could be built you would expect there to have been the most rigorous democratic debate, not just because it has great significance in visual terms-just offshore from an AONB- but because of its likely environmental impacts. The potential for these was looked at most closely for the Scroby Sands wind farm off Yarmouth, with serious thought given to how it might affect marine mammals and birds; the big surprise to everyone when construction began was that the huge pressure impacts from the piling operations ( exceded only by depth charges and large under sea explosions) killed large numbers of fish, any fish in the vicinity of these things that has a swim bladder dies. I think we can all guess what would be attracted to a banquet of dead fish floating around.

This level of environmental damage has apparently been considered acceptable for wind farm construction, but does not sit well with the fact that most fish in the north sea are considered endangered and fishermen who catch just a few boxes more than their quota can be fined thousands of pounds.

The crux of this problem is that Scira, the company constructing Sheringham Shoal, should have been monitoring any impacts the construction is having on wildlife and the environment. A project of this size, the construction of 88 turbines, requires the strictest monitoring of its impacts. This extract from their newsletter suggests that Scira were ‘planning’ do some monitoring.

It says this was to be carried out by observers, using special monitoring equipment. Surely if they have been doing this to the rigorous standards that protected species like seals and porpoises warrant they will know with some certainty that they are not responsible and could demonstrate that fact with data they have collected. This of course they may yet do.

However, I have tried without success to get this information from Scira. This is one email reply I had from them, the last words are quite telling.

Dear Godfrey,

I have received the following information today, that Scira operates according to the requirements of FEPA licenses as granted by the Marine Management Organisation. This involves marine mammal and bird monitoring amongst other things.

They understand why you are asking and would like to remind you that while this is under investigation by the police, that further questions go through them.

Scira has provided all relevant information to the police and cooperated fully with investigations even though they are not under any suspicion for the mutilation of the seals.

It is fully understood by Scira, the seriousness of this issue and why the police are doing their best to get to the bottom of this without public hindrance.

Regards

Kay

If you have been moved by this article and would like to do more, you can. Forward this URL to any friends you have who might share your concern, because in the end it may well be the weight of public opinion that determines the outcome of this terrible situation.

Update 24/08/2010. Followed by Update 30/08/2010.

Speculation.

Since this unfortunate business began I have been offered a number of theories as to why the seals are being injured in this way, some of them probably not too far off the truth, much of it ill thought out nonsense. For example it seems absurd to suggest that grey seal bulls are responsible; after many years of peaceful co-existence why should grey seal bulls have suddenly and inexplicably gone on a killing spree causing identical injuries in every case? That’s about as likely as whistling is to bring up a wind.

Other theories are scuppered by timing. The theory that fishing boats somehow spin them through between twin outboards or the theory that ships with ducted propellers are responsible are implausible: because they cannot be reconciled with two facts: that the injuries have been concentrated in the last few months; and the fact that if they were caused by random shipping accidents the carcasses would have been washed up randomly all along the coast.

The injuries are of two specific types. The first and earliest occurred around Christmas 2009 and are of the type shown at the top of this blog. The remainder–on seals that have washed ashore since April-are like that shown above this update. This suggests two sources.

The first set of injuries could be linked to a large vessel associated with the wind farm, which I understand was operating off the coast during that period (until the Svenan arrived). The second group of injuries do suggest a ducted propeller, but as Wells Harbour Commissioners have said, these devices have been around for a long time; why would they suddenly start killing seals in just one area now? These involve a spiral cut from nose to tail always beginning at the head, if ducted propellers were to blame the seals would be caught up as they swam and enter head first, tail first, or even sideways; their approaches to the blades would be random.

All the seals examined in the second group had entered whatever device killed them headfirst. Why? There must be an explanation for the initial orientation of the seals before their mutilation. What could possibly line them up? I offer my own theory. As piling operations begin any fish that are stunned or killed by the enormous impacts will drift down tide, seals attracted to them would then swim up into the tide to pick them up, which would orientate all of them in the same direction, toward the source of the fish and possibly toward the instrument that will kill them, sucking them in as they approach head first.

The smaller numbers of seals that have washed up around St Andrew’s Bay confuse the issue and throw a life line to the wind farm companies and those who seeking to protect their operations. There are clear differences between the injuries that have occurred there and those that occurred here.

Everything I have heard and read recently tends to suggest that a cover up may be beginning, I have been led to believe for example that the tidal stream and wind effect investigations showed that the wind farms could not be responsible for these seal deaths. The studies are not yet complete however, and I know from well over fifty years experiance on and in the North Sea that the place where they are being washed ashore is entirely consistent with them being killed north east of Blakeney Harbour. I would rather trust my own judgement in respect of the North Sea than that of a landbased expert.

Since this blog was first posted no more seals have been washed up. Before that they were coming ashore regularly. Is this another coincidence? The Svenan and all the other equipment working out there should have been thoroughly examined under the waterline during the very first inspection, not by the police who have neither the resources nor expertise to carry out such work, but by an organisation that was fully qualified to undertake it. This did not and as far as I know has not happened. The Svenan left the area for Yarmouth shortly after this hit the press and has just returned. I fear that now the injuries have ceased it may be too late to ever really know what caused them.

Update 30/08/2010

On Friday our local BBC TV News carried the latest item on the seal deaths, in an interview with Dr Dave Thompson who is leading the investigation for the SMRU, it emerged that they now know with some certainty that the seals are being killed by a ducted propeller, and to use his words ‘are being drawn in head first as they search for food’ they are now looking for the boat responsible.

My guess from the use of the words ‘searching’ and ‘ boat’ is that they are trying to pin it on a fishing boat. What I expect they will say is that as trawlers or other fishing vessels bring in their nets, fish spill out and then the seals that are attracted to them get sucked into their ducted propellers.

I have checked with the local fishermen’s association and have been assured that no trawlers (the main users of ducted propellers) fish this area in summer. There is apparently one exception and that is working for a wind farm. In any case as I have said trawlers and other fishing vessels have been operating here for many years. Why have we only had these seal deaths here over the last four-month period?

The explanation SMRU eventually come up with will have to fit all the facts, if their explanation puts the blame on fishing boats or other vessels it will fail to do that and therefore potentially fail to stand up to rigorous public scrutiny; but how rigorous will the scrutiny be? I doubt very much that the BBC or EDP with their pro-wind farms stance will ask any of these difficult questions.

Update 19/08/2010
Since this last blog was posted the situation has come under close investigation by a number of agencies, the aforementioned police and Sea Mammal Research Unit have been joined by the RSPCA and MMO (Marine Management Agency) who have overall responsibility for monitoring conditions and for conducting this investigation.

The corkscrew injuries inflicted on the seals are consistent with a particular type of propulsion/manoeuvring system know as a Kort Nozzle. The only place in the near North Sea where such devices are employed is Sheringham Shoal Wind Farm. This coincidence means that Scira, the company doing the work, should not be surprised if people like me who know little of their modus operandi are suspicious.

What this coincidence demands is a thorough investigation of the equipment and operating procedures being used to construct this wind farm. If such an investigation ultimately proves beyond question that they are not responsible then the investigation can look to the wider area for an explanation.

The important question that has to be asked now is what would happen if any of the vessels involved in the construction of Sheringham Shoal wind farm are found to have been responsible for the deaths of the seals, because this is a massive operation that almost certainly would/could not be stopped at this stage.

If it were me out there doing something to endanger/ kill protected species I would be prosecuted under the relevant wildlife legislation, and be fined or possibly sent to prison. However, it is not me out there, it is a massive group of international companies with enormous resources who are seen by many, including some in the prosecuting authority, to be saving the planet.

What usually happens in this country in this kind of situation is that there would be a pragmatic decision to balance off these deaths against the greater good (as with the fish) that wind farms are supposed to represent. This of course is not a decision that would sit well with most of the public, so the temptation for those in authority to blur the outcome is very real.

I can see the press release now.

'After a thorough and exhaustive investigation by MMO, the Sea Mammal Research Unit and the Police, no evidence to implicate wind farm construction in the recent deaths of seals on the Norfolk coast has been found. The cause of these deaths remains inexplicable.'

This is too important to remain unresolved, the cause, whatever it is, must be found. If you belong to a wildlife organsisation please do whatever you can to persuade them to put pressure on the investigating teams to come up with a definitive answer to this mystery.

ONE LAW FOR US ANOTHER FOR THEM ?

2010-07-27T12:23:00.000-07:00

It seems that in this country today the police must never be seen to be in the wrong. I believe the trust that we the public have in our Police Force is being irreparably damaged by the apparent shift in the relationship between the police and the law. The police are always very quick, sometimes as in the case of the MP Damian Green too quick, to demonstrate that nobody, not even politicians are above the law, while on a fairly regular basis now we are being shown that they clearly are.

I am not trying to imply that the Police are more ‘Gung Ho’ or more violent towards the general public than in the past and they do often find themselves in very stressful situations but when incidents of conflict between the police and members of the public do occur there seems to be a definate trend toward more brazen acquittals, which can serve no purpose other than to embolden those in the ‘force’ who have a tendency toward violence to use it more often.

The first of two cases that particularly concern me is of a very drunk and no doubt troublesome reveller with a very bloodied face, handcuffed by the police and being pinned down over the bonnet of a police car having CS gas sprayed into his face at just a few inches distance, this was a clear breach of the guidelines on the use of this deterrent, which even in exceptional circumstances (which this clearly wasn’t) should not be used closer than a meter. This video shows what happened, you don't have to watch all of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjp4oyd14c8&feature=related

Despite there being a clear breach of the guidelines and a lengthy enquiry we were told there was no case for anyone to answer, so just like the three enquiries into the CRU leaked emails the purpose seems to have been to whitewash.

Next the more publicised case of Ian Tomlinson.

The Director of Public Prosecutions has announced that no charges are to be brought against PC Simon Harwood in connection with the death of Ian Tomlinson.

Video available here, if you have not seen it already then you should watch it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/telegraphtv/5123453/Damning-video-emerges-over-G20-protest-death.html

It shows a man walking along with his hands in his pockets being hit first with a baton, then violently pushed to the ground, having his hands in his pockets he could do little to break his fall. After being helped up he walked on for another 100 yards or so then died.

Ian Tomlinson was examined by three pathologists, The first Dr Patel (who is at present suspended over claims of incompetence) was not given any details relating to the circumstances surrounding Ian Tomlinson's death and concluded that he died from a heart attack. Two further examinations were carried out by seperate pathologists who both concluded that he died from internal bleeding as result of blunt force injuries consistant with his being violently knocked down.

Justice is a process, not an outcome and the decision should not have been decided on conflicting medical evidence alone, there should have been a jury and their judgement should have been based on an assessment of all the evidence, not just the medical opinions.

If a person dies, even from a heart attack just minutes after being assaulted, there should be a case to answer, the IPCC apparently thought so why not the CPS? Just a very quick bit of research on the net shows me this--- Under section 3 of the Public Order Act a person is guilty of affray if he/she uses or threatens unlawful violence against another. That alone would send PC Harwood to prison for at least 3 years.

Or conversely he could have been tried for ‘Misfeasance’, which is an action against the holder of a public office, alleging in essence that the office-holder has misused or abused his power. The video evidence alone shows that there is not much doubt about that.

More recently Ekram Haque a 65-year-old grandfather (in admittedly different circumstances) was knocked down in an almost identical fashion by a pair of intellectually challenged ‘happy slappers’, they received -a much less than they deserved -8 years in jail between them. It might have been said at their trial that they had a record of violence. However, a close inspection of PC Harwood’s record would have shown that he too had been investigated inconclusively by Surrey Police on allegations of excessive force used on another occasion.

Ekram died a week after being knocked to the ground, Ian Tomlinson died just a few minutes after he was knocked down. Yet it has taken 15 months of procrastination, for the Crown Prosecution Service to come out and say that no charges will be brought. They refused to have the case put before a jury and the delays that they have deliberately created now ensure that charges of 'Common Assault’ cannot be brought because the six-month time limit has expired. How very convenient.

In an open and democratic society it must be more important to prosecute police who have broken the law than it is to prosecute anybody else, otherwise any trust the public might have in the police force is destroyed.

What Value the Nobel Prize?

2010-07-12T06:57:00.000-07:00

Irena Sendler

I suppose that once upon a time the British Honours system did actually honour those whose lives and works distinguished them from the background noise. Today they are diminished because the modern trend to equalise everyone has meant that a fair proportion of those honoured are just ordinary people who have been selected because they have washed floors, delivered newspapers or seen children across the road for an exceptional period of time. Deeds of dedication certainly, but hardly enough to lift them that far above the rest of us, however their selection along with that of pop stars and other inconsequential celebrities has devalued the system.

The change is not confined to the British Honours, in the last decade or so it has also applied to the Nobel Prize which now seems to have become a mirror of popular opinion rather than a reflection of outstanding achievement. Awarded recently to President Obama, with no obvious reason it was said that it was for what he might achieve than for what he actually had. The following short story illustrates a much worse example.

 During WWII, Irena Sendler contrived to get permission to work in the Warsaw Ghetto, as a Nurse.   She had a reason; she knew what the Nazi's were doing to the Jews. In 1942, the Nazis herded hundreds of thousands of Jews into a 16-block area that came to be known as the Warsaw Ghetto. It was sealed off and Jewish families ended up behind its walls, most of them to await certain death. Irena Sendler was so appalled by the conditions that she joined Zegota, the Council for Aid to Jews, organized by the Polish underground resistance movement. As one of its first recruits she directed its efforts to rescue Jewish children from that terrible place.

Able to enter the Ghetto legally, Irena managed to be issued a pass and visited daily, she took in food, medicines and clothing. But 5,000 people were dying each month from starvation and disease, and she decided to do her best to get as many of the children out as possible. For Irena Sendler, a young mother herself, persuading parents to part with their children was in itself a distressing task. Finding families on the outside willing to shelter the children, and thereby willing to risk their life if the Nazis ever found out, was also not easy.

Irena Sendler, who wore a star armband as a sign of her solidarity to Jews, began smuggling children out in an ambulance. She recruited at least one person from each of the ten centres of the Social Welfare Department. With their help, she issued hundreds of false documents with forged signatures. Irena Sendler successfully smuggled almost 2,500 Jewish children to safety and gave them temporary new identities.

Children were taken out in sacks or body bags ,others were buried inside loads of goods. One baby was smuggled out in a toolbox. Some were carried out in potato sacks, others were placed in coffins, and some entered a church in the Ghetto, which had two entrances. One entrance opened into the Ghetto, the other opened into the Aryan side of Warsaw. They entered the church as Jews and exited as Christians.

But the Nazis became aware of Irena's activities, and on October 20, 1943 she was arrested, imprisoned and tortured by the Gestapo, who broke her feet and legs. She ended up in the Pawiak Prison, but they failed to break her spirit. She was the only one who knew the names and addresses of the families sheltering the Jewish children, she withstood the torture, that crippled her for life, refusing to betray either her associates or any of the Jewish children in hiding. Sentenced to death, Irena was saved at the last minute when Zegota members bribed one of the Gestapo agents to halt the execution. She escaped from prison but for the rest of the war the Nazis pursued her.

She carefully noted, in coded form, the children’s original names and their new identities. She kept the only record of their true identities in jars buried beneath an apple tree in a neighbour's back yard, hoping she could someday dig up the jars, locate the children and inform them of their past.

In all, the jars contained the names of 2,500 children...

After the war she dug up the jars and used the notes to track down the children she had saved to reunite them with relatives scattered across Europe, although most lost their families during the Holocaust in Nazi death camps.

In 2007 Irena Sendler was nominated for the Noble Prize, she didn’t get it, it was awarded instead to the charlatans at the IPCC and one of the biggest con artists and bandwagon jumpers in the world, Al Gore.

 Irena Sendler passed away on Monday May 12th, 2008.

Sometimes I get so angry I think my head will burst!

Just Us

2010-05-16T14:32:00.000-07:00

To discover that we are not alone in the universe, that there actually are extraterrestrial intelligences out there would fundamentally alter how the human race sees itself, but the much more unlikely event of realising that we are totally alone in the universe would I think have far more more profound implications for our philosophy and our civilisation.

An irrational belief in visits by alien space craft and alien abductions along with a constant stream of films and books involving extraterrestrials suggests that most people want to believe and even find some comfort in the idea of there being other intelligent life in the universe, even if it is green and hostile. My guess is that any survey that looked at this would show that most people believe intelligent life to be a part of the universe.

The starting point for almost any discussion about extraterrestrial intelligence starts with this statement. ‘There are billions of stars in our galaxy and there are countless billions of galaxies, there must be millions of stars with planetary systems that have Earth like planets in them. Therefore, we cannot be alone’. But this argument does not really hold up, the conditions and sequences of events for a world like ours to exist are multiple and complex, a fruit machine with a hundred reels would have to come up with all cherries several times in succession to create it. Ice formation in our atmosphere is infinitely less complex than planetary formation and produces trillions of snowflakes in a blizzard, yet no two are alike.

The universe is thought to have existed for approx 15 billion years. It took the first few billion to create the material i.e. heavy elements, for solar systems like ours to form, but that still leaves many billions of years for intelligent life to have evolved. Accepting that the window an evolving civilisation might have for transmitting radio waves that could reach us is small, (we ourselves are already transmitting much less than 50 years ago (cable /internet /satellites directing their transmissions back at the Earth) one would still expect us to have picked up something, CETI has been operating for 50 years and so far has picked up sweet FA. This alone makes the likelihood of extraterrestrial intelligence slim.

The astronauts who went to the moon were all effected by the overwhelming realisation that the tiny blue globe hanging in the vast emptiness that surrounded them was tiny, fragile, and very alone. We should have no need of evangelical politico/ science to make us care for the future. All we need is to see ourselves and the wonder of life around us as a miracle and place a value on it commensurate with that. A more real sense of the immensity of the universe and an understanding of just how miraculous life is might help us to put a proper value on it. Realising that it may be the only life there is might make us treasure it.

Postscript.
And just to humour me, imagine you have watched the news and there was a report that in conjunction with all the worlds largest radio telescope arrays and the most powerful computer ever built, SETI had analyzed the spectra of every star in the galaxy to identify chemical signatures that would indicate there were civilizations on planets going round them, but had found nothing.
Think about how you would feel.

You Can Fool Some of the People

2010-04-05T00:17:00.000-07:00

As there are only ever a few acres of intellectual high ground it would seem to follow that the more people that believe something the less likely it is to be true. I have therefore, never believed anything anyone told me, particularly if it was important and might affect me. So I am very heartened to learn that ‘Nullius in Verba’, the motto of the prestigious ‘Royal Society’, is usually translated as ‘on the word of no one’. A statement that underlines the independent authority that empirical evidence bestows on science; knowledge about the material world should be based on experimental evidence rather than preconceived ideas, or what the political establishment or majority believe.

Man made climate change has become a political and social crusade that is setting out a framework for how we should be governed and how we should live, this is important stuff and for many it has become a surrogate religion and a spiritual quest. For them it offers liberation from first world guilt, a position of moral superiority and the illusion that they understand some science. What it also and much more dangerously offers is a rationale for government to radically increase its supervision of our lives and our choices. This is not new, governments have always striven to do this but the uniform of AGW so readily and comfortably fits the credulous that harnessed to the power of 21st century media it is fast becoming the most powerful and controlling doctrine in history.

A cynical but powerful minority have realised that it does not actually matter if the theory is correct, all you have to do is put a distorting mirror up to ‘natural climate change’ make it look un-stoppable, blame us for it and you’ve got the net and the trident. It has everything, hooks that dramatic (but quite normal) weather events can be hung on, new pictures every summer of glaciers and the arctic ice melting, causal links to almost every human activity, (particularly if they are fun) and is an imminent and looming threat to the entire future of mankind.

Abraham Lincoln said "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time. This of course is not quite true because you can never fool ‘all’ the people, and in any case in a democracy you don’t have to, all you need to do is ‘fool some of the people some of the time’ just enough to get you a majority when you need it. It would seem that at the moment the warmists have it all their own way, but it might not always be so.

So far they do not control the Internet, so for the time being at least there is a place where you, I, anyone, can speak out and look for the truth. It only takes the slightest tremor to start an avalanche and if we keep having these snowy winters who knows how or who will start it.

Anyone who believes in AGW without taking a serious look at the evidence cannot convincingly argue that they have not been brainwashed. Can you?

Why I do This.

2010-03-28T03:55:00.000-07:00

An item that appeared in a number of National newspapers this week and is now all over the Internet claims that ‘Global Warming’ has solved a territorial dispute between India and Bangladesh.

Example. 'An ongoing territorial dispute between India and Bangladesh has been resolved, South Talpatti Island (a/k/a New Moore Island) a ‘rock’ island in the Bay of Bengal has disappeared under the waves as sea levels rise due to Global Warming'.

On the face of it his would seem to be pretty conclusive proof that indeed sea levels are rising and Global Warming may be true after all.

However, after a little research what did I find? Well the key word in this particular bit of disinformation is ‘rock ‘. Because ‘Moore Island’ and a number of other islands in that part of the Bay of Bengal are actually sand banks that were thrown up during a particularly severe cyclone forty years ago. High enough to support some vegetation and big enough in area to be of limited use, both governments laid claim to them, but of course being made of sand they are -not unlike the Global Warming theory itself- gradually being eroded away over time

Only the Money is Certain

2010-03-12T14:29:00.000-08:00

The evidence for man’s involvement in changing climate is,and always has been very uncertain, very little science is simple and our planet’s climate is perhaps the most complex and chaotic system that scientists have to investigate, our understanding of it is commensurate with that complexity. In such a situation science cannot provide the firm evidence, based on well-founded theories and experiments that are needed for reliable predictions. The best that is available at present are mathematical models and computer simulations which make unverifiable predictions that are totally dependant on the validity and ‘objectivity’ of the data fed in.
Herein lies the problem, which is three fold. First there is the high, and at the moment irresolvable degree of uncertainty in respect of the science, second the dire consequences should the models be right and third the equally serious costs that will arise from the actions being proposed to mitigate the predictions whether they are right or wrong.

How might this dilemma be resolved rationally?

The uncertain science?
Well that’s easy, get rid of the IPCC and its 2498 non-climate scientists and vested interest politicians and set up a new scientific body comprised entirely of climate scientists (in all their forms) including all of those presently excluded from the IPCC. Then keep the media and politicians away and let them get on with it.

The serious consequences should the models be correct?
The seriousness of planetary warming and possible sea level rise is only serious if looked at negatively (default mode for 21st century media). Certainly some very low-lying areas could disappear under the sea if not protected but that was true of Holland many years ago but it didn’t happen. New areas of temperate land would become available for habitation and agriculture, Greenland could become green again, the Northwest Passage could open, climate shift could re-green the Sahara (bigger than the USA) and a warmer earth would support more plant life to take advantage of the extra CO2. The benefits of a warming planet would probably outweigh the disadvantages, especially if it postpones the end of the present inter-glacial period.

The cost of the solution?
The scale of the proposed geoengineering ideas to tackle climate change are beyond anything even a flourishing economy could afford, let alone one as bankrupt as ours. The only hope for the future of a warming planet and the economies of the western world would be to junk them, we cannot possibly reduce our carbon emissions enough to make a difference no matter what we do, its completely crazy. The costs will cripple us, deprive the third world of a future and have little or no effect other than to create the perfect scenario for the economic domination of China and India. Because they have no intention of risking their economies in this futile quest.

If man made climate warming becomes a fact in the years ahead the only realistic option would be to prepare for it, more nuclear power, better flood protection, better water management and pragmatic options to move populations that cannot be defended. These are not insurmountable challenges, trying to alter the climate is.

Why then are these obvious, common sense alternatives not being considered, we know that scientists and politicians seldom have much common sense but that is not the reason. The reason is.
Money.
Science funding amounting to billions world wide is riding this wave, and is the only explanation we need to understand the momentum it has gained. Carbon trading worldwide reached £80 billion in 2008. There are predictions that the carbon market will reach $2 - $10 trillion in the near future. Hot air will soon be the largest single commodity traded on global exchanges.
Businesses large and small are reaping huge profits from this new and apparently limitless cash cow. This statement from the ‘United States Climate Action Partnership’ shows how cynically intertwined climate and business have now become.

‘United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) is a group of businesses and leading environmental organisations that have come together to call on the federal government to quickly enact strong national legislation to require significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. USCAP has issued a landmark set of principles and recommendations to underscore the urgent need for a policy framework on climate change.’

Yes of course they have, they cannot wait to get their hands on the loot!

These kinds of businesses also benefit from “Green Funds’ and government subsidies which we pay for, if you have not already noticed an increase in your electricity bills you soon will. Here in the UK alone there are uncounted billions pouring into windfarm development, even here in north Norfolk there are now many who are getting rich on the back of it. The politicians and business people involved in this are the most powerful people on earth, what chance can there be that they will let go of this seemingly endless money stream. They control the media and as things stand they have some justification as for thinking that they control us. It is up to all of us to demonstrate that this is not true.

Anyone who believes in AGW without having taken a serious look at the evidence cannot convincingly argue that they have not been brainwashed. Can you?

Small

2010-02-13T02:38:00.000-08:00

We are so very small, no matter how you look at it we are insignificant. There are more galaxies in the universe than raindrops in the heaviest monsoon and more brightly burning suns than we have the neurons to imagine. The universe has existed for an incomprehensible length of time, if Everest stood for all time past our existence would have no more height than a coin placed on the summit, our size is tiny and our existence transient, yet we think and talk as if we hold the planets's destiny in our hands, that we can alter the climate or the level of the seas. In our greed and over-population we have brought about the extinction of many of this planets creatures and before we are done many more will go, including ourselves; only an irrational optimist would believe that we will not. Even if we do not bring about our own demise we will become extinct naturally in a relatively short time.

Then another Everest of time will unfold until the sun's life is done the world grows cold and any life left is ended. Should some superior space faring agency then come along and find this dead cinder interesting, they could look in vain through its geological pages for evidence of our existence and find nothing.

All that saves us from being nothing is that we can know this, we may not be able to imagine so many stars or so many years, but we know how old the universe is and we know how big it is, and we understand our very small place in it, or at least some of us do. That so many do not is perhaps the major cause of many of today’s problems. Much of mankind today suffers from a lack of perspective, of humility or any understanding of our place in the scheme of things.

Anyone who believes in AGW without having taken a serious look at the evidence cannot convincingly argue that they have not been brainwashed. Can you?

Science or Science Fiction

2010-02-04T14:26:00.000-08:00

Plato described philosophical enquiry as like being deep in a cave and trying to interpret what was going on in the world outside by observing the flickering shadows on the cave wall. Nothing illustrates the truth of this more clearly than the climate change debate. ‘We are all entitled to an opinion’ it is said, but opinion without enquiry is not opinion, its an unsubstantiated assumption. One’s entitlement to an opinion is validated by enquiry.

For us non-scientists the bulk of our enquiry has to be informed (although not entirely) by the researches and investigations made by experts in the field we are interested in. Not having the appropriate scientific qualifications however, does not, and more importantly should not discourage any of us from thinking for ourselves. The consequences of an unquestioning acceptance of any dogma particularly scientific/political dogma can be terrible, eugenics and the holocaust spring to mind.

So how do we make sense of these shadows on the wall, particularly when there are so many and the majority are shadows of shadows i.e. scientific facts being misconstrued by politicians, advertisers, and other self-interested parties for their own ends. The scale of the propaganda and deceit surrounding climate change right now is unprecedented in our history and should give us all grave cause for concern.

Science can never be certain, certainly never ‘settled’ as the climate extremists would have us believe. Scientific analysis and peer review will arrive at a starting point to build scientific decisions, but will always be subject to change, every theory has either has been proved wrong, incomplete or had to be modified at some point.

The Ptolemaic system i.e. the sun and planets orbiting the earth was superseded by the Copernican solar system, which in turn was modified by Newton’s gravitational laws, which were superseded by general relativity, which has acquired further modification and a companion theory, Quantum Physics and so it will go on.

Very little science is simple and our climate is perhaps the most complex and chaotic system scientists have to investigate, the Earth’s orbit around the sun and its radiant power along with the Earth’s rotation are its principal drivers, ocean currents, jet streams and weather systems transmit the energy and clouds and water vapour are the main temperature drivers. The major gases in the atmosphere, nitrogen 78%, oxygen 21%, are supplemented in very much smaller proportions (collectively less than 1%) with trace gases, some of which absorb heat. These gases, water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, ozone, and nitrous oxide, are referred to as 'greenhouse' gases, and therefore also play a role in climate.

Climate is always changing, – climate change is a fact (it could be sunny today and rainy tomorrow,) we don’t need scientists to tell us that, just look out the bloody window! We would not be here if that were not so, the early atmosphere of the earth was totally hostile to life, as we know it today. Bacteria that could tolerate that climate created oxygen, which eventually led to plants, which converted even more carbon dioxide into oxygen, which led to us.

For the last three billion years the planet has been subjected to five major ice ages, one actually covered the entire globe with ice for millions of years. These ice ages although each lasted for many millions of years, were separated by much greater spans of time when the Earth had no ice at all and for our world, that is the status quo, No Ice.

The present ‘Ice Age’ began approx 40,million years ago becoming more severe around 3 million years ago. During ice ages there are much shorter periods of warming called inter-glacials, these usually come along every 100,000 to 500,000 years or so and only last for between 10 and 20,000 years so very brief intervals of warmth within much longer cold periods.

We are 18, 000 years into an inter glacial period, so we are probably coming to the end of it. Inter-glacials have much variation within them so for example over the last 1,000 years there have been warm and cold periods. (See graph below)

This graph has long been established as the accepted account of temperatures over the last millennium, however despite this and the evidence of the historical record the IPCC promoted a new graph (produced by Michael Mann), which removed all the variation and produced an exaggerated amount of warming during the last few decades of the twentieth century.

Here we have the IPCC Hockey Stick top and the accepted graph below.

Comparing the hockey stick of Michael Mann as used by the IPCC with the accepted record you have to wonder why they are so different. The explanation is that the Hockey Stick is the product of a computer model, one that had algorithms built into it that only allowed data that supported the Hockey Stick shape to be retained. It was a very simple trick that even a bad magician would be ashamed of but very much the stuff of the IPCC. Two computer wizards Ross Mckitrick and Stehen Mcintyre despite being repeatedly refused access to the modelling data eventually found that 105 of 112 data sets he had used were incomplete, flawed or incorrect.

The computer model used by the IPCC and on which their apocalyptic predictions are based extrapolates climate changes 100 years into the future based on nothing more than a doubling of CO2; none of the other drivers are factored in and computer models are just like any other computing outcomes, = junk in junk out. For a theory to stand up it has to have good science in it as well. The validating criteria for any scientific theory are how well it stands up to testing or how accurately it can support or predict the consequences of its suppositions. We may not be scientists but we can look at some of the statements and predictions that have come out of the IPCC and Hadley Center based on this theory.

1.
The Met Office (Hadley Center) currently has one of the most powerful computers in the world for climate modeling and they predicted the summer of 2009 would be dry and hot, it was cool and very wet. They also predicted that 2009/10 would be one of the warmest winters on record and it has been the coldest for decades!

2.
The IPCC said that Polar Bear numbers were falling rapidly and predicted that their very existence was threatened by the melting of arctic ice. At present polar bear numbers are more or less at the maximum their habitat will sustain.

3. They predicted a severe worldwide increase in droughts, this not happening.

4. The IPCC predicted that Himalayan Glaciers would have melted away by 2035, this has quite comprehensively been shown to be impossible.

5. They claimed that Hurricanes were getting more frequent and violent as a consequence of climate change, this has been disproved and as if to confirm it the last few years have been relatively quiescent in respect of hurricanes.

6. They claim (quite rightly) that sea levels are rising, we are after all in an interglacial, (just 10,000 years ago the north sea was land) and this will not cease until we begin to move back into the next glaciation. However, they predict that it will rise by very much more than can be accounted for by glacial rebound, claiming that sea levels will rise by a metre or possibly much more during the next 100 years. This seems to have produced a panic among the AGW brigade and a rush to see who can come up with the most apocalyptic sea level rise scenario. Currently we have a range extending from the status quo, that is the natural interglacial rise we already have, to just the tops of the Cairngorms sticking out of the water.

I will try to cover this in more detail in a later blog for now I submit that this man
.∗ Prof Nils- Axel Morner the former head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University should know what is happening, he has spent his life measuring sea levels and has shown quite conclusively that sea levels around the Maldives (one of the areas the IPCC are always referring to) are not rising. He says that around the world at any one time, sea levels can be rising or falling but collectively they produce a flat line.

∗eu·gen·ics
the proposed improvement of the human species by encouraging or permitting reproduction of only those individuals with genetic characteristics judged desirable. It has been regarded with disfavour since the Nazi period.

Anyone who believes in AGW without having taken a serious look at the evidence cannot convincingly argue that they have not been brainwashed. Can you?

Guilty as Charged

2010-01-28T12:45:00.001-08:00

The Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia has been found guilty under the ‘Freedom of Information Act’ for refusing to allow others to see their data. What an indictment of a scientific establishment who claim through the IPCC that their papers are peer reviewed. They are peer reviewed - if you can call it that- but by other IPCC contributors , in other words only by those who have already subscribed to the orthodoxy.

Of course we all know now why they were so reluctant. I have looked at a great many of the 1000 or so emails hacked out of their computers and am appalled at the lack of scientific objectivity I found there. Not objective science at all but much more akin to those early scientists who built up a whole new form of celestial mechanics in a desperate attempt to retain an earth centric planetary system. The scientists working at the CRU have made an assumption (one that is financially beneficial for their research) and are looking for the evidence to back it up, and because they are not finding it have had to resort to slight of hand (or to use their own words, ‘apply a trick’ or ‘beef it up’) to make it fit. This is not science, its science fiction.

BBC National Evening News today ( 28/1/10 ) covered this story but used it as an unashamedly blatant opportunity for AGW disaster propaganda, running film of calving glaciers in the background throughout the report. The BBC clearly stand firmly behind the AGW orthodoxy enabling their Science Correspondent David Shukman to present the few facts the report contained in a way that masked the truth. He suggested for example that the CRU could quiet justifiably have been irritated by the persistent requests to examine their data because they came from unqualified nuisances who wanted to use the data to damage the CRU. Of course if the data had shown good objective empirical research it would have been very difficult to damage anyone. Now they have been hung out to dry!

Anyone who believes in AGW without having taken a serious look at the evidence cannot convincingly argue that they have not been brainwashed. Can you?

A Cooling Climate

2010-01-14T12:12:00.000-08:00

Cooling Climate

As with God opinions regarding AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) tend to fall out along lines of personality and predetermined tendencies to accept certain positions without much need of evidence, rather than the more difficult process of intellectual appraisal.

There is now quite unequivocal evidence that the Earth is moving into a cooler phase and has been doing so for a few years now, but those who support AGW, including the ‘scientists’, will not openly acknowledge it and dismiss this third record breaking cold winter ( northern hemisphere) as natural variation. However, they cannot have it both ways; they cannot credit every extreme weather event that comes along as proof of AGW, and then classify cold weather as natural variation. The mantra they patronisingly use right now is that we ( the gullible public) must not confuse weather with climate. What? That is like saying do not confuse waves with the sea. Weather is a product of climate, if the climate were warming up then we would expect the weather to get warmer wouldn’t we? If not why the predictions of record-breaking temperatures and why would three cold winters and cool wet summers in a row not be an indication that the climate is getting cooler?

Dr Viner (UEA CRU) claimed (apart from citing that his decision to live in Stibbard was based on a wish to stay well above any areas likely to be inundated by sea level rise) that within a decade snow would cease to fall and would become so infrequent that it would become a novelty for children who had never seen it. Spot on there then. These people are so full of shit they no longer notice the smell.

The British Met Office has predicted that this will be one of the warmest winters on record, and as I understand it still do (even though we are only half way through). How can they justify this position? They do so apparently by taking the fifteen highest temperature readings between November and March and averaging them out. So as November was quite a warm month and despite the fact that Britain has been subjected to sub zero temperatures both day and night for a complete month since (coasts excepted) , that is where they will go for their temperature samples which will then be used to tell us, who have been struggling to get to work on icy roads and pavements, what this winter was actually like. Yes black is white and ten years hence who will remember. What do they say, lies, damn lies and statistics?

Anyone who believes in AGW without having taken a serious look at the evidence cannot convincingly argue that they have not been brainwashed. Can you?