Climate and Weather

Once again I see the terrible weather the UK and Europe have been enduring - the UK in particular taking the brunt of it - is fuelling the 'Global Warming/Climate Change' hysteria. Yet another 'paper' has been rushed into print claiming that 93% of the 'missing heat' (the gap between reality and climate model predictions) is lurking in the oceans. The Polar Vortex responsible for this battering we are currently enduring is, apparently, caused by the ice loss and warming of the Arctic Ocean. The paper also claims that Antarctica is losing its ice shelves, and the reason for the current increase in ice there is - you got it - global warming 'trapping' a vortex over the continent.

I get fed up with selective quotes, buzz phrases (the users of which seldom actually know what they mean) and headlines like "unprecedented" or "worst XXX in history". I get fed up with being told that something has never happened before, when right in front of us is ample evidence that it has, and may even have been worse. Why did the Victorians build the Embankments along the Thames in London? Why did the coastal authorities in the 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries spend enormous amounts of money (often the landowner's own) and effort building land drains, dykes and sea defences? Because none of these events or storms is "unprecedented" except in the minds of idle ignoramuses who never check their facts and are totally ignorant of any history. In medieval times an entire town vanished overnight in a storm that hit the Frisian coast of Germany. Archaeologists now know that wasn't 'unprecedented' then either. Holland has suffered massive flooding throughout its history, and the Thames suffered 'catastrophic' floods at regular intervals until quite recently. In fact, in February 1928 there was massive flooding in much the same areas now affected, people drowned in the western suburbs of London in the floods. So how is the current flood 'unprecedented'?

There can be no doubt that the climate is changing, but to ascribe it, as so many reports do, purely to the Carbon Dioxide emissions of mankind is pure garbage. "Carbon" has become a 'catch-all' word for everything Greenpeace and its devotees cal a 'greenhouse gas' - in which group they now include water vapour. But how many of the idiots who earnestly repeat this trash actually understand anything at all about the 'gases' they deem to be so harmful? Not many if any of the conversations and news reports I am constantly bombarded with are anything to go by. Once again we see the likes of the Labour Leader, and the Minister for the Environment trotting out the buzz phrase that 'we must de-carbonise society' in order to 'prevent catastrophic climate change'. As I have repeatedly said, the day I see proof they can control the rise and fall of the tides, is the day I will subscribe to this trash. Until then, stop running around like Chicken-licken screaming the sky is falling, and let's get real. The answer to climate change - a natural phenomenon that has been happening since the planet first formed - is to adapt.

Stop building in flood plains would be a good start. The Somerset Levels were a sea marsh until they were drained in the 18th and 19th Centuries, so were the Fens. The other little wriggle is that we now have probably 30 times the number of people living in Britain than at the beginning of the Industrial Age. Urban sprawl has increased run-off, created 'heat islands' and 'micro-climates' which all mess up the weather patterns - so let's take a look at the effect those have as well.

Let's do something positive about finding a reliable and efficient source of electrical energy. I'd love to see the figures for the output of all those damned useless windmills during the storms. I'm prepared to take a bet with the High Street Bookmakers that it was not the vaunted 17% capacity they supposedly give. I'd be surprised if it was as much as 1 or 2% because with the wind speeds reported, most of them will have had to be shut down to prevent damage. So the alternative supplies will have been brought online - massive diesel generating plants quietly installed by the wind generating companies to keep the current flowing when the wind turbines aren't producing. And Drax, the massive coal burning plant currently being converted to burn wood chips imported from Western Canada by rail and ship loads. Yes, I expect that does a huge amount to "de-carbonise" our energy use, Mr Milliband.

Yes, let's replace hydrocarbon fuelled vehicles with electric ones - but let's find a more efficient way of using those than with massive and extremely toxic batteries. Let's find better ways to build and insulate our homes. Let's make those less vulnerable and more efficient even if that means replacing and redesigning all the building stock we currently hang onto as if it were the epitome of architectural and construction achievement. Frankly, most of it was substandard when built, and it hasn't improved with age. I'm not talking about real heritage buildings, but, seriously, what is the attraction of a Victorian Terrace built for "t' workers up t' mill"? The rooms are often damp, cramped and even if the house has been renovated, built right onto the street, has no garden and the street outside is choked with the cars not invented when the houses were built.

Climate Change, like the tides, is unstoppable. Like the tides, or continental drift, we can't stop it. So let's, for pities sake, stop wasting time and money trying to 'stop' it. It's time to get seriously real. The 'Climate Scientists' can't actually say which way it's going anyway, since nature has, so far, refused to conform to their fantasy models, and while Britain is bombarded by rain and storms, the North American continent is being buried in snow and ice. All down to 'Global Warming' you see. Most of these models are using data that has been 'smoothed' or 'averaged' and 'adjusted' to fit the model, which means the data fed into them is pretty close to being worthless - except in terms of how much money can be extracted from the tax payer to keep funding the circus.

So here's a radical idea. Stop funding the research into this. Let the UN pay for it if they can find the money and divert it from the wastage and corruption of that fraudulent organisation. Stop funding the multi-million dollar operations of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, etc., all of which are now become purely political (socialist/communist) organisations. Stop subsidising the inefficient wind farms (a wind turbine is, at best, only 27% efficient, whereas a coal fire power station is at least 43% efficient and most likely more). The money saved could be invested in rebuilding our building stock, and in new generating plants with the latest and most efficient technology. Wind and solar won't do it, and neither are as 'clean and green' as their proponents like to argue.

I think I really must stop being practical. I wonder of the Church of Climate Change dances and uses tambourines in their worship? Might be good for a laugh ...

Energy Demand and Freezing Weather ...

The 'Big Freeze' in the US could have been made a great deal worse by massive power outages. The surprise is what 'saved' the system. It certainly wasn't all those windmills and solar cells, nor was it the coal and gas generating stations, and even the diesel emergency generating stations had problems. The probably unpalatable fact for the 'Green' lobbyists is that it was the nuclear stations that kept going while natural gas lines suffered massive drops in pressure (the gas 'liquified' in the low temperatures and Charles Law took over and did the rest), the diesel generators suffered fuel problems (diesel fuel tends to 'jellify' at very low temperatures) and the coal trains couldn't get enough to the power stations in the snow - and the snow hindered its movement from the storage bunkers to the furnaces where there was enough.

The much maligned and hated nuclear power stations alone had no problem. Need more power in the grid? Run up some more of the turbines and bring them on line. The only thing that could have bothered them was the collapse of the overhead power grid. From Smart Planet, I got the following data in an article entitled The Score After the Deep Freeze: Nuclear Power 1: Polar Vortex 0. When Solar and Wind were shutting down because the extreme weather rendered them unusable, nuclear took the strain. Output figures for New England for the period show:

• Nuclear 29%
• Gas 27%
• Oil 15%
• Coal 14%

It is reported that coal stacks froze solid, and both oil and gas had problems, and diesel generators don't function well in extreme low temperatures (ask the U-boat commanders ordered to operate above the Arctic Circle in the 1940s ...). The remaining 15% of the energy used came from a mix of other sources, though wind provided the bulk of it - when the wind conditions allowed it. Now, remember this is for ONE part of the US, and the freezing weather actually affected the whole of the North and West and extended almost as far South as Florida. Admittedly the New England area is possibly one of the more densely populated areas and therefore has a very high demand for power, but it highlights one of the biggest problems we face in the pursuit of 'clean' energy.

It is true that there are a number of problems associated with nuclear power, but the fear that has been whipped up against it is largely based on general ignorance. The ignorance of the majority of people is ruthlessly exploited by the anti-nuclear lobby who are probably almost as ignorant as those they claim to 'inform' on it. One of the biggest problems is the lack of understanding regarding radioactivity, radiation and the dangers. As a good friend and former colleague who specialised in radiation once remarked, it's a radioactive universe. Yes, the current Uranium based reactor systems do produce some nasty by-products with long 'half-lives' of decay, but the question most folk don't understand is the difference between exposure to Alpha, Beta and Gamma radiation sources. The first two are fairly easy to shield, the third is not and is the really nasty one. Ironically, almost every anti-nuclear campaigner I've ever encountered doesn't know this and doesn't realise that the gold rings, ear rings and pendants they wear also emits radiation. So do the rocks used to build houses in places like Scotland or Cornwall.

Had an x-ray recently? You've probably had about half the allowable radiation dose permitted in a nuclear facility. I discovered some years ago talking to a man (then in his late 80s) who had been part of the Manhattan Project team, that their 'safe exposure limits' had been set by halving the exposure limits allowed for x-rays ... No one seems to have ever questioned them since.

Radiation in one form or another is present everywhere, most sources things we take for granted and don't even consider to be 'radioactive'. Until fairly recently if you'd held a Geiger counter near the face of a 'luminous' watch it would have gone crazy. In fact it isn't that long ago a watchmakers premises in London were found to be sufficiently radioactive as to need a massive (and expensive) decontamination process.

The real problem with Nuclear generation is the waste, and here again, there is as much misinformation as there is waste. The truth is that very little of the waste is actually 'high level' waste such as Plutonium, Polonium, Caesium and so on. Most of it is irradiated clothing, tools and other materials which do not have a long 'half-life'. It is this stuff that Greenpeace and CND activists love to find 'improperly stored', and whip up hysteria with often staged and retouched photographs. Of course the stuff is dangerous, but to claim it will 'poison' the ground water, or irradiate anyone walking past is is nonsense. The high level waste is a different matter, but again, there is actually very little of it. The fuel rods themselves are generally recovered and can be reprocessed so that around 80% of the original material is recovered. The nasty stuff can be removed and is first cooled, compressed into cakes, then sealed into solid glass slugs before being encased in concrete and a steel jacket. This is the stuff the anti-nuclear lobby would have the gullible believe is being mishandled and improperly stored - and ignorance is their tool.

The fact is that nuclear is the best alternative to wind, solar, coal and oil electricity generating plants. For one thing there is no CO2 output. Nor do we have to stay with the current Uranium fuelled reactors. The truth is that Uranium was chosen for the simple reason that it does 'breed' Plutonium and that was required to make the atomic bombs. The alternative is to use Thorium which has almost no seriously bad decay products. No Plutonium, no Polonium and no Caesium. In other words, you don't have the incredibly long 'half-lives' of the radioactive wastes we are currently dealing with. There is still waste, and there is still a 'risk' but then the waste from a coal burning power station is seriously nasty - and radioactive.

To those who would rather see a further spread of windmills I would point to the fact that during the recent storms in the UK the National Grid was receiving very little from all the hundreds of turbines around Britain. Most of them were shut down because the winds were too strong - so the power was being produced by all the 'dirty' technologies they are campaigning to have shut down permanently. If you would rather see hydro-electricity increased, there are problems there as well. Building a dam large enough to generate the sort of capacity required causes massive ecological disruption to wild-life and the river systems - take a look at the Aral Sea since the Soviets dammed all the rivers that once fed it. Take a look at the Snowy River in Australia below the dam built on that, or the Murray-Darling Basin once the waters feeding that were diverted to provide water to other uses.Take a look at what is happening now on the Yellow River in China and then take a look at how the Severn eco-system will be affected by a barrage spanning the estuary. Why not dam the Thames at Dartford? Sure, the river upstream will be stable (it currently has an 18 - 21 foot tide) and the outflow/inflow can be used to generate power, navigation will be affected of course, but think of the benefit ... 

Nuclear power generation doesn't impact rivers, landscapes or ecological systems in anything like the same way. Incidents such as Windscale, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima are rare - far rarer than incidents involving other power generating plants, and each one of those involved circumstances that were unique. There are no nuclear plants in Europe or the UK that incorporate the features of Fukushima, much less are built in earthquake and tsunami zones. Nor is it so easy to deliberately crash an aircraft into the reactor building. In fact I would bet that most people couldn't actually identify the reactor building at most such sites. Changing the type of fuel to Thorium would, in fact, change the ball game as well. OK, it isn't as easy as simply pulling one type of fuel rod and replacing it with another, but this is where the current "No Nuclear" attitude is actually holding us back. 

So far all the efforts to cut power use, to reduce reliance on 'fossil fuel' (and there is a huge debate on whether 'oil' is in fact a 'fossil' product) have failed. And they will continue to fail. Our society needs electricity - lots of it - to survive. Those who think we can revert to subsistence farming, are living in Lalaland, and those who think we can maintain our current standard of living and levels of civilisation while reducing our use of electricity and transport are fooling themselves. "Renewable" energy will never replace normal generating plants since they are not reliable, and the fact that ever single one of us is actually subsidising the owners of these things is a disgrace. Data from the National Grid shows that though wind has the capacity to supply 17% of demand, it rarely produces more than 5% of what is required. 

Nuclear is clearly far more reliable, and if the hysterical, misinformed, campaigning mob is faced with reality - as in the removal of all their electric gadgetry whenever their wind turbines drop out of the gird - we might see some real progress. Progress which doesn't mean defacing the countryside and destroying the ecology with their windmills, dams and acres of solar panels. It is time for a major rethink, and for some serious education of the ignorant.  

Weather Lore

Listening to a learned climate scientist making predictions based on the latest models and data yesterday I did get a few laughs. The present warmer than usual winter in Western Europe is being seized upon by the Climate Change/Green lobby to ramp up their "see, we told you so" scaremongering. No mention is made, of course, of the unusually cold weather blanketing the US and Eastern Canada, or of the unseasonably extensive pack ice in Antarctica, or the massive recovery of the Arctic ice. Oh no, the entire focus is on the "Climate Change" in one small part of the overall continent. It was funny, largely because all these serious speakers have university degrees and live in cities, making, of course, the occasional foray into the countryside to choose some more sites for windmills and solar panel farms, and perhaps to wring their hands over the latest lack of snow.

Living in a small village, surrounded by farmers and forest, one cannot help but be aware of the old folk lore regarding a lot of nature and natural phenomenon. It's a pity so many highly educated Greens and Climate Scientists don't take a closer look at what the people on the land, in the forest and in the fields can tell them about cycles. A couple of weeks ago one of our local farmers told me that if the Epiphany dawned warm and clear with no snow - the winter was over and the Spring would arrive early. There are a number of similar measures and sayings in different places, and they are, generally, based on many centuries of observation, and are generally pretty much on the money.

Epiphany was chilly, but it was clear, and there was no snow on the ground. Now I am seeing birds furiously building nests, rabbits, squirrels and other wildlife all getting themselves geared up for the next stage in the cycle of their lives and the old farmer is complaint that the crops he had planned will not thrive yet - because the ground is still to wet.

It strikes me that for this sort of 'lore' to arise, there must have been centuries of observation of similar events and cycles. OK, so the folk who developed this didn't have temperature records, they didn't have satellite images and data, and the probably wouldn't know the North Atlantic Oscillation from a fun fair. That doesn't mean it can simply be disregarded - especially when it is, a lot of the time, more accurate than all the data crunching that goes into 'models'. I suspect that most of these models are simply a fancier way of the old Shaman throwing the bones and declaring that, because one landed in a pool of water, another on a stone and yet another on a patch of bare ground, that this meant we were going to get a flood, followed by a drying up of the rivers and a drought.

The rural weather lore is not just sucked out of the air, it has developed and been handed down through generations. It would not be repeated if the cycles weren't being observed by those repeating them. Some of the residents in this village are well into their 80s and one is over 90. Talking to them about the cycles of the land and the weather is fascinating and, I must say, a heck of a lot more informative than listening to someone repeating the story that Germany will not see any snow - even on its highest mountains, in another 30 years. Or that even Switzerland will not see snow in a hundred. I mentioned this to one old fellow here and he laughed. "Ja," he said, "They said that when I was little. Then we got the winter of 1947."

It seems to be the same thing all over the world. Once one becomes an "expert", the simple act of doing a reality check occasionally seems to get forgotten. Now, thanks to the fact that a warm winter (my neighbour reminds me in broad Hessisch that they had a similar one some years ago) I shall dig out my waders and take my friend Harry the Sheltie for a walk in the mud.