Month: January 2014

Damn this is getting good.

Climate Science Watch:

Briefly, on how this case got started, from a post at Climate Progress:

The kick-off for the lawsuit was actually a piece written by Rand Simberg at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), which referred to Mann as “the Jerry Sandusky of climate science” because he “molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science.” The editors eventually removed the offending sentences, but not before Mark Steyn picked them up at National Review’s online blog. Steyn said he wasn’t sure he’d have “extended that metaphor all the way into the locker-room showers with quite the zeal Mr Simberg does, but he has a point.” He then went on to call Mann’s work on the famous “hockey stick” graph “fraudulent.” So Mann sued Simberg, Steyn, CEI and National Review for defamation.

Also see Rabett Run: Mann vs Steyn Lurches Forward.
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Accusing a scientist of conducting his research fraudulently is a factual allegation that can be proven true or false, not mere hyperbolic opinionating. If it is false it is defamatory, and if it is made with actual malice it is actionable. So said DC Superior Court Frederick Weisberg in tossing out motions by defendants National Review et al. to dismiss Prof. Michael Mann’s defamation complaint — thus moving the case a step toward discovery proceedings and a jury trial.

The matter before the court in this latest step of the thus-far procedurally rather tangled case was on the separate special motions of defendants Mark Steyn and National Review, Inc. and of defendants Competitive Enterprise Institute and Rand Simberg to dismiss Michael Mann’s amended defamation complaint. On January 22 DC Superior Court Judge Weisberg denied defendants’ motions to dismiss under the DC Anti-SLAPP Act and on one other ground.

The judge’s ruling, and specifically what he says in his order, looks good for Prof. Mann’s position. Here’s a bit of what Judge Weisberg said:

Opinions and rhetorical hyperbole are protected speech under the First Amendment. Arguably, several of defendants’ statements fall into these protected categories. Some of defendants’ statements, however, contain what could reasonably be understood as assertions of fact. Accusing a scientist of conducting his research fraudulently, manipulating his data to achieve a predetermined or political outcome, or purposefully distorting the scientific truth are factual allegations. They go to the heart of scientific integrity. They can be proven true or false. If false, they are defamatory. If made with actual malice, they are actionable. Viewing the allegations of the amended complaint in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, a reasonable finder of fact is likely to find in favor of the plaintiff on each of Counts I-VI, including the Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress alleged in Count VI as to both sets of defendants.

So much for the argument that what Simberg and Steyn were doing was mere opinionating, mere rhetorical flourishes. Judge Weisberg appears to slam dunk that position. It’s against the law to accuse someone, with malice, of scientific fraud, if the accusation won’t stand up in court (and not just to the satisfaction of the defendants and their support subculture).

Weisberg continued –

Continue reading “Michael Mann Defamation Case Rolls On”

This one features Dr. Jennifer Francis prominently – I’m thinking of it because I’ll be interviewing Dr. Francis today on the Univ. of Michigan campus, where she will be giving a talk.  For that reason, I’m a little rushed this morning, more posts on the way.

Hope to catch at least one other prominent scientist as well.

I have not yet done a sea ice piece for the most recent season, but now that I have extended interview footage with Dr. Walt Meier, formerly of the NSIDC, now with NASA Goddard, I am trying to find the time.

If Financial Times Gets It, Maybe Anyone Can

Financial Times:

Elon Musk, the Silicon Valley billionaire, is the man behind the PayPal online payments system, the Tesla luxury electric sports car and SpaceX, the commercial space travel company.

But Mr Musk is also chairman of SolarCity, the biggest installer of residential solar systems in the US, and it has just launched an eye-catching combination of his sprawling interests: battery packs for Tesla cars that store electricity from solar panels.
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SolarCity’s battery system is not a widely affordable answer yet, analysts say, but it could still help advance important shifts in the way energy is used.

The system is being rolled out first to businesses because it is aimed at cutting a growing energy cost: the charges that utilities impose, not just for the amount of electricity a company uses, but for the level of power it needs at any point in time.

SolarCity says its battery packs can lower these so-called “demand charges” significantly by providing power when demand is highest, as well as providing back-up power during the outages that periodically plague the ageing US electricity grid.

The company is initially offering the system, known as DemandLogic, in places where demand charges are high, such as parts of California, Connecticut and Massachusetts, and hopes eventually to launch a system for households.
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Still, battery prices are falling fast. Mr Jaffe says smaller lithium batteries, such as those that power laptop computers, now cost $200-$250 per kilowatt hour, compared with $1,200 three years ago, while larger ones used in electric cars are $300-$400 per kWh, half what they were two years ago. “We expect them to get cheaper and cheaper,” he said.

If solar energy storage does spread widely, it is likely to add to the headaches that solar power is posing to conventional utilities around the world.

The plunging cost of solar panels is already turning utility customers into competitors as households start generating their own electricity, especially during daylight hours when utilities have traditionally made the most money.

The big energy generators that still have to build and maintain expensive gas or coal power plants are starting to fight back in many countries, urging regulators to impose fees on people putting in new rooftop solar systems to help pay for the cost of a power grid they say is being used virtually for free.

The conflict is likely to intensify as solar generation continues to surge, and not just in countries such as Germany, the world’s biggest solar power generator.

Continue reading “You See Where this is Going, Right?”

Accuweather:

Bitterly cold air is again settling southward from the Arctic into a large part of the Eastern states. Unlike the outbreak from early January, this time the cold will have more staying power.

Into the first part of next week, the polar vortex will hover just north of the United States border causing waves of frigid air to blast into the Midwest and much of the East.

The polar vortex is a commonly used term among the meteorological community to describe an intense storm with frigid air and strong winds that spends much of its time above the Arctic Circle. Occasionally, during the autumn, winter and spring, this storm can dip farther south, approaching the mid-latitudes.

Christian Science Monitor:

While much of the United States has experienced a weather year with fewer extremes and an easing drought, the record-breaking California drought – the worst since 1895 – is not leaving the region anytime soon, according to climatologists.

The unseasonal balmy but dry weather is the result of an equally unprecedented high pressure ridge lurking offshore and blocking the typical winter storms needed to drop precipitation all along the West Coast.

This ridge has persisted for 13 months and the longer it lingers, the less likely it is to leave, points out climatologist Brian Fuchs, from the National Drought Mitigation Center in Lincoln, Nebraska. This high pressure ridge system is feeding on itself, “creating a sort of perfect environment for perpetuating the dry conditions” it creates, he says.

High-pressure systems are not uncommon, but it is abnormal for them to hang around uninterrupted for so long. “This makes it even harder as winter storms approach for them to break through and change that pattern,” he adds.

San Francisco Business Times:

Yes, 2013 was the driest year in California since the 1840s, when recordkeeping started. But Lynn Ingram, a climate expert at the University of California, Berkeley, thinks this could be the Golden State’s driest year in half a millennium.

Continue reading “Think on These Things”

The practice of marching out credentialed spokespeople to front for a destructive, rapacious industry is time honored, having been perfected by the Tobacco industry in past decades – as the nauseating video above reminds us.

These clips came to mind as I was reviewing recent hearings before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.  I posted Dr. Andrew Dessler’s testimony in support of the scientific community last week.

Congressional Climate deniers have, in recent years, presented classics major “Lord” Monckton as their “expert” witness, so those of us that follow such things are always eager to see who will debase themselves by following in His Sublime Excellency’s exalted footsteps.

The selection of Dr. Judith Curry as tool of choice was not a huge surprise. Deniers will claim that Dr. Curry has some kind of status or respect from her peers, or that her views carry weight, or that she presents science in the spirit of inquiry and dialogue.

The video below, however, (posted by denialist “Steve Goddard”) of Dr. Curry receiving an award from a table full of the anti-science activists should speak volumes as to who she is, and how she views her own work – “dumpster diving”, as her new Tee shirt depicts.

Ok, I’ll start.
One of Dr. Curry’s early talking points is that “Increasing Antarctic sea ice extent” somehow weakens the science of global climate change.
You’re never surprised to hear this kind of thing from Marc Morano on Fox & Friends, but to see someone who should know better try to throw that against the wall is jarring, and revealing.
It’s a bald faced cut and paste of a popular, and not-too-bright – climate denial meme, that I took apart in a video some time ago – by interviewing specialists in the field who know well what Antarctic ice is doing, as well as what it means.

Rabbett Run adds:

..Prof. Curry really does not believe that increasing Antarctic sea ice extent casts any doubt of the AR5’s conclusions because she knows why the sea ice in Antarctica has been increasing (or perhaps not increasing as much, that may be another interesting tale of whom do you believe, theory or observation, as a recent preprint casts doubt on the magnitude).  In a 2010 PNAS paper, Accelerated warming of the Southern Ocean and its impacts on the hydrological cycle and sea ice Prof. Curry’s abstract reads:

The observed sea surface temperature in the Southern Ocean shows a substantial warming trend for the second half of the 20th century. Associated with the warming, there has been an enhanced atmospheric hydrological cycle in the Southern Ocean that results in an increase of the Antarctic sea ice for the past three decades through the reduced upward ocean heat transport and increased snowfall. The simulated sea surface temperature variability from two global coupled climate models for the second half of the 20th century is dominated by natural internal variability associated with the Antarctic Oscillation, suggesting that the models’ internal variability is too strong, leading to a response to anthropogenic forcing that is too weak. With increased loading of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere through the 21st century, the models show an accelerated warming in the Southern Ocean, and indicate that anthropogenic forcing exceeds natural internal variability. The increased heating from below (ocean) and above (atmosphere) and increased liquid precipitation associated with the enhanced hydrological cycle results in a projected decline of the Antarctic sea ice.(emphasis added)

More below.

Continue reading “Judith Curry’s Testimony: Where There’s Smoke…”

Mike MacCracken was the first “real” climate scientist that I got to know, who started answering my questions, pointing things out to me, and introducing me to other folks.
Dr. MacCracken is a global treasure, in that he knows the course of climate science over the last half century as few others do, and sees the big picture in a way that few will.  For this interview, I crashed a conference at the University of Michigan in January 2012.

Next time you hear that climate science is something Al Gore invented in 2006, or that climate science predictions have been wrong,  pull out this video. A little history is in order.

There has never been a better guitarist.

In 2013, the Edison Electric Institute issued a paper warning that electric utilities face “disruptive challenges”, including the rise of distributed energy resources, like rooftop solar.  In recent months, we have seen a building move by utilities to place roadblocks in the way of solar energy deployment, making it more difficult and expensive for businesses and homeowners to self generate electricity.

Now more confirmation. This will be a fight.

San Diego Union Tribune:

After resigning for health reasons, a member of the California Public Utilities Commission has warned of intense pressure by utilities to protect against the incursion of rooftop solar energy.

Commissioner Mark Ferron announced Wednesday that he could no longer perform his duties as commissioner after two years of treatment for prostate cancer. In a jocular parting report, he praised California for its leading role on energy and climate policy, while warning that its utilities “would still dearly like to strangle rooftop solar if they could.”

By order of the state legislature (Assembly Bill 327), the commission is poised to overhaul how much customers can be rewarded for generating their own solar electricity. Ferron, a former executive at Deutsche Bank and Salomon Brothers, warned that zealous legislators with little experience in energy matters have handed the commission “a poisoned chalice.”

“The Commission will come under intense pressure to use this authority to protect the interests of the utilities over those of consumers and potential self-generators” of solar electricity, he wrote, “all in the name of addressing exaggerated concerns about grid stability, cost and fairness.”

“You — my fellow Commissioners — all must be bold and forthright in defending and strengthening our state’s commitment to clean and distributed energy,” he stated.

Industry analysts and advisers, including the investor-owned utilities association Edison Electric Institute, have issued public warnings of a disruptive threat to existing utility business models by the accelerating adoption of rooftop solar, and other “distributed generation” of electricity by customers.

Edison Electric Institute:

The timing of such transformative changes is unclear, but with the potential for technological innovation (e.g., solar photovoltaic or PV) becoming economically viable due to this confluence of forces, the industry and its stakeholders must proactively assess the impacts and alternatives available to address disruptive challenges in a timely manner.
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While tariff restructuring can be used to mitigate lost revenues, the longer-term threat of fully exiting from the grid (or customers solely using the electric grid for backup purposes) raises the potential for irreparable damages to revenues and growth prospects. This suggests that an old-line industry with 30-year cost recovery of investment is vulnerable to cost-recovery threats from disruptive forces.
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Due to the variable nature of renewable DER, there is a perception that customers will always need to remain on the grid. While we would expect customers to remain on the grid until a fully viable and economic distributed non-variable resource is available, one can imagine a day when battery storage technology or micro turbines could allow customers to be electric grid independent. To put this into perspective, who would have believed 10 years ago that traditional wire line telephone customers could economically “cut the cord?”
Continue reading “California Utility Commissioner: Utilities Would “Strangle Solar” if They Could”

FastCoExist:

It’s hard to point to any one weather disaster and say definitively that it’s related to climate change. But it’s not your imagination: the number of major weather-related disasters in the U.S. has been steadily increasing over the past few decades. For evidence, check out the NOAA National Climatic Data Center’s series of maps showing the number of billion dollar weather disasters that have occurred every year since 1980.

Not every year has had more disasters than the years immediately prior, but the trend is there. The weather is less stable than it was 30 years ago, and it’s racking up some pretty big bills. Presumably, it’s a problem that won’t get better anytime soon.

Toronto Globe and Mail:

What is remarkable is that Munich Re first warned about global warming way back in 1973, when it noticed that flood damage was increasing. It was the first big company to do so—two decades before the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit triggered a planetary anxiety attack by publicizing the concepts of “global warming” and “climate change.”

Munich Re, Swiss Re and the other reinsurers, along with the Lloyd’s of London insurance market (unrelated to the bank of the same name), stand out from the rest of the business world by being on the same page as scientists on climate change. What’s more, while most of the planet has its head in the sand about the reality and requirements of global warming, the reinsurance industry has already moved on to mastering the math on other catastrophes.

Continue reading “More Evidence on Increasing Extreme Weather Impacts”

Everybody gets the history, right? Make sure you watch the vid above, especially the part starting at 1:19.

Walter Wink in Religiononline:

John Ehrlichman, Nixon’s domestic policy adviser, later confessed to Dan Baum, author of another trenchant study of drugs, Smoke and Mirrors (1996), that Nixon’s election team was looking for scapegoats. There were two candidates: hippies and blacks. The “silent majority” was frightened of both. And hippies and blacks had something in common: they were publicly perceived to be into drugs.

According to Baum’s report, Ehrlichman acknowledged, “We knew we were lying about the health effects of marijuana. We knew we were lying about the relationship between heroin and crime. But this is what we were doing to win the election. And it worked.”

Brent Duke, Stanford University:

While only 13 percent of those using illegal drugs are African-American (exactly their proportion in the national population), blacks constitute 35 percent of those arrested for simple possession and a staggering 74 percent of those sentenced for drug possession (Wink, 1999).

I’m not part of the “cannabis cures cancer” crowd, but certainly an industrial crop with these kinds of multiple uses and benefits deserves to retake its place in the ag toolbox. Just like I am all about wind energy as a big help to stabilize rural agrarian incomes, I’m also hoping that restarting a fiber and fuel industry based on hemp could be, if not a panacea, a help for our struggling rural economies.

For the last 30 years, the “conservative” solution for rural economies has been to build more prisons. I think we have enough of those. Looking forward to fields of (non subsidized) industrial hemp waving beneath fields of (non subsidized) industrial wind turbines.

LiveScience:

Bioenergy is currently the fastest growing source of renewable energy. Cultivating energy crops on arable land can decrease dependency on depleting fossil resources and it can mitigate climate change.

But some biofuel crops have bad environmental effects: they use too much water, displace people and create more emissions than they save. This has led to a demand for high-yielding energy crops with low environmental impact. Industrial hemp is said to be just that.

Enthusiasts have been promoting the use of industrial hemp for producing bioenergy for a long time now. With its potentially high biomass yield and its suitability to fit into existing crop rotations, hemp could not only complement but exceed other available energy crops.
Continue reading “OK, Now That We’re Getting Over Reefer Madness, Can We Talk About Hemp?”