Solar ... In the news

Martyn1981

Leeds_Solar wrote: »

If one side is spending tens / hundreds of millions on global PR and lobbying efforts specifically to spread disinformation, then obviously the size of their war chest matters (as does the level of their access to policy makers).

The fact that they choose to spend so great a proportion of their funds on this effort, and so little on actual research is very telling though IMO.

If they genuinely believed there was any significant doubt, then they'd have been much better advised to channel their funding into scientific efforts to refute the hypothesis. They obviously don't consider it very likely that any research they fund would help them to refute the IPCC position.

The only times I'm aware of that sceptics have actually mounted a significant research effort in recent years, they've ended up supporting the IPCC position via that research. (eg the Watts inspired effort to replicate the global temperature record, or analyse the US station network to see if problems in the network could explain the warming trend)

Hiya LS & Z. Not jumping into the middle of your discussion, as I'm massively outgunned in the knowledge dept on these issues. However, I thought I'd share my personal experience regarding the news and AGW last year:

Now, I'm assuming that if the skeptics could maintain a solid anti-AGW stance, then they would. Any weakening of their position, whilst the scientific position grew to 97%+ (about as unanimous as is probably possible) would undermine their argument.

So, whilst this is holy un-scientific, I found the news last year (summer 2012) coming from some of the biggest skeptics, to be very interesting:-

Firstly we had BEST (Berkely Earth Surface Temperature). Not truly AGW skeptics, but they didn't believe that the evidence was good enough to reach the conclusions made. So they did their own data analysis and concluded that AGW was real and serious.

Next we have the Heartland Institute. Near psychotic anti-AGW at times, and last year practically imploded after i. their donor list was leaked and despite claims to the contrary, turned out to include FF and car industry, ii. they [STRIKE]ran[/STRIKE] launched a national (US) poster campaign, stating that the only people left believing in AGW were on the extreme fringes of society, and included madmen, tyrants and murderers. The campaign was pulled after 1 day.

However, their lead scientist concluded that AGW was real, but not that serious, hardly fitting with the organisations beliefs. If I remember the story correctly, despite him cherry picking his own peer reviewers, their conclusion was that his paper wasn't really worth publishing due to the data used. So he published it in Korea(?).

Thirdly, Exxon Mobil. They were one of the leads in 'fighting' AGW conclusions. But last year their boss stated that AGW was real, but fears were overblown, since society could learn to adapt. Adapt - that doesn't sound too unreasonable until you consider what adapting means. To me that means spending money (insurance, food/crop costs, land drainage and flood defence, health and respiratory issues etc). I'm sure the argument of spending money on FF's and then spending money on adapting is better described by 'buy cheap, buy twice'.

So, is my gut feeling scientific? Of course not. But I can't help thinking (based on the news), that if those who have been traditionally anti-AGW are changing their positions, whilst the pro-AGW scientific consensus remains solid, then surely that must mean something.

Mart.

Cardew

EricMears wrote: »

I don't think anybody is 'picking on him'. But what he said, might have said or should have said several years ago can hardly be described as 'news'

It was Monbiot's views as a subject for discussion - at least it is relevant as it covers solar, FIT, and the 'news' is that FIT might be affected by a different funding method. Perhaps I should have said why single out Monboit's views as historical.

My point was that far less discussion has been devoted to Monbiot in this thread, than the on-going discussion about how climate change was viewed 40 years ago.

Martyn1981

Further updates and news from this ongoing event (and one regarding the further and future development of solar):

SEUK: Belectric UK chief challenges Barker’s nuclear cost claim

http://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/news/seuk_belectric_uk_chief_challenges_barkers_nuclear_cost_claim

The UK head of leading German solar EPC firm Belectric has disputed suggestions by energy minister Greg Barker that solar energy is still more expensive than nuclear.

Speaking at Solar Energy UK this morning, Barker said that despite the dramatic fall in the costs of solar PV in recent years, the technology was still more expensive than nuclear, other renewables such as onshore wind, and fossil fuels.


Also:

Brighter future? Maybe not for UK solar

http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/details/beitrag/brighter-future-maybe-not-for-uk-solar_100012990/#axzz2h0Vm88iq

Extracts:

The roadmap on the future of UK solar published yesterday questions solar's effectiveness at reducing carbon output and asks whether the cost reductions necessary for 20 GW by 2020 are feasible.

one of the four 'principles' of the roadmap casts doubt on the efficacy of solar in reducing the global carbon footprint by citing two studies claiming the true lifetime carbon emissions associated with solar – from the mining of silicon to the final generation of power – are much higher than those associated with onshore and offshore wind.

The 38-page report, which foreshadows the UK's first Solar PV Strategy, expected in the spring, states there is little prospect of finding the cost reductions necessary for the roll-out of solar from conventional and thin-film panels instead asserting hope lies with the development of next-generation solar technology which, the report adds, the UK is ploughing R&D money into.


Not linked, by news 'within range' of the above article:

DEK Solar Helps Break New Barriers for Low-Cost, High-Efficiency Solar Cells

http://www.solardaily.com/reports/DEK_Solar_Helps_Break_New_Barriers_for_Low_Cost_High_Efficiency_Solar_Cells_999.html

Building on earlier work conducted in conjunction with the Institute for Solar Energy Research Hamelin (ISFH), DEK Solar has further optimized its Dual Print stencils and screens to push past previous industry cost and cell efficiency benchmarks.

In the company's latest project with ISFH, a record 20.2% cell efficiency on a PERC solar cell has been achieved via a Dual Print process with a remarkable frontside metallization silver cost of less than $0.01 per Wp.

Mart.

zeupater

Leeds_Solar wrote: »

If you don't try to equate the situation regarding global cooling in the 70s with the situation now with global warming, then you'll not regularly see people like me refuting it.

They are nothing like each other - and please don't pretend that wasn't what you were implying by stating that there was a consensus around cooling in the 70s, it's pretty obvious this was your intent.


unless that website is google, then whether it's listed there or not is pretty irrelevant.

I hope you've realised by now that I've no need to be spoon fed my points by some website.



I've done this before, and I'm afraid I'm not going to wade through 4 decade old papers again, suffice to say that I didn't find anything to contradict the paper's assertions.

Even a quick glance though clearly refutes your original assertion though, as there are clearly a lot of papers that are predicting warming.



well I'm still confused about your point. If it's that the cooling period was longer than the 70's, well yes it roughly ran from the late 40s through to the late 70s, and the dimming also seems to have been occuring for a long time as well.

As I said though, all I was attempting to point out was that the teachers weren't wrong to be teaching about this trend at that point, just wrong if they extrapolated from that to a longer term cooling trend .....

Hi

Even more interesting .... especially since there are multiple arguments being maintained at the same time, so let's review just the relevant thread ...

In an exchange, which was related to 'fact' & 'consensus', not Global Warming, the following was posted as part of a larger position ...

"In the 1970's, consensus, based on the research-based evidence available at the time, was that the earth was cooling and we were on the cusp of entering into another 'ice age'. The facts remain the same, but consensus performed a complete U-turn over a period of only 15-20 years ... strangely enough, that's pretty much the same timescale which is claimed as being irrelevant when considering the currently observed temperature stasis/cooling." [*1]

... a number of posts regarding 'fact' appeared before I made a counter argument after the 'Myth' paper was raised ...

"If it was then there were a number of GCE 'O' level & 'A' level science reference books which were printed based on myth, not science!! ... It was mainstream enough for cyclical glaciation and our current position within the cycle to be taught alongside other subjects with scientific consensus such as plate tectonics and the central place theory .... " [*2]

... [*1] was countered with ...

Leeds_Solar wrote: »

no it wasn't - this is just a commonly repeated fallacy that you've fallen for.

The vast majority of published peer reviewed scientific articles in the field of climate science that mentioned either warming or cooling in the 1970s were making warming predictions.

... with explanation being offered as (note this is still fact vs consensus) ... at this point [*2] also becomes relevant ...

zeupater wrote: »

... In the 1970s I personally was taught (in England) that (i) there was a decades-long cooling trend which was contrary to the long term inter-glacial trend & (ii) that, based on glacial-cycle research, the northern hemisphere was both close to the max temperature before a new cooling period and close to the average interval between such events ... note, this is 'fact', however the science behind what was being taught was based on 'consensus' ....

... the counter being made much later than the initial debate had subsided ...

Leeds_Solar wrote: »

... I was responding to a specific statement you made which is demonstrably false ...

... There was also a slight reduction in solar output on one of the cycles in this period that would likely have exacerbated the issue.

So your teachers weren't really wrong unless they were falsely extrapolating from the short term trend and expecting it to continue, which is the sort of error I could well see a fairly poorly trained teacher making, but doesn't in itself have any real reflection on the actual understanding of the subject amongst the majority of scientists active in the field at the time ...

If my point was 'demonstrably false', how could a 'poorly trained' teacher not be wrong ... afterall, there was a "slight reduction in solar output on one of the cycles in this period that would likely have exacerbated the issue"

Anyway, history continues ...

zeupater wrote: »

... A statement which is "demonstrably false " either is or isn't. If there is a question of whether a cooling trend was being taught or not, then why would the teachers be considered as being 'poorly trained', especially when different teachers were covering the same issue within different schools (MrsZ attended different schools, but covered the same material) ... doesn't this logically suggest centralised syllabus approval by the examining board, which would require board consensus, therefore having nothing to do with the quality of the teacher?

Then,

Leeds_Solar wrote: »

... as I've said, the basics of the stuff you describe being taught was pretty much correct, it's only if that was then used to extrapolate to a long term cooling trend that it would have been wrong, and not reflecting the scientific understanding at the time .... teachers weren't exactly wrong to teach that there had been a recent slight short lived cooling trend, nor is this inconsistent with the current understanding of the climatic processes involved ...

Followed by, (isn't it a boring process, just to illustrate a single thread of inconsistency!)

zeupater wrote: »

... It seems that there is agreement that the possibility of global cooling being taught in the 1970s is a reality .....
.... teachers don't set the syllabus, the examination boards do ... perhaps this is where the problem is then. With Oxford and Cambridge boards being offshoots from their respective universities ... it would be far more interesting to discover what they were thinking at the time that the syllabus was set ...

then, to bring up to date ...

Leeds_Solar wrote: »

If you don't try to equate the situation regarding global cooling in the 70s with the situation now with global warming, then you'll not regularly see people like me refuting it.

They are nothing like each other ...

...Even a quick glance though clearly refutes your original assertion though, as there are clearly a lot of papers that are predicting warming.

... the cooling period was longer than the 70's, well yes it roughly ran from the late 40s through to the late 70s, and the dimming also seems to have been occuring for a long time as well.

As I said though, all I was attempting to point out was that the teachers weren't wrong to be teaching about this trend at that point, just wrong if they extrapolated from that to a longer term cooling trend ....

... There's a theory related to the scientific method around generational paradigm shifts, whereby essentially many of those who teach a subject are largely reflecting in their teaching what they themselves learnt at university. I'd suspect this is at play in this situation, with the warming hypothesis taking a generation to really transition to the state where it's being taught at high school level.

This doesn't apply so much to those actively involved in research in the field, as they're far more likely to read most / all of the latest research in the field.

Phew !! what a totally confused argument. What I really find interesting is that an original position of "no it wasn't - this is just a commonly repeated fallacy" has moved to a position accepting that a cooling period "roughly ran from the late 40s through to the late 70s" & a realisation that teachers were possibly following a syllabus which would likely not include latest developments (a cutting edge to mainstream lead-time - who'd have thought it ) ...

It actually looked like we're actually heading towards a position of consensus here .... <jest warning!>a little more movement and someone will actually consider that you're 'not on message' and be re-classified as being 'sceptical' .... :rotfl: </jest warning!>

Just to provide a summary, for those who aren't asleep yet and are interested in the contradictions .... a cooling period "roughly ran from the late 40s through to the late 70s", followed by a significant warming period over a the following ~20 years, followed by a slowing/stasis period for the last ~15 years ... that logically gives 20 years of significant warming trend in a 65 year period " ... strangely enough, that's pretty much the same timescale which is claimed as being irrelevant when considering the currently observed temperature stasis/cooling." as raised in the originally disputed [*1] .... oddly enough, it's also the conclusion which you would have made by simply glancing at the HadCET annual temperature anomalies chart .... http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/graphs/HadCET_graph_ylybars_uptodate.gif ... as raised in post #298 on this thread ... full circle, no 'facts' proved, nothing really disproved either ... I really do also find it very odd that extrapolating long term accelerated climate change (note the emphasis on accelerated !) based on observations made over a short timescale is considered as being scientifically acceptable, but to "extrapolate to a long term cooling trend" would be "wrong" ... isn't science really strange! ...

Predicting the future is all guesswork, "and that's the case whether you have a spreadsheet on a £500 laptop from the high-street, or a full climate model on a £50million IBM Sequoia or Cray supercomputer which the likes of the Met-Office have access to" [Post#300] (although a laptop is considerably more environmentally friendly ... )

HTH
Z

spgsc531

http://news.uk.msn.com/video-clips?videoid=c3fd4b5a-6643-40ec-bfb5-49ac80def022

ed110220

The claim that warming has stopped based on cherry picking a short enough time period is probably best shown to be faulty by showing that it is possible to find no fewer than five such periods covering the entire time since 1970.

With this 'logic' it would have been possible to argue that we've been cooling ever since 1970! You could also argue by the same method that summer must be colder than winter by picking periods of a few days or weeks that begin warmer than they end. I think this shows the illogic of it.

Leeds_Solar

rogerblack wrote: »

This is not correct.
The 'core group' is only available to certain pensioners, however there is a much wider group - the 'broader group' - whos eligibility varies from provider to provider.
Being disabled and on certain income related benefits for example ,ay qualify you.
(Got payment last year, and am not yet a pensioner)

I stand corrected on that part then, DECC's guidance made it look as if you needed to be a pensioner to qualify.

In which case, effectively the fuel poor are still being protected from fuel price rises due to FIT payments, with an average £8 a household charge for FIT offset by a £130ish rebate.

This change would then seem like being just another expensive rearranging of the deck chairs by government, similar to the replacing of CERT with ECO, which are essentially the same thing with a few minor tweaks, and just long enough between them for a hell of a lot of insulation companies to go bust / lay most of their staff off. [/soapbox]

Leeds_Solar

zeupater wrote: »

Phew !! what a totally confused argument. What I really find interesting is that an original position of "no it wasn't - this is just a commonly repeated fallacy" has moved to a position accepting that a cooling period "roughly ran from the late 40s through to the late 70s" & a realisation that teachers were possibly following a syllabus which would likely not include latest developments (a cutting edge to mainstream lead-time - who'd have thought it ) ...

My position has remained consistent throughout.

1 - You were and remain wrong to state that there was a scientific consensus around "the earth was cooling and we were on the cusp of entering into another 'ice age'."

2 - The science you were taught re millankovitch cycles and ice ages was probably largely correct, as would have been a discussion at that time about a slight cooling that had occurred since the late 40s.

3 - If your teachers then attempted to conflate the 2 points, and thought this was an indication that we might be on the cusp of a new ice age, then at this point they were at odds with the majority of the published science at the time, and now. Although there were a few minority scientific opinions at the time that did think this was a possibility, these were rapidly refuted - popular science in the media however took quite a long time to catch up with the actual mainstream scientific position.

There is barely one iota of difference between any of my posts on this point.

zeupater

ed110220 wrote: »

The claim that warming has stopped based on cherry picking a short enough time period is probably best shown to be faulty by showing that it is possible to find no fewer than five such periods covering the entire time since 1970.

With this 'logic' it would have been possible to argue that we've been cooling ever since 1970! You could also argue by the same method that summer must be colder than winter by picking periods of a few days or weeks that begin warmer than they end. I think this shows the illogic of it.

Hi

I would have thought that anyone referencing the very 'anti-sceptical' resource mentioned previously on this thread would at least be consistent ... how exactly does the above support your previous point? ...

ed110220 wrote: »

... Also, as you point out too, sufficiently short time periods don't tell you anything about the trend, only the noise, and are susceptible to cherry-picking, ie the 'trend' you get depends heavily on which year you begin or end with. Those who wish to show a cooling trend tend to start with an unusually warm year, say 1998, which gives a rather different spurious trend than starting with 1997 or 1999.

Another problem with a ten year running mean for today is that it depends on five years that haven't happened yet as well as five that have. Once those 5 years have happened, the running mean for 2013 will be different.

... surely it's open for all to appreciate the contradiction here, ... it's bad enough for some to form an opinion based on 'dodgy' presentation of science, but at least most would attempt to be consistent ....

My view on this was given in the post ...

zeupater wrote: »

...
Regarding trend start dates, it's a case of picking a date to suit, however, comparing annual rolling averages (eg previous 5 years vs previous 10, 10/20, 20/30, 30/50) actually smooths any anomaly out, if all of the smaller time periods have a lower averaged temperature than the larger groups, then you have a significant cooling trend .... it doesn't matter which year you start with, because each group starts in a different year !!

... now that's the logical approach, each rolling period has it's own start date, so it simply can't be selective ...

HTH
Z

Leeds_Solar

zeupater wrote: »

Just to provide a summary, for those who aren't asleep yet and are interested in the contradictions .... a cooling period "roughly ran from the late 40s through to the late 70s", followed by a significant warming period over a the following ~20 years, followed by a slowing/stasis period for the last ~15 years ... that logically gives 20 years of significant warming trend in a 65 year period " ... strangely enough, that's pretty much the same timescale which is claimed as being irrelevant when considering the currently observed temperature stasis/cooling." as raised in the originally disputed [*1] .... oddly enough, it's also the conclusion which you would have made by simply glancing at the HadCET annual temperature anomalies chart
Z

If you entirely miss out the scale of any change, and neglect to point out the preceding warming period, and unusual high temperatures of the preceding decade (40s) you'd almost have a point.



There was actually only 1 decade of actual cooling, following a peak in the 40s, both the 60's and 70's were still slightly cooler than the 40s, but warmer than the 50s. Depending on your start and end points you can make the case for there having been 30 years of marginal cooling, but essentially there was a minor correction in the 50s following an exceptionally hot 40s, followed by a 20 year period of stagnation, which then gave way to rapid decade on decade rises from the end of the 70's onwards.

Or to put it another way,

In the last 50 years all 5 decades have been warmer than the previous decade

In the last 100 years 9 decades were warmer than the preceding decade, and just 1 decade was slightly cooler than the preceding decade.