UK is now a clean energy leader

Engineering with Rosie looks at The UK's Stunning Grid Flip From Coal Giant to Clean Energy Leader (feat. ‪@JustHaveaThink‬).

 

Engineering with Rosie answers the question "Does Australia Need Nuclear"

Rosemary Barnes on her Engineering with Rosie YouTube channel has a video Four Reasons Why Nuclear Power is a Dumb Idea for Australia explaining why nuclear power does not make sense for Australia. Note, Rosemary is not anti-nuclear.

Are EV batteries better than home batteries?

 According to Ronald Brakels at the SolarQuotes blog, yes they are: Here’s Why EV Batteries Are Cheaper & More Reliable Than Home Batteries.

Hydrogen won't replace gas for domestic heating and cooking

In Why HYDROGEN for home heating is a REALLY DUMB idea Just Have a Think talks to Canadian petrochemical expert Paul Martin on why using hydrogen to replace gas for home heating and cooking does not make sense.

Catalyst Episode on Extreme Weather

 An episode of ABC's Catalyst, called Extreme Weather, explained how "global warming can produce extreme droughts, floods, heatwaves, and even blizzards". 

The logical falacy common to many science deniers

The Indian Ocean Dipole and Eastern Australian Droughts

Peter Hannam in The culprit behind east Australia's big dry explains that the Indian Ocean Dipole has a a huge effect on rainfall levels in Australia's eastern states.

In its so-called positive phase, tropical waters off Australia's north-west are relatively cool - compared with those near Africa - strengthening easterly winds and reducing the potential convection that typically supplies much of south-eastern Australia's critical winter and spring rains. A negative IOD has the opposite effect.

And of course, climate change is making it worse:

Dr Cai says that while the Indian Ocean is warming - along with others around the world - “the west is warming faster”. Under such conditions, "it’s easier to have an extreme positive IOD event", he said.
Such a future would be bad news for farmers, and raise doubts about the effectiveness of policies proclaimed to be "drought-proofing".
“We change the average climate by having these events more frequently or more strongly," Abram says. "It has an effect of changing our average rainfall.”

...

"We are perturbing the atmosphere in a profound way with greenhouse gases," England says. "How this changes our modes of variability is uncertain.”

The top 100 solutions to climate change

In A new book ranks the top 100 solutions to climate change. The results are surprising. David Roberts interviews Paul Hawken about Hawken's book Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming.

Unlike most popular books on climate change, it is not a polemic or a collection of anecdotes and exhortations. In fact, with the exception of a few thoughtful essays scattered throughout, it’s basically a reference book: a list of solutions, ranked by potential carbon impact, each with cost estimates and a short description. A set of scenarios show the cumulative potential.

...

The number one solution, in terms of potential impact? A combination of educating girls and family planning, which together could reduce 120 gigatons of CO2-equivalent by 2050 — more than on- and offshore wind power combined (99 GT).

...

Also sitting atop the list, with an impact that dwarfs any single energy source: refrigerant management. (Don’t hear much about that, do you? Here’s a great Brad Plumer piece on it.)

David MacKay on Sustainable Energy

In 2008 David MacKay FRS, the Regius Professor of Engineering at the University of Cambridge, wrote a book Sustainable Energy – without the hot air. This book is available free at his site www.withouthotair.com

The biggest takeaway I had from the book was this:

Have no illusions. To achieve our goal of getting off fossil fuels, these
reductions in demand and increases in supply must be big. Don’t be distracted
by the myth that “every little helps.” If everyone does a little, we’ll
achieve only a little. We must do a lot. What’s required are big changes in
demand and in supply.

Hill’s Criteria applied to climate change

In What climate skeptics taught me about global warming Seth Miller writes that:

Long before research exposed evidence that humans cause global warming, science made another sensational claim — that smoking caused lung cancer.

That case has been proven beyond doubt. But there is a science story from this era that is mostly forgotten: The battle against cigarettes taught science how to prove.

Before linking cigarettes to lung cancer, science had no established method to prove that one thing caused another. The fields of epidemiology and statistics were new, and while they had some prior successes, the questions were so evident — think about mercury causing madness — that proof did not require the level of meticulousness that modern science expects. The need to establish a link between cigarettes and lung cancers — and the backlash that ensued — changed this. Epidemiology and cigarettes grew up together.

...

And I unearthed a notion that is rarely mentioned in the global warming debate: Science actually has a method for establishing that one thing causes another. Scientists don’t have to vote on the issue — the 97% consensus of climate scientists who believe that humans cause warming is telling, but only one part of a broader process. And for those who want to honestly weigh their skepticism in context of the evidence, there is a way.

...

The battle against smoking was the first bare-knuckles public policy debate driven by science. So over years of defending his work, Hill had to think deeply about what constitutes ‘proof’, and how to overcome the intelligent rebuttals of the world’s Ronald Fishers.

In 1965, he formally proposed a solution.

Hill recognized that there are more ways to support causation that finding that two variables track. In fact, Hill identified nine separate strands of ‘proof’, each of which makes an independent case for or against causation. The list of nine aspects — and I’ll go into details below — are now called Hill’s Criteria.

You don’t need strong support from all of the strands to prove a result. But when independent strands tell the same story, with no contradictions, the case is strong. Perhaps as importantly, by using fixed criteria, we can categorize not just data we have, but identify what data are missing as well. And with all of the possible evidence in mind, we can effectively draw a conclusion using classic, human judgment.

...

And while Hill’s Criteria are not commonly used outside epidemiology, they should be. The criteria take an impossibly large and complex pile of data and break them up into chunks. They make the evidence understandable. And they make the case for causality transparent — each piece of evidence is categorized, and weighed in the context of the whole. If evidence is challenged, it becomes clear just how devastating or inconsequential that challenge is. We lose any presumption that somehow a single set of data could prove the entirety of scientific understanding to be in error.

What happens when we apply Hill’s criteria to the question:
Are humans, by adding CO2 to the air, causing the planet to warm?

Miller then goes on to test this question against Hill's Criteria.

This is worth a read.

Misleading with graphs

In Why this National Review global temperature graph is so misleading Philip Bump shows how using different scales on a graph can mislead. He then graphs the US national debt and the Dow Jones as examples.

Clean energy is coming - don't get left behind

Paul Ebert writes that The clean energy economy is coming – and there's a lot to lose for those who can't keep up: "The energy internet, the ‘smart’ grid, solar energy and battery storage are converging and the economic benefits are clear".

Renewables as a source for baseload power

Skeptical Science asks the question Can renewables provide baseload power? and answers yes.

Mark Diesendorf argues that Baseload power is a myth: even intermittent renewables will work.

Change the energy market settlement time to encourage storage technologies

In Change market rules, and battery storage will easily beat gas Giles Parkinson argues that changing the settlement time in the energy market from 30 minutes to 5 minutes will encourage the adoption of fast response technologies like batteries and other forms of storage.

A blind study on climate change data fails to support the deniers

In Blind study fails to support deniers The University of Queensland reports on a blind study of statistical trends from climate studies. Economists and statisticians participated in the study.

“For instance, we took the figures for the shrinkage of Arctic Sea ice and turned it into a profit statement of the fictitious Supreme Widget Corporation,” Dr Ballard said.

“In other tests we presented environmental data as if it related to a trade surplus, the population trends of rural towns, agricultural output, world lithium production, and global currency trade.

“In a blind test, economists and statisticians were then asked if they agreed with statements made about the trends of each situation.

“The idea is that climate change is so politicised that we need to decontextualise our statements so that people’s arguments are based not purely on politics, but on data instead.”

In the instance of comparing Arctic ice to the fictitious Supreme Widget Company, 52 participants had to say whether ‘profits’ (ice levels) between 1989 and 2009 had consistently decreased  or had returned to health.

Data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, used by both climate change deniers and believers, formed the basis of the question about Arctic ice.

...

“In general, participants rated popular arguments by climate change deniers as misleading if applied to a profit-and-loss statement or the other forms of data we presented to them,” Dr Ballard said.

Nuclear not suitable for Australia?

Evcricket writes that If the answer is nuclear you don’t understand the question.

The follow up:  Is nuclear a good investment?

A mini ice age isn't coming

As Dana Nuccitelli reports in No, the sun isn't going to save us from global warming

To sum up, a number of scientific studies have asked the question, ‘if the sun were to enter another extended quiet phase (a grand solar minimum), how would that impact global surface temperatures?’. Every study agrees, it would cause no more than 0.3°C cooling, which would only be enough to temporarily offset about a decade’s worth of human-caused global warming.

2014 the hottest year on record

According to Ben Cubby in Climate changes amid the blaming game 2014 was the hottest year on record. Not only that, but the ten hottest years have all been since 1998.

Over the weekend, as bushfires scorched the Adelaide Hills, southern Australia was the hottest region on the face of the planet.

On Monday, it was announced by the respected Japan Meteorological Agency that 2014 had been the warmest year the world has seen since reliable measurements began in 1890. On Tuesday, our own Bureau of Meteorology revealed that 2014 had been Australia's third-warmest year, and NSW had just endured its hottest on record. All of the world's top ten hottest years have now taken place since 1998.

Warming has not paused

The post Recent global warming trends: significant or paused or what? has the following graph:

So warming has not paused. The variability we see is still inline with long term trends.

To quote the post:

In summary: that the warming since 1998 “is not significant” is completely irrelevant. This warming is real (in all global surface temperature data sets), and it is factually wrong to claim there has been no warming since 1998. There has been further warming despite the extreme cherry pick of 1998.

What is relevant, in contrast, is that the warming since 1998 is not significantly less than the long-term warming. So while there has been a slowdown, this slowdown is not significant in the sense that it is not outside of what you expect from time to time due to year-to-year natural variability, which is always present in this time series.

Claims warming have paused are rubbish

In Government goes cold on global warming Greg Jericho shows that claims that warming has "paused" is rubbish.