UK energy future

[pjclarke]

Does anybody seriously put this forward as helping the problem (if it is one) ?

I wonder how that can ever help..

I agree. Few can afford to write off such an asset so it would just be sold to another owner. The challenge is to persuade the car industry to improve mpg, which they have signally failed to do - a 1983 Peugeot 205 gave 72mpg at 56mph, a contemporary Prius manages 55mpg. In the States fuel efficiency has actually declined.

Once again, the technology is there, but it is not adopted due to lack of political (read: popular) will.

[DodgyAgent]

I agree. Few can afford to write off such an asset so it would just be sold to another owner. The challenge is to persuade the car industry to improve mpg, which they have signally failed to do - a 1983 Peugeot 205 gave 72mpg at 56mph, a contemporary Prius manages 55mpg. In the States fuel efficiency has actually declined.

Once again, the technology is there, but it is not adopted due to lack of political (read: popular) will.

None of that is actually necessary at all

[DodgyAgent]

The Syrian Drought That Created ISIS Is An Urban Myth

Numerous significant thinkers from Pulitzer prizewinning journalist Thomas Friedman to the Prince of Wales to ex-choral-jailbait-nymphet Charlotte Church have been promoting the theory that the current troubles in Syria are the result of a drought caused by ‘climate change’.

It’s an easy mistake to have made. Often when people are short of food and water their natural instinct is to strap on a suicide vest, pick up a Kalashnikov and drive to Paris in order to kill a few hundred people as an important gesture designed to raise public awareness of the urgent need to reduce anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions before someone gets hurt.

But in this case, Friedman, the Prince of Wales, Charlotte Church – and also Graham Linehan, the Irish scriptwriter of the brilliant comedy series Father Ted – are wrong in their assumption.

We know this because of a stubborn fact called meteorological evidence.

As Roger Andrews demonstrates here in great detail the “drought” that supposedly ravaged Syria between 2006 and 2011 and drove thousands of ordinary Syrians into the arms of ISIS and Al Qaeda never actually happened.

Take Aleppo – where, according to the “drought” theory, conditions got so bad that thousands were driven off the land:

Last January, it was reported that crop failures ….. just in the farming villages around the city of Aleppo, had led 200,000 rural villagers to leave for the cities.

Maybe. But here’s the problem with that theory: there was no drought in Aleppo.

Average annual rainfall during the 2006-2011 period was only 9% lower than average annual rainfall over the preceding 55 years. The driest year during the period (2011) was only the seventh driest on record and 2006-2011 was only the 13th driest six-year period on record. Clearly the crop failures in the farming villages around Aleppo – which undoubtedly occurred – weren’t caused by a drought of Biblical proportions. In fact there doesn’t seem to have been a drought at Aleppo at all.

Yes, in some parts of Syria it’s true there were much greater falls in average annual rainfall. But not in any of the main crop-growing areas.

temp-1

Average rainfall over 2006-2011 was below the pre-2006 average at four stations (Deir Ezzor -31%, Palmyra -22%, Lattakia -17% and Aleppo -9% as already discussed ) but above it at three (Kamishli +3%, Damascus +5% and Hama +15%). The average for all seven stations was 7% below the pre-2006 average, decreasing to 4% when only the five “cropland” stations (Lattakia, Aleppo, Kamishi, Hama and Damascus) are considered.

So, to repeat, the 2006 to 2011 drought which experts like the Prince of Wales are citing in support of their “climate change” causes terrorism thesis did not exist.

That doesn’t mean, by the way, that there were no food shortages in Syria during that period. There were. But, as Roger Andrews goes on to explain, this was largely the result of geopolitical factors and poor farming practice.

There have been two historic contributors. First was Syria’s skyrocketing population, which more than quadrupled from 4.7 million to 22.1 million between 1961 and 2012. Second was Syria’s government, which in an attempt to keep up with population growth encouraged rapid development of irrigated croplands beginning in the 1980s (according to FAO data Syria’s irrigated cropland increased by 70%, from 693,000 to 1,180,000 hectares, between 1990 and 1995 alone, which explains the large increase in wheat production over this period seen in Figure 7). Climate and Security summarizes the problems thus:

Based on short-term assessments during years of relative plenty, the government has heavily subsidized water-intensive wheat and cotton farming, and encouraged inefficient irrigation techniques. In the face of both climate and human-induced water shortages, farmers have sought to increase supply by turning to the country’s groundwater resources, with Syria’s National Agricultural Policy Center reporting an increase in wells tapping aquifers from “just over 135,000 in 1999 to more than 213,000 in 2007.” This pumping “has caused groundwater levels to plummet in many parts of the country, and raised significant concerns about the water quality in remaining aquifer stocks.” On top of this, the over-grazing of land and a rapidly growing population have compounded the land desertification process. As previously fertile lands turn to dust, farmers and herders have had no choice but to move elsewhere, starve, or demand change.

But while these factors undoubtedly contributed the event that probably contributed most to the 2008 crop failures was Bashar Assad’s 2005 “liberalization” of the Syrian economy, which caused a near-tripling of the price of diesel between 2007 and 2008 and made it “nearly impossible for many cultivators to keep their irrigation pumps running, much less to transport produce to the cities” (sources here and here). I haven’t checked any further, but if this is why Syria’s crops failed then Obama, Kerry, Pope Francis et al. are calling for global action on climate change because Assad hiked diesel prices in Syria eight years ago.

But obviously all this weight of evidence still won’t be enough to persuade the righteous. When you feel that “climate change” is the answer to everything, who needs facts

[pjclarke]

'ex-choral-jailbait-nymphet' ??

Drought denial now? You have your blog science, I'll stick to the peer-reviewed, published stuff

Having established Syria’s vulnerability to droughts, we now examine the 2007–2010 drought itself. The severity and persistence of the drought can be seen in the area mean of FC rainfall according to the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (UEA CRU) data (Fig. 1A) and in the two Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) stations located closest to Syria’s northeastern agricultural region, Deir ez-Zor on the Euphrates River and Kamishli near the Turkish border (Materials and Methods). The 2007/2008 winter was easily the driest in the observed records. Multiyear drought episodes, here defined as three or more consecutive years of rainfall below the century-long normal, occurred periodically over the last 80 years (CRU), in the late 1950s, 1980s, and 1990s (Fig. 1A, brown shading). Although less severe, these droughts raise the question of why the effects of the recent drought were so much more dramatic. We offer three reasons: (i) the recent demand for available resources was disproportionately larger than in the 1950s; in addition to the recent emphasis on agricultural production, the total population of Syria (Fig. 1D) grew from 4 million in the 1950s to 22 million in recent years; (ii) the decline in the supply of groundwater has depleted the buffer against years with low rainfall; and (iii) the recent drought occurred shortly after the 1990s drought, which was also severe; Syria was far more vulnerable to a severe drought in the first decade of the 21st century than in the 1950s, and the FC never fully recovered from the late 1990s drought before collapsing again into severe drought. In fact, the region has been in moderate to severe drought from 1998 through 2009, with 7 of 11 years receiving rainfall below the 1901–2008 normal. It is notable that three of the four most severe multiyear droughts have occurred in the last 25 years, the period during which external anthropogenic forcing has seen its largest increase.

Climate change in the Fertile Crescent and implications of the recent Syrian drought

Or, in the MSM

The drought started in 2006, years before violence broke out in Syria. By 2009,*yields of wheat and barley fell by about one-half and two-thirds, respectively, and 800,000 people lost their basic food support. By 2011, the year violence erupted after a popular uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, the situation had worsened and more than 1 million Syrians were forced into food insecurity. With rising political tensions, and families no longer able to ensure their futures on rural agricultural land, more than 1.5 million people migrated to cities, including Aleppo, Damascus and Homs, where many deaths occurred.

Is the Syrian conflict linked to climate change? - CNN.com

[LucidDementia]

So just to get this straight, your response to the fact the IPCC predicted the opposite of what happened is to ad-hom attack someone who has been fighting you raving lunatics from day one?

So as I predicted you'll just say it's a lie.

Still no equation, still no concrete evidence, just endless IPCC drivel, no solutions. Endless garbage, rhetoric, peer-reviewed tulipe and waffle about consensus.


As to other posts around my "get a smaller car" comment should see I wasn't serious. What was pointed out is that when asked for a solution of any kind on any scale none is forthcoming. Just more fearmongering horsetulip. MPG in the US has declined? Hilarious. Who are you sampling as the car owners? Single black grandmothers under the age of 60?

To say nothing of the suggestion political will and popular will are the same thing. Eons apart.


Never before in human history have so many statistics been twisted, stupidly sampled or so enthusiastically lied about than by the eco-loons.
Stick to the resources argument and we might listen, trying to tell us that every farting cow pushes us closer to the brink? Not a good look.

[pjclarke]

So just to get this straight, your response to the fact the IPCC predicted the opposite of what happened is to ad-hom attack someone who has been fighting you raving lunatics from day one?

No I pointed out - with cast-iron evidence - that what Monckton plotted was not what the IPCC predicted, and he cherry-picked a period too short to be statistically valid.. It’s a made up number, as my links demonstrated. Monckton has a track record of getting the science egregiously wrong. Here's all the data

MPG in the US has declined? Hilarious.

Specifically - average mpg in the US for cars and light trucks declined between 1988 (22.0) and 2006 (20.8), admittedly the trend has picked up since then, my point was that for those 18 years it was the reverse of what we needed.


Bye for now.

Bonus quote:-

On May 6, 2010, Mr. Christopher Monckton testified by invitation to the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming of the U.S. House of Representatives. Mr. Monckton, who is not a scientist, gave testimony that was in stark contrast to that of the scientists who were present at the hearing as well as the many official statements produced by the world’s premiere scientific organizations, about the growing dangers of climate change. Here, a number of top climate scientists have thoroughly refuted all of Mr. Monckton’s major assertions, clearly demonstrating a number of obvious and elementary errors. We encourage the U.S. Congress to give careful consideration to the implications this document has for the care that should be exercised in choosing expert witnesses to inform the legislative process.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Monckton-response.pdf

[pjclarke]

Never before in human history have so many statistics been twisted, stupidly sampled or so enthusiastically lied about than by the eco-loons.

I've told you a million times not to exaggerate.

Its only scaremongering or alarmism if the scare is not real. You have failed to point out a single factual error in anything I've posted, at the same time, while strong on infantile name-calling, you have not provided a shred of evidence for your over-the-top assertions, relying instead on long-debunked myths, bulltulip petitions and a fabricated graph from a potty aristocrat who, when he is not denying climate change, claims to have cured AIDS.

Not a good look. I am grateful to you for exposing the paper-thin basis of the counter-argument, but for now - I'm out.

[LucidDementia]

I've told you a million times not to exaggerate.

Nice.

I don't need evidence, I'm not the one pushing an agenda or trying to terrify the world.

The burden of proof is on you lot and you don't have any.


Oh and directly from your "cast iron" proof. (Which interestingly is barely legible English) Your proof Monkton is wrong actually agrees with him but takes issue with his figures not his position.

Oddly, I agree the IPCC model’s projections look high!

Some will find it odd I write this when they know I think the IPCC projections look high. I do indeed. Observations, when fit with least squares since 2001, display negative trends. Observations, when fit with least squares since 1980, display, trends that are, on average, less than those for the simulations I downloaded from The Climate Explorer (which consist, predominantly of simulations used in the AR4).

There is a very simple message here. Drop it. We don't buy it and we're not going to.

[LucidDementia]

Bonus common sense.

This graph, if we assume it to be true shows nothing more than a trend of less than 1 degree Celsius either side of the mean in 150 years. It doesn't help your case in any way. There is no evidence at all of anything other than 'the climate changes'. Shocking.

And mpg is for cars and light trucks. So not cars.

For those who don't follow my meaning here is an American light truck.



And its engine:



They call this 6.2 Litre monster the Eco-tec

Personally I love it, but good luck getting 29 mpg out of it.


And finally I never resort to infantile name calling peej. What I often do is call a spade a spade.
You are a twat. Ask around.

[pjclarke]

Oh and directly from your "cast iron" proof. (Which interestingly is barely legible English) Your proof Monkton is wrong actually agrees with him but takes issue with his figures not his position.

I think she's Canadian. Lucia found the graph you posted (or a nearly identical one from His Fraudship) had the IPCC trend 75% larger than could possibly be correct. Some might think an apology was in order. And she's right - over the 7 year period plotted the models over-projected temperature, but then nobody expects the models to capture such short term variability, and the planet is rapidly catching up.